Secrets of Death Page 26

  But there would be traces of paint left under the door sills or on other parts of the body that had been shielded from the flames. If a vehicle examiner said it was black, then it was black.

  Of course, the number-plates had gone and there would be nothing of any value to recover from the interior. But with any luck a forensic examination would retrieve the chassis number. And then the owner of the Land Rover could be identified.

  Cooper turned to Villiers as the wreck was lowered on to the recovery vehicle.

  ‘Did anyone see anything?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you think? Joy-riders and burned-out cars are a common occurrence round here. The neighbourhood team says some of the kids keep a stockpile of petrol cans and disposable lighters ready for a bit of fun. The Woodies love a good fire. One thing, though …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A lady at the house over there says she heard someone paid the local kids a few quid to do the job in this case.’

  ‘Oh? And where did she hear that?’

  ‘She’s the type who watches what’s going on up and down the street. In good weather she leaves her windows open so she can listen to conversations.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘No, not in so many words. But that seems to be how she came to overhear some youths talking about it. She couldn’t see which youths they were, of course.’

  ‘We could ask around to see which of them has just got in a supply of fags and booze.’

  ‘They probably have other ways of making a bit of money round here,’ said Villiers.

  ‘True.’

  Cooper looked at the streets around him. There were plenty of other places you could take a vehicle to dispose of it by setting it on fire. So why here in particular?

  He could see Marnie Letts’ house a few doors down Sycamore Crescent, near the corner with Elm Street. He recalled his conversation with her a few days ago, when she’d claimed not to know much about cars. Marnie had said she wasn’t be able to recognise one car from another, except for a BMW, because her neighbour had one. And she drove a Nissan herself. So what about her husband, the tree surgeon?

  Cooper shook his head. Why would Marnie Letts mention seeing a Land Rover at Heeley Bank if she knew perfectly well who it belonged to? Perhaps she had taken into account the possibility that visitors like the Cooks might have caught it on a dashboard camera.

  A crowd of spectators was gathering at the corner of the street, attracted by the police activity. They were laughing and taking photos with their mobile phones as if they were watching a performance of street theatre staged for their benefit.

  When an officer cleared the way to allow the low-loader to exit the street, some of the crowd cheered. At least they’d provided some entertainment for the Woodies.

  Diane Fry took Jamie Callaghan in for another interview session with Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif. They were running out of time to keep the two men in custody without making formal charges and this would probably be their last shot.

  But Fry had a new piece of evidence at her disposal. DNA traces from the latex gloves found dumped in the neighbour’s wheelie bin at Forest Fields had matched the sample taken from Simon Hull when he was arrested. Partial prints had been recovered from inside the gloves too, but they were less clear. It didn’t matter. She had the ammunition she needed.

  ‘When we asked you previously if you’d visited Roger Farrell’s address in Forest Fields, you declined to answer. Would you care to change your response, Mr Hull?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because we have your fingerprints.’

  Hull shrugged. ‘I suppose I must have been there at some time. Like you said, I did know him.’

  ‘When would that have been?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Ages ago. Ages.’

  ‘Were you wearing these gloves at the time?’

  ‘What?’

  Fry showed him the latex gloves in their evidence bag. ‘That must have been a strange sort of social call.’

  ‘I’ve never seen those before.’

  ‘It’s too late for that, Mr Hull. Your DNA is inside them. And you left them in the wheelie bin of the next-door neighbour after your break-in. That was foolish.’

  Hull looked at his solicitor, who seemed to be getting worried. ‘I’m advising my client not to answer any more questions,’ he said.

  ‘But that doesn’t stop me asking them,’ said Fry, sensing that she was close to her objective.

  ‘If you insist, Detective Sergeant.’

  Fry turned back to Simon Hull.

  ‘Mr Hull, why did you break into Roger Farrell’s house? Was it to remove evidence? I suppose, after he died, you must have panicked and wanted to conceal the fact that you were connected to him.’

