Lost River bcadf-10

by Stephen Booth

  MG15

  RECORD OF INTERVIEW

  ROTI

  Person Interviewed: Darren Joseph Barnes

  Place of Interview: Queens Road Police Station

  Interviewing Officer(s): DI Blake

  Other persons present: DS Sandhu, Solicitor Mr Alderton

  DI Blake: Introduction and Caution in accordance with PACE. DI Blake reminds Barnes that he was arrested in connection with an alleged rape near the Connemara pub, Digbeth. Barnes gives his account of his movements on the night.

  Barnes: I wasn’t in Digbeth. I wasn’t at the pub. I met up with S-Man (Marcus Shepherd) at the club in Broad Street. No matter what he says.

  Blake: We have a witness who states that she saw you running from the scene, Darren.

  Barnes: She’s wrong then.

  Blake: Did you attack a woman in Digbeth that night?

  Barnes: No comment.

  Fry flicked impatiently to the end of the interview. Once the ‘no comments’ started, it was a waste of time. Though it wasn’t stated in the transcript, the solicitor must have intervened to steer his client’s responses. With an experienced suspect, it only needed a shake of the head. Nothing that would be recorded on tape.

  She checked back to the beginning again. The solicitor was Mr Alderton. She had half expected to see the name of William Leeson printed there. There must be some significance to him, or why did Andy Kewley mention him? The same law firm as Alderton, maybe. She could probably check.

  Barnes: No, I told you it weren’t me.

  DI Blake: This interview will now be concluded, however, we need to make further enquiries and will be further interviewing you later. Interview concluded.

  When Cooper’s call came through, Fry was sitting with the case file closed on the table in front of her, wondering whether she was right to have read it. Had it helped her at all? Had it made her feel any better? She was really no closer to knowing who these people were, these individuals who had become inextricably entangled in her own life. Darren Barnes, Marcus Shepherd, Louise Jones. And the mysterious William Leeson. Not forgetting him.

  She drew a pad of the hotel stationery towards her and jotted down the information Cooper gave her.

  Marcus Shepherd, also known as ‘S-Man’. A last-known address in Handsworth Wood, a string of cautions and convictions from the age of twelve, but just one spell in prison.

  ‘There’s a lot of other stuff,’ said Cooper. ‘Date of birth, ethnicity codes.’

  ‘You can skip those.’

  Darren Joseph Barnes, also known as ‘Doors’. Another Handsworth address, an even longer conviction record. Barnes had started his career in crime early, with prosecutions for criminal damage and anti-social behaviour at the age of ten — the youngest you could be charged with a crime in this country.

  ‘Street names,’ said Fry. ‘They both have street names. Are they members of a gang?’

  ‘I don’t know, Diane.’

  And Fry felt irrationally disappointed that there was so little on Leeson.

  ‘What was the name of his firm?’

  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t find him. That means he’s not currently practising.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So,’ said Cooper. ‘Have you got what you needed?’

  ‘I really need to know what the problem is with the DNA evidence. What Gareth Blake means by contamination. And what matches were made on the database. But I can’t ask you to get involved any more, Ben. You’ve done your bit. I’m already way out on a limb as it is.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. I appreciate it.’

  ‘See you back home some time, then?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Back here, in Edendale.’

  ‘Oh right. Yeah. And, Ben — you’re not worrying about this incident on Monday? The girl who drowned?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’ve got far too much else to do.’

  Fry looked at the case file again. She’d been told that a cold case hit had resulted from an arrest of one of the suspects — a routine swab taken from him when he was processed through the custody suite, linking him to the rape years previously through a DNA profile match.

  There were two types of sample at issue here. There was a Criminal Justice sample, the DNA collected by rubbing a buccal swab inside a suspect’s cheek to collect skin cells. And there were SOC samples, taken from evidence recovered at a crime scene — blood, hair, semen, saliva.

