‘But you’ve been in contact with him since then, haven’t you?’
‘No. Well…’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘He phoned me at home last night. He was pretty upset. He told me he’d lost his job at the hotel.’
‘They sacked him from the Grand?’
‘Yes. He said it was because he’d been interviewed by the police again.’
‘That would have been me,’ said Cooper.
‘Well, he said people were talking, and the management didn’t like it. The same old story, I’m afraid. He’ll never be able to put his life back together, no matter how hard he tries.’
‘Why did Deacon phone you?’
‘Because I’m the only person who’s ever tried to help him.’
Cooper wondered if it was as simple as that. Could there be more to the relationship between Deacon and Nield, a comradeship made from shared interests? Paedophiles and child abusers had to find their friends where they could get them. They forged strong bonds in the face of adversity, like soldiers under fire.
He tapped the photograph again. ‘But you met him here in Dovedale on Monday, didn’t you sir? There’s hardly any point in denying it.’
Nield opened his mouth to speak, closed it again.
‘Are you going to arrest me?’ he said. ‘Because if you are, I’m not saying anything until I can speak to a solicitor.’
‘Of course not. We wouldn’t want it any other way, sir. We have rules here, you know. Codes of Practice, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. All for your protection.’
Nield looked confused. He’d probably watched too many detective dramas on TV, and been misled by all those scenes where the suspect was left sweating in a bare room, bullied and shouted at until he broke down and confessed. Sometimes those TV programmes were useful. They raised false expectations, and people were disorientated when they encountered the real thing. Many a first-time offender had discovered that police officers were real human beings, who treated you with politeness and consideration, brought you a cup of tea and asked how you felt. The British character couldn’t resist that treatment. It was only fair to be polite in return and tell the nice policeman what he wanted to know.
There were regulars who knew the score, of course. Hard cases who were doing the ‘no comment’ bit even before you got them in the van. But Robert Nield wasn’t one of those. Cooper was willing to bet that he’d never been in a police station in his life.
‘Look,’ said Nield. ‘If you’re not going to arrest me, let’s walk along the river to the place where that photograph is supposed to have been taken.’
Cooper hesitated. He didn’t want to go near the river again. The thought of it was disturbing, the water seemed to fill his eyes and mouth the moment he thought about it. He shuddered, knew that what Nield was suggesting made sense.
‘All right.’
They walked in silence past the stepping stones, alongside the weirs, and skirted the grassy spur of Lovers’ Leap to reach a spot close to the Natural Arch and Reynard’s Cave. Cooper stayed as far as he could from the bank, trying to shut out the sound of the rushing water.
‘About here, I think,’ said Nield.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You know, these rocks in used to be coral reefs, when this part of Derbyshire was under a tropical sea. It took millennia for water and wind to eat away the limestone and form those caves and arches, and leave the harder rock projecting from the valley. That arch was originally the mouth of a cavern until the roof fell in.’
‘Your point is?’ said Cooper.
‘It used to take thousands of years to change the shape of a landscape like this. Now we can change it in a few minutes — with the help of a computer.’
‘What?’
‘Compare your photograph to the real thing.’
Cooper located the position that Nield had been standing by an oddly shaped outcrop of rock nearby. To the left of it on the bank was a stand of trees, and one of the ancient stumps with coins hammered into its cut surface. A money tree.
Then he held up the photo. The oddly shaped rock was there, just to the left of Nield. But the money tree wasn’t there. Behind Sean Deacon was a background of grassy bank, slightly blurred in the print. In fact, the closer he looked, the more blurred the grass seemed, as if it had melted.
He looked at Robert Nield, remembering his son’s digitally enhanced photographs, the face superimposed on the limestone cliff. It would be perfectly possible for Alex to merge two images and tinker with the background to make them look like one. It was a trick performed all the time by the professionals.
And Alex had three days to come up with this. If he’d shown Cooper the image on his computer screen in higher definition, the line between the two halves might have been more obvious. But the low-quality print-out had been enough to fool him. He had only focused on the people, not the background — just as Alex had expected him to. He knew that Cooper would fail to see the pattern of the landscape.
‘I suppose you’ve guessed where I got this from, Mr Nield,’ said Cooper.
‘Yes. My son is very talented. I did tell you that.’
‘Yes, you did. But why would he deliberately try to get you into trouble?’
Robert Nield shrugged and raised his hands, as if appealing to the river and the spires of the Twelve Apostles.
‘Who knows why teenage boys do these things? Their minds are a mystery to me.’
‘Why are you still pursuing this, Ben?’ asked DI Hitchens when Cooper reported to him at West Street.
‘I’m convinced there was someone else there,’ said Cooper.
‘Someone nearby when Emily Nield drowned. Possibly Sean Deacon.’
‘The photograph was just a prank by the teenage son, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And there’s no other evidence?’
‘None of the witnesses is specific about it, but if you read between the lines in their statements…’
As soon as he said that, he knew it was a mistake. The CPS didn’t read between the lines of a statement. Nor did a judge and jury. They only read what was there, the words that had actually been said by a witness. No one read between the lines, except a police officer who’d become obsessed and was trying too hard to make a case out of nothing.
