Secrets of Death

by Stephen Booth

  He hated to admit that. But Diane Fry was so often right. In the past, she’d nudged him into seeing things differently and it had turned out to be the right way in the end.

  ‘Tate must have spent a lot of time on this,’ said Cooper. ‘The planning alone had to be immense. So why did he target Farrell so obsessively? Presumably it was something to with the killing of the three girls in Nottingham.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What was so personal about it for him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yet.’

  Cooper got up and went back into the CID room, with Fry following him. Luke Irvine had his head down behind his screen, as if trying to avoid any flak that might be flying around.

  ‘Luke, have you been focusing your search on when Tate was working in Mansfield?’ asked Cooper.

  Irvine had his finger poised to keep scrolling, but he stopped, staring at the screen as if frozen.

  ‘Yes. This one,’ he said. ‘This is the one.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Irvine tapped a couple of keys and several sheets of paper slid off the printer. Fry snatched one up. She hardly needed to read the text. She recognised the person in the photograph.

  ‘Victoria Jenkins,’ she said.

  ‘Who is Victoria Jenkins?’ asked Villiers.

  ‘Was,’ said Fry. ‘She was the last of the three murder victims. A media student at Nottingham Trent University. Twenty years old. She was found strangled in an alleyway. And she was from Mansfield.’

  ‘Like Anson Tate?’

  ‘And not only that.’ Fry waved the printout. ‘He’d written a story about her.’

  Cooper took a copy of the cutting. There was a photograph of a young Victoria Jenkins waving a results sheet with a huge grin on her face. The accompanying story was glowing, and felt oddly creepy and sycophantic when it carried Anson Tate’s byline.

  ‘This goes back to two years before her death, before she became a student at NTU,’ said Fry.

  ‘Victoria Jenkins was a multiple A-star student in her A-level results,’ added Irvine. ‘Tate did an interview with her for the local papers at the time.’

  Cooper scanned through the article. Victoria was described as a brilliant student with a promising future ahead of her. In fact, Tate had used the word ‘rosy’. There were more clichés and purple prose, but a glimpse of the real girl did emerge.

  Victoria Jenkins came from a poor family on a Mansfield housing estate, one of four children brought up by their mother on her own. Victoria told her interviewer about struggling to afford books and having to help look after her younger siblings. But she also talked about her determination to make the most of her opportunities and follow her dreams. She had ambitions to be a TV presenter one day. But there was a problem. She couldn’t move too far away to attend university because her mother still had the three younger children at home. So she had been delighted to be accepted on a media course not far away in Nottingham.

  Fry put her copy of the article down. ‘Is this the reason for Tate’s subsequent actions? Did he fall for her? He was a single man, heading towards middle age. It can happen.’

  Hurst looked up, aghast. ‘My God. She was an awful lot younger than him. Twenty-five years, at least.’

  ‘An unhealthy obsession certainly,’ said Cooper. ‘I wonder if he visited her in Nottingham.’

  ‘Perhaps he was a customer?’ suggested Fry.

  Cooper shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine it, Diane.’

  ‘Well, you never know. He is a man.’

  ‘Tate isn’t that type.’

  ‘If you say so. I’m not convinced.’

  Cooper sat quietly for a moment, turning over the new information in his mind. There was a lot to take in.

  Anson Tate had planned everything so carefully. That Secrets of Death website must have been his. For a start, it was no coincidence that he didn’t have a computer in the flat but had to use one at the library. He would have disposed of whatever machine he used, right after the death of Roger Farrell. It could be anywhere now and they would never stand a chance of finding it without information from Tate himself.

  And it was worse than that. Tate had lured people in and made them practise their means of suicide until they got it exactly right. Surely, if he’d really intended to kill himself that day on Bargate Bridge, he would have done it properly. He wouldn’t be alive now and living in his cheap little flat in Edendale. But his hadn’t been a genuine attempt. He had never intended to die. He’d chosen too busy a location, had timed his actions so that he would be prevented from jumping by some helpful passer-by.

