What had then happened in that fog was hard to tell. The accounts of the people involved varied so much that it was obvious their imaginations had come into play, sparked by the eerie silence and muffling effect of the mist. Had they heard voices? Lights? A shout? Someone screaming? None of them seemed completely sure.
And, crucially, where were they in relation to Faith Matthew when she died? Their statements taken next day didn’t seem to be much help. Almost without exception, the walkers had looked at the map they’d been shown and shrugged. There was no way for them to tell by then, sitting in the bright artificial lights of an interview room. It was a totally different world from the one they’d been lost in a few hours previously. The lines and symbols of an Ordnance Survey map bore no relation to the disorienting confusion of their disastrous expedition. Probably they didn’t even feel like the same people as those who’d panicked on the moor as they became wet, cold, frightened and lost.
The mind could forget so very easily. It could wipe out an experience completely, blur it into something less traumatic or even create misleading memories.
‘It seems like a nightmare now,’ Millie Taylor had said. ‘As if it didn’t really happen.’
‘It was like being in a film,’ said Karina Scott. ‘The Blair Witch Project. All we could see was a flash of torchlight now and then. All we could hear were odd sounds we couldn’t explain.’
Yes, there was a lot that couldn’t explained. And that was what Cooper was missing. A coherent explanation.
24
Diane Fry was sitting in the same room at Derbyshire Constabulary headquarters, at the same table, with the same stack of files on its freshly polished surface.
Martin Jackson looked as though he enjoyed his job. He’d entered the room full of energy, fresh and pink-cheeked like someone who’d just been for a run around the grounds. And perhaps he had.
Jackson put his glasses on and spread his files out in front of him as if ready for a party game. Hangman or snakes and ladders maybe. One where someone slipped up and met an unfortunate end.
‘DS Fry, do you remember a colleague of yours from West Midlands Police, Andrew Kewley?’ he asked.
‘Of course I remember him,’ said Fry.
‘He died rather suddenly.’
‘I know that.’
‘Naturally. You were there, weren’t you?’
‘To be more accurate, I found his body,’ she said. ‘It was very distressing for me.’
‘I’m sure it was. Kewley was a friend of yours, as well as a close colleague.’
‘He’d retired by then,’ said Fry. ‘And I hadn’t seen him for some time, since I transferred to Derbyshire.’
‘Really? Didn’t you meet with him earlier that same week, a day or two before his death?’
Fry clenched her fists under the table, hoping he couldn’t see her reaction. How did Jackson know that? Only she and Andy Kewley had been present at that meeting. Warstone Lane Cemetery, with its catacombs and broken angels, right in the heart of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. It had been Kewley’s choice of location. Had he mentioned their meeting to someone else? Someone currently on the West Midlands force? Or had Gareth Blake already been watching Kewley by then?
‘I meant I hadn’t seen him before that week,’ she said.
‘Mmm.’ Jackson made another note on his pad. ‘As I understand it, you’d asked Mr Kewley for some information.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Fry. ‘It was in connection with an old case.’
‘Your case, in fact.’
‘Yes, my case,’ said Fry, momentarily irritated at hearing the same phrase Ben Cooper had used.
Jackson pursed his lips at her change of tone.
‘A violent assault you suffered during the course of your duties when you were stationed in Birmingham, serving with Aston CID. I gather you were separated from your colleagues during an operation and assaulted by gang members when they discovered you were a police officer.’
‘You can call it a rape,’ said Fry. ‘That’s what it was. And of course it was obviously of concern to me.’
‘As the victim, yes. We fully appreciate that. Very understandable. But as a serving police officer, you should have known better than to be conducting inquiries of your own, making unofficial contact with witnesses. Possibly even suspects?’
He made the last phrase sound like a question, which Fry avoided answering.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But should police officers be held to much higher standards than members of the public even when they’re victims themselves?’
‘Ah, a much-debated question of principle. But beyond my remit, I’m afraid. We only attempt to apply the existing rules here.’
‘Then perhaps you should be investigating what happened to Andy Kewley that day,’ said Fry. ‘It seems to me that’s a more serious question to be asking.’
He looked at her over his glasses. ‘You think his death was suspicious?’
‘I don’t have the evidence, but...’
Jackson switched smoothly to another file from the bottom of his pile. ‘The inquest recorded a verdict of natural causes. The results of the post-mortem were fairly clear. Mr Kewley was suffering from heart disease. No doubt the result of too much alcohol, too many cigarettes and not enough exercise. Things were different in those days, I suppose.’
‘I think someone was watching him,’ said Fry. ‘How would anyone know that we met earlier that week otherwise? Where does your information come from?’
‘From our colleagues in the West Midlands,’ said Jackson.
‘Exactly.’
‘I can’t tell you more than that.’
‘Because it might constitute evidence, I suppose.’
Fry felt herself growing angry. She’d been trying to fight it ever since she first entered this room and sat across the table from this man. She’d tried to keep the flood of rage and frustration under control, but now she was afraid she might lose the battle. The worst thing was, she knew that was exactly what Martin Jackson wanted.
He took off his glasses and laid them carefully on the table. ‘DS Fry, if you have allegations to make of improper behaviour by your former colleagues, you should make them through the proper channels. This inquiry only covers your own conduct.’
‘I know,’ said Fry, biting her lip. ‘And of course I deeply regret what happened to Andy Kewley.’
Jackson smiled.
‘And so,’ he asked quietly, ‘do you blame yourself for his death?’
Fry was silent. There were some questions she wasn’t obliged to answer. Not even to herself.
The Kinder View Nursery wasn’t quite what Ben Cooper expected. He’d heard it referred to as a garden centre. But there were no fancy plant pots here, no racks of gardening tools, no bamboo trellising and not even a tearoom. Only plants. The Gould brothers were evidently growers, not retailers.
There were a few years in age between Theo and Duncan Gould, but they were so alike that they could almost be taken for twins. Cooper had to look closely at their eyes to discern that Theo was the older of the two.
The Goulds were dressed in matching olive-green fleeces today with their company logo. Despite the weather, both wore shorts, revealing powerful, hairy calves and thick woollen socks.
Cooper recalled the descriptions of what each of the walkers had been wearing on Kinder that Sunday. Surely the Goulds had dressed alike for the walk. Could it have been feasible in the fog to mistake one for the other? Of course it could. But would it also have been possible to think you’d seen both Theo and Duncan when you’d actually only seen one, because the other brother was somewhere else? That was a more difficult question.