Secrets of Death

by Stephen Booth

  He sat across the table from her, his back to the marina. His shoulders seemed to block out the sunlight.

  ‘You’re restless, I expect,’ he said. ‘You don’t like being away from the job, do you, Diane?’

  ‘Not at a critical point in an inquiry, no.’

  ‘So you’d rather be in the office than taking your rest day.’

  Fry sipped her cappuccino. ‘I suppose so.’

  Callaghan had ordered a southern fried chicken baguette, and his cappuccino was topped with cinnamon. The aromas mingled with the scent of his deodorant. His hair was still slightly damp from the shower after his workout.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything?’ he said, waving a piece of baguette.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  Fry watched another narrowboat go by, a small dog perched on the bow as its owner cautiously negotiated the turn. Across the water, at the entrance to the marina, was a sign for the chandlery. She had never known what kind of items they sold in a chandlery. She wondered if it was worth paying a visit just to find out, since she had nothing else to do. But it might feel a bit too much like shopping.

  Callaghan was watching her curiously, as if trying to read her thoughts.

  ‘How do you think the boss is getting on?’ he said. ‘Will it be good news for us when we go back in?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Fry.

  ‘So what are you thinking about? I’m sure it’s something do with the Roger Farrell case.’

  He was right, of course. She had been turning over the details in her mind ever since she’d escaped from the apartment in Wilford.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘You’re worried that Farrell might have picked someone else up in the last day or two. I only mentioned it as a possibility. It’s not very likely, you know.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Fry.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, it’s those witness reports we’ve had,’ she said. ‘Someone asking questions around the Forest Road area.’

  ‘Questions about Farrell.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m thinking we ought to be looking into that a lot more seriously than we are. I’m going to press Mr Mackenzie on it tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll back you up, Diane. You know that.’

  ‘Thanks, Jamie.’

  He finished his baguette and wiped his fingers on a napkin. ‘It’s a pleasure. Is that all it was?’

  ‘No.’

  Fry hadn’t really acknowledged it to herself, but there was more to her worries than that. She was becoming increasingly anxious about the possibility that Roger Farrell had somehow slipped through their fingers at the last moment.

  ‘I’m wondering if whoever was asking those questions might have something to do with Farrell avoiding our attempts to arrest him.’

  ‘They might have helped him to skip town, you mean?’

  ‘No, not that,’ she said. ‘It occurs to me that they might not be helping him at all.’

  Callaghan squinted at her, as if the sun was now directly in his eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m wondering,’ said Fry, ‘if they might have arranged for him to disappear completely. And for ever.’

  8

  Ben Cooper had made a major decision in his life. It was probably one of the biggest steps he would ever take. It tied him down for many years to come, putting him under an obligation to people he would rather not have been forced to deal with. But sometimes you had to take this sort of step. It was all part of moving on, facing facts.

  He’d bought himself a house.

  The village of Foolow was barely a stone’s throw from where he’d grown up at Bridge End Farm. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Of course he liked to go back and visit often, to see his brother and sister-in-law, and his nieces, who were getting taller by the day. On the other hand, he had a sneaking anxiety that it might be a sign of weakness, that he’d allowed himself to be drawn back towards the security of home when he’d been so close to breaking free completely.

  His little flat in Edendale had been the first stage. His planned marriage to Liz and the future they’d mapped out for themselves would have been the second. There would have been no need to look back at the past if it had all worked out. No necessity for him to be buying a house on his own if Liz hadn’t died.

  And this wasn’t the property Liz would have chosen to live in. He was very aware of that. She had wanted something modern, a three-bedroom semi on an executive housing estate to the south of Edendale, a blank canvas she could make her mark on. But this cottage was old and small. Its stone walls oozed with history and the steps to its front door were worn smooth by generations of previous occupants.

  It was squeezed into its village setting as if it had always been there, as if it had grown organically over the centuries, jostling with its neighbours for the available space and light, as much a natural part of its environment as the trees and the grass and the heather on the hills.

  So here he was, the owner of a house, a limestone cottage half covered in ivy. He’d looked at many other properties before this. In the end, it was the way the front garden was advertised that swung his decision. The estate agent’s details described it as having a pleasant outlook over the surrounding village and rolling hills, with ample room to sit out, read a book and enjoy a glass of wine. If it made even an estate agent feel that way, he knew he would probably like it.

  Its name was Tollhouse Cottage. Like all the others in the row, it was nearly three hundred years old, built for farm labourers or estate workers at a time when houses were intended to last several lifetimes. The walls were solid, not those timber and plasterboard things you could put your fist through. Without the door or a window open, he could hear nothing from outside.

  It also had a cellar. Just a small one – what they would have called a keeping cellar in the old days, for the storage of items that needed keeping cool in the days before fridges. It was cool down there too. He shivered as he stood at the bottom of the short flight of stone steps. The walls were bare, with a slab raised a few inches off the floor. It wasn’t just the cold that made him shiver, though. There was damp in the walls. He could see it in patches and feel it seeping into his bones. He was a few feet below ground here, so it was inevitable that it would feel this way, like standing in his own grave.