  Yes, Tate had been a very careful planner indeed. He’d even planned his own failure.

  When the forensic examiner rang to say he’d recovered the chassis number from the burned-out Land Rover, Cooper hardly needed to ask who it belonged to.

  ‘Anson Tate,’ he said. ‘That clinches it.’

  ‘Should we go and get him?’ said Fry.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Well, it’s your case, of course …’ she said.

  Cooper smiled. It was the one concession from Fry that he’d been waiting for.

  ‘Come along, then,’ he said.

  ‘It would be a pleasure.’

  Gavin Murfin was still on surveillance outside Anson Tate’s flat. Cooper was about to call him to check that Tate was still at home, when Murfin rang.

  ‘He’s on the move,’ he said.

  ‘Tate?’

  ‘Yes, a taxi has just pulled up at the house and he’s getting in.’

  ‘Are you in your car, Gavin?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Follow him, but at a discreet distance. And keep me informed where he’s heading. We’re on our way.’

  29

  In the West Street parking area, Cooper jumped automatically into his Toyota and held open the door. Fry stood on the tarmac staring at the bodywork.

  ‘Get in, then,’ said Cooper. ‘Or I’m going without you.’

  She reluctantly got in and snapped on her seat belt, and Cooper swung out through the barrier into the Edendale traffic. It was almost like old times, having Diane Fry in the car with him on the way to make an arrest. Almost, but not quite. She still had the rank of sergeant. And he was an inspector.

  ‘We could have taken my car,’ she said. ‘It has less damage on it. So it’s probably more legal on the road.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the RAV,’ said Cooper. ‘Just a few scratches. It can survive a lot worse than that.’

  As they drove, Cooper was waiting for news of Anson Tate’s whereabouts.

  ‘Will he be expecting us to have figured it out, do you think?’ said Fry.

  ‘Tate is far from stupid,’ said Cooper. ‘Evil and manipulative, yes, but not stupid. He knows we’ll have been looking at him carefully. And that’s my fault, of course. I’ve scared him by pressing him too hard over the past few days.’

  ‘I hope he hasn’t bolted. It would be unfortunate to lose him like we did Roger Farrell.’

  Cooper realised he didn’t feel guilty at all for putting Tate under pressure. Anson Tate had presented himself as a victim. But he wasn’t.

  For a moment, Cooper wondered if David Kuzneski’s cousin Lily Haynes had been right when she talked to him at Kuzneski’s funeral. She’d suggested that his perception of people had been distorted over the years by what he’d had to deal with.

  There was no way of avoiding it in this job. You always had to assume someone was lying until you could establish otherwise. The law said people were innocent until proved guilty, but that was only when a case came to trial. During a major inquiry, everyone might be guilty. And that was the way a police officer had to approach an unknown individual. So of course it distorted your perceptions.

  Gavin Murfin came on his direct radio channel.

  ‘Tate’s taxi is driving out of town. Heading south. Eyam maybe or Foolow. Perhaps he’s planning to call on yo
u, Ben.’

  Murfin made it sound like a joke, but Cooper went cold at the thought of Tate knowing where he lived.

  ‘What does he mean?’ asked Fry. ‘You live in Edendale. That little place in Welbeck Street with a cat and the old lady next door.’

  ‘I’ve moved,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘There wasn’t any reason why I should tell you.’

  ‘No.’

  Cooper had a sudden, sharp memory then of Diane Fry calling unexpectedly at his flat in Welbeck Street on the day he moved in, bringing him a housewarming present. Apart from members of his family, she had been the only person ever to do that. She had claimed just to have been passing. And he recalled her very words as she handed him the gift, because they had made such an impression: ‘I don’t like you all that much, as you know. But I brought you this.’ He had pretty much given up trying to understand her since then.

  ‘No, he’s past Foolow, so you’ve had a lucky escape,’ came Murfin’s voice. ‘Looks as though he’s turning towards Wardlow.’