  When a new Criminal Justice sample was added to the National DNA Database it was checked against all Scene of Crime profiles on the database. When a new SOC sample was added, it was checked against all CJ and SOC records. Any that were compatible were reported as a match.

  Fry wondered if she knew too much about this process. She wasn’t the average IP, totally ignorant of the criminal justice system, her knowledge of forensics limited to what she’d picked up from CSI: Las Vegas. Most victims would accept what they were told.

  But it was true that current DNA profiling methods were very sensitive. It was possible to detect very low levels of DNA, equivalent to approximately fifty cells, and even to detect the DNA present in a single cell.

  Fry knew that because of that high sensitivity, there was an increased chance of detecting DNA from more than one person in samples. It might be background DNA, which was everywhere in the environment and couldn’t be avoided. It might be DNA deposited inadvertently by police officers attending the scene after an incident, or collecting samples for analysis. Her own DNA profile was already on the PED, the Police Elimination Database, designed to eliminate DNA left innocently at a scene.

  And it went further. DNA could be shed by scientists involved in the analysis, or even by the people involved in production of the laboratory materials. DNA could be accidentally transferred from one item to another somewhere along the line.

  DNA from all of these sources was referred to as contamination. That was what Gareth Blake had said — ‘contamination’. Well, that sort of contamination was easily detected in CJ samples and the profile wouldn’t be loaded on to the database. It was less easy to detect contamination in a DNA profile from a crime-scene sample. Contamination at the scene could compromise the lab’s ability to interpret a DNA profile from an SOC sample. Despite all the precautions, contamination still happened.

  Contamination. What a wonderful word. If anything or anyone had been contaminated in this process, it was her.

  She looked at the notes she’d taken from Cooper’s phone call. ‘S-Man’ and ‘Doors’. Street names were significant. If these two were members of a gang, they would be well known to West Midlands Police. But she needed access to the police intelligence systems to find that out.

  ‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’ she told herself.

  Fry almost laughed. She wasn’t on the inside now, she was an outsider. She couldn’t turn to the PNC any more, and she couldn’t consult the intelligence officer. If she wanted information, there was only one thing to do — ask the right person.

  18

  A man with white hair was playing a guitar in the Shaw Croft Centre near Boots the Chemist and the Co-op. He was performing a version of ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.

  Near Victoria Square, St John Street still had its famous gallows-style pub sign spanning the street. It bore what must be one of the longest pub names in England — The Green Man and Black’s Head Royal Hotel. It sounded like three pubs, but was actually only one. Mounted on top of the sign was the head of the black boy himself. Seen from the Dig Street end, he was grinning like an idiot. But from the other side, his painted red lips were turned down in mock sadness. The guide books still referred to him as the ‘blackamoor’.

  Heavy lorries were struggling to get past a keg delivery at the pub. Of course, it was no longer a brewery dray, but a lorry owned by Kuehne amp; Nagel drinks logistics.

  Cooper realized that he might have chosen the wrong day. It was market day in Ashbourne, a
nd parking spaces were in high demand. The market itself was only a small one, nothing like the size of Edendale’s. But people from the surrounding area were in town doing their shopping, or having tea at Spencer’s the Bakers tea rooms in the Market Place under the antique Turog sign.

  Lodge’s supermarket was located in the southern half of the town, near the corner of London Road and Blenheim Road, just down from the Quality Inn and the Black Sheep Bar. Across the road were commercial premises on the Airfield Industrial Estate. Alruba Rubber, Artisan Biscuits, Vital Earth Organic Compost. The mixture of smells must be interesting over there. A forklift truck bumped up the road, carrying a stack of pallets to an engineering works.

  The assistant manager of Lodge’s was David Underwood, a man in his thirties with a neat goatee beard and the sort of red hair that suggested distant Viking ancestors. When he met Cooper in the office, he was just removing a white coat.

