Lost River. Stephen Booth

       7

      On his way back from the Nields, Cooper called at the Ashbourne section station on Compton. He spotted the blue lamp over its door right next to the Wheel Inn.

      Seeing the Wheel reminded Cooper that he’d once had a memorable duty in Ashbourne, many moons ago, when he was drafted in to help police the world’s oldest, largest, longest and maddest football game. Several thousand people turned up every year for Ashbourne’s Royal Shrovetide Football – and that was just the players.

      From an objective point of view, the event was basically a moving brawl, which seethed backwards and forwards through the streets of the town, across fields, and even along the bed of the river. The game lasted for two days, with goals three miles apart on opposite sides of the town. If you visited Ashbourne on those days, you had to be careful where you parked your car. Of course, the pubs remained open all day, all the shops and banks boarded up their windows, and some closed completely, making the town look as though major civil unrest was taking place. Which, from a policing point of view, it was. There had been intermittent attempts to ban the game because of its violent nature. But it had been going on for a thousand years now. So that was that.

      Cooper remembered the Wheel Inn particularly. The two ‘teams’ – if thousands of people could be referred to as a team – came from the north and south sides of the town and were known as the Up’ards and Down’ards. Compton was Down’ard territory, and the Wheel one of their favourite gathering places before the match.

      Inside the station, he didn’t have too much difficulty persuading Sergeant Wragg to let him have copies of the statements from the witnesses to Emily Nield’s death in Dovedale. There was a small sheaf of them, collected by Wragg’s constables as they intercepted members of the public leaving the scene.

      ‘Emily was a pupil at Parkside Community Junior,’ said Wragg as he gave Cooper the file. ‘I thought a copy of her photograph might be useful.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      The photo was clipped to the first page. In it, Emily Nield was pictured in a green sweatshirt with her school logo, and was grinning cheekily at the camera, with one slightly crooked tooth prominent in her smile.

      Seeing the photograph was a shock for Cooper. He hadn’t seen the girl in life, and could not have described her if he’d been asked to. Nor could he have recognized her from the photograph. As far as Cooper was concerned, she bore absolutely no resemblance to the body he’d held in his arms in Dovedale.

      But that was what death did to you. In a few tragic moments, Emily Nield had become a different person. Unrecognizable.

      ‘The son attends Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School here in the town,’ said Wragg. ‘But I suppose you don’t want to know about him.’

      The file also included the Nields’ own statements. Cooper had already got their version of events first hand, but he accepted the copies from Wragg and tucked the file under his arm.

       ‘Thank you for this. It’s appreciated.’

      ‘No problem. Is there anything I need to know?’

      Cooper hesitated, decided he could trust Wragg as a colleague.

      ‘It’s just a suspicion. I thought I saw someone I recognized among the bystanders in Dovedale.’

      ‘Ah. Someone who shouldn’t have been there?’ asked Wragg astutely.

      ‘Yes. I’m going to do a check on the Sex Offenders’ Register, to see if I can make an ID.’

      Wragg nodded. ‘Let me know, won’t you? He might be one of ours.’

      ‘Of course.’

      A look of concern crossed the sergeant’s face. ‘You don’t think this person was involved in Emily Nield’s death in some way?’

      ‘Let’s hope not,’ said Cooper. ‘I really hope not.’

      Outside, he paused to adjust to the glare of the sun, and dug out his sunglasses from a pocket.

      To his right, where Compton became Dig Street, he saw two supermarkets standing side by side near the bridge over Henmore Brook – Somerfield’s standing right next door to the Co-op. Behind them was the Shaw Croft car park, where the Shrovetide football game was kicked off or ‘turned up’. A few years ago, Prince Charles had arrived to be ‘turner-up’. He was a great lover of tradition.

      Round the corner in St John Street, Cooper passed Ashbourne’s famous Gingerbread Shop with its original wattle and daub frontage. He supposed the town was very attractive in its own way. But it wasn’t Edendale.

      Gavin Murfin had been calling him from West Street, no doubt wondering where his new Acting DS had disappeared to for so long. He wasn’t used to that when he was working for Diane Fry.

      ‘I got those print-outs for you, Ben,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many entries on the register in the Ashbourne area. Are you sure you don’t want me to widen it out a bit? Derby is only twenty minutes down the road, after all.’

      Cooper knew he was right. Visitors to Dovedale came from many miles around. It was probably a futile exercise, the list too long for him to plough through in search of a half-seen profile. On the other hand, the fact that the face he’d seen was familiar meant that the individual concerned must be from this area, at least from Derbyshire. Well, didn’t it? Or could his memory be playing some trick on him, throwing up a recollection of a photograph he’d seen in a bulletin from another force, or even glimpsed in a newspaper or on the TV screen.

      ‘We have to start somewhere, Gavin. That will do for now.’

      ‘I still don’t know what this is about, Ben.’

      ‘Sorry. I’ll explain it to you later.’

      Murfin’s voice became muffled, as if he was shielding the phone with his hand.

      ‘And where the heck are you? I’ve been covering for you. But, mate –’

      ‘I’ll be back soon.’

      With a deep sigh, Murfin accepted his reassurance. ‘I hope I actually make it to my thirty, Ben. I’m afraid Superintendent Branagh might kill me before that.’

      Fry felt sure some of these Birmingham city-centre under-passes were exactly the way they’d been when she drove through them in her very first car, a white Mini. Particularly this one under the Paradise Circus island. It had grey walls, and a black roof so low that no natural light penetrated the tunnel. It was probably a metaphor for something, diving underground into this grim, lightless world, but knowing that you would emerge a minute later, out into the sunlight.

      As she came back above ground, Fry caught a glimpse of the old Paradise Forum shopping centre, which was supposed to have been scheduled for demolition. And next to it was the brutalist Central Library, described by Prince Charles as looking more like a place for burning books than for keeping them in. These buildings seemed old now, though they were built in the mid seventies. Well, thirty or forty years was a lifetime in the history of Birmingham architecture. Buildings she remembered being under construction while she was growing up were already