‘It’s for kids, man. Kids who don’t know any better. Too many people get hurt with that shit. You know what I mean?’
‘Of course I do.’
He stroked the girl’s arm. ‘Besides, I got other things on my mind now.’
‘Will you stick with the job, though?’
Vince shrugged. ‘There’s not much else, Sis, until they sort this country out. There are loads of young lads around here who want to work. But, you know, what they want to do is bricklaying, plumbing — that sort of job. A good trade. But right now, if you want to sign up for a plumbing course, there’s a twelve-month waiting list. What use is that? The papers talk about this “broken Britain” thing, don’t they? Well, if you don’t want a broken Britain, if you don’t want a broken Birmingham, you got to give these kids the chance of a job.’
Before she left, Fry couldn’t resist another sweep around the room. The makeshift crack inhaler had magically disappeared.
Vince opened the door and checked the corridor before he let her out of the flat. The screaming in the stairwell had stopped. Fry wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing, or not.
‘Sis?’ said Vince quietly, as they stood outside his door. ‘Are you okay now? You’re doing all right, aren’t you?’
She looked at his face. His dark eyes were full of worry. He badly wanted some reassurance.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, don’t worry. I’m doing all right.’
‘Cool. Take care, eh?’
‘Sure.’
Fry heard the door close and bolts shoot home as she walked down the corridor. She wanted it to be true that Vince would turn out okay. He was a good-looking boy. She hoped that he wouldn’t end up with his pretty face immortalized in a crime-scene photograph.
She took the stairs all the way down. Yes, it was sixteen floors. But she would have walked sixty to avoid being shut in that lift again.
Night was falling fast on the estate. The tower blocks stood as dark monoliths, the open spaces harboured invisible dangers.
Heading back into the city, Fry could see the lights of the Expressway. Cars streaking through the darkness, like insects flitting through the dusk. They said it was a jungle out there. The smaller animals hid in their burrows, desperate to stay safe. But larger beasts still stalked the streets, calling to each other in the night.
15
Eighty miles away from Birmingham, Ben Cooper bumped his Toyota down the track to Bridge End Farm, twisting the wheel at familiar points along the way to avoid the worst of the potholes. Matt repaired the track regularly with compacted earth and stones, but the first heavy rain of winter always washed it all away again. When the water came rushing down from the hillside, it turned the narrow track into a muddy river.
His wheels rattled over a cattle grid and into the yard, tyres splashing through trails of fresh-dropped cow manure left by the herd coming down to the milking shed from their pasture and back again after afternoon milking.
At this time of year, there would normally be some calves waiting to go to Bakewell Market, but their pen was empty. Matt used to have a vintage tractor tucked away in the implement shed, an old grey Fergie that he loved to tinker with in any spare minutes. But that had gone now, sold off to make a bit of money. Farming was one constant battle against cashflow problems.
Standing in the tractor shed was the solitary big green John Deere. Its bulky shape usually made Ben smile — it looked so much the way his older brother did in his green overalls, with his big shoulders and barrel chest.
But for some reason he didn’t feel like smiling tonight. He was conscious of so many other things that he had to do, which were being neglected. And he was starting to get anxious about what might be wrong at the farm. He’d experienced too many family traumas to bear the thought of facing another so soon. His father, Sergeant Joe Cooper, had been everybody’s favourite local bobby until he was kicked to death in the street in Edendale by a gang of drunken yobs. His mother had suffered from schizophrenia for years, putting the whole family through nightmare scenes until the final release of her death. Was it wrong to wish that people would only bring him good news about the family, and keep their problems to themselves?
But he loved his two nieces. Amy was thirteen now, the same age as Alex Nield. In some ways, she’d been strangely adult since the age of eleven. Ben had started to feel sorry for the teachers at Amy’s new school. She could be mercilessly outspoken if you were boring her.
And Josie…well, maybe she still kept that imaginary friend in her head, but at least she’d stopped talking about her, and that had allowed Matt to stop worrying about Josie inheriting her grandmother’s mental illness.
Ben entered the big farmhouse kitchen through the back door and gave his sister-in-law Kate a kiss. The girls weren’t around, presumably doing their homework or whatever girls got up to in their own rooms.
‘So what are you working on at the moment?’ asked Matt.
‘All kinds of things,’ said Ben, picturing the paperwork on his desk rather than what he had actually been spending his time on. ‘I was in Ashbourne today. The little girl who died in Dovedale.’
‘Oh, the drowning,’ said Matt. ‘Was there something funny about it?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘I’ve got a friend who farms in that area. Brian Dyott. I met him through the NFU. Odd sort of place, isn’t it? It seems to be important what other people think about you. When you talk to Brian, you’d think his greatest ambition was to be featured in the farming pages of the Ashbourne News Telegraph.’
‘Really?’
‘When they had Jonathan Dimbleby and Any Questions? at the grammar school last year, Brian tried to ask about the single farm payment scheme. Not because he thought anyone would be interested. It was just so he could get his name mentioned. They didn’t pick him.’
‘Is he standing for election to the town council, or something?’
‘Maybe. Anyway…’ said Matt, carefully not looking at him, ‘he might know the family of that girl.’
Ben didn’t react to the hint. While it was useful to get information from any source he could, it was never wise to involve his own family, even peripherally.
‘What’s the problem at home, Matt? You didn’t explain in your message.’
‘Well, it’s about Amy,’ said Matt.
‘What has she been up to?’
‘I’m not really sure she’s been up to anything. She seems to be having trouble at school. The teachers say she’s been bullying other pupils, but I don’t think that can be right. You know Amy — she’s more likely to be the one that’s getting bullied. But if she loses her temper and retaliates — ’
‘Has she hurt somebody?’
‘There was a complaint from some other girl’s parents,’ admitted Matt. ‘They’re talking about sending her to a counsellor or something. The parents wanted to report it, just because Amy made the girl bleed a bit. I mean, it’s not as if she’s a criminal. She’s not going to turn into a serial killer, just because she had a bit of a teenage spat with another kid. It’s ridiculous.’
‘What does Amy say?’ asked Ben.
‘Well, that’s the problem. She won’t talk to us about it. And God knows, we’ve tried, both of us.’
Ben felt suddenly angry. He stared at his brother, his red farmer’s face so complacent, his mind so bound up with his own concerns that he saw nothing of anybody’s else’s problems. He was as isolated from the realities of life in the outside world as his farm was from the streets of the town.
‘Matt, what exactly do you expect me to do?’ he said. ‘If she won’t talk to her mum and dad, she’s not going to talk to me, is she?’
‘Well, I thought you might — ’
‘You thought what? Jesus, Matt, don’t you think I’ve got better things to do? Have you any idea what’s going on out there in the real world? On Monday, I held a dead girl in my arms.’
