Secrets of Death

by Stephen Booth

  Denning was a former pupil of Woodlands School, just a few streets away from his flat. He wasn’t a low-achiever. He’d done reasonably well in his A-levels, but had never been able to find a well-paying job. He’d been unemployed and on Job Seeker’s Allowance for eighteen months before the theme park opening came up. And that hadn’t lasted long.

  Cooper found a framed photograph on the window ledge. It showed Denning standing on a bridge with his arm round a young woman, presumably the now-pregnant girlfriend. They both looked happy and untroubled. The bridge spanned a river – Cooper could see a weir to one side and dense trees on the other bank.

  Then he looked more closely. He realised it was the Lovers’ Bridge in Edendale, but before it became completely covered in padlocks. Just a few were visible, near the standing couple. In fact, the locks seemed as much the focus of the picture as the young people themselves.

  In the car on the way back to Edendale, they were both quiet with their own thoughts. They were within a mile of West Street when Carol Villiers broke the silence. It hadn’t been an uncomfortable one, like the many long, awkward pauses he had experienced with Diane Fry. But he was glad when she spoke. It was better than the thoughts that were going through his head.

  ‘So how is the new house, Ben?’ asked Villiers.

  Cooper smiled. A safe topic.

  ‘Fantastic,’ he said.

  ‘Foolow?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. It’s perfect. Come and see it for yourself. Call round for a drink tonight, if you like. I’ve got some beer in the fridge. One of the first priorities, after feeding the cat.’

  ‘No, I can’t. I’m going out tonight.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Cooper knew Villiers had an active social life. She had plenty of friends in the area, old mates she’d picked up with again when she returned to Derbyshire from her career in the RAF Police. She was a member of a couple of sports clubs in the Eden Valley and probably knew lots of people he didn’t. So usually he didn’t wonder where she was going and who she was going with. Yet he found himself wondering now and hardly daring to ask.

  ‘Anywhere interesting?’ he said, as casually as he could.

  ‘Derby,’ said Villiers. ‘For the book festival.’

  ‘There’s a book festival in Derby?’

  ‘Of course. Didn’t you know?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, I forgot – it’s the city. Outside your experience.’

  ‘You almost sound like Diane Fry,’ said Cooper. ‘But I know you’re not really a city girl yourself.’

  He saw her face crease uncomfortably at the comparison, but didn’t know how to backtrack. Even to him, it sound like an insult now he’d said it.

  Villiers let it pass. ‘They’ve got a couple of good authors on. Military history, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Not your sort of thing.’

  ‘I suppose it might be interesting.’

  Villiers smiled. ‘I hope so. I’m going with a friend.’

  ‘Right.’

  Cooper felt irrationally disappointed. Not that she was going to the book festival with someone else – he was only a workmate, after all. And not even that really, since he was her boss while they were at work. It was the fact that she didn’t tell him who she was going with specifically. It looked like a deliberate withholding of information, as if she didn’t want him to know who her friend was. He wasn’t sure he liked that. Not from Carol Villiers.

  10

  Becky Hurst looked up brightly when they returned to the CID room at West Street.

  ‘We’ve tracked down that failed suicide, Anson Tate,’ she said. ‘Believe it or not, he’s moved from Mansfield and is right here in Edendale. Do you want the address?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Cooper took the note with Anson Tate’s address. It was out on Buxton Road, where many of the properties were large Victorian houses divided into flats.

  He hesitated. Something was nagging at him, something that had been left undone.

  ‘Carol,’ he said, ‘did you check for recent calls on Roger Farrell’s mobile phone?’

  ‘Yes. He hadn’t made any calls for several hours before his death. In fact, his phone was switched off when we found it in the car.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose he didn’t want any interruptions to his final preparations. Some randomly generated sales pitch from a call centre would ruin the moment.’

  ‘It ruins any moment,’ said Villiers.

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Well, there was one call from a pay-as-you-go mobile, which must have come in while he was parked at Heeley Bank. But there was no voicemail message left. So that gives us nothing either.’

  Cooper hated getting nothing. And it didn’t feel right in this case.

  ‘Carol, can you stay here and chase up some of those earlier suicides?’ he said. ‘We really need to pin down more connections. At the moment, we’re just not putting the facts together.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Recently, a number of asylum-seekers had been dispersed to Derbyshire, and some were housed in Edendale’s vacant properties, including a series of sprawling houses in the Buxton Road area. The first appearance of Syrians and Somalis had been met with a degree of hostility in the Eden Valley. Racist slogans had been scrawled on walls and the British National Party were said to be holding recruitment meetings in a local pub. Cooper felt sure it would be short-lived.

  This was one of the few areas in the older part of Edendale where the streets weren’t lined on either side with parked cars. At least, there were no cars evident in front of the house where Anson Tate lived. But a gravel drive ran alongside the house and disappeared around the back. Perhaps there were garages, an old coach house, or just some space cleared from the garden for residents’ parking.

  The house hadn’t been painted in recent years and some of the window frames on the upper storeys were beginning to rot from the damp. A set of buttons by the front door had flat numbers on them rather than the names of residents. Probably the occupants changed so often that it wasn’t worth listing their names. That, or they preferred to remain anonymous.