  ‘I was about to go off shift,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could give me a lift home? I only live just up the road. I normally walk.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Cooper. It would be a better place to talk anyway. He could see members of staff already looking their way, wondering what his visit was all about.

  Underwood lived in a nice post-war semi-detached house on Old Derby Road. Lots of hedges and larch lap fencing. Handy for the golf club, if you were interested. And Cooper noticed that all the streets in this area seemed to be named after plants — Rowan, Poplar, Chestnut, Lime. On Willow Meadow Road, they passed the Pinecroft Stores.

  David Underwood invited him in.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ he asked. ‘Is it anything to do with the death of Bob Nield’s little girl? We’ve all been very upset about that. A lot of the staff took time off to go to the funeral.’

  Cooper remembered Robert Nield describing the Lodge’s staff as a big family. But was that entirely true?

  ‘Yes, I met one of your staff after the service. Marjorie Evans.’

  ‘Our checkout supervisor. She’s been at Lodge’s for years. We couldn’t manage without her.’

  ‘Are all the staff so loyal and contented?’

  Underwood looked at him sideways. ‘I suppose Marjorie said something to you, did she? She’s a lovely woman, but she can be a bit of a gossip. Likes people to think she knows things they don’t, if you understand me.’

  ‘So if I asked you your opinion of Robert Nield, would it be an entirely positive one?’

  With a smile, Underwood turned to gaze out of his front window at Old Derby Road. ‘It depends on how persistent you’re planning to be. I could say the two of us see totally eye to eye, and you might go away satisfied. But if you’re intending to talk to any of the staff, you’d get a different story. And then you would know I was lying.’

  ‘Well, it’s probably best not to start by telling any lies then, Mr Underwood,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Well, the fact is, we’ve had a few disagreements about the running of the store. Business isn’t good at the moment. The competition is too intense. If we don’t adapt and change, we’ll go down, like so many other businesses. That’s my view, anyway.’

  ‘And Mr Nield is more of a traditionalist, perhaps?’

  ‘He’s very conservative,’ said Underwood. ‘He says Lodge’s have unique values, and we’ve got to stick to them. But that’s not what customers look for these days, is it? They shop on convenience and price. The only value they want is value for money. Special offers — three for twos and BOGOFs. Locally sourced products are good, but it’s not the priority, if we’re going to survive.’

  ‘I can see you’re both probably quite passionate about it.’

  ‘We are. Bob Nield has a vested interest in the store, of course. But it’s my livelihood, too. I want a career in retailing. I don’t want to be part of a failing operation.’

  ‘Do you have disagreements about the staff too?’ asked Cooper.

  Underwood shrugged. ‘Oh, sometimes. But, to be fair, Bob has a good eye for hiring staff. He can assess people pretty well. And, once they’re on the payroll, they become part of the family. He treats everyone like an uncle. That’s the part of the job he really loves, I think. Presiding over his family. The trouble is — some of his family know that he’s leading them towards disaster.’

  Cooper nodded. It wasn’t an uncommon story. Nield sounded like a man who was giving far more attention to his work family than to his real one back home. Perhaps that was because he had more control in the workplace, the power over the pay packet, the ability to hire and fire. In the Nields’ home, Cooper suspected that Dawn was the one in control.

  He turned back to Underwood.

  ‘You don’t happen to know a man called Sean Deacon, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Cooper was surprised. It had been a bit of a shot in the dark.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘He worked for us for a while.’

  ‘At Lodge’s?’

  ‘Yes, Bob Nield gave him a job. I think he felt sorry for the man. Deacon wasn’t long out of prison then. He was trying to get his life back on track, he said. He seemed genuinely to want to work — though I would have said he was a bit over qualified for stacking shelves. He used to be a teacher, I think. But that profession is closed to him now.’

  ‘Did you have trouble with him?’

  ‘No, he was a perfectly good member of staff. Honest, punctual, hard working…’

  ‘Is there a “but”?’