‘All right, you don’t need to tell me, sir,’ he said.
Hitchens looked relieved. ‘Thank God, Ben. I’m glad you see sense. We can’t have you going off the rails, can we? Not right now.’
‘No, sir. Not right now.’
Cooper tried a smile, and Hitchens rubbed his hands together, a sure sign that he thought the conversation was at an end.
‘Let it be then, eh? Leave the Nields in peace.’
In the CID room, Cooper tried to concentrate on something else. He’d remembered an old acquaintance who had been serving with the RAF Police until recently. Carol Parry was a local woman, who had often talked about applying to Derbyshire Constabulary for a job when she finished her time in the RAF. Derbyshire would have welcomed her with open arms — officers with her experience were vital to balance the number of new recruits who were filtering into the ranks.
But, in the end, Parry had met a man from Coventry and had applied to join West Midlands Police instead, so they could be together. She was a loss to Derbyshire. But she might still remember him.
He called her and chatted to her for a while before explaining what he wanted.
‘Okay, Ben, I’ll do some asking around. Details will be a bit hard to come by, you know — but I might get a general idea of what’s going on.’
‘That’s brilliant, Carol. I owe you one. Thanks a lot.’
Then Cooper turned his attention to the transcripts of the interviews with Michael Lowndes and his associate from the Devonshire Estate, who were now both under arrest.
Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst had done a good job with the interviews. But reading over the transcripts again, Cooper could see that there
were some questions which had been leading. Irvine had almost put the answers into Lowndes’ mouth, so that he knew what he was expected to say. Awareness of that tendency in yourself came with experience.
For a moment, Cooper thought about the statements from witnesses in Dovedale. He realized that many of those individuals had been asked questions that could have influenced their subsequent memories. ‘Where were you when the girl fell into the water?’ ‘Did you see her bang her head on the stone?’ Anyone who’d been asked those questions would have no doubt that the girl had fallen, would believe that they’d actually seen the stone on which she hit her head. Careless phrasing during the interviews could have planted the images in their minds. It was called ‘verbal overshadowing’. It was a mistake to underestimate the power words had to affect the mind.
Cooper could still remember what it was like when he was a new, wet-behind-the-ears detective constable just learning the ropes. It didn’t seem all that long ago, really. But the years had passed quickly, and DC Luke Irvine was from a different generation.
His family were from West Yorkshire, some village between Huddersfield and Barns ley. Denby Dale? Wasn’t that the place they had giant pies? Irvine had once confided that his father used to work in the mining-equipment industry, but his job went when all the pits closed down. So he got a job at Rolls-Royce in Derby, and the family moved down to Derbyshire. He was only five at the time, so he didn’t remember much about Denby Dale, except for visits to his grandma. It sounded odd to Cooper. So many people seemed to be displaced. Was it all that unusual now to stay in the area where you grew up?
And Irvine had another quality that might come in useful. He was a bit of a computer geek in his spare time.
‘Well, you might call it geek language,’ said Irvine when Cooper showed him Alex Nield’s profile. ‘But some of this stuff is leetspeak.’
‘What?’
‘Leetspeak.’
‘Luke, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You don’t know what leetspeak is?’
‘Not a clue. And I bet the Nields haven’t either.’
‘It’s a kind of cipher that you only come across on the internet. Originally, it began with users of the old bulletin board systems in the 1980s. If you had “elite” status, you could access special chat rooms, things like that. Elite became “leet”, you see.’
‘Right.’
‘They used these mis-spellings and ASCII characters to get round text filters, so they could discuss forbidden topics. They became a sort of code. Now, young kids use it to show off how knowledgeable they are. Everyone wants to be thought of as “leet”.’
‘So it would be used to show off, and to stop outsiders understanding what you’re saying?’
‘Yeah. And to mock newbies, of course.’
‘Noobs.’
‘That’s it.’
Irvine looked at the profile again.
‘Some of it is just text language, though. Like using “u” instead of “you”, or “n” instead of “and”.’
‘Those are the parts I can get,’ said Cooper.
He scrolled down to the sentence that had disturbed him most. u were born wrong n u must die!!!!!
‘I’ve seen a lot worse than that,’ said Irvine. ‘They can get pretty nasty, these kids. The general rule is, the nastier they talk, the younger they are. How old is this kid?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘About right.’
‘So what about this one?’ said Cooper. im s0 1337 taht i pwn ur @ss n00b!!!!
‘Okay, that’s easy,’ said Irvine. ‘A zero is used in place of an “o”. That’s an obvious one — so “n00b” instead of “noob”.’
‘Yes.’
‘Common mis-typings come into leet — so “taht” is deliberate, not a mistake. So is “pwn” which originally meant “own”, the “p” being next to the “o” on the keyboard. And the “@” symbol replaces an “a”.’
‘Okay so far,’ said Cooper.
Irvine looked up. ‘It feels strange just explaining this letter by letter. It’s not what you’re supposed to do with it. The idea is, you either understand it straight off, or you don’t. You’re either leet literate, or you’re not. There’s no in between.’
