Secrets of Death

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Not far away.’

  Cooper watched the man but couldn’t see his face from here.

  ‘What sort of car does he drive?’ he asked.

  ‘A black Jeep.’

  ‘A Grand Cherokee?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, it looks a bit like a Land Rover, if you don’t know much about cars.’

  Fry frowned, but let it pass as an irrelevant comment. She’d got used to having to do that when she worked regularly with Ben Cooper in Edendale.

  ‘And what job does Hull do?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘He runs a small garage in Radford. Servicing and MoTs. You know the sort of thing. If I’m right, that may be a direct to link Farrell, given his tendency to change cars so often. Why, what does that make you think of? Land Rovers again?’

  ‘No, I was wondering if he was an internet wizard of some kind. A web designer perhaps.’

  ‘A web designer?’ said Fry. ‘Oh, that would be Anwar Sharif. He works in managed IT services. His employers are based on a new business park out by the motorway. Companies outsource to them for network infrastructure, technical support, data security, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  Simon Hull disappeared into a house and Fry pulled away from the kerb again, turning the corner into another almost identical road.

  ‘Diane …’ said Cooper.

  ‘What?’

  He gestured out of the car window. ‘Is this what you left Edendale for?’

  Fry stamped her foot on the brake a bit too hard as a light turned amber, making Cooper jerk against his seat belt.

  ‘Yes, this is part of it,’ she said. ‘Just a very small part of it. Here in the city is where we see what’s actually happening. I don’t suppose you can even begin to understand that. You and your rural idyll up there in the wilds of the High Peak. You don’t realise how cut off you are from the real world, how divorced you are from what’s going on in society.’

  ‘Oh, I’m aware of it,’ said Cooper. ‘I just don’t want to be so much a part of it as you’ve become.’

  ‘Me? I always was a part of it. You never changed me into a country girl.’

  ‘No, I realise that. It wasn’t going to happen.’

  ‘Never.’

  Fry took him to the police station at St Ann’s, where the Northern Command of EMSOU’s Major Crime Unit was based. To Cooper’s eye, the St Ann’s area was another huge housing estate. And someone had spent money on the building where Fry worked too. There probably weren’t any leaky corners here or sink holes in the car park.

  The station on St Ann’s Well Road was used as a base for officers, but had no front counter and wasn’t open for members of the public to visit. It gave the building a different atmosphere from West Street, where the lobby and front reception desk were often busy with visitors.

  There was another difference here. Back home, Derbyshire Constabulary was divided into geographical divisions, all of which contained some urban areas. Nottinghamshire Police openly divided themselves into just two – City Division and County Division. It was reminiscent of the days when the city had its own separate police force, before amalgamation in the 1960s. It seemed a tacit admission that policing in the city was different from that in a rural area.

  It was late by now, and the station was unnaturally quiet. Upstairs, Fry introduced him to a tall, dark-haired officer who was alone in the MCU office.

  ‘This is my colleague, DC Jamie Callaghan,’ she said. ‘He’s working a late shift.’

  ‘Inspector,’ said Callaghan with a brief nod.

  Cooper studied the pin board. The photograph of Anwar Sharif meant nothing to him. He was an Asian man aged in his late thirties, with a trimmed beard and gelled hair. But the head shot of Simon Hull made him frown and look more closely.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Fry.

  ‘I’ve seen this man before. Simon Hull.’

  ‘I showed him to you earlier on.’

  ‘Well, not the man himself,’ said Cooper. ‘I mean a picture of him. A younger him.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘There was a photograph in Roger Farrell’s car when we found him. It showed two couples. I’m pretty sure the other man in it was Simon Hull.’

  ‘I’d like to see that.’

  ‘It’s at Edendale with the rest of the stuff we recovered from his car.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘Nothing important.’

