The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery

by Stephen Booth

  Today he was here for the results of the initial post-mortem on Malcolm Kelsey. And that meant dealing with the forensic pathologist, Dr Juliana van Doon.

  Dr van Doon had worked in Edendale for some time now. That was the one thing Cooper had in common with her. He didn’t know what the usual professional development for a forensic pathologist was, but she hadn’t moved on and pursued other opportunities. Perhaps she’d tried for other jobs, but failed. Or perhaps she just enjoyed meeting the dead residents of Derbyshire.

  Looking at the pathologist, Cooper found he still couldn’t decide which it was. And he certainly couldn’t ask her. He’d been slightly afraid of her ever since he first encountered her when he was a fresh young detective constable. She was one of the few people who’d been willing to put Diane Fry in her place too. The frostiness in the atmosphere when Fry was present owed more to the nature of their relationship than to the chill of the coolers where the bodies were preserved. Cooper had felt the shiver of hostility more than once.

  But Diane Fry wasn’t here today and Cooper felt able to smile at the pathologist, hoping for a reciprocal response. But it didn’t come.

  ‘It’s difficult to tell whether some of these injuries were caused pre-mortem or post-mortem,’ she said. ‘I think this individual was freshly deceased when he was buried.’

  ‘His body was covered with large stones to conceal it,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I mean. If he’d been dead for some time, I would have expected the stones to have left impressions in the soft tissue. Some of them have. But there are also contusions which look from their shape to be due to an object like a stone. Bruising like that only occurs before, during, or immediately after death.’

  ‘Do you think he might still have been alive when they piled the stones on him?’ asked Cooper.

  The pathologist waggled a hand in an uncharacteristically indecisive gesture. ‘All I can say is that it was a close run thing. They didn’t wait to be sure he was dead.’

  ‘And perhaps they didn’t care,’ said Cooper.

  Dr van Doon didn’t comment. It wasn’t her concern. Her job wasn’t to consider who committed this act of violence, or what they were thinking at the time. Perhaps that was how she coped with the job, why she felt comfortable in the mortuary. She only had to deal with the physical evidence, which could be analysed and explained. Dealing with living people and their emotions was much more difficult and messy.

  ‘This individual is overweight, of course,’ said Dr van Doon wearily. ‘It’s rare to see anyone coming in here who isn’t these days. We used to record whether an individual was well nourished, or not. Now I prefer to put “over nourished”. What was his occupation?’

  ‘He was a lorry driver,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Ah yes. I’m immediately picturing burgers and chips. Sausage, egg and beans. Deep-fried cholesterol with a bucket of carbohydrates on the side.’

  Cooper’s thoughts wandered for a moment. ‘Sally’s Snack Box,’ he said.

  The pathologist looked up sharply from her notes. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did I just say “Sally’s Snack Box”,’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I believe you did. Why did you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s what I was thinking.’

  Dr van Doon stared at him. Then, inexplicably, she smiled. Cooper had never seen her smile before – not a genuine smile of amusement like that, instead of her usual sarcastic grimace.

  ‘Is there anything else I can tell you, DI Cooper?’ she said. ‘You know about the fatal injuries. There were a series of contusions to the head and body, but the fatal injury was a wound to the neck from a sharp blade. Two wounds, in fact. Very close together, the result of two separate stabbing actions.’

  ‘The weapon?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have to be anything unusual. A sixteen-centimetre bladed kitchen knife – that would do the job. Unfortunately for this individual, the blade severed his external jugular vein. That causes rapid blood loss, due to the relatively large size of the jugular and the reflux of blood flowing back the other way. I’d put cause of death down to shock and haemorrhage as a result of the severed jugular vein.’

  ‘I suppose he would have bled out fairly quickly?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Significant blood loss leads to haemorrhagic shock and subsequently death. Loss of consciousness undoubtedly occurred within, say, five minutes or so. It was a survivable injury, if he’d received medical attention quickly. But left untreated, he wouldn’t have got far before he became unconscious.’

