The steel flap was on a powerful spring. The slam as it closed echoed mockingly down the hall.
Outside the flats, a familiar silver grey Hyundai was parked at the kerb under a streetlight. Detective Sergeant Gorpal Sandhu leaned against the bonnet, his arms folded, a smile on his face. DI Gareth Blake was in the passenger seat, his mobile phone to his ear.
Coming face to face with Sandhu reminded Fry guiltily of what Andy Kewley had said in Warstone Lane cemetery about some of the Asian officers here in the West Midlands. Had he been hinting something about DS Sandhu in particular? Or was it just part of the smokescreen created by his obsessions?
‘We want a word,’ said Sandhu. ‘Please get in the car.’
Blake’s face was creased with concern, his eyes steady and sincere. Fry recognized that expression. This was the face of the caring, sharing, modern police service. A face that couldn’t always be believed.
‘Diane, you know the department really wants to be supportive. Especially in the circumstances…’
‘Thanks. Although I think I hear a “but” coming.’
‘Well, we were wondering…I mean, to put it bluntly, why are you still here? We thought you would have headed back to Derbyshire by now. Isn’t your BCU missing you? I imagine they’re always short-staffed up there in the sticks.’
‘Oh, they’re coping,’ said Fry. ‘In fact, I’m sure some of them will be quite happy to have me out of the way for a while.’
Blake smiled. ‘Oh, is someone stepping up in your place? I should watch your back, if I were you, Diane. That’s always good advice.’
Fry looked away. Gareth Blake was no fool. She’d almost forgotten that. Like all the best detectives, he could read between the lines. And he could listen between the words, too. Damn it, she’d have to be more careful.
‘I don’t get back here very often,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been catching up with a few people. West Midlands Police don’t have any objections to that, do they?’
‘No, of course not. In fact, it might help you, Diane. Help to put things behind you, I mean.’
Was it her imagination, or did he put a little more emphasis on the phrase ‘behind you’ than was strictly necessary, or natural? Fry felt she was being given a hint. A gentle hint for now, but it might turn into a warning very quickly.
‘You know what it’s like with people from your past. When you meet them again, you remember why you didn’t keep in touch with them. You realize you have nothing in common.’
‘That’s right. You’ve moved on, Diane. That’s good. A nice, clean break is probably best for all concerned.’
Fry opened the door and stood on the pavement. She watched them drive away before she went back to her own car. Best for all concerned? Was it? She was sure there were some people who’d be very happy if she just gave up and walked away. DI Gareth Blake might be among them. So why was he warning her off, yet helping her covertly at the same time?
And how could Blake have known that she would be in Edgbaston? Surely he wasn’t having her followed? She would have noticed — her guard wasn’t down that much. And besides, he would never have got surveillance approved. She knew how these things worked. There was no justification for such an operation, let alone enough spare cash in the budget. Unless Blake had been following her himself on some lone crusade, it was impossible. And he wasn’t the loner type.
So who was he in contact with who might have been giving him information?
Well, there was only one person. And if she couldn’t trust her own sister, who could she trust?
The frustration that was growing inside her made Fry feel reckless. If she wasn’t very careful, she would do something stupid. There was no one here to restrain her, to offer the quiet word of advice, or make the sensible suggestion.
In Derbyshire, a Traffic unit had taken a shout on the Ml. Several calls had come in that night reporting an obstruction on the northbound carriageway, midway between junctions 28 and 29.
Ben Cooper heard the news on his radio as he was leaving West Street. He’d been working late into the evening, trying to catch up with all the jobs he hadn’t done, and perhaps not wanting to go home. He’d phoned Mrs Shelley and asked her to go round and feed the cat. At least that was one thing he wouldn’t have to feel too guilty about.
But the message about the motorway incident caught his attention. Last time an obstruction was reported on the Ml, it turned out to be a human body. Admittedly, it would have been almost unrecognizable by the time the later callers saw it. The log had showed eight minutes thirty seconds between the initial call and the final one, when the first response car was already on the scene.
Cooper had still been in uniform then, just on the point of transferring to CID. He and his partner had been diverted to the scene to help out. It had been evening rush hour, he remembered. From the squashed and bloodied look of the body, it seemed that every vehicle in the middle lane had hit it before Traffic officers managed to close the carriageway. By then, it was just another bit of roadkill stirring gently in the slipstream of a lorry.
‘A drunk,’ one of the Traffic officers had said. ‘Drunks and motorways are a bad mix.’
Then Cooper found himself being called up on the radio by the control room.
‘Traffic have an incident on the motorway, between junctions 29 and 30.’
‘I heard,’ said Cooper. ‘But that’s C Division. What has it got to do with me?’
‘Your attendance has been specifically requested, DS Cooper.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Cooper jumped into his car and headed out of Edendale. Frowning, he contacted the Traffic officer whose name he’d been given by Control, the officer in charge at the scene. It was a man he knew, a long-serving member of the Roads Policing Unit who had probably been present at similar incidents, possibly even the one that Cooper remembered.
‘Another one?’ he said. ‘A jumper? Between 28 and 29?’
‘It’s that bridge on the B road near Tibshelf Services. Do you know where I mean?’
‘Newton Wood Lane?’ said Cooper.
‘That’s the one. It’s the quietest spot you can pick, if you’re really going to do it. The bridge on the A3 8 is bigger, but it’s much too busy. You’re likely to get some Good Samaritan stopping and interfering.’
‘It still has nothing to do with me,’ said Cooper, but less certainly.
‘We were lucky. We got an ID straight away.’
‘An ID on the body?’
‘No, he hasn’t actually jumped yet. You know what it’s like, Ben — we got a load of contradictory reports and it came out all garbled. We arrived expecting a dead one, and he’s very much alive.’
‘And now…?’
‘And now he’s on the bridge, and he’s threatening to jump any minute. He says his name is Sean Deacon.’
‘Oh,’ said Cooper. ‘So it is to do with me, after all.’
Sean Deacon had resisted all attempts to talk him down from the parapet of the bridge. He was precariously balanced, and everyone could see that a move too close would send him over. Bizarrely, Deacon had a briefcase clutched in one hand, the other braced against the top of the parapet, which was barely wide enough to stand on.
‘We’ve closed the outside lane underneath him,’ said an officer in a yellow high-vis jacket. ‘But it won’t do him much good if he goes over.’
A few yards away, paramedics were waiting, and a crew in a fire-and-rescue appliance. It was clear that Deacon had been waiting for Cooper to arrive. He smiled briefly when he saw Cooper approaching the bridge, walking into the headlights of a police car.
And then Deacon jumped to his feet, ran ten yards towards the opposite carriageway, balancing like a tightrope walker, before leaping out into the air over the motorway. He seemed to glide through the air, his silhouette caught in the flickering lights of the oncoming traffic, his jacket opening out around him like wings. For that one moment, he was a bird soaring.
Cooper began to run across the bridge, footsteps pounding after him. He saw Deacon’s briefcase falling into the traffic, picked out by the headlights of a lorry, bouncing and cart-wheeling, forcing cars to swerve in a terrible cacophony of horns and screeching tyres.