  ‘If Simon Hull denies knowing Roger Farrell,’ said Fry, staring at the photos, ‘it would be very useful to have photographic evidence we can present to him to prove otherwise.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about these two men?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘We’re picking them up in the morning,’ said Fry. ‘A couple of early calls have been arranged. DC Callaghan and I will be conducting interviews with them here at St Ann’s later tomorrow.’

  ‘It sounds like a bit of a fishing expedition,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Don’t let DCI Mackenzie hear you say that. He might change his mind.’

  ‘Well, I hope that’s helped to put you in the picture,’ said Fry when they got back in to the Audi. It was dark now and she turned on her headlights as they passed through the barrier on to St Ann’s Well Road.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Cooper. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘So what are your thoughts about Roger Farrell now?’

  ‘It’s a different perspective. I’ll have to give it some consideration.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘For now.’

  Fry gritted her teeth as she drove back towards Edendale. They left the street lights of the city behind and hit the darkened roads of North Derbyshire.

  ‘Isn’t it your birthday later this month?’ said Fry after a while.

  Cooper was surprised. ‘Fancy you remembering that.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to send you a card or anything,’ said Fry. ‘I just remembered that you’re Cancer. A crab in its shell.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Half an hour later, Cooper got out of Fry’s car at West Street and stood looking at her for a moment before he closed the door.

  ‘By the way, Diane …’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know you’ve got a white stain on your jacket?’

  ‘Really?’ Fry looked at the mark and brushed at it ineffectually. ‘I don’t know what that can be.’

  ‘Strangely enough,’ said Cooper, ‘it smells like sour baby milk.’

  24

  Day 6

  The clouds had settled over the Eden Valley next day. A thin white layer stretched to the horizon, with a hint of deeper grey that might produce rain. Ben Cooper knew it could happen in the blink of an eye, that change from light to dark, from warmth to chill. Up there on the moors, you had to be vigilant.

  Even driving through Edendale, Cooper couldn’t get one obsessive thought out of his mind: the expectation of another suicide. That was the way it worked with epidemics, wasn’t it? You just got more and more cases until you finally discovered the cause.

  At the top of the high street, he turned left at the lights into Clappergate, away from the pedestrianised area. He passed the front of the railway station and the spire of All Saints parish church. He found himself thinking about people who threw themselves off tall buildings. You needed about fifteen storeys to be sure you wouldn’t survive the fall and leave yourself with massive injuries instead.

  There were no buildings tall enough for that in the town. Well, unless you could get to the top of the spire at All Saints. That would do it, he supposed. He’d never heard of anyone attempting it and he hoped he never would.

  There was another thing that had changed in Edendale. And it was one that Ben Cooper regretted. For many years, he and other officers based at E Division headquarters had been calling at May’s Café, just down the hill from West Street, for a mug of May’s coffe
e and a meat pie. It had been a tradition, deeply ingrained in the working practices of the police station.

  But the café had closed when May Hobson became ill and no one could be found to run it in her place. It was empty now and awaiting a confirmed buyer. Rumours at West Street said it was going to be a hairdresser’s or a tattoo parlour. Whenever Cooper walked past it, he still seemed to detect the aroma of coffee and baking – familiar and comforting, like May herself. It was a lesson everyone had to learn. Some traditions passed, because their time was over.

  Cooper walked past the door of the CID room towards his office, automatically glancing in to see which of his team were present. At first, he didn’t notice anything unusual. He’d reached his desk and was taking off his jacket when he stopped and frowned.

  ‘No, it can’t be,’ he said.

  Slowly Cooper walked back out and gazed into the room. It was as if he’d been hurled back in time, shifted several months into the past when the world was a different place. Yet somehow it also seemed completely right and natural.

  The person sitting next to Becky Hurst looked round, chewing slowly on something. Cooper could have a good guess what it was. A remnant of pork pie or a bite of a cunningly concealed Mars bar.