  ‘No comment,’ said Hull.

  ‘So the question is – were you an accomplice to Farrell’s murders? Did you get some kind of pleasure from the murders of those girls? Did you and Anwar Sharif join in or were you just watching? On the other hand, perhaps that wasn’t your role. Maybe you helped Farrell afterwards, assisted him to escape the consequences of his crimes? Which was it, Mr Hull?’

  Hull’s face flushed bright red. Fry was pleased to see it. She knew from the previous interviews that he could be pushed close to the edge by the right questions. Despite his solicitor’s efforts to caution him, Hull could no longer hold back.

  ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong,’ he said. ‘That’s not what we were doing at all.’

  ‘But you were observed by witnesses asking questions about him around the area.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t us. We saw that bloke, the one asking questions all over the place. He was a journalist. He knew all about Roger Farrell anyway. And he knew about Victoria Jenkins too.’

  ‘A journalist?’ said Fry.

  Hull scowled. ‘Well, that’s what he said he was, anyway. An investigative journalist. If you ask me, him and Roger Farrell were a pair made for each other.’

  Priorities were always a problem and this inquiry was becoming more complicated. Cooper knew this wasn’t an urgent priority, but his instinct was nagging him about something.

  He stopped off in the centre of Edendale on his way back from the Woodlands and asked Carol Villiers to wait while he walked down to the river. He’d brought the framed photograph he’d found in Alex Denning’s flat in Derby. He held it in front of him as he stepped out on to the river bank. Yes, he’d been right about the place it had been taken.

  The modern footbridge over the River Eden had been built with decorative cast iron railings. In the last couple of years, people had begun to attach padlocks to the bridge as a symbol of their eternal love, each couple throwing the key into the water below. The tradition had reached the East Midlands from China, via Paris. In some parts of the world, the fashion had already reached its peak and was dying out. As usual, Edendale was a decade or two behind the times.

  At least the trend was a boost for local gift shops. They’d begun selling heart-shaped, personalised padlocks aimed directly at the lovelorn couples market. Eventually, the bridge would be covered in locks like a metallic flower display. It might become another of those quirky Peak District customs with their origins lost in time, like well dressing and money trees.

  That was if the bridge didn’t fall down first or the river wasn’t blocked by a rising dam of submerged keys.

  Cooper walked forward until he was at the point where Alex Denning and his girlfriend had been standing. There were dozens of locks here and it took several minutes to go through them, looking at their inscriptions. Finally he found one that said ‘Alex and Joolz’. No other indication of who the mysterious Joolz was. He guessed she probably wasn’t christened that either. Jules, Julie? It was hard to say.

  As he was holding the photograph, Cooper felt something in the back. He prised open the clips and removed the backing. A black business card dropped into his hand. Gold edging, a string of letters and numbers. At least Alex Denning had tak
en some precautions to keep his Secrets of Death password secure.

  A group of people went by, their footsteps making the deck of the bridge vibrate uneasily. Cooper recalled that this bridge was supposed to be haunted. A jilted bride who’d thrown herself into the river or something like that.

  It was always the most tragic stories that left legends of ghosts behind. Nobody ever claimed to have seen the terrifying spectre of some benign granny who’d died peacefully in her bed from old age. There were no hordes of ghostly flu victims haunting the streets of Edendale, though there ought to have been hundreds of them after the First World War. Legend had just left the murdered and executed, the desperate and helpless. And, of course, the suicides.

  You could see the Bargate Bridge from here. It was an ancient stone construction, described in the guide books as seventeenth-century. No lorries or other HGVs were allowed on the bridge now. And the road itself was one-way, because of its narrow width. So cars drove near the middle, which took the strain off the arches and buttresses, and left room for pedestrians along the parapet. That was where tourists stopped to take photographs of the river.

