The canal passed under the railway line here. There was a lock full of scum-covered water, waiting to lift boats another ten feet towards the hills around the city. The spaces under the arches had once been used for workshops and storage areas. For years now they had been boarded up, but the boards had been ripped off the doorways, exposing deep, dank caverns it would be foolish to enter.

Fry waited by the lock gate. After a few minutes, a figure stepped out of the shadows at the back of the arch and came towards her. It was a woman, a few years younger than herself. Her eyes looked simultaneously beaten and defiant.

‘I’ve not seen you around here before. What is it you want?’

Fry stared at her hard, but failed to see what she wanted to see. ‘I’m just looking,’ she said.

‘Are you after sex? Drugs?’

‘No.’

‘You must be the cops, then.’

‘I’m looking for this woman.’

Fry took the photograph from her wallet. It was old and worn, taken at least ten years ago. She knew it was futile hoping for an identification, but she had to keep trying. If you gave up trying, you gave up everything.

‘Never seen her before.’

‘You haven’t looked properly.’

‘Is she in trouble, then?’ The woman looked at the photo, and pulled a face, curling her lip and wrinkling her nose. ‘Nah. She’s too clean, for a start. And what sort of hairstyle is that, I ask you?’

‘She may not look like that any more,’ said Fry.

‘Eh?’ She laughed. ‘You’re wasting your time then, aren’t you, duck?’

The woman walked away. Just like all the others did. Fry wanted to get her into a wrist hold, lock the kwik-cuffs, take her back to the station and question her until she found out what she wanted to know. But she was out of her territory here, in the position of begging for information. And she was taking enough risks as it was. In fact, she was a damned idiot. What had stirred up her need to follow this quest? It was a need she had tried to suppress for a long time, so why should it surface now? But she knew why. It was another thing that was the fault of Ben Cooper.

Fry considered how out of place Cooper would be here, in the city. He was chained like a prisoner to the area he came from. He would be completely lost in these streets; but he was never lost on the moors. Ben Cooper smelled his way around like a sheepdog – she had seen him do it, and it drove her mad.