  He went back up the steps, closed the hatch and dragged a rug back over it. He couldn’t think what use he would have for a cellar. It wasn’t as if he’d brought so many belongings with him from the flat in Welbeck Street. His stuff would fit into this house with room to spare.

  ‘So what do you think, Hopes?’ he said. ‘I suppose a cat flap is the first priority.’

  The cat didn’t answer. She was too busy exploring all the corners of the house, making sure she’d claimed every room as her territory. She’d be back to the kitchen soon when she got hungry.

  One of the other attractions of the cottage for Cooper was the wood-burning stove. It was a smaller version of the one at Bridge End Farm and he’d already ordered in a stack of logs. He was determined it would be cosy in here during the winter.

  He would miss his local in Edendale, of course. The Hanging Gate had been his refuge for the past few years with its scenic Peak District views on the walls, the same old sixties and seventies pop classics playing, the Banks’s Bitter and Mansfield Cask Ale. It had been a familiar and unthreatening place to retreat to of an evening, where he could enjoy an hour or two of anonymity.

  Foolow had its own pub, the Bull’s Head. But this was a small village. They would soon get to know who he was here.

  He turned as his brother Matt came through the front door carrying a huge cardboard box.

  ‘It’s almost as bad as those caravan people,’ said Matt. ‘You should see the amount of stuff some of them arrive with. You’d think they were heading out on a polar expedition.’

  ‘They must have heard you have a reputation for being primitive.’
r />   ‘Don’t let Kate hear you saying that. She’s in charge of facilities for the site, not me.’

  Against his better instincts, Matt Cooper had put one field of Bridge End Farm aside for use as a caravan site. Most farms in the national park were small, less than a hundred acres. That size of farm could only be run as a part-time enterprise, with the farmer and his family taking second jobs or diversifying into the area’s biggest industry – tourism.

  Tourists were the only reliable source of income for a Derbyshire hill farmer. As well as a small number of static caravans, Bridge End had a few pitches for touring caravans and camper vans. From Easter onwards, there had been a steady flow in and out of the site. Matt had watched each one arrive with a scowl of contempt, until Kate made him stay in the cowshed out of the way.

  ‘You’ve to get used to having the caravanners, Matt,’ said Ben. ‘Think of the money they’re bringing in.’

  Matt grunted as he put the box down on the sitting room floor. ‘I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle,’ he said. ‘They’re all townies.’

  Ben smiled. Of course, most of the visitors were fine – quiet, friendly, undemanding and no trouble to their hosts at all – but occasionally a family lived down to all of Matt’s expectations. He muttered the word townies so often now that it had started to lose any meaning. After a while, he had begun to do it unconsciously, as if he had a mild form of Tourette’s syndrome.

  Matt saw his smile and scowled. ‘Well, you know what it’s like. They come down the lane towing one of those massive things behind an underpowered car and they block the whole place up for miles around. Some of us are trying to make a living at farming, you know.’

  ‘And not doing very well at it. That’s why you need another source of income, isn’t it?’

  His brother didn’t answer. He squatted on the floor to unpack the box, distributing the contents at random around the room without even looking to see what they were. Ben wished his sister-in-law Kate could have been here. She was the organised one. Kate would have this place in perfect order in no time. With Matt’s involvement, it would take months to get things right. There would probably be essential items he would never find again.

  ‘The girls seem to like the caravanners, though,’ said Ben, remembering seeing his two nieces chatting happily to the visitors on his last call at Bridge End.

  Matt shook his head. ‘I don’t know why. It’s not as if they’re going to meet any young people of their own age. What self-respecting teenager would want to go on a caravan holiday with their parents?’

  He held up an electric toaster as if he’d never seen one before and had no idea what its function was. He put it down on an armchair. Then he straightened up and looked round the room, seeming satisfied with his efforts.

  Ben thought he and Matt had little in common physically, except perhaps a look of their father around the eyes and nose. Their mother had been blue-eyed, but the eyes of both her sons were brown, their hair dark where she was fair. Matt had also inherited their father’s size, the wide shoulders, the enormous hands – and the uncertain temper.

  As he aged, Matt was beginning to look more and more like their father. In years to come, he would look exactly the way their father would have, if he’d lived.

  His character was different, though. A rebellious side of his personality was gradually being revealed, which could only have come from their mother. Recently, Matt had joined protests against milk prices, angry at the way he and other milk producers were being prevented from earning a proper living by the pressure to drive down costs for consumers. Farmers had been emptying supermarket shelves of milk, blocking roads outside dairies with their tractors and even taking cows into stores. And Matt had been present at several demonstrations in and around Derbyshire.

  Ben had watched with surprise and a certain amount of admiration. Once a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, his brother was in danger of turning into a hot-headed radical. Something had finally pushed him over the edge.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of space here, anyway,’ said Matt, pacing the room to gaze out of the window.

  ‘You mean it looks a bit empty, don’t you?’

  Matt shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a bit of space.’

  ‘I’ll get some more stuff when I’ve finished decorating.’