‘Well, I think I’m getting there,’ said Cooper. ‘Of course, “ur” is “your”, yes?’
‘Correct.’
‘But what’s this “1337”? What’s the significance of the number?’
‘Well, that’s leet,’ said Irvine.
‘I know, but — ’
‘No, I mean “1337” is leetspeak for “leet”.’
‘Say that again.’
Irvine grinned. ‘The numbers stand for letters, Ben. The one is “1”, the three is “e”…’
‘…and the seven is a “t”.’
‘You got it: “1337” is “leet” in leetspeak.’
Cooper blew out a breath, as if he’d been working physically hard for the last few minutes.
‘It makes your brain hurt a bit.’
‘So the sentence reads…?’ asked Irvine.
‘I’m so leet that I own your ass, noob.’
‘w00t!!!!!’
‘What?’
‘That’s a leet expression. w00t!!!!! It’s an exclamation of joy, or success.’
‘You should use it with lots of exclamation marks, I imagine,’ said Cooper.
Irvine laughed. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Luke?’
‘It’s good to get a chance to show off your talents.’
‘I’m so leet that I own your ass, noob. A bit American, but I suppose we get the message.’
‘The kid probably copied a lot of this stuff from someone else’s profile, you know.’
‘Probably.’
‘Right down at the bottom, we’ve got brb kk?? You see those a lot in messages — “brb” is “be right back”. You say “brb” when you’re ending a conversation. Sometimes you’re not coming back at all, it’s just a way of getting rid of someone you don’t want to talk to. And “kk??” is just “okay?”’
‘Some of it is just decoration, though,’ said Cooper. ‘The sword and the face.’
‘Yeah, just ASCII art.’
‘Art?’
‘That’s what they call it.’
‘These city names don’t mean anything to you, do they? Engine House, Dutchman, The Folly.’
Irvine shook his head. ‘Can’t help you there. They’re plain vanilla. Ordinary English. They must have particular meaning for the user.’
‘And is this just for decoration? It looks like something to do with money.’
Cooper pointed at the repeated characters.?0$7?0$7?0$7?0$7?0$7 R1v32
‘No, that’s leet,’ said Irvine. ‘A slightly different use of the character set, but you would do that to confuse the issue.’
‘Successfully, in this case.’
‘You see, the pound sign stands for an “1”…’
‘Maybe,’ said Cooper, ‘you could translate the words, rather than doing it letter by letter.’
Irvine shrugged. ‘Okay. This is what it says.’
He drew a message pad towards him and wrote it out in big capital letters that could be understood even by the most ignorant noob.
Cooper ripped the paper from the pad and stared at it. It read:
LOST
LOST
LOST
LOST RIVER
19
The Indian restaurant was having a busy evening. Its windows were steamed up with hot breath and curry, the front was propped open to let a waft of curry drift out on to the pavement.
On a warm night like this, doors and windows would be standing open all over the city, everyone desperate to get a bit of cool air. Not many in Birmingham thought it worthwhile to install air conditioning. Well, some of the smart new office blocks down by Holloway Circus had it, perhaps. But not here in the streets of Handsworth. Here, everyone expected grey
clouds and rain, even in the summer. Anything else took the entire city by surprise. Ironic really, that even the original generation of Asian migrants had forgotten the heat of the Indian subcontinent so thoroughly. Birmingham certainly got into your blood, didn’t it?
But those open doors and windows were also an invitation. Burglars everywhere wouldn’t believe their luck tonight.
Diane Fry saw a wino sheltering in the doorway of an offlicence. A ghetto blaster on wheels roared past, doing well over the speed limit for a city street. But you could never find a police officer when you needed one, could you?
Outside a bank, a woman was using the cash machine, hunched over the hole in the wall while a friend stood cavey, eyes alert for skimmers or an opportunist mugger. Safe? Of course the city was safe — provided you were sensible, and took a few precautions.
Fry remembered her old bus route to college at Perry Barr. The number 51 or 16, she wasn’t sure. But she recalled with absolute clarity that the route had seemed to pass through all the scariest parts of the city. Aston, Handsworth, Lozells, Newtown. All the places she would have avoided in any other circumstances. Some of those streets she would never have walked down alone. She only viewed them from the top deck of the bus, surrounded by other passengers, eyes glued to the greasy windows as she stared at the people on the street, as if she were a visitor to a wildlife park, observing the big cats at a safe distance. Travelling home on the bus at night could be quite an adrenalin ride. Maybe that was why she’d always wanted to go back and do it again.
Vincent Bowskill was waiting for her in the entrance to an alley full of grey city council wheelie bins bursting with plastic bags. He was smoking a cigarette, his face washed sickly green by the restaurant sign. Through the plate-glass window, Fry glimpsed gold-embossed wallpaper, tables covered in plumcoloured cloth and sheets of glass, a few customers mopping up curry with their naan bread.
The streets were all yellow glare and deep shadow. A pair of black ghosts moving soundlessly between the streetlights turned out to be two women in black burqas, their eyes covered by concealing grilles. They wore the full Afghan chadri — the type some Pakistanis called a ‘shuttlecock burqa’. Purdah clothing.
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