Lost River. Stephen Booth

descends into nightmare when the eldest son accuses his father of sexual abuse. That would be a comedy, then. She might give it a miss.

      The Water’s Edge was busy with people. The development had formed a complex of bridges where three canals met, connecting Brindleyplace to the ICC and NIA. Narrowboats were moored to the towpath, one of them converted into a café. The music she’d heard turned out to be a jive group on the bandstand, playing to customers eating outside at the restaurants. Their sign said Jive Romeros.

      It was funny how canals had become a decorative feature. They had been such a part of the industrial revolution, yet they were surviving the wholesale demolition of the factories they’d once served. They were like all those Victorian pubs, preserved in the middle of modern office developments and retail parks.

      She could see some of the city centre’s glass towers from here. Most prominent among them was the Beetham Tower on Holloway Circus. The huge glass panels in its upper levels made the building look as if its walls had been blown away in a bomb blast, exposing the hidden lives of the people behind them.

      A full-scale crown court trial would mean expensive defence barristers being shipped into the city. Would they take accommodation at Brindleyplace? No, she guessed not. They would stay at the Radisson SAS in the Beetham Tower, and drink downstairs at the Filini Bar.

      Around the corner from 3 Brindleyplace, Fry could see the entrance to the National Sea Life Centre, a fan-shaped building backing on to the canal. It boasted a transparent walk-through underwater tunnel, yet it was about as far from the sea as you could get in the UK.

      She thought of all the people she’d dealt with as a police officer over the years. All the victims, all the families. And all the children, of course. Particularly the children. There were some victims she’d let down, when she ought to have been able to help them. Everyone said you shouldn’t allow any of that to get to you, that you should just let it go and move on to the next case, to another victim looking for justice, needing your help. But sometimes it wasn’t so easy.

      And she thought of all the times she’d observed the behaviour of victims and felt a lack of sympathy at their weakness, their hesitation when faced with a decision. All the times she’d wanted to tell them that it wasn’t as bad as all that.

      Fry had so often seen people going into court to confront their past. The worst part of the process was waiting in the witness room, and the long walk down the corridor to take the stand. She’d watched people taking that walk. It might only be a few yards, but when you were going to face your own demons, it could seem like a million lonely miles.

       ‘So what do you say, Diane?’

       ‘I need time.’

       ‘Of course. All the time you want.’

      For herself, Fry knew that the long walk down that corridor would be the most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life.

      Cooper stopped a few miles out of Ashbourne and pulled off the A515 into a car park serving the Tissington Trail, close to the village of Alsop. Dovedale was just over the hill to the west – the Milldale end of the valley, up past the boardwalks beyond Reynard’s Cave and the weirs under Raven’s Tor.

      He couldn’t put off reading the witness statements any longer. And he was afraid of being distracted when he got back to the office, too caught up in other things, all those unavoidable demands on his time.

      Ideally, the statements ought to be read on the ground, in Dovedale itself, so he could picture where the witnesses were standing. But it would take too long right now to battle his way in and out of the dale against the traffic, and mingle with the crowds. That would have to wait for another time.

      The statements were all pretty brief. The one thing that became clear was that no one had seen everything. Some witnesses recalled seeing the dog go into the river, but not the girl. Others had seen Emily and her brother playing on the bank, throwing sticks for Buster. Then they’d looked away, absorbed in their own concerns, until all the shouting began.

      A few members of the public stated that they had actually seen Emily run into the water, then fall and bang her head on a rock. He could see why Sergeant Wragg felt the results of the interviews were conclusive.

      But Cooper was bothered by the wording of these statements. ‘Yes, I saw the little girl fall and bang her head.’ ‘She was knocked over by the dog. The rock struck her on the side of the head.’ ‘She couldn’t catch the dog. I saw her slip and float downstream towards the rocks.’ One lady believed there had been a whole crowd of children and dogs in the water, too many for her to be able to distinguish one little girl in a green summer dress. Meanwhile, her friend had seen the girl distinctly, but swore the dress was blue.

      All of these people had been within a few hundreds yards of the incident. Strange that none of them had noticed the child’s parents. How odd that none of them had seen what Cooper saw – the man standing on the bank, his hands raised, fingers dripping water. Robert Nield was a striking enough figure at any time. You’d think he would have been observed by at least one of these eyewitnesses.