  And that was also where Anson Tate had intended to make his jump, until the Canadian tourist had intervened, locking Tate in a powerful grip to prevent him going over. Tate would have jumped without that intervention. He would have ended up in the water below the weir, where wet rocks protruded above the surface.

  Cooper wondered about the passing tourist who’d been the first to restrain Anson Tate from throwing himself off. The picture in his mind made a distinct contrast with the incident Superintendent Branagh had referred to in Derby, when youths had taunted a young man on the roof of a shopping centre car park with shouts of ‘Jump!’.

  But wasn’t that exactly what someone had been doing, though more subtly? The owner of the Secrets of Death website had appeared to be the friend and adviser of potential suicides. In reality he was just one more person shouting ‘Jump!’.

  Cooper liked the proportions of Bargate Bridge. They knew how to build bridges in the seventeenth century. Its arches were elegant as well as strong. It looked as though it would stand over the River Eden for ever.

  There was one other thing that struck him today, though. The bridge wasn’t that high. A fall from that parapet to the water probably wouldn’t kill you.

  Cooper remained staring at the bridge for a few minutes, until he sensed Carol Villiers standing impatient alongside him.

  ‘Anson Tate,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘He’s much cleverer than he seems. I bet he’s a success at everything he sets out to do.’

  Villiers looked at Cooper in surprise. ‘Mr Tate? Ben, he attempted suicide, but was held back by a passer-by. He’s the one who failed.’

  ‘Failed? No, he didn’t,’ said Cooper. ‘He was very successful.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, think about it for a minute. What is his story? What did he try to do?’

  ‘He tried to throw himself off Bargate Bridge.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Cooper. ‘There are plenty of high places around here. Good long drops if you were going to jump. Stanage Edge, Kinder Downfall, Peveril Castle. Not that I’m recommending it – it’s insane. But if you were planning to do that …’

  ‘What are you saying, Ben?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. I’m asking a question. I’m asking why you would choose Bargate Bridge instead. It’s only thirty or forty feet, and you’d land in water. From Peveril Castle, the Peak Cavern gorge is nearly two hundred and fifty feet. So why that bridge?’

  Villiers looked thoughtful. ‘Because it’s more public?’

  ‘You would make more of an impact at Peveril Castle, if you chose a busy time for visitors to the cavern.’

  ‘What other reason is there?’

  ‘Because,’ said Cooper, ‘there’s more likely to be someone passing who will stop you. A Canadian tourist from Vancouver, for example. You could almost count on it.’

  Cooper was suddenly overwhelmed with horror at the realisation of what he was saying, at what Anson Tate must have done.

  28

  Diane Fry arrived in Edendale and drove straight up to West Street. She entered the CID room, stopped and looked around. This was her former territory, yet she didn’t belong here any more. One of these desks had been hers, but there was no trace left of her presence, not even her initials carved into the surface.

  ‘Where is Ben Cooper?’ she said.

  DC Becky Hurst looked up. ‘He’s out.’

  Fry sighed. ‘Is this it, then?’

  ‘We do our best,’ said Hurst.

  Fry hadn’t imagined working with DS Sharma and DCs Irvine and Hurst, let alone Gavin Murfin. But there they were at their desks and here she was. It would have to do.

  ‘Stop what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some important information on your inquiry.’

  Hurst and Irvine looked to Sharma for guidance, but he barely responded. Murfin simply shrugged his shoulders and stopped what he was doing without argument.

  ‘I’m not sure how much you know about this already,’ she said. ‘But let me explain EMSOU’s involvement.’

  Fry briefed them on her interviews with Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif, her efforts to confirm their connection to Roger Farrell. She was surprised how little Ben Cooper seemed to have told his team. But perhaps he wanted them to focus on their own particular tasks.

  ‘Now Simon Hull has given us some significant details in an interview this morning,’ she said at last. ‘He says that he and Sharif were well aware of the person who was asking questions about Farrell. We’ve been told that he claimed to be an investigative journalist.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds like my territory,’ said Irvine.

