Lost River by Stephen Booth Page B

first met her when she was a SOCO in E Division, and they’d abseiled into a disused quarry together looking for evidence. She’d been bundled up in overalls and a water-proof jacket then, with a red helmet pulled over her eyes. But he remembered a conspiratorial smile as she came alongside him on the face of a quarry, the smile shared by rock climbers. Her face had been flushed with cold and excitement, and her eyes shone with pleasure from under her helmet. That was the moment he realized he wanted to know her better.
    Things had moved slowly after that, as these things did. It was only on his birthday one year that he began to see their relationship differently, when among the cards left on his desk was one from Petty, signed ‘Hugs, Liz’. Their initial date had followed soon after that, dinner at the Raj Mahal in Edendale, and their first chaste kiss, her skin cool and slightly damp from the rain.
    He really cared for her now, and he’d always taken it for granted that he would get married and settle down one, day,probably have a couple of kids, just like Matt. Was Liz the one he would be married to when that happened?
    ‘Acting DS?’ she said. ‘Wow. But a permanent promotion would be great.’
    ‘Yes, of course it would.’
    ‘That would help a lot.’
    Cooper sensed there was something else that she wasn’t saying. One of those female subtexts that he was supposed to pick up on, a message he should understand without being told. What could it be?
    Liz glanced at him, and looked away. And he felt as though he’d just failed an important test.

8
    Waiting in the lobby of West Midlands Police headquarters in Colmore Circus, Fry picked up a newspaper off the table. The Birmingham Mail. She hadn’t seen the paper for years, in fact never read a local newspaper at all now.
    She found herself drawn to the personal ads. To her mind, they seemed to give a more honest glimpse into people’s real lives than any of the journalists’ stories elsewhere in the paper. As she read the ads, with their sometimes cryptic wording, she recalled an Agatha Christie play that had once been staged by the local amateur dramatic society in Dudley. A Murder is Announced. Why had she been there? She’d been dragged along against her will, she imagined. Maybe some friend or relative had been in the cast. All she remembered was the bit about a silly advert in the personal column, giving the time and date and place of a murder. Then there was some business with the lights going out and shots being fired, and a body on the floor.
    She stared out of the plate glass on to Colmore Circus, a stream of traffic going past into the city. This wasn’t Little Paddocks in Chipping Cleghorn, and she couldn’t expect to see Colonel Archie or Miss Letitia walking in through the French windows. There was no vicarage here that hadn’t beenturned into student bedsits. And no village shop in the shadow of the mosque.
    Rachel Murchison showed her to a room on one of the upper floors of Lloyd House, through an open-plan office full of ringing telephones.
    ‘I just wanted to touch base before the meeting,’ said Murchison, arranging a folder full of papers in front of her.
    ‘Yes, I understand.’
    Touching base. One of those phrases beloved by management types everywhere. Fry’s heart sank when she heard it.
    Murchison was now in a navy blue suit offset with a white blouse, dark hair tied neatly back, businesslike and self-confident, but still with that guarded watchfulness. She was the specialist counsellor, there to judge her psychological state.
    In any cold case rape enquiry, the police had to consult counsellors before they approached a victim, and develop a joint approach strategy. They needed to understand whether the victim had moved on and didn’t want to testify.
    On the day Blake and Murchison came to Derbyshire, their approach strategy would already have been developed. They had planned their tactics before Fry even heard about the hit