Scared to Live. Stephen Booth

Anglia for two quid an hour, I suppose.’

      Nobody laughed, or even dared to nod in agreement. A Nottinghamshire detective next to Cooper shuffled his feet in the shredded tree bark around the roots of an ornamental birch.

      Somebody at the front asked a question about identity theft, which set Judson off on a new tangent. The Nottinghamshire officer leaned towards Cooper.

      ‘Are you Derbyshire?’ he said quietly.

      ‘Yes, I’m based right here in Edendale. DC Cooper.’

      ‘Ross Matthews. Hi. What’s it like working here?’

      ‘It’s OK,’ said Cooper defensively.

      Matthews nodded. ‘I’m at St Ann’s, and it’s a nightmare. I might put in for a transfer when we go global.’

      He didn’t need to explain what he was talking about. Everyone knew that the number of regional police forces would soon be reduced dramatically. A government commission had concluded that any force with fewer than four thousand officers was too small to deal with serious crime. So Derbyshire was certain to disappear. Even its bigger neighbour, Nottinghamshire, had suffered highly publicized problems that had led its chief constable to admit his detectives couldn’t cope. Within a few months, all the officers here this morning might be working for one huge East Midlands Constabulary.

      ‘Why not?’ said Cooper. ‘We can always do with some help here.’

      He realized that Judson had finished speaking and was looking at him over the heads of the group, waiting for his attention.

      It was then that Cooper’s mobile rang. Probably he should have switched it off. He bet everybody else had put theirs on to silent vibrate, but he’d forgotten this morning.

      He looked at the number on the display, and saw it was Diane Fry. His DS shouldn’t be calling him, not when she knew he was on the plastic crime exercise. Cooper looked at Judson and shrugged apologetically, then walked a few paces away from the group.

      ‘Yes, Diane?’

      ‘Where are you right now, Ben?’

      ‘Somerfield’s supermarket.’

      ‘I suppose that makes sense, does it?’

      ‘They have ATMs,’ said Cooper. ‘You know – cash machines.’

      ‘Yes, I know what an ATM is. Wait – you’re on the plastic crime initiative.’

      ‘Did you forget?’

      ‘No, I’ve been a bit busy this morning, that’s all.’

      ‘Something on?’

      He heard Fry hesitate. ‘Don’t get excited. Just something I’d like you to take a look at when you’re finished. Get away as soon as you can, will you?’

      ‘Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’

      ‘A house fire last night. Multiple fatalities.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘One of the Edendale estates. The Shrubs, I think they call it.’

      ‘I know where you mean.’

      For all the time she’d served in E Division, Fry still didn’t seem to know the area all that well. Perhaps she didn’t think it was worth the effort because she wasn’t intending to stay long enough. Yes, that was the impression she gave. A visitor caught in a depressing stop-over while she waited for a connection to somewhere better.

      Cooper remembered a few of the initial reactions to Fry when she’d first transferred from West Midlands. ‘A bit of a hard-faced cow’; ‘Could be a looker, but she doesn’t bother’; ‘Too tall, too skinny, no make-up’; ‘Stroppy bitch’. None of them had been fair, of course. But Fry hadn’t done much to make herself popular with her colleagues. In fact she seemed to relish her image.

      In the background, he could hear Judson answering a question. ‘A blank piece of plastic, embossed and encoded with a stolen account number. Some of these plastic crime merchants practically steal your identity.’

      ‘Can you hear me, Ben?’

      ‘Yes, you mentioned a fire on the Shrubs.’

      ‘Great. Well, three deaths. A mother and two children.’

      ‘Evidence of suspicious circumstances?’

      ‘Not yet. But …’

      ‘You’re expecting some?’

      ‘We haven’t had the forensics yet. But I want to know if you’ll be around.’

      ‘OK,’ said Cooper, trying not to sound surprised. ‘I’ll see you back at the office after the session with Steve Judson. Is that OK?’

      ‘Yes, that’s absolutely fine.’

      When he ended the call, Cooper frowned. Somehow, Fry hadn’t sounded her usual self.

      Judson caught his eye across the group and raised an eyebrow. ‘They get your PIN by focusing a camera on the keypad,’ he was saying. ‘At the end of the day, they retrieve discarded receipts. They match up the time of your withdrawal with the tape from the camera, and they’ve got both your PIN and your account number. They can produce a duplicate card and make fraudulent withdrawals as easily as if they’d stolen the genuine card. And you won’t even know anything’s happened until you see your next bank statement. That’s more than bingo – it’s the jackpot.’

      Edendale District General was on the northern edge of town, occupying a greenfield site where new wards could be added as funding became available. Fry had never seen the old hospital on Fargate. It had closed years ago, its Victorian buildings so primitive and crumbling that nobody had bothered saving them from demolition. But its location must have been very handy. Even at this time of the morning, it would take her fifteen minutes to get across town to the new site, once she got away from Darwin Street.

      ‘Tell me again, who made the emergency call?’ she asked Murfin when he came off the radio to the control room.

      ‘One of the neighbours dialled 999 when he saw the smoke. Bloke by the name of Wade. A bit of a know-it-all, by the sound of him. FOAs took a statement earlier.’

      ‘You know, we should have made sure we had complete information before we came out.’

      Murfin looked aggrieved. ‘You said you wanted to get the job out of the way as soon as possible. In and out, and turn it over to the coroner, that’s what you said.’

      ‘OK, Gavin, thanks.’ Fry didn’t like her words being quoted back to her, especially when she’d been wrong. ‘It’s a bit irritating, that’s all.’

      ‘Is that why you made me look in that last bedroom?’

      She sighed. ‘It had to be done, Gavin. You aren’t here just to wreck the place and make stupid jokes. There was nothing in the bedroom, anyway.’

      ‘You didn’t know that at the time.’

      ‘Right. How come the hospital staff have more information than we do, eh? So the youngest child wasn’t even at home, but with the grandparents? It shouldn’t have needed a call to the ward sister to find that out.’

      Murfin was silent as he watched her get into her car. ‘You know I’ve got kids of my own, don’t you?’ he said quietly, before she closed the door.

      Fry bit her lip, caught out by a moment of tricky human emotion when she hadn’t expected it. ‘Sorry, Gavin.’

      But he didn’t seem to have heard her as he walked away. And by the time she caught up with him later, he was back to his old self, so she didn’t mention it again.

      * * *

      Brian Mullen was in a side room off one of the newer wards, with a PC on duty outside