  ‘There’s always a “but”,’ said Underwood. ‘It was other people who had problems with him. I mean, when it got around the area that a convicted paedophile was working at the store. You can imagine what that was like. Some of our customers were up in arms, and said they daren’t bring their children into the store while he was here.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘All nonsense, of course. Complete hysteria.’

  ‘Do you have any children yourself?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘No.’ Underwood looked at him. ‘Oh, I see. You mean I can’t really understand how parents might feel in those circumstances. Well, perhaps you’re right. Anyway, Bob Nield had to let Deacon go in the end. I suppose we were being tainted by association. It was a real shame, though. The guy seemed absolutely genuine to me.’

  ‘Yes, I met him.’

  ‘Did he get another job?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not sure it’s any better than stacking your shelves.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Were there any anonymous letters written to the store at the time?’

  Underwood hesitated. ‘Yes, a few.’

  ‘Did you report them to the police?’

  ‘No, we didn’t take it too seriously. And we’re hardly going to take our customers to court over something like that. Business is difficult enough as it is.’

  ‘I wonder if you kept any on file?’

  ‘No, I’m sure we didn’t. Why are you asking?’

  ‘Because we had one about Robert Nield, after the death of his daughter,’ said Cooper. ‘You haven’t heard about it? The letter was mentioned in the Eden Valley Times.’

  ‘We don’t get it here,’ said Underwood. ‘It’s the good old ANT — the Ashbourne News Telegraph.’

  ‘Of course. Well, if I had any idea who wrote it, that would help me.’

  Underwood sighed, and looked faintly guilty.

  ‘I’m afraid that would probably be my mother. She has religion issues.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Oh, bad. Basically, she believes that she’s one of the chosen. When the Apocalypse comes, she’ll get called up to Heaven in the Rapture, leaving nothing but an empty heap of clothes and the rest of us poor buggers burning in Hell.’

  ‘That affects her social interactions, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. She won’t hardly speak to you, unless you’re among the chosen. You know, the way she looks at people sometimes — it’s as if they’re already burning, and she’s quite content that they deserve every second of the agon
y.’

  ‘Not the most congenial of neighbours, then.’

  ‘No.’

  Then Underwood started to chuckle to himself.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Just a thought that popped into my head. They talk about “neighbours from Hell”, don’t they? But maybe a neighbour from Heaven could be every bit as bad.’

  ‘Is she at home?’

  ‘No, she works at Moy Park — the poultry company on the industrial estate over there.’

  ‘If I could be sure it was her…’

  ‘Handwriting that looks like a spider’s crawled across the page? Threats that God will wreak his vengeance on the wicked sinners?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘She took a major objection to Bob Nield over the Sean Deacon business, blamed him personally for introducing wickedness. Getting rid of Deacon wasn’t enough for her. She practically crossed herself with garlic every time she saw Bob. You know, like you do with the Devil.’

  ‘Vampires maybe,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Funny that,’ said Underwood, with a small smile. ‘I always thought Bob Nield had a look of Christopher Lee about him. He’d make a good Count Dracula.’

  Robert Nield looked at the photograph Cooper showed him, the shot of himself and Sean Deacon standing a few feet apart on the banks of the River Dove, below the limestone spur.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘That never happened.’

  ‘The evidence is there, sir.’

  ‘Where did you get this from?’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  Nield was sweating inside the car. They were sitting in Cooper’s Toyota at the Dovedale car park. It had seemed preferable to making a nuisance of himself at their home in Ashbourne again, where he was starting to wear out his welcome. This might be something that Dawn and the rest of the family didn’t need to know about. There was no point in piling on the agony when it wasn’t necessary.

  ‘It’s true that I helped Sean Deacon out when he needed a job,’ said Nield. ‘He came to the store for an interview, and I was impressed with him. He was always open and honest about his background. I did my best for him, but it didn’t work out. That’s all.’