her mind. In the evening, she’d decided on a drink in the Pitcher and Piano at the Water’s Edge. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she passed Tin Tin and Shogun Teppan-Yaki on the way to the pub. Choosing between Chinese and Japanese food would have seemed like too big a decision earlier in the week.
But last night, as she sat eating Mongolian lamb in the Tin Tin, Fry had finally realized that she was worrying about all the wrong people. Why should she concern herself about the fate of William Leeson, or Darren Barnes and Shepherd? Or even Andy Kewley, or Vincent Bowskill?
The concrete city belonged to the past now. Her foster parents, her old home in Warley, her career with West Midlands Police — it all belonged to the past. Birmingham was no longer the same place she’d worked in, and her history had been flattened by those bulldozers. It was a blue-glass city now. Brum was moving on. There was no reason why she couldn’t do the same.
This morning, Fry felt as though she was waking from the horror of a bad dream. For the first time in years, she seemed to have discovered a peaceful place in her own mind. It was here now, inside her — an ocean of calm. She could imagine it blue and warm, glittering with sunlight, stretching endlessly to that horizon.
As she was passing the outer suburbs of Walsall, she switched on her radio and found she was still tuned to BBC WM. The presenter’s voice was giving way to a news bulletin. According to the lead item, two members of the notorious m1 Crew had been killed in a drive-by shooting in Handsworth. They were executed, it was believed, in a revenge attack by a rival gang. The victims had been named as Marcus Shepherd and Darren Joseph Barnes.
Maybe someone was on her side, after all.
In Edendale, Ben Cooper had just left the Superintendent’s office. Somehow, things had gone right for him this week. He didn’t really understand why, but he wasn’t going to fight it. Two arrests, and a missing child recovered alive — those had helped. And he’d even earned credit for giving the young DCs their head, allowing them the chance to show what they could do with the Lowndes enquiry on the Devonshire Estate. Another successful outcome.
As a result, Branagh had offered him a permanent promotion to detective sergeant. Well, he was hardly going to refuse. For some reason, the Super seemed to like him.
And there was another reason to feel good today. Last night, as soon as he was free, Cooper had climbed into his car and turned it towards Bridge End Farm without even thinking where he was going. The time he’d spent with the Nields had reminded him of something that he should never have forgotten — that the worst thing you could do was destroy your own family.
Where had he read that A person’s enemies will include members of his own family? He had a feeling it was in the Bible somewhere. But that should never be the case, should it?
Matt had been surprised to see him. But as they faced each other on the threshold of the farmhouse, the words had almost been unnecessary. His apology, when it came, had felt like a huge release.
‘It’s okay,’ Matt had said. ‘It’s okay, Ben. We’re always okay, you and me.’
Sitting at his desk, Cooper smiled at the memory. But there was just one more thing left to do, and he’d been putting it off. He might have put it off too long already. After the row with Liz on Friday night, the situation was coming to a head. He’d heard nothing from Liz over the weekend, not even a text message. That put the responsibility on to him. He had to sort it out. A decision had to be made, one way or another.
When Diane Fry called the office a few minutes later, he could tell she was in her car from the amount of road noise. She would be hands free, of course. Fry always followed the rules.
‘Well, I’m on my way back,’ she said.
‘Great. So how are you feeling about things now?’
‘It’s strange. I feel good — though logically I shouldn’t. I learned one thing, Ben, if nothing else.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The people who you think are on your side always turn round and betray you. No one sticks by you all the way. No one.’
Cooper felt his heart thump painfully with the need to speak. But he held his tongue. Now wasn’t the time. But then, would it ever be the time? Their relationship had been unpredictable ever since she transferred to Derbyshire. To an outsider, it might seem that he had no reason to feel any affection for Diane Fry. And yet, when she asked, he had felt no hesitation in giving her his help. Had she forgotten that so quickly? Or was this just typical of the Diane that he knew, saying honestly what she thought?
‘I should have known, I suppose,’ she said. ‘It’s always the people closest to you who cause you the most harm. Always your family who wreck your life.’
‘I didn’t know you were that close to him, Diane,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t think you ever mentioned him, even.’
‘Who?’
‘Vincent Bowskill.’
‘Oh, Vince. Well, it was years ago, Ben. Years ago.’
She ought to sound as weary as ever. Yet there was a different quality in her voice. Something must have happened to her in Birmingham, in connection with her past. Cooper supposed it was nothing to do with him, and he might never know what it was. The passage of time could turn a person into someone you didn’t recognize. But that was true the other way round, too. Sometimes, you couldn’t relate to the person they’d been in the past, either.
‘Ben,’ said Fry, ‘Angie wants me to come back to Birmingham. I mean — for good.’
‘But…I thought Birmingham held bad memories for you.’
‘Memories disappear in the end. They do, don’t they? It just takes time.’
‘Oh, well. I suppose that’s where you feel you belong, Diane.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘And there’s no reason for you stay in Derbyshire. Is there?’
‘Nothing too important.’
‘So what have you decided to do?’
There was a silence at the other end of the line, apart from the hum of tyres on tarmac. Cooper listened. He listened as hard as he could, until he became aware that he was holding his breath because he was straining so hard to hear. He needed to hear something. Anything. But still, there was silence.
‘Diane? So what have you — ’
But now there was no road noise either. It was the silence of a lost signal.
When she reached Edendale, Fry called first at her flat in Grosvenor Avenue. After just a few days away, her furniture had turned into some kind of huge dust magnet. She wondered why she had ever thought the place was fit to live in.
The house was completely quiet, too. All the students were at college, and the restaurant workers sleeping. A scatter of envelopes lay behind her door. Junk mail to welcome her home. There was no point in staying here.
An hour later, she walked into the CID room at West Street. Gavin Murfin was eating a meat-and-potato pie over his paperwork. There was an officer she didn’t know sitting at the rickety desk in the corner. The window nearest her was spattered with bird droppings. She already felt as though she’d stepped into a parallel universe, where the twenty-first century had ceased to exist.
She tried to work, to plough her way through the mountain of memos and bulletins, to read a few of the emails filling her inbox. But, within a few minutes, Fry felt stifled.
Cooper stopped by her desk and looked at her anxiously.
‘This William Leeson,’ he said quietly. ‘He was your real dad?’
‘No. He might be my father. But he was never my dad.’
Fry thought about what she’d just said. For years, she’d considered Jim and Alice Bowskill her mum and dad. They were the people who’d brought her up when she was a teenager, given her the stability she needed at a critical time in her life. It was true that there had always been the knowledge that they were not her real parents. How could it be otherwise? And always there had been that nagging question — why had they never adopted her, as they did Vince?
Maybe it was because she’d already been too old when she came to them, or perhaps it was their experience with Angie. But there had been a lack of commitment she’d tried not to resent when she looked at Vince, a hint that they might have expected her to move on somewhere else after a while. Perhaps they’d been surprised that she’d
