Blind to the Bones. Stephen Booth

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      DS Diane Fry knew all about fear. Some people were excited by it, and liked to play with the taste and smell of it, teasing their senses to the limit. But others were destroyed by its poison, eaten away by a senseless, insidious acid that seeped into their brains before they could fight it.

      It wasn’t always possible to know what made you afraid. A therapist had once told her that fear conditioning could be created by a single episode, because that was the way nature had designed the human brain. It was an evolutionary advantage, a mechanism to prevent you from returning to a dangerous situation. Once frightened, forever cautious. And that was why just one sound, a single movement or a smell, could trigger the train of memory that stimulated fear. The sound of a footstep on a creaking floorboard, the sliding pattern of shadows as a door opened in the darkness, the soapy smell of shaving foam that made her nauseous even now.

      The evidence bag that Diane Fry was holding contained none of those things. It contained only a grubby and stained mobile phone. So why did she feel as though the process had begun that would send her sliding down a long, dark tunnel towards the source of her fear?

      ‘Do the parents know about this yet, sir?’ she said.

      Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens was also nothing to be afraid of, as far as Fry was concerned. He was capable enough, but had a disrespectful attitude towards his senior officers that wasn’t going to get him any further in the promotion game. It was a tendency he didn’t seem able to control, any more than Fry could control the dark shadow that had flapped and squirmed somewhere in her mind when she had picked up the bag.

      ‘No, Diane,’ said Hitchens. ‘In fact, we need to be a bit cautious about that. We’ll have to consider how much information we give them.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Mr and Mrs Renshaw are, how shall I put it … a bit difficult to talk to.’

      Fry didn’t feel in the least surprised. Since she had transferred to Derbyshire Constabulary from the West Midlands, she had found most people in the Peak District difficult to talk to – including her colleagues in E Division. Not only did they find her accent strange and exotic, but they also seemed to be living in a different world entirely, a world where the city streets she had known before just didn’t exist.

      ‘I’d like to see exactly where the phone was discovered,’ she said.

      ‘Of course. The contact details are all there. It was found by members of a rambling club doing a spring clean on an overgrown footpath near Chapel-en-le-Frith. The phone was one of hundreds of bits of rubbish they picked up. If it hadn’t been wrapped up tight in a plastic carrier bag, there might not have been anything recognizable left to be found.’

      Despite its condition, the mobile phone had still contained its SIM card when it was found. It had been traced via the network operators, Vodafone, to the ownership of Miss Emma Renshaw, the Old Rectory, Main Street, Withens.

      Fry opened the file that Hitchens had given her. As soon as she saw the first photograph, she thought she knew what had triggered the fear. Emma Renshaw was standing in a garden, wearing a white sweater with leaping dolphins across the chest. Her hair was fair and straight, hanging almost to her shoulders, and she looked happy, but shy, and a little nervous too.

      The second photograph was slightly more recent. A note said it had been taken while Emma was on a study trip in Italy. Not Venice or Florence, or even Rome – the places where everyone was supposed to go to look at art. She was in Milan, visiting contemporary design houses. But the weather had been warm and sunny in Milan. The photo showed her standing in front of a café with another girl, of Asian appearance. Emma’s hair was pulled back, revealing good cheekbones and delicate ears, which made her look more vulnerable, despite the increased confidence in her smile. She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, and the skin of her arms and neck was bare and pink.

      ‘Emma Renshaw disappeared just over two years ago,’ said Hitchens. ‘She was a student in Birmingham, where she attended the University of Central England’s School of Art and Design. She was last seen by the young people she shared a house with in Bearwood, about three miles from the art school. Bearwood is in the area called the Black Country.’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ said Fry.

      ‘Oh, of course you do.’

      Fry could see the information from her personnel file gradually being dredged up into her DI’s mind. The expression on his face changed as he remembered the awful details, became embarrassed for a moment, then resumed his professional manner.

      ‘You’re from the Black Country yourself, aren’t you, Diane?’

      ‘Yes, sir. That’s where I’m from.’

      The Black Country was the name given to the urban sprawl west of the city of Birmingham. Old industrial towns like Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall were in the Black Country. And many smaller communities, too – like Warley, where Fry had lived with her foster parents, a string of housing estates tucked between Birmingham and the M5 motorway. Right next door to Bearwood.

      ‘Anyway, the house the young people shared is in Darlaston Road, Bearwood. Emma’s housemates say they left her in the house getting ready to travel home by train to Derbyshire for the Easter holidays. At least, that’s what Emma told them she was doing, and they had no reason to doubt her.’

      ‘The housemates being Alex Dearden, Debbie Stark and Neil Granger,’ said Fry, consulting the file.

      ‘They СКАЧАТЬ