  ‘And what are you doing, DC Irvine?’

  ‘I’ve been doing some research into Anson Tate’s history as a journalist. Trawling through links to articles he’s written in the past.’

  ‘Good. That sounds useful.’

  Dev Sharma had been listening intently, leaning forward in his chair, his eyes fixed unnervingly on Fry but not commenting. So when he began to speak, Fry immediately paid attention.

  ‘Some of those prostitutes are trafficked,’ said Sharma. ‘The Immigration Enforcement team picked a couple of them up during the operation I was liaising on earlier this week.’

  ‘From the Forest Road area?’ asked Fry.

  ‘Yes.’

  Fry studied him, wondering how much she could rely on him. She liked the look of Sharma and had heard positive things about him. She took a decision.

  ‘DS Sharma, could you speak to Immigration Enforcement and see if one of the prostitutes might be willing to talk?’

  ‘I’m sure they would if they thought they could avoid deportation by co-operating,’ said Sharma.

  ‘Get on to it right away, will you?’

  She saw Sharma hesitate then. Of course, she had no rank over him. He was Ben Cooper’s DS. He ought to take instructions from Cooper, not from this interfering detective sergeant sticking her nose in from the Major Crime Unit.

  ‘I think Ben would appreciate it when he gets back,’ she said more gently. ‘It will save a lot of time if you do it now.’

  Sharma nodded reluctantly. ‘All right.’ He went back to his desk to make some phone calls.

  ‘We’ve been going through all the previous suicides in the area,’ said Hurst. ‘There are quite a lot of them.’

  ‘You’ve been told to look for connections to the Farrell case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re probably wasting your time, I’m afraid.’

  A few moments later, the atmosphere in the room changed suddenly and several pairs of eyes swivelled towards the door.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Fry turned to find Ben Cooper in the doorway, with Carol Villiers close behind him.

  ‘Sorry. But you weren’t here and this couldn’t wait.’

  ‘What couldn’t
?’

  ‘Simon Hull has opened up. We’ve got what we need from him. And you might not like it.’

  Not for the first time, Cooper could see that something had been going on behind his back. Irvine and Hurst looked particularly guilty. He gestured Diane Fry into his office and made her sit down across the desk from him. Now he was in the DI’s chair again.

  ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said.

  Fry went over the details again, impatient and fidgeting. He nodded as she talked. It seemed indisputable that Anson Tate had been the journalist asking questions about Roger Farrell in Nottingham. The description Simon Hull had given was very accurate and he’d since confirmed the ID from photographs. Anwar Sharif had backed him up on this, if nothing else.

  ‘Farrell is the link,’ said Fry. ‘Tate is behind your suicides, not Hull and Sharif. They were into the blackmail business.’

  ‘So you’ve come to the same conclusion as me,’ said Cooper calmly when she’d finished.

  Fry stared at him. ‘You’re saying you’d already figured this out?’

  ‘It was starting to seem likely.’

  ‘I see. Well, it couldn’t have been one of the successful suicides, obviously. It would have to be someone who is still alive. A survivor, then. Your local man, Anson Tate.’

  ‘He isn’t really local,’ said Cooper. ‘He lives in Edendale now, but he only moved here a few months ago from Mansfield.’

  Fry had gone very still. ‘Mansfield?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’

  Cooper blinked. ‘It didn’t seem relevant. Why?’

  ‘One of the murdered students, Victoria Jenkins. She was from Mansfield.’

  ‘It could just be a coincidence.’

  ‘You’ve never really believed in coincidences, though,’ said Fry. ‘You’re the man who sees connections in everything.’

  ‘I can’t see the connection in this case.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not looking at it from the proper angle.’

  Cooper gazed at her. From the start, he’d been trying to look at the situation from above, gain an overview without being blinded by the details. Had he failed to do that? Was there some other angle he could be looking at it from?