  Cooper pressed the button for flat 5 and waited. Nothing happened, so he tried again. He couldn’t hear anything from inside the house and he wasn’t sure the bell was working. Then there was a thump of footsteps descending stairs and a vague shape moved behind the leaded glass of the door.

  When he finally answered the bell, Anson Tate turned out to be a rather insignificant-looking man. He was a few inches shorter than Cooper, running slightly to flab, with a narrow mouth and anxious eyes. Well, he was insignificant except for his hair. It was receding, but he’d gelled it forwards into a stiff wedge that came to a point on his forehead. It looked oddly aggressive.

  Cooper introduced himself and showed his ID. Tate was initially reluctant to let him into the house. That was perfectly normal. Even innocent people resisted his presence, unless they’d actually sent for the police.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about, sir,’ said Cooper. ‘I just want a chat.’

  ‘A chat?’ said Tate sceptically.

  ‘Yes, that’s all.’

  Tate led him slowly upstairs. The staircases and corridors were wide, and the ceilings were high, with Victorian architraves and elegant mouldings from which the plaster was peeling. The property would have housed an affluent family at one time, with servants living on the top floor. It was exactly the sort of place that was now in multiple occupancy, divided up into cheap flats and bedsits for people who had no intention of staying long.

  ‘So what can I do for you, officer?’ asked Tate.

  ‘I’m hoping you might be able to help me with some enquiries we’re making.’

  ‘Helping with enquiries, is it? I didn’t realise that old cliché was still in use.’

  ‘I’m sure it will disappear when we find a better one.’

  Tate smiled, though it was a smile without humour. ‘Sit down,
please. Make yourself at home. Such as it is.’

  ‘You haven’t lived here long,’ said Cooper.

  Tate recognised that it was a question. ‘No, just a few weeks. Temporary accommodation really.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Well, you must know about me,’ said Tate. ‘The only thing that’s of any interest about me, anyway. The fact that I’m still here, when I shouldn’t be.’

  ‘I wondered if you would mind talking to me about what led to your attempt to take your own life,’ said Cooper, feeling that he was speaking more carefully than was really necessary with this man.

  ‘Oh, all that,’ said Tate. ‘All that stuff I was planning to leave behind me.’

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s distressing for you, sir.’

  Tate stared at him, seeing something far distant from the walls of the little flat. Then he took a deep breath.

  ‘I haven’t got any coffee,’ he said. ‘But I can offer you a herbal tea.’

  ‘That will be fine.’

  ‘Peppermint, or lemon and ginger?’

  ‘Er, lemon and ginger. Thank you.’

  ‘I won’t be a tick.’

  Cooper looked around while he waited. The flat was depressing. The furniture looked cheap and ancient, scuffed by the feet and elbows of countless previous tenants careless of someone else’s property. The carpet had a threadbare patch in the doorway, the torn pile held down by a strip of tape. Because they were on the top floor, the windows were small and set high in the walls. The old servants’ quarters. Servants famously had no need of air and light, or even heating. There was probably a view of Edendale from here if you took the trouble to stand on a chair and peer through the grimy panes.

  Although the lights were on, the rooms seemed dark and dismal. Anson Tate had looked quite at home in the gloom, but Cooper felt uncomfortable. It was as if the June weather and the sun-bathed Peak District had disappeared for the length of his visit. He hoped they would still be there when he left.

  ‘He was Canadian, you know,’ called Tate from the kitchen area, above the sound of a boiling kettle. ‘From Vancouver.’

  ‘Who was, sir?’

  ‘The man who interrupted me that day. On the bridge, I mean. He stopped me going over. He was a lot bigger than me and very strong. He had a grip like a vice. Perhaps he was a lumberjack. I never bothered to ask him.’

  Tate put his head round the door. ‘Would you like to see my bruises? They’re still there. I probably ought to sue him. Don’t you think?’

  He put a cup in front of Cooper on the table. Aromatic steam rose from it, filling the room with the smell of hot ginger.

  Before coming, Cooper had thought about how to approach Anson Tate. He wasn’t a suspect. He had no criminal record of any kind. All he’d done to be of interest was try to kill himself. That made him a victim, of a kind. Vulnerable. If he’d been in a cell at the West Street custody suite, he would be on regular suicide watch.

  Tate sat down opposite Cooper, nursing his cup. He’d made peppermint tea for himself. The two aromas mingled in an exotic mist between them. Ginger and peppermint, and a chat about suicide. Sometimes, this job seemed very strange.

  ‘I suppose you want to know why I wanted to do it?’ asked Tate.

  ‘Well, if you’d like …’

  ‘I had a job once,’ said Tate, without needing any more encouragement. ‘It was a rubbish job. Boring and pointless. It was badly paid too. I spent all day doing things I had no interest in with people I cared about even less. It was my job, though. It made me feel as though I had something, that I belonged somewhere. When I put that ID card lanyard round my neck, it was like putting on a disguise. All the people who passed me in the corridor, or saw me in the canteen – they accepted my right to be there. Some of them even knew who I was. One or two actually said hello now and then.’