  ‘A couple of hundred yards?’

  ‘With an injury like that?’ said Dr van Doon. ‘Well, he’d be in serious difficulties. But you never know with the human body. It can get a long way on adrenalin.’

  Cooper nodded. Five minutes would have been enough for Mac Kelsey to struggle from his cab and set out across the fields to the point by the dry-stone wall where he eventually collapsed and died. Of course, it didn’t explain why he ran across the fields instead of towards the houses in Shawhead. But he would hardly have been thinking straight in the circumstances and he might not have realised where he was heading in his panic.

  The best thing for Kelsey to have done was to try to reduce the loss of blood and phone for help before he lost consciousness. But he didn’t do that. He was afraid of something and he’d tried to run away, to escape.

  And he’d been quite right. There was definitely something to be afraid of near Shawhead. Or someone.

  19

  When Cooper returned to West Street, he was relieved to see that Luke Irvine was out of the office – though there was no news yet from Shawhead on the whereabouts of Michael and Donna Schofield.

  As the hours passed, Cooper was getting more and more anxious to speak to Mrs Schofield. It was too much of a coincidence that she should be living in such a small place as Shawhead. He needed to hear what she had to say. Cooper called Irvine’s number and left a voicemail asking him to check in.

  At least Carol Villiers and Dev Sharma had followed up Becky Hurst’s enquiries in New Mills and collected a mass of information on the fatal crash that had occurred on the A6 eight years previously. Villiers and Sharma crowded into Cooper’s office, bringing another chair. With three of them inside and the door closed, the space felt extremely cramped.

  ‘We think it’s all here,’ said Sharma, ‘though we haven’t had chance to study it. Given a little more time . . .’

  ‘It’ll do,’ said Cooper. ‘Time is a luxury we don’t have much of.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Cooper looked at Villiers. She was unnaturally quiet and developed a fixed expression that he couldn’t read. He wasn’t sure whether it was for his benefit, or Sharma’s. One thing he hadn’t asked was how they got on together when he wasn’t there.

  ‘Carol?’ he said.

  ‘I agree with DS Sharma,’ she said. ‘In fact, we don’t really know what we’re looking for. Some kind of connection with the Shawhead murder inquiry?’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Well, the lorry driver’s name was James Allsop. He was thirty-six years old. Married, but no children. He lived at Whaley Bridge.’

  ‘Local, then,’ said Cooper. ‘Interesting.’

  First he read through a press report of the court hearing. It didn’t tell the whole story – and like most press reports, it left a lot of questions unanswered and probably unasked. But it was a useful summary without having to wade through endless transcriptions of witness statements and expert evidence.

  James Allsop had been a long-distance driver making overnight runs from his depot to distribution centres around the region. He ought to have been resting during the day, but his trial heard evidence that Allsop had been getting too little sleep because he was working on vehicle maintenance for his firm during the day to earn extra money.

  But the immediate cause of the crash wasn’t just his tiredness. He was said to have been in the habit of u
sing his iPhone to send text messages and check email while carrying out deliveries.

  The court was told that Ashley Brooks had died instantly in the crash on the A6 near Bridgemont Roundabout. Allsop had pleaded guilty to a charge of causing death by dangerous driving. And the trial judge hadn’t minced his words when he sentenced Allsop.

  ‘At the time when this accident occurred, you were travelling too fast in wet and dangerous road conditions,’ the judge said in his summing up. ‘You were also in a state of fatigue that made you unable to concentrate fully on the task of driving. You should not have been driving at all at the time, as you had failed to take sufficient rest. All the indications are that long before the fatal collision you must or should have been aware of your condition.

  ‘It is equally obvious that you were disregarding the rules of the road by texting continuously. At the time you were illegally using your mobile phone and this was the primary cause of the accident. People who use a handheld phone while driving are a major risk to other road users. Your conduct involved a flagrant disregard for the rules of the road and an apparent disregard for the danger caused to others.’

