‘Di, what’s going on?’ she said.
‘Are the PNC print-outs there that Ben brought?’
‘Yes.’
‘Read the details of Darren Barnes to me again.’
Angie began to read hesitantly.
Darren Joseph Barnes, also known as ‘Doors’. She went though his address, date of birth, and ethnicity codes, and got to his conviction record.
‘Stop. Go back.’
‘To which bit?’
‘The ethnicity codes,’ said Diane.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, go back and read them again.’
‘This is for Darren Barnes. Ethnicity Code. PNC: IC1. Sixteen point self-determined system: Ml. That’s mixed race, White and Black Caribbean.’
‘I knew that,’ said Fry. ‘Damn it, I knew that. And Marcus Shepherd? Is he the same category?’
‘Ethnicity Code. PNC: IC3.’
‘So he’s black?’
‘No, wait. Under the self-determined system, he’s m1 too. They’re both classified as mixed race, Diane.’
‘They class themselves as mixed race. Although, to the arresting officer, one looks white, and one looks black.’
‘I guess we’re talking shades of colour here.’
‘Shades of colour, right.’ Diane jumped up. ‘Oh, Christ. I don’t believe it.’
‘What?’
‘The m1 Crew.’
‘What about them? Where are you going?’ But Diane was already on her way out of the door, not even looking back to see if her sister was following.
‘Diane, where are you — ’
Tower blocks looked even worse in the day time. At night, they had a certain mystery, a brooding presence, the curtained windows of their flats forming a pattern of light against the sky. Now, in the daylight, the Chamberlain Tower looked grubby and forlorn, the cracked concrete and graffiti’d walkways oozing despair, all its flaws exposed by the sun.
Vincent Bowskill was alone this afternoon. He was unshaven and bleary eyed, as if he wasn’t long awake. His flat smelled like a derelict laundry, full of unwashed clothes. But underneath it was that sweet, faint chemical odour of recently smoked crack.
‘Diane,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to talk.’
‘I did what you asked me to. There was no need to send Angie round. She’s mad, that one. Dangerous, you know? I don’t want her coming to mine again. Keep her away. I could get in deep shit here, you understand. Some of these guys don’t mess around.’
‘Vince, shut up.’
He ran his fingers nervously across his mouth as he looked at her face.
‘What? What?’
‘The m1 Crew.’
‘What about them?’
‘The name is nothing to do with motorways or rappers, is it? It refers to the sixteen-point ethnicity code, the self-determined system. It’s what you describe yourself as when you’re stopped by the police. You say you’re mixed race, White and Black Caribbean. They put you down on their stop-and-search forms as Ml.’
‘Everybody knows that.’
‘You hate being put into a category by the system. So you decided to categorize yourselves. I understand that, I really do. It’s a way of taking back control, asserting your own identity. Everyone needs an identity. You have to belong to a group, a family, a tribe. Or a gang.’
‘So?’
‘You wanted to get into the m1 Crew, didn’t you? You badly needed to be part of the gang, to feel you belong. But they weren’t really like you at all. Were they, Vince? They thought you were much too soft, a kid with no street cred. You couldn’t get their respect. So you made them a gift. Was that the deal you made?’
Fry recalled Andy Kewley’s words. This wasn’t one of the primary suspects, but he knew who was involved all right, and he helped to cover up. A real piece of work. He was as guilty as anyone I ever met.
Vince shook his head. ‘It wasn’t me. You didn’t see me there.’
‘But you were there that night.’
‘You don’t understand anything.’
‘I understand you, Vince.’
‘No way. You can’t ever understand. You’re a copper.’ He stopped and stared at her, as if suddenly scared by her expression.
And so he should be. A vivid memory had come to her now. No confused images or blurred impressions any more. She almost had it last time, stood here in this flat, but she’d been distracted by the crack pipe, the blonde girlfriend. She remembered that shudder when she heard him say, ‘She’s a copper.’ It wasn’t just the accent. The voice was the same. A familiar voice, coarse and slurring. Of course it was familiar. She’d lived in the same house with him for years.
‘Vince,’ she said, ‘I didn’t see you. But I heard you.’
Fry sat for some time in her car, staring blindly at the traffic on Birchfield Road, streams of motorists hurtling past Checkpoint Charlie, oblivious to the fact that they were crossing the borderland in the deadly turf war between Birmingham’s street gangs.
She couldn’t have said how long she sat there before she finally turned on the engine, wound down the windows, and swung out on to the underpass, heading for Perry Barr.
Jim Bowskill answered the door in his slippers, with his sleeves rolled up to expose white forearms. He looked as though he’d been cleaning, or doing the washing up. The impression of domestic banality turned her heart over.
‘Your mum’s not here,’ he said. ‘She’s a doing a bit of shopping.’
‘Good. It’s perhaps better this way.’
‘You should have let us know you were coming, love. I’ll put the kettle on. Alice won’t be more than half an hour or so. She popped across to the One-Stop. She said we needed some fresh meat. I don’t know why, when we’ve got plenty of stuff in the freezer. Would you like tea, or coffee?’
‘No, Dad. Don’t bother.’
Why did people talk so much when there was nothing to say? Fry wondered if they felt they had to fill the silence with noise to prevent reality from leaking into their minds, as if the truth was hiding in the pauses.
‘Can we sit down for a minute? There’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Of course, love. But are you sure you don’t want — ’
‘No, Dad. Sit down.’
They sat opposite each other, Jim in his usual armchair, but perched anxiously on the edge of the seat, Fry on the settee like a visitor.
‘We’ve never really talked about this before,’ she said. ‘I mean, the night of the assault.’
Even now, she felt reluctant use the word ‘rape’ when speaking to Jim Bowskill. It was as if she had to protect him from the harsh world out there, the one he didn’t seem to see passing his window.
‘We’re always here if you want to talk,’ he said. ‘Your Mum would love — ’
‘I know,’ said Fry. ‘I know that, Dad. Thanks, really. But there’s something…a bit of information that I’ve only just realized myself. It affects you personally, Dad. You have to know about it.’
He gazed at her steadily, a look of concern crossing his face. Or was it an expression of fear? Fry hesitated now. Was she about to turn Jim’s world upside down?
‘Go on, love,’ he said.