  Cooper acknowledged the information. He’d driven that route himself with Villiers a few days ago on his way to visit the scene of David Kuzneski’s suicide. It was the logical way to Monsal Head.

  Cooper put his foot down when they got out of the town. Tate was some distance ahead of them and he didn’t know what exactly the man was planning to do. They might not have much time.

  ‘Okay, the taxi is stopping at Monsal Head in front of the hotel,’ reported Murfin.

  ‘The viewpoint car park?’

  ‘Yes. Tate is out of the car, paying off the driver. It looks like he’s going for a walk.’

  ‘A walk? Are you kidding? Anson Tate? Keep a careful eye on him.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Gavin Murfin greeted Cooper and Fry as they parked on the side of the road just downhill from the Monsal Head Hotel. A small group of marked and unmarked police cars began to gather behind them.

  ‘Tate is on the viaduct,’ said Murfin. ‘Right in the middle. He hasn’t spoken to anyone, he’s just standing there, leaning on the parapet. He’s been there a while now and members of the public are starting to get a bit uneasy about him.’

  ‘What do you think he’s planning?’ asked Fry.

  ‘A dramatic gesture, I think. A statement. He’s winding down his life, but he wants to do it publicly. With us watching.’

  ‘Damn it.’

  Carol Villiers had joined them, peering round the corner of the hotel at the scene on the viaduct.

  ‘This explains why he disposed of his Land Rover,’ she said. ‘He knew he wasn’t going to need it any more.’

  ‘We’ll have to get him away from there,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Tate couldn’t have a better vantage point if he tried, though. Our vehicles will be obvious the moment they turn into the car park. And so will we. If he sees us coming …’

  Cooper tried to imagine a bird’s eye view of the area. The viaduct was the focal point of the landscape here, but there was a lot more going on that you couldn’t see so obviously.

  ‘Don’t worry. I know a way,’ he said. ‘The Headstone Tunnel.’

  ‘That would work,’ said Villiers.

  ‘Can you and Diane work your way round to the other side, in case he legs it?’

  Villiers and Fry looked at each other. It was no good: they would have to work together.

  ‘We’ll meet you somewhere in the middle,’ said Fry. ‘I suppose.’

  He turned to the uniformed officers. ‘Close the trail at both ends of the viaduct. And try to keep the public back.’

  Cooper got back in his car, turned by the side of the hotel and drove past the congregational chapel into the village of Great Longstone. He found a side road in the centre of the village and followed it just past a sharp dog leg to where an old railway bridge formed a hump in the road. He tucked the Toyota into the side of the lane with difficulty and climbed out.

  Most people got on to the Monsal Trail at Hassop, where they could hire bikes at the café. From there, the trail followed the track of an old railway line, where a deep cutting had been blasted from the rock. At Longstone, this part of the trail was set so deep into the landscape that it was invisible from the surrounding fields.

  He ran down the steps and found himself on the Monsal Trail. He’d recalled that this last section before the viaduct passed through Headstone Tunnel. Headstone was the longest tunnel on the line. It had been closed for many years after it fell into disrepair, forcing the Monsal Trail to take a diversion round it. Now it was open for walkers and cyclists. A new surface had been laid and lighting installed.

  ‘It will only take a few minutes for me to walk through the tunnel,’ said Cooper on the direct channel to Villiers. ‘He won’t see me coming from this direction.’

  ‘You could have hired a bike and a cycling helmet. Tate would never have recognised you then.’

  ‘That’s actually a good idea. A bit late now, though.’

  Near the former Longstone station stood Thornbridge Hall, a wedding venue for which Cooper had once read the prospectus, when marriage had still been a prospect. He’d found the brochure in the flat at Welbeck Street with a pile of others and thrown it out when he packed up to move. Thornbridge had been the home of a railway director, who had direct access to the station via his own set of steps. A later owner had filled it with items from the Duke of Newcastle’s home in Nottinghamshire, when his company was contracted to demolish it. In July, a beer festival was held at Thornbridge, when beer enthusiasts camped out in the parkland among the duke’s statues and fountains.