  The prosecution told the court the fatal crash had happened at just after 11 p.m. a few miles after Allsop had left his depot in a white articulated Iveco Stralis. He was planning to drive overnight to deliver his load to a distribution centre in the West Midlands.

  Statements were heard from drivers who had noticed his erratic driving on the A6. They described his lorry weaving from side to side on the dual carriageway and running over the rumble strip on the hard shoulder. The prosecutor said that when the collision happened another motorist driving behind Allsop did not see him apply his brakes or take any evasive action.

  Police investigations found that at the time of the crash Allsop was travelling at fifty-five miles per hour but had previously been doing over sixty in a forty miles per hour zone. He had apparently been driving as fast as the vehicle’s speed limiter would allow him.

  After the crash Allsop told police that having finished a similar shift the previous night he had gone home and slept until 6.30 p.m. But subsequent investigations proved this was a lie. In fact, he had been working on maintenance jobs at the depot until three o’clock before returning home for just a few hours’ sleep. He had habitually been working an extra day shift in the yard to earn extra money. During the thirty-six-hour period before the fatal collision, it was clear he had failed to take sufficient rest.

  Investigations also found that he’d been sending messages while driving his lorry at fifty-five miles per hour. One message had been sent just seconds before the crash. In one text exchange about his lack of sleep, he said: I’ve survived so far.

  ‘James Allsop was an experienced driver working for a local haulage company,’ said Villiers, seeing Cooper pause. ‘It seems he was heading for a distribution centre near Wolverhampton.’

  ‘Did he have any previous convictions?’

  ‘None.’

  Cooper nodded and continued to read.

  At the end of a trial at Derby Crown Court, Allsop had been sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and had been disqualified for eight years. With an early release on licence, that meant his driving ban would have lasted longer than his prison sentence. After the end of his ban he was supposed to take an extended driving test before he could consider getting behind the wheel again.

  ‘Who was he sending text messages to?’ asked Cooper, picking out the first unanswered question.

  ‘The way he was going at it, you might think he was having an affair or something,’ said Villiers a bit too cheerfully. ‘Exchanging secret messages with his lover. But no – he was texting his wife. It wasn’t mentioned in court, but Allsop’s wife told the investigating team that they had a row that day, just before Allsop set off to work.’

  ‘So they hadn’t resolved the argument.’

  ‘No. Allsop was texting her because they hadn’t spoken to each before he left to start his overnight run down to Wolverhampton.’

  ‘Was he apologising? Trying to resolve the argument?’

  ‘It seems so, at first.’

  ‘At first?’

  ‘Well, if you read through the transcript of all his texts that day, you’ll see that he starts off sounding contrite, but the tone changes later on. His wife wanted to carry on the argument. Allsop begins to sound more and more angry, and his texts get longer.’

  Villiers glanced through the transcripts.

  ‘And more badly spelled,’ she added. ‘The last few texts are full of counter-accusations and attempts to justify himself.’

  ‘What was the argument about?’

  Villiers shrugged. ‘The usual.’

  ‘But if he wasn’t having an affair . . . ?’

  ‘No. And she wasn’t either, by the way. So far as we know.’

  ‘And neither of them had suspicions, unfounded or not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Money, then,’ said Sharma confidently.

  Villiers laughed. ‘The voice of the married man. But yes – you’re right, it was money. She was asking him where it had all gone.’

  ‘And where had it gone?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Another unanswered question, then.

  ‘He must have needed it for something,’ he said. ‘He was working maintenance shifts during the day to earn extra money. That was why he was so tired. You don’t do that unless you’ve got a pressing need for cash.’

  ‘I don’t think it was gone into,’ said Villiers. ‘They probably thought it wasn’t relevant.’

