‘Yes.’
‘It’s Saturday.’
‘I know, but… you understand.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
Erin Byrne lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Calver Mill, with rooms on three levels connected by an original stone staircase.
At the top of the stairs, Cooper found a small office space, with a desk and a computer, and a few bookshelves along the wall, all brightly lit by a generous expanse of skylight. This felt like a real eyrie, almost an ivory tower, a sanctuary raised clear of any neighbours, with a distant glimpse across the Derwent Valley towards the hills on the other side. Cooper could imagine working here if he was an artist or writer, or some kind of creative person. It felt a long way from the real world out there on the streets.
‘Thanks for coming. I thought we might pop across the road to the Bridge Inn, if you’ve got the time,’ said Byrne.
‘I can spare half an hour or so.’
‘No urgent incidents to attend?’
‘Not today.’
At the end of August, the leaves of the Virginia creeper on the walls of the Bridge Inn were just starting to turn a deep red. Inside the bar, they stood among a display of antique firefighting equipment and hundreds of foreign bank notes stuck on to the oak beams.
‘Outside, I think?’ said Byrne. ‘Less chance of being overheard.’
‘We’re not in a spy film, you know.’
She looked around at the locals in the public bar. ‘I’d feel more comfortable.’
‘All right.’
The riverside garden at the Bridge was big enough to accommodate a couple of hundred people, all under blue and gold Hardy and Hanson parasols. So although it was a Saturday lunchtime, there were plenty of tables free. Byrne chose a spot as far as possible from the pub, overlooking the Derwent and the older of the two bridges. For a few minutes they said nothing, but sat watching the ducks on the river and listening to the sound of the weir as they sipped their drinks.
Byrne fished into her bag. It was one of the most capacious bags Cooper had ever seen. He guessed it must contain her notebook, digital recorder, camera, phone, and whatever else the modern newspaper journalist needed.
‘I brought you a copy of this week’s Eden Valley Times,’ she said. ‘Just out. Hot off the press.’
‘Oh, thanks. I suppose…?’
‘We led with a story on the Savages, yes.’
‘We don’t call them that.’
‘Don’t blame me. It’s what everyone is talking about. We just reflect the interests of our readers.’
‘Right.’
She laughed. ‘You’re all the same.’
‘Who?’
‘The police. You look down so much on the media. Until you want our help with something. An appeal to the public, an e-fit of a wanted man. Oh, then we’re all supposed to be on the same side. But when we want information from you, the barriers go up. Then you pull that disapproving face and say we’re not helping the situation. You say we’re sensationalising.’
‘I don’t have a disapproving face,’ said Cooper. ‘Do I?’
She took a drink to hide her expression behind the glass. ‘Well, perhaps not as much as some I could mention. I’ve met Superintendent Hazel Branagh.’
Cooper stifled a smile. ‘Oh, have you?’
‘It was at some civic do. She was being all smiling and matey with the dignitaries, but when she found out who I was, she looked as though she’d just sucked on a lemon.’
‘We’re not all like that. But some police officers have had a bad experience with the press during the course of their careers. We learn to be cautious. We definitely learn not to say too much.’
‘Or not to say anything at all,’ said Byrne.
‘Not quite, surely?’
She put down her glass and positioned it carefully on a coaster, wiping off a mist of condensation.
‘My dad was a local newspaper journalist too. Old school. He ended up as a subeditor on the Sheffield Star. He once told me that when he was a trainee reporter, if he had the police stories to cover, he actually went round to the police station every morning and spoke to the desk sergeant. That was when there were such things as desk sergeants, of course. The sergeant would look in the incident book and tell him what had happened overnight. And because they spoke every morning, they got to know each other. So if the sergeant was busy, he just gave Dad the incident book to read for himself. It’s a question of trust, you see.’
‘That was, what? The seventies?’
‘I suppose so. Dixon of Dock Green might still have been on the telly.’
‘It wouldn’t happen now.’
‘Too true. The reporters on police calls now never see a police officer, let alone get to know one. They never go inside a police station, either. All they do is make a phone call and get a recorded message. There’s absolutely no personal contact, and no trust. My dad pulls his hair out when I tell him what it’s like now.’
‘My dad would, too,’ said Cooper.
She opened her mouth as if to ask him about his father. But perhaps she read something in his face, because she kept the question to herself. That required quite a lot of self-control for a journalist.
‘Anyway, enough of that,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to listen to me moaning. This is what you wanted to see.’
She handed Cooper a clear plastic wallet containing a single sheet of paper and an envelope. The note itself was crudely written. He might actually have said drawn rather than written. It looked as if it had been scrawled in felt-tip pen by a clumsy child. Just one sentence.
‘Sheffeild Rode,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘I know it’s crude,’ said Byrne. ‘And illiterate, too.’
‘Sheffield isn’t all that difficult a word to spell, surely.’
‘It could be written by someone whose first language isn’t English?’
‘Maybe. And what’s this symbol?’
The note was accompanied by a rudimentary sketch – a short horizontal line with an arrow beneath it, pointing to the centre of the line. If it was supposed to represent a road, with a particular house indicated on it, the sketch was worse than useless. But perhaps it wasn’t that at all. It looked more symbolic than representational.
‘I don’t know,’ said Byrne. ‘No one in the office could identify it.’
‘And you didn’t look it up?’
‘We’d normally do a Google search, of course. But there’s no way of entering a picture as a search term. No way that I know of, anyway.’
‘No, that’s right.’
‘So without a clue what to look for, we were a bit stumped. That’s why my editor agreed we should pass it to you. On the understanding that we, you know…’
‘Get some information in return?’
‘Yes. Or at least a bit of a head-start on the nationals when there’s a breakthrough.’
Cooper nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘So, what are you going to do? Raid all the houses on Sheffield Road?’
He laughed. ‘I would have difficulty justifying that on the grounds of an anonymous message.’
‘Yes, I see the problem.’
‘But we can get it forensically examined. Something might emerge.’
‘I’ll leave it with you, then.’
Cooper looked at her as she got ready to leave.