  There was a book on the table, a bookmark protruding from a page about halfway through. Tate absent-mindedly picked up the book, opened it at the bookmark and closed it again. Cooper couldn’t see the cover, but it looked like a novel. Dark colours, a splash of red. A thriller, perhaps.

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t sound much, does it?’ said Tate. ‘But it was something. It gave me a purpose. I don’t have any of that now. And I’ve got to ask myself – if I can’t do anything with my life, what’s the point of being alive at all?’

  ‘Surely …’

  ‘Well?’

  Tate leaned closer, as if hoping for a meaningful answer. Yet Cooper didn’t have an answer at all. He’d asked himself the same question many times.

  ‘I see.’ Tate sighed. ‘When you’re living alone, you become invisible. We’re surrounded by invisible people. It’s no surprise that they long to do something, anything, to make themselves visible to the world, if only for a while. It doesn’t mean they’re cowards.’

  Cooper blinked. Was it cowardly to plan your own death, to face up to that final unknown prospect and meet it without flinching? On balance, he thought not.

  Yet Tate seemed oddly angry. Cooper wasn’t sure what target his anger was directed at – life, fate, society, himself? That was probably a question for his psychiatrist or his counsellor to be asking.

  ‘Doesn’t it seem wrong to you that sick animals are put out of their misery by vets, but we aren’t allowed to end our own wretched existences?’ said Tate. ‘What is it about a human life that makes it so different, so sacrosanct? We’re just animals too, aren’t we? Why should we be forced to suffer?’

  He stopped talking. Cooper stared at him through a swirl of herbal steam.

  ‘Do you understand?’ said Tate. ‘I hope you do.’

  He looked at Cooper, his eyes darting anxiously back and forth across the detective’s face, as if seeking something.

  Then Tate smiled a small, sad smile.

  ‘No, you’re too young,’ he said. ‘You still have delusions of hope.’

  ‘Hope is important.’

  ‘Really? Do you know the three most common regrets that people express on their deathbeds? They say “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” or “I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends”. And they regret not letting themselves be happier. I wish I’d known that. I’ve never had friends, I’ve never known happiness. All I had was my work. And when my eyes were opened and I saw the futility of that … well, what did I have left? I’m sure there are lots of people like me. You must see them yourself.’

  ‘We see all kinds of things in this job.’

  Tate nodded. ‘Well, perhaps you’ve heard people say this before. That every day you’ve got this awful thing nagging at you, as if there’s something terribly wrong. And then suddenly you see the truth. You know what wasn’t right. And you know what to do about it too. It’s a kind of release.’

  ‘It’s the people left behind,’ said Cooper. ‘The family and friends. A spouse, the parents. The children.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tate. ‘Everyone talks as if suicides are selfish, that they don’t care what they’re doing to other people. But when you’ve reached that stage in your life, you genuinely think you’re doing everyone a favour. You believe that your family and friends will be better off without you, that their lives will be easier when you’re gone. And do you know what? For many men, that’s actually true.’

  Cooper took a drink of his lemon and ginger, gathering his thoughts. He’d lost control of the interview, of course. It was understandable. Tate had been using him as he would a counsellor, pouring out his feelings, his justifications. Somewhere in there might be a useful detail.

  ‘Though you’re right about the people left behind,’ said Tate. ‘No matter who you are, your death isn’t just your own experience. It affects other people. The final event of your life will live on in the memories of your loved ones. Wouldn’t you prefer their memory of you to be one of freedom from indignity and pain? My mother … my mother never had that choice.’

  ‘Your mother?’ said Cooper.

  That hadn’t been in the notes
on Anson Tate’s suicide attempt. There was nothing about his mother. No mention of her in his suicide note either.

  ‘What happened to your mother, Mr Tate?’

  Tate fiddled with the bookmark, sliding it in and out of the page in his book.

  ‘She died of pancreatic cancer. Do you know the survival rate for that type of cancer? Two per cent. It took her a long time to die and she was in constant pain and distress.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Why should you? But I had to watch it happening. She had chronic pain from the tumour pressing against her internal organs. She also had all the effects of the medication, the use of opioids – the thirst, the nausea, the itching, the constipation, the despair …’

  Tate took another deep breath before he continued.

  ‘As a result of that illness,’ he said, ‘she left me with memories of seeing her in constant agony and of her loss of dignity. In the end, I was unable to see her as the person I wanted to remember. The fact is, if I’d been allowed to end her life before she got to that stage, I would have done it gladly. I’d have done it in the knowledge that she would thank me for it, if she could. But mercy has become a crime.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true, sir,’ said Cooper.

  ‘For me, it was.’

  Cooper looked round the tiny flat. He was trying to ease the atmosphere, to give Anson Tate a moment to collect himself and become calmer. Seeing the sparseness of the surroundings reminded him of an important question he’d come here to ask.

  ‘Do you have a computer, Mr Tate?’

  ‘No, I don’t need one. Why?’

  ‘When you started to think about going down that route,’ said Cooper, ‘I mean, about taking your own life – did you go to anyone to get advice, support or information?’