  ‘Just the facts,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I suppose it didn’t really seem necessary to support the prosecution. They had Allsop’s own statement and his wife’s. They had independent witness reports of the crash. And of course they had the forensic evidence – including the mobile phone data. It was a sound case.’

  ‘Of course it was. It was cut and dried, more than enough to obtain conviction for causing death by dangerous driving. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give us many leads on the subsequent murder of Mac Kelsey.’

  As usual Cooper felt a nagging sense of dissatisfaction that he hadn’t been there to ask the questions that came into his head, which others might have considered irrelevant. It left him with an incomplete picture.

  Villiers handed him another cutting. James Allsop was pictured entering court with his head bowed and a manilla folder full of papers held over his face to shield him from the photographers. He was accompanied by his lawyer and a slightly brassy blonde woman with a hard, pinched face. The caption said she was the defendant’s wife, Mrs Vicky Allsop, who had sat behind her husband in court throughout the trial.

  Cooper wondered whether this woman stayed loyal after seeing Allsop sentenced to eight years in prison. Many wives weren’t able to deal with that. After a year or two of waiting, they reached a point where they decided they wanted to get on with their own lives. It was a common experience for prisoners to receive the Dear John letter in their cells. It made their rehabilitation back into society at the end of their sentence so much more difficult.

  But what could the criminal justice system do about that? People made their own decisions. They formed relationships for their own inexplicable reasons and tore them apart again just as easily. It was beyond the scope of legislation.

  The newspaper photos of James Allsop were useless, so Cooper turned to the police file compiled when Allsop was processed through the custody suite on his arrest. There was the usual mugshot, the glowering stare of an apprehensive suspect, trying to look defiant but failing. He’d been treated for his injuries first, but they were minor – some bruising around the cheekbone, a slightly swollen eye and a cut near the right temple. He looked very tired too, his eyes bloodshot and his face puffy, even where it wasn’t bruised.

  In the custody record he was described as a Caucasian male, thirty-eight years old, fiv
e feet ten inches tall, weighing fifteen stone and two pounds. That was just creeping into the obese range for his height. From the photos in the papers, he didn’t look as though that weight was muscle either. Cooper supposed it was a long-distance lorry driver’s occupational hazard. Too much time spent with his backside in the driving seat and not enough exercise, apart from lifting his elbow in the pub.

  ‘What’s happened to James Allsop since then?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Find out, then.’

  Cooper pulled out a newspaper report published after the end of the trial. In the usual way of newspapers, it concentrated on the human interest angle instead of any useful information about the evidence given at the hearing. This often meant a long, emotional outpouring from the bereaved family, a release of all the pent-up grief and frustration they’d been unable to express during the court proceedings. Sometimes a statement was read out after sentencing by a family member, sometimes by a lawyer or even a police officer.

  This one was a cutting from the Buxton Advertiser. It was accompanied by a photo of Ashley Brooks that was familiar to Cooper. He’d seen a copy of it in Scott’s house in New Mills.

  A6 crash victim family’s ‘nightmare’

  The family of a woman killed in a horrific crash on the A6 caused by a lorry driver texting at the wheel have told of the nightmare of losing her. Twenty-six-year-old Ashley Brooks died after her car, which was parked in a lay-by, was hit by a heavy goods vehicle being driven by James Allsop. He had been composing text messages while driving at fifty-five miles per hour.

  Ashley’s father Mr Edward Flynn said: ‘Losing a child is the worst nightmare any parent could be forced to live through. Our grief is so overwhelming that we are struggling to cope with this loss. We think about Ashley every minute of every day. There has not been one moment since that terrible night that we have not experienced the sorrow.’

  The crash happened on the A6 near New Mills in September last year when Allsop’s Iveco lorry hit the Honda Civic owned by Ashley Brooks, causing her horrific injuries. After being hit by the truck, her Honda collided with another lorry parked in the same lay-by. She was trapped in her vehicle by a resulting fire and was later pronounced dead at the scene. The dual carriageway was closed for six hours after the pile-up.