  Matt looked at the pile of paint tins and rolls of wallpaper that had been accumulating in the hallway.

  ‘Are you planning to redecorate the place completely, Ben?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It will take a while if you’re doing it on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Ben. ‘It will give me something to do in the evenings.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’

  Matt paused. Ben could hear him breathing heavily and fidgeting with some coins in the pocket of his jeans. It was a habit he recognised, one he’d noticed in his brother before. Not that often. Just when he was building up to saying something important.

  ‘Have you thought,’ said Matt finally, ‘that you might be doing all this as a sort of displacement activity?’

  Ben laughed, then looked at his brother with a burst of affection and understanding. Displacement activity? That wasn’t a phrase Matt would have thought of himself. He probably had no idea what it meant. His reading matter was confined to Farmers Weekly and Classic Tractor. There were no psychology textbooks on the shelf in his office, just box files full of movement records and cattle passports. Ben knew it must have come from Kate. Matt had come primed with the right questions to ask.

  ‘Displacement activity?’ said Ben. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  Matt sucked in his breath as if someone had just stuck a needle into his finger. He’d been afraid his brother would ask him to explain.

  ‘All this,’ he said, with a vague wave of his arm around the room. ‘Taking on this house. Deciding to redecorate the whole thing yourself when it doesn’t really need it. You’re keeping yourself busy all the time. To avoid having to think about anything else.’

  ‘Is that so wrong?’ said Ben gently, feeling sorry for his brother.

  Matt looked at him, a puzzled and slightly pleading look in his eye. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think it’s what I would do too.’

  ‘Then there’s no problem, is there?’

  With a deep sigh, Matt went back to moving the paint tins. ‘None at all.’

  Ben watched him for a while. ‘I’m fine, Matt,’ he said. ‘Really I am.’

  After his brother had gone, Ben took the opportunity to enjoy a few moments of peace. He opened a bottle of beer and sat out on the patio to take in the view and the evening air.

  After a wet spring in Derbyshire, summer had burst into life with a vengeance. The brightest greens were blinding in their brightness; the darker shades looked damp and cool.

  People in other countries, or even in the cities, didn’t realise how green England was until they flew over it. He felt so lucky to be living in one of the most beautiful parts of it. And the Peak District was certainly beautiful. Though it could also be dangerous.

  Small puffs of cloud drifted across the blue sky. When he looked out from here over the patchwork of fields, the sun broke through the clouds sporadically, high-lighting one field and then another, changing the colours in the landscape as it went, catching a white-painted farmhouse here, casting shadows from a copse of trees over there.

  The tracery of white limestone walls was like a map laid over the landscape, so painstakingly constructed that it seemed to hold the countryside together. He sometimes thought that if you followed the right lines on that map you could discover any story, find the clues to any mystery. All the answers might lie caught in this gleaming web.

  Ben found himself thinking about his father, Sergeant Joe Cooper, and wondering what he would have thought of the new house. He would probably have scowled and kicked the plaster and muttered something about rising damp and the electricity bill.

  He and Matt had never ta
lked about their father properly. Not ever, in the whole of their lives. And when Joe Cooper died, it was too late to start. The subject had become far too big even to grasp at. So Ben had never told his brother how much he’d come to resent the memories he had, the fact that so few of them were positive. He suspected that their father was still an idol for Matt, in a way. The older brother always had a different experience. And Matt still blamed the police for their father’s death. That was an unspoken, but unavoidable fact.

  Ben shook himself and took a drink of beer. He had to relax. But having Matt in the new house didn’t have that effect on him.

  He gazed out at the countryside, wondering who his second visitor to Tollhouse Cottage might be and hoping it wouldn’t be too much of a shock.

  9

  Day 3

  For Gordon Burgess, Surprise View was no longer a surprise. He still remembered the first time he’d seen it, though.

  He’d been driving over from Sheffield past the Fox House towards Hathersage. As he crossed over Burbage Bridge, he’d been distracted by the dramatic sight of Carl Wark, the Iron Age hill fort brooding on the northern skyline like a shattered stone reminder of the past. It had been set against a foreground of purple heather, acres and acres of it sweeping up the hillside.

  A few hundred yards later, he’d passed a roadside car park hacked out of the heather and bracken, and he’d wondered why it had been placed just there. Then came white chevrons indicating a sharp right-hand bend as the A6187 blasted through the gritstone. A battered lump of rock was in front him as he swung the wheel to the right.

  And bang – there it was. A huge, astonishing vista had opened up. He found himself looking down across Hathersage to the whole of the Hope Valley as it snaked its way up through Hope and Bamford to Castleton. The distinctive bare face of Mam Tor, the Shivering Mountain, stood at the head of the valley, with a glimpse of the dark plateau of Kinder Scout on the horizon. The rolling White Peak hills swept in from the south, lapping gently against the hard gritstone tors of the Dark Peak. Dense woodland formed clumps and swirls across the landscape. The view was lit by a hazy summer sun that made the scene look magical, something idealised and unreal from a dreamscape.