  ‘Gavin, what on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Eh-up,’ said Murfin with a grin. ‘They told me you needed a bit of help. So here I am.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Not possible? Think of me as a miracle, then.’

  ‘But why you?’

  ‘I’m available,’ said Murfin. ‘And I’m cheap.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you got sacked from Eden Valley Enquiries.’

  ‘We went our separate ways by mutual consent,’ said Murfin. ‘We had artistic differences.’

  ‘No, that’s what members of boy bands say when they can’t stand each other any longer.’

  Murfin sighed and picked at something stuck in his teeth. ‘I couldn’t face one more day on the Woodlands Estate. That’s the truth of it, like. It had got so they saw me coming like the bailiffs or the rent collector, and they all closed their curtains and hid. I mean, what sort of private enquiry agent has to stand on someone’s doorstep shouting through the letterbox while kids abuse him from the pavement?’

  Cooper laughed. ‘It didn’t work out, then. Not quite up to your expectations.’

  ‘That’s the top and bottom of it. So when I heard a rumour that HR were scouring Derbyshire for cheap civilian staff to hire, I decided to bite the bullet and take a pay cut. Just to help out, like. Public duty and all that.’

  ‘You were missing us.’

  ‘After a fashion.’

  So this was what Superintendent Branagh had meant when she talked about supplementing staff. In a way it was amazing that Gavin Murfin was the one who’d been brought back. Of course, he was only recently retired, which meant he hadn’t lost touch in the way most retirees so quickly did.

  On the other hand, he had never made any attempt to toe the line while he was here, never tried to be in anyone’s good books. Quite the opposite, in fact. He’d been very free with his comments, his sarcastic asides and sardonic looks. There must be something about becoming a senior manager that destroyed your sense of irony. That was the only reason Murfin had got away with it for all those years.

  Cooper looked around the room to see how Murfin was fitting back in. Even Becky Hurst looked pleased to see him.

  ‘So what am I supposed to do with you, Gavin?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I can take statements, make phone calls, prepare files for court, bring fun and laughter to the office.’

  ‘Door-to-door enquiries?’

  Murfin sighed. ‘If you insist. But …’

  ‘But it might be better if we just kept you in the office and away from the general public.’

  ‘That seems to be the general idea. Since I’m not a police officer any more.’

  ‘So whose responsibility are you? Whose authority do you actually answer to?’

  ‘The same as everyone else,’ said Murfin. ‘Human Resources.’

  ‘I wish Hazel Branagh had told me,’ said Cooper. ‘She ought to have been more specific about what was being planned.’

  Murfin tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’m a sort of secret weapon, like.’

  ‘No powers of arrest, though.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Not that I can recall the last time you arrested someone, Gavin.’

  ‘True, it wasn’t my speciality in my more mature years. I preferred to use my vast experience to guide my colleagues.’

  ‘Is that a direct quote from your application letter?’ asked Cooper.

  Murfin smiled. ‘You’d have to ask HR.’

  ‘How did it go with Diane Fry?’ asked Carol Villiers, changing the subject.

  ‘Oh, it was fine,’ Ben said. She knew about his history with Fry, of course. There wasn’t much he could conceal from Carol. And she’d worked with Fry too for a while, when Cooper was on extended leave. Villiers had made no secret of the fact that she hadn’t enjoyed the experience, in fact had regarded Diane Fry as a kind of interloper.

  But was there something more personal between them? Cooper could see Carol’s hackles rise as she mentioned Fry’s name. Perhaps they were just incompatible personalities. Fry wanted to dominate everyone and Villiers wasn’t the kind of woman to let that happen to her.

  ‘Fine?’ she said. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We’re both professionals, aren’t we?’

  ‘If you say so, Ben.’

  Murfin grinned when he overheard their conversation.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Fry?’ he said, drawing out the name with disturbing relish. ‘Shallow as a puddle, I reckon.’

  ‘Are you kidding, Gavin?’

