The one thing Ben Cooper couldn’t ask Carol Villiers to do was run a PNC check. Unauthorised use of the police national computer system was a serious disciplinary offence. Many officers around the country had been sacked for accessing information from the PNC, or passing it on to members of the public. Some had even been prosecuted for breaches of the Data Protection Act.
At one time, Cooper might have turned to his contacts on the local newspaper for information. There was a journalist called Erin Byrne that he’d dealt with in the past. But the Eden Valley Times no longer had an office in Edendale. Its parent company had been swallowed up by one of the big publishing corporations that already owned half of the regional newspapers in the UK. What was left of the editorial staff had been centralised and now worked from a production hub twenty miles away in Sheffield. Like most small towns, Edendale would probably never have its own local paper again.
So who could he talk to? Who would have the same sort of local knowledge that an old-fashioned newspaper reporter used to possess? Who would know the area and its characters well, particularly its villains? He need someone like his father, the old-style copper. But they didn’t exist any more, did they? Well, not still in the service.
The old police station at Lowbridge had been closed in the previous year’s cutbacks. It was just one of the county’s assets to be offloaded, following cuts in the annual policing budget. Many of the force’s properties had been under-used for years – or so the argument went. Money could be saved, and revenue earned, by selling off surplus buildings like this one. Yet here it still stood, empty and abandoned, its doors and windows boarded up and scrawled with obscene graffiti. No one wanted to buy a disused police station in Lowbridge.
And why would they? There were already enough empty properties waiting for a buyer. If you were looking for somewhere to open a shop, you were spoiled for choice on the high street. ‘For Sale’ and ‘To Let’ signs sprouted on almost every frontage. If you wanted a property to convert into flats, there was the old primary school, or the Mechanics’ Institute, or the magistrates’ court. They’d all stood empty for years. Prime residential development opportunities for someone with the money, the vision, and a massive amount of optimism. But a derelict police station? Surely it was best left to the ghosts of old coppers, to the memories of prisoners who’d literally left their mark on the walls of the disused cells, or even to the vandals who’d swarmed to the empty building like locusts. Its symbolism made it a prime target for protest and abuse.
Stanley Walker still had keys to the place, though. He’d been Police Constable Walker in the old days, and could still tell you his collar number. In fact, he would recite it at any opportunity, like a prisoner of war giving his name and rank. He’d completed thirty years’ service in uniform, including spells in Public Order, Response and Traffic, but had started and ended his career right here in Lowbridge. Then he’d become Old Stan, a part-time civilian employee standing behind the front counter, a friendly face to greet the public.
‘Only, some of the public weren’t so friendly,’ he said, as he made Cooper a cup of tea in his house in Lowbridge. ‘Especially the ones that remembered me from when I was in uniform.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘So I was glad to go in the end. There comes a point when you want to be out of the firing line.’
Now that Stanley Walker was retired, he lived on his memories. Word on the grapevine had it that he was writing it all down, working on a memoir. Cooper wondered if that might be true. There was supposed to be quite a market these days for first-person accounts by police officers, paramedics, doctors, firefighters – in fact, anyone who’d met the public on a day-to-day basis for a few decades and could write about it with humour. If you could look back to a period like the 1970s, you might be on to a winner. The public loved nostalgia, and the Seventies had been a different world. As a young PC, Walker would have been unencumbered by PACE, or the Scarman Report, or political correctness.
Cooper looked around Walker’s house for signs of a manuscript, or at least a laptop or computer. Most police officers weren’t known for their literary talent, but even if you couldn’t get a publisher, you could upload your work to the internet yourself as an eBook and hope for the best. Your family and friends might buy a few copies, at least.
Walker opened a drawer and rattled a large bunch of keys.
‘Want to take a look at the old hellhole, then?’ he said. ‘I can offer you the fifty pence tour of the cells, or the one quid tour. Ask me the difference.’
‘What’s the difference, Stan?’ asked Cooper.
‘For a quid, you get to come out again.’
Walker put his coat on and they walked a couple of streets through Lowbridge to the old police station. Though Lowbridge was called a village, the spread of development along the valley bottom from Edendale meant there were no longer any green fields to separate the two places, only a road sign at the point where one house was in Edendale and the next one in Lowbridge.
A glimpse of the swollen River Eden and the water already lying in surrounding fields reminded Cooper that properties to the east of Edendale were among those most at risk of flooding. He knew that most of Lowbridge sat in the ‘purple area’ on flood maps, where homes and businesses received warnings when flooding was expected.
A housing development had been built here on what local people insisted had always been a floodplain for the River Eden. They’d said it loudly at the time, when planning permission was given, and they’d said it again when the builders moved in and started work on the foundations. Just because the area hadn’t flooded recently, that didn’t mean it would never flood again. But nobody took any notice of them. Not until occupants had moved into the houses and the first floods arrived. Now the access road was closed to traffic by deep water and front doors all along the new crescents were protected by sandbags.
But some home owners at Lowbridge were the lucky ones. At least they had insurance against flooding. All across Derbyshire, there were people whose properties had been affected by flooding in the recent past and who were no longer able to take out insurance policies, being considered too much of a risk.