  Just past the old station, Cooper passed under a bridge that crossed over the trail connecting the fields on either side. He saw the entrance to the tunnel ahead.

  The approach was spectacular. The vertical walls of the cutting were buttressed by columns of dark brick, weathered to the same colour as the rock. Trees grew high above the trail on top of the embankments. Dense masses of vegetation swarmed down the rock face, brambles and long, green tendrils of ivy hanging clear as they reached towards the ground. Wild flowers peeped from the crevices, their purples, whites and yellows creating the appearance of an exotic garden. At ground level, bracken and elder saplings threatened to overwhelm the fencing, creeping on to the edges of the trail.

  Near the tunnel entrance, the buttresses formed alcoves in the rock, like the walls of an ancient temple. A steel-framed mesh canopy protected walkers from the danger of boulders tumbling down from the broken rock face. A blue sign warned him that the lights were turned off at dusk. But it was almost midsummer, and the longest day of the year was only a week or two away. Dusk was a while off yet.

  For the first few yards, the walls were green with moss and lichen. They survived only as far as the light reached. When Cooper was barely fifty yards in, all he could see ahead was darkness but for the long string of overhead strip lights curving away to the right where the tunnel formed a bend on its way towards the viaduct. He could smell the dampness in the walls and hear the strange echo of his own footsteps.

  Cooper stopped, turned and looked back for a moment to the entrance. He saw a green arch, an unnatural bright green from sunlight flooding the trail where it ran through the cutting. The light was behind him now and ahead was darkness.

  After he’d paused to let his eyes adjust, he realised that the tunnel wasn’t really as dark as it had seemed. The overhead lights created patterns of dark and light, and he could see refuges built into the walls at intervals. He was becoming conscious of the amount of rock and earth beyond those walls and above his head, and he could feel himself descending on a slight gradient.

  His radio crackled. ‘What’s your position, Ben?’

  ‘Almost there.’

  Cooper kept walking and the lights ahead kept curving away to the right, as if he would eventually walk round in a circle and be lost in an endless tunnel for the rest of time.

  Finally he saw a di
stant dot, which grew very slowly to be … a cyclist riding towards him from the other direction. Another cyclist behind, both of them wearing helmets. They said hello as they passed him to his right. Cooper didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. He kept walking.

  And the next light was the real end of the tunnel. He could see it creeping in along the floor and walls, saw the green of the moss and lichen again. Finally, it was the genuine light at the end of the tunnel. He felt slightly disoriented, as if the tunnel had been much longer than five hundred and thirty yards. Had he passed through some strange parallel world halfway along? His mother would have said the fairies owned the middle of the tunnel and only let people through after playing tricks on them and making them feel lost. It was the darkness, he supposed. Human beings weren’t designed for it.

  When he emerged into daylight, he found a path to his right leading down to the car park at Monsal Head. A fingerpost pointed him straight ahead to Wyedale. A moment later, he had stepped out on the viaduct.

  And he saw Anson Tate standing in the middle, tapping his foot as if getting impatient for Cooper to arrive.

  Diane Fry was having to follow DC Villiers. She didn’t know where anything was around here. She never had done, even when she was stationed in Edendale. What could you do when there were no roads?

  Villiers took her by car up the hill from Monsal Head, as if they were heading away from the incident. Fry kept looking at her, wondering if she’d gone mad. But Villiers seemed to know where she was going. A mile up the hill, she swung sharp left and they descended rapidly down a narrow, winding lane. Fry clung to her seat as they skidded round a corner through a belt of trees.

  ‘No wonder your cars get damaged,’ she said.

  ‘It’s an occupational hazard around here,’ said Villiers, having to raise her voice above the noise of the engine bouncing off the stone walls.

  They reached a junction and Villiers turned left, driving along the side of a small river. A few yards further on, she stopped, letting the car slide on to the grass at an awkward angle.