  Murfin looked surprised to be challenged on his view. ‘I can read her like a book, mate. It’s all on the surface. She wants you to think there’s a lot of depth behind it, but it’s all out there really. What you see is what you get. Superficial, like.’

  ‘I think you may have seriously misjudged Diane Fry.’

  Murfin winked. ‘My instincts are never wrong.’

  ‘I think your instincts have died, Gavin. They’re just overdue for a decent burial.’

  Cooper filled in his team with an outline of the case against Roger Farrell and the two associates, Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif.

  ‘Farrell’s funeral is the one we ought to be present at,’ said Villiers. ‘It won’t happen for a while yet, until the inquest has been opened at least.’

  ‘We can keep an eye out for the date, though.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Cooper even had DS Devdan Sharma back from secondment. That meant the team was almost back to full strength, the way it had been when he’d first moved up from uniform to CID.

  Sharma came to Cooper’s office to give him a briefing on the immigration inquiry, though he didn’t need to. It was outside Cooper’s remit, not his responsibility at all. But it was courteous of Dev to do that. He was always dutiful in the role of detective sergeant, always had respect for Cooper’s position as his boss.

  Not everyone showed him that level of respect. In fact, Cooper wasn’t sure he liked it. He preferred honesty and he wasn’t convinced that Dev Sharma was genuine. There was something else going on in the background, which would take him more time to figure out.

  Sharma was a recent addition to E Division CID, filling the role that Cooper himself had left vacant when he was promoted. Cooper had taken him for dinner one night shortly after he arrived in Edendale, in an attempt to get to know him. He always felt it was important with someone he was going to be working with closely. They’d gone to the Mussel and Crab on Hollowgate, and shared a selection of fish and chicken dishes. And yes, Sharma had talked about himself, his background, his family, his police career in D Division in Derby.

  But Cooper had come away from the evening feeling he’d failed. He’d been given a list of facts
, like a carefully planned character outline, rather than getting right to the heart of the person. He still didn’t really know Dev Sharma. Perhaps it would just take more time. Some people were like that.

  ‘The group organising and exploiting illegal migrant workers was based in Derby, but there were links to other cities,’ said Sharma. ‘It was quite a network.’

  ‘Nottingham too?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yes. And Leicester. Even down as far as Birmingham. So the inquiry has moved beyond us now.’

  ‘Was it a useful experience?’

  ‘The illegal workers we picked up were taken to an immigration removal centre near Lincoln,’ said Sharma, avoiding the question. ‘Right out in the country. It’s strange, isn’t it?’

  Cooper took it that he hadn’t enjoyed the assignment but didn’t feel able to say so.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘I think most people don’t know places like that even exist.’

  Cooper had to agree. The location that Sharma was referring to had been a women’s prison until a few years ago. Now it was operated on behalf of the UK Border Agency, housing four hundred foreign detainees awaiting deportation. Its new purpose might not be obvious to the casual passer-by. It had maintained a low profile, even after the death of a Bangladeshi migrant worker.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to work on Immigration Enforcement, then?’ said Cooper.

  Sharma shook his head firmly. ‘No.’

  Cooper was surprised to see his DS looked genuinely shaken by his experience working alongside Immigration Enforcement. It was the first real glimpse of the man behind the facts.

  ‘Well, there’s certainly plenty to do here,’ said Cooper. ‘We’ll be able to keep you busy.’

  ‘I’m glad of that.’ Sharma hesitated before continuing. ‘DI Cooper, I know I haven’t fitted in here as easily as you might have hoped. I’m not familiar with this area and I may appear lacking in vital local knowledge at times. But I do appreciate the opportunity of working in E Division as part of your team.’

  It was quite a speech and it sounded genuine. Cooper felt himself warming to Sharma.

  ‘Let’s get to work, then,’ he said. ‘Have you heard about our current inquiry, Dev?’

  ‘DC Irvine has told me about what he called “suicide tourists”.’