Cooper thought it must be devastating to lose everything in your house to flood water. Your home should be your refuge, the place you could come back to after everything the world threw at you. It shouldn’t be a disaster zone where all that you valued had been taken from you. And, for some of these people, it had happened more than once.
The old police station was still distinctively identified by the blue lamp over its front door. But they entered through a yard at the back, where police vehicles would once have been parked. It was surrounded by a steel palisaded security fence with triple-pointed heads, and there was a hefty padlock on the gate. Walker had the key for the padlock, a key for the back door and a security code to tap in before they could enter.
‘You wouldn’t think it was empty,’ he said. ‘Well, almost. If you want my opinion, they’d be better off just demolishing the whole thing.’
The reception area looked sad and dusty. It hadn’t been used for a while, even before the station closed. It was part of a general trend in Derbyshire, and everywhere else in the country. In the past year, front desks had been closed at police stations across the county. Heanor, New Mills, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Belper and others. Even some of the larger inquiry offices like Matlock had their opening hours reduced. Members of the public were supposed to stay at home and make a phone call.
Though the desks and chairs were pushed aside, stacked in a corner or lying in broken heaps, some recognisable features remained in the offices behind the front desk, including what Cooper had hoped for – a rogues’ gallery on the back wall. Photos of all the villains in Lowbridge were pinned together on a large corkboard. Any new PC coming into the station could have studied the gallery to help him identify the characters he was likely to meet out on the street.
‘This is what I remember,’ said Cooper.
‘Who was it you were looking for?’ asked Walker.
‘Name of Gibson.’
‘Oh, there were two of those buggers. At least.’
‘There was one called Ryan.’
‘Yes, he’s here somewhere.’
But Walker hesitated and looked at him curiously.
‘You could just have got him off the PNC or the intelligence system, couldn’t you?’ he said. ‘You have everything on computer these days. At least, that’s what the last sergeant here kept on telling me.’
‘Not quite everything,’ said Cooper. He tapped the side of his head. ‘Some things are up here.’
‘Damn right. I’m glad to hear there are still a few who think that way. It makes me feel a bit less of a dinosaur.’
‘Not you.’
‘Oh, yes. Me. A right old brontosaurus. I was never exactly the type to be intelligence led.’
Cooper laughed. For some years now, ‘intelligence-led policing’ had been one of the buzz phrases echoing around meetings of Senior Management Teams up and down the country. It was said to be one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways of tackling crime. But intelligence-led policing required people sitting in front of computer screens in a back office. Officers like PC Stanley Walker could never have done that job.
‘Yes, Ryan Gibson,’ he said. ‘Here he is.’
The Gibson in the photograph was in his twenties. Short-cropped hair, a sullen expression, the blue ink of a tattoo visible on the side of his neck. He had the look of a young man who’d been in a fight or two and had quite enjoyed it. When he saw that look, it always raised a question in Cooper’s mind about the way the young man had been brought up. What had happened to him as a child that made him see violence as acceptable, just a part of normal life?
‘Our Ryan did a stint in the army, you know,’ said Walker. ‘He saw some service overseas, but missed out on all the major conflicts. I don’t reckon he had what you’d call a distinguished career exactly.’
‘Is there an address for him?’
‘It should be on the back of the photo. Yes, here we are.’ Walker laughed. ‘It’s lucky the Data Protection Act doesn’t apply to us, eh?’
‘Yes, lucky.’
Cooper wrote the address down and studied the photograph again. Gibson would be a good few years older now. Some men changed. They matured, settled down, had families of their own and learned to take their responsibilities seriously. Others never did. Or never could.
‘For me, he always had that look,’ said Walker. ‘Do you know what I mean? The look of a man whose face was bound to appear on the news bulletins one day, after he was arrested for doing something appalling. His neighbours would say he’d “kept himself to himself”.’
‘And he ended up with his face immortalised in a custody suite photograph.’
‘He tried to be too clever. Ryan decided to get involved in a blackmail racket. It wasn’t his style. And definitely not his brother’s. Too much brain work involved.’
‘Oh, yes. the brother.’
‘Sean. He’s on the board too.’
There was a distinct similarity of features. But Sean was younger, still in his teens when the picture was taken. Unlike his brother, he didn’t look strong. Despite his youth, his face was becoming gaunt and his eyes shadowed and sunken.
‘Drugs,’ said Walker. ‘Sean started with a bit of glue sniffing when he was about twelve or thirteen, and progressed from there. If you can call it progress.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He had a couple of spells inside. Short sentences. Nothing that took him out of circulation for too long, but just enough time for him to make a few contacts among the real criminal fraternity. He never worked for a living that I know of. The army certainly wouldn’t have had him.’
‘There was a particular inquiry I was remembering,’ said Cooper. ‘You were a big help at the time.’
Walker laughed. ‘Yes, I recall. You were wet behind the ears in CID then. You needed a bloke with experience like me.’
‘You’re right, I did. Do you remember…?’
‘Hicklin,’ said Walker promptly. ‘Poor old bugger. Chaps like him always come off worst when they encounter the Gibsons of this world.’
