‘In the Connemara.’
‘Right. He was working on something big for us. He was our guy, you know.’
‘That’s what you think.’
He shook his head, as if she was talking a different language that he didn’t even want to understand.
‘When we came out of the pub he was right behind us. The guy was hammered. He’d been on the lash with his partner.’
‘Doyle.’
‘Whatever. Then he came to us for his Charlie. He’s a complete coke head, you know?’
‘No, I didn’t know that. So he was with you when you came out?’
‘Like I said, he was right behind us. That guy was completely off his tits. He was pissing himself laughing.’
‘Laughing?’
‘Oh, yeah. I reckon some of the boys were playing it up, just for him.’
Diane recalled figures back in the darkness, watching, laughing. The reek of booze and violence. But there was no memory of Leeson.
‘It was weird, you know?’ said Barnes. ‘It was like, if he hadn’t been there, it might not have happened.’
‘Oh, so it wasn’t your fault? You didn’t know what you were doing?’
‘All I’m saying is, you ought to go after him. Otherwise, a bloke like that will never get what’s coming to him.’
Angie called to her, and Diane turned. While her attention was distracted, Barnes made a grab for her. That was a mistake. She took hold of his arm, straightened it out, and whipped him off his feet so he sprawled across the parapet of the bridge.
‘Keep struggling,’ she said. ‘It would give me quite a lot of pleasure to break your arm. I’ll make you beg in front of your mates. I’ll let them see you crawl to a woman.’
‘Fuck you.’
Then she let him go. She heard a crunch, the crash of a body falling through the broken fence, and a loud splash as something hit the water. The River Rea had swept up more of the city’s debris.
Her sister stood a few yards away, watching her. When Diane saw the expression on her face, she dropped her ASP in the dirt in despair.
‘Angie,’ she said, ‘I can’t do this any more.’
25
Saturday
This morning, Cooper was taking a trip into the past of the Nield family. Last night had been exhausting. He’d come home from Birmingham already tired, and the bust-up with Liz had ended badly, with tears and the slamming of his front door. It had been inevitable from the moment he walked into his flat.
Soon, he would have to do something about his relationship with Liz. He felt like a coward to be avoiding the issue right now. But a day or two might make a difference. Things would be calmer, at least. Meanwhile, there was work to do.
To reach Wetton, Cooper had to drive past the turning to Dovedale and through the estate village of Ilam, with its Alpinestyle cottages and the sound of sheep where other villages had traffic. Coaches from Norfolk and Birmingham were parked up at the Dovedale entrance. A farmer on a quad bike moved his flock up the road.
For more than twenty-four hours now, he’d been haunted by the content of Alex Nield’s profile on War Tribe, his secret little messages that could be intended for no one except himself. In his online world, well away from the eyes of his parents, the boy seemed to be revealing his obsessions, the inner turmoils that were troubling his teenage life. u were born wrong n u must die!!!!!
What had put that idea into his head? It was more than just an idle threat, it sounded like something he’d heard, or words that had been said to him personally. Who must die? Who had been born wrong?
And there was the final bit of code:
LOST
LOST
LOST
LOST RIVER
It could be a reference to the River Dove, to the events in Dovedale last Monday. Cooper had no way of knowing when Alex might have updated his profile. But his instinct told him there was something much deeper here, and much older. It dated to the Nields’ time in Wetton, the village whose name Alex Nield couldn’t even bear to hear spoken.
Despite its Ashbourne postal address, Wetton was actually in Staffordshire. Strictly speaking, that meant it was out of Cooper’s jurisdiction. But, of course, the people involved in this case were very much his.
This was a typical limestone village, an old farming community with pretty cottages, converted barns, and a scattering of B amp;Bs. A few holiday lets were owned by the Chatsworth Estate, the Duke of Devonshire’s tentacles reaching even here. In the centre of the village stood a pub, Ye Olde Royal Oak, famous for originating the annual Toe Wrestling Championship. Another quirky English sport, like the Ashbourne football game on the smallest of scales.
Like the streets in Ashbourne, most of the cottages seemed to be named after plants. Vine, Laburnum, Sycamore, Rose. It was funny how little things gave away the fact you were in a different area. Here, it was the brown wheelie bins of Staffordshire Moorlands, replacing the green of Derbyshire Dales.
The Nields had lived on a quiet lane at the Leek Road end of the village. The house wasn’t far from the village hall, which looked as though it had once been the village school. Probably another casualty of falling numbers, families forced out of the villages by rising house prices.
Stable House was solid and stone-built, with a double frontage and big sash windows. It had that wonderful Georgian symmetry that gave even the most humble home a bit of character. The slopes of Wetton Hill rose behind it. Given a choice between this and the executive home in Ashbourne the Nields occupied now, Cooper knew which he would go for.
The Ashbourne to Alstonefield bus passed through Wetton, the Glovers 443 route. But the morning and afternoon runs for Queen Elizabeth’s School didn’t travel as far as Wetton. They stopped at Ilam Cross.
For a child like Alex Nield that would mean a walk home of…what? Nearly four miles, he guessed. Up Ilam Moor Lane, through the hamlet of Stanshope, and across the Wall Ditch before you’d even come in sight of Wetton. Not very likely. Country kids might have done that at one time, but not in this day and age, with too much traffic on those narrow roads and the dangerous temptation to accept a lift from the wrong person. No, there would have to be someone to pick a child up from Ilam Cross. A car waiting at the roadside near the bridge.
But the lack of a school bus was because Wetton lay in Staffordshire, of course — and therefore outside the Queen Elizabeth’s catchment area. This might have been the Nields’ reason for moving into Ashbourne, to qualify Alex for attendance at a better school. Parents moved house for those reasons all the time. Well, maybe.
There was no point in talking to the people who lived at Stable House now. Chances were, they had never known the Nields, except as names on a conveyance. The neighbours were the folk he needed to speak to.
Next door, separated by a garden, was a house called Oak Tree Cottage. This had been part of a farm, too. There were still derelict outbuildings behind the house, windowless, with grass growing from the gutters. Cooper sniffed. Someone nearby had a wood-burning stove. The smell was so distinctive, and so evocative.
Cooper walked up the path to Oak Tree Cottage. He took no notice of the mock Georgian front door. In these parts, front doors were just for show. The truth was always round the back.
The woman who answered the door introduced herself as Mrs Challinor. She’d lived in Wetton all her life, and her parents before her. She’d married a local man, too. Generations of her ancestors probably lay in the churchyard over there. And she remembered the Nields very well. Of course she did. It was only two years since they left.
‘They live in the town now, don’t they?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Cooper.