‘When you knew him, Ryan Gibson had a straight job though, didn’t he?’ asked Cooper.
‘Yes, both Gibson and Roger Hicklin were working in the stores yard for one of the quarry companies. Gibson drove a forklift truck, as I recall.’
‘What was the name of those employers?’
‘Wait a bit,’ said Walker. ‘It’ll come to me in a minute.’
Cooper waited patiently. He knew the information he wanted would be there, filed safely away. It was just the retrieval system that had become a bit slow.
‘Now, it’s funny,’ said Walker, ‘but I heard that Ryan had gone back working for that same company when he got out last time. You’ve got to hand it to employers who have loyalty to staff like that. You wouldn’t get some folk round here giving you a job if you had a record.’
‘Maybe he was just very good with a forklift truck,’ said Cooper.
‘Yes, that was it,’ said Walker. ‘I knew it would come back to me. They’re called A.J. Morton and Sons.’
When Cooper left Stanley Walker, he called Carol Villiers on her mobile. From the background din, it sounded as though she must be in a pub. He wondered who she was with, for a moment picturing a strapping ex-squaddy with a desert suntan and tattoos. But it was none of his business, was it?
‘Ben, what is it?’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I’m … I’m all right.’
The noise was reduced suddenly, as if she’d stepped out of the bar and closed a door behind her. Somehow, that made Cooper feel better. It suggested that she was giving him her undivided attention, no matter what else was going on.
‘Carol, I need to see the crime scene,’ he said.
‘The crime scene?’
‘The area of Sparrow Wood where Glen Turner’s body was found.’
‘Oh, that crime scene.’
‘Could you take me there this weekend?’
‘Ben, I can’t just do that. I mean, what would Diane Fry say?’
‘Make it Sunday,’ said Cooper. ‘She won’t be around then. There’ll just be a scene guard, maybe some forensics staff at most.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘You’re the only one I can rely on, Carol,’ he said.
She was silent for a moment. He heard laughter, a few bars of music, the faint chink of glasses. At one time, he would have longed to be there himself in the bar, chatting and drinking with a crowd of friends. Right now, the thought made him nervous. The idea of that sea of curious faces staring at him was intolerable. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He felt the tremor beginning in his hands, the irritation burning at the back of his throat. In another second, he would have to put the phone down and forget the whole thing.
‘You’ll get me in real bother, you know,’ said Villiers.
‘It’ll be worth it,’ he said.
He heard her sigh. ‘It had better be, Ben. It had better be.’
That night, Ben Cooper sat above Josh Lane’s home at Derwent Park. He was watching the colour of the stone in the quarry change from grey to black as clouds covered the stars. It was as if someone had turned the lights off in the Peak District, plunging the valley into darkness. The air felt chilly. And he could see from the sky in the west that another deluge was on its way.
Cooper settled down under a hawthorn tree to watch. A few cars arrived, people greeted each other, but no one came near Josh Lane. Music played somewhere, a woman laughed, a phone rang. But Lane’s curtains remained drawn, and his door closed.
As midnight approached, it began to rain again. Cooper unfolded his waxed coat, pulled it on and drew up the hood, letting the raindrops drum on the fabric. A sheep approached the tree, stared at him with wild eyes, then moved on to the next shelter, bleating its annoyance.
Sitting here, the feeling of freedom was invigorating. Tomorrow, Diane Fry would be up to her neck in prioritisation and resource allocation. But he would still be free. It was only when he went to sleep that reality came crashing into his head, the reek of smoke and the scorch of flames, the images of a roaring inferno.
His nightmares did change sometimes. There were nights when he dreamed he was choking on a tube, unable to breathe normally because of the plastic cylinder thrust down his throat. He would wake up thrashing in his bed, wanting to pull the tube out to get air into his painful, burning lungs.
But of course, that had really happened to him, so perhaps it couldn’t be called a nightmare at all. The distinction between a dream world and the quagmire of distorted memories was a difficult one to make. He hadn’t yet learned to detect the dividing line, couldn’t distinguish one from the other. As a result, he never quite knew which world he was in.
Intubation, they’d called it in the hospital. Necessary because he was showing symptoms of upper airway problems. A tube had to be inserted in his throat to keep his airway from closing due to swelling, the result of heat damage to the tissues of the respiratory tract. It was just one of the major consequences of smoke inhalation. Smoke also blocked the intake of oxygen to the lungs and raised carbon monoxide levels, reducing the ability of the blood to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. Inhalation of smoke particles and chemicals like carbon monoxide and cyanide caused direct irritation of the lung. But at least smoke cooled rapidly once it was inhaled and heat damage was limited to the tissues of the mouth and upper throat.
His latest test results at the hospital showed that there was still a significant decline in his PEF, his peak expiratory flow. Permanent respiratory tract damage would be bad news. It could even see him leaving the police service completely. Those memories weren’t something he could put behind him and forget, as many people thought. Because they didn’t just belong to the past. They affected his present, and would have an impact on his future too.
No, it wasn’t possible to keep those memories out. Far from it. Sometimes he felt as though they were tearing through the walls, trying to get inside his head.