Secrets of Death Read online

  ‘Where to now?’ said Fry.

  ‘Across the bridge.’

  It was only a narrow footbridge, but it led directly on to the trail. And there was the other end of the Headstone Viaduct ahead.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Fry.

  Cooper’s voice came over the radio.

  ‘Carol? Diane? Where are you?’

  ‘We’re here. Just keep him talking.’

  Anson Tate had never needed much encouragement to keep talking. Cooper edged slowly towards him, conscious of the advice never to make a sudden move when dealing with a potential suicide. Tate had seen him, but Cooper didn’t speak until he got closer.

  ‘Don’t do anything silly, Mr Tate,’ said Cooper, guessing from their previous conversations that the phrase would annoy him.

  ‘Silly? Silly?’

  ‘Taking your own life doesn’t solve anything, if that’s what you were planning.’

  Tate shifted his grip suddenly on the parapet and Cooper stopped.

  ‘You call it “doing something silly or stupid”,’ said Tate. ‘But it’s not stupid. Sometimes, it’s the most sensible and logical thing you can do. What’s wrong with taking your own life?’

  ‘It’s irrational,’ said Cooper.

  Tate shook his head vigorously.

  ‘No, I believe in rational suicide,’ he said. ‘Rational is the important word.’

  ‘There’s nothing rational about it.’

  Provoked, Tate couldn’t resist trying to justify himself. That knowledge was the one weapon Cooper had at his disposal.

  ‘Really?’ said Tate. ‘Well, you’re as ignorant about it as everyone else. For anyone who likes to be in charge of their own life, the final stages of it should be the way you choose it to be. We should be in charge at the end of our lives, not helpless babies, dependent on strangers, kept alive by technology, with no say in what happens to us, no knowledge of what’s going on around us. No dignity. It turns us into something less than an animal, which is allowed to die in peace.’

  Cooper held up his hands in a placatory gesture.

  ‘You’re thinking of your mother,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You understand?’ snapped Tate. ‘No, you don’t. No one does. Not until they come to that moment themselves. I’ve helped a few people to understand. That’s the best thing I could have done with my own life.’

  ‘What about all the innocent people who have died?’

  ‘Innocent people suffer all the time. It’s nothing new. I’m sure you’re aware of that.’

  ‘This is different, though.’

  ‘Different?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You must understand. It’s completely different when it’s your fault.’

  Tate shrugged. ‘I gave them knowledge. It’s the most valuable gift one human being can give to another.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we’re all going to die one day. Death is an open door. Yet society tells us we mustn’t go through that door. And most of us don’t. Because we’re frightened of what’s on the other side. And what is on the other side of the door? The unknown, of course.’

  ‘People are always afraid of the unknown. You can’t blame them for that.’

  ‘No,’ said Tate. ‘But I can do something about it. Because knowledge is the best answer to fear. It dispels the darkness of ignorance and puts us back in control of our lives. It gives us a choice. When everything is known and predictable and within your control – well, it isn’t frightening any more.’

  ‘You’re deluded,’ said Cooper. ‘You don’t know everything. You don’t know what happens when you die. You have no idea what it feels like. Because you’re still alive, Mr Tate.’

  Tate shook his head, the wedge of hair on his forehead gleaming jet black, though he was standing in full sun on the viaduct.

  ‘The stigma that surrounds suicide is wrong,’ he said. ‘Just so wrong. People should be allowed to make their own end-of-life decisions. How can one person make a judgement on how much another suffers? Whose definition of suffering do you use? And why shouldn’t we quit while we’re still ahead?’

  Down below in the dale, Cooper could see a small crowd gathering, their faces turned up, their cameras and smartphones held aloft.

  Tate looked down at them with a smile. He enjoyed being the centre of attention. And there was nothing Cooper could do about it. The location was too open and there were too many people around. Like the incident at the shopping centre in Derby, someone might soon get impatient and begin to shout, ‘Jump!’

  ‘Look at all these people,’ said Tate. ‘They think they’re in charge of their own destinies. Well, death will rob them of control. All the talk about the ethics of dying is really a question of who takes charge of the process – and why should it be the doctors? A dying person can plan the clothes they’re buried in, the inscription on their tombstone, the music at their funeral. But there’s one last freedom, the one we’re constantly denied. We don’t get to choose our own way of death. Taking the decision into your own hands can make all the difference to your peace of mind in the final days.’

  ‘Is this the sort of stuff you put on your website?’ said Cooper.

  ‘I put anything they needed to hear.’

  Uniformed officers in yellow high-vis jackets were going among the crowd below the viaduct trying to move them away. Cooper couldn’t hear their voices, but he saw the hand gestures, like shepherds trying to usher reluctant sheep away from their favourite food. The crowd backed off, then edged closer again as soon as an officer’s back was turned. And the number of spectators was increasing. It was a futile exercise.

  Tate had the nerve to wave at the crowd and some of them waved back. Did he think he was some kind of celebrity greeting his fans? It was hard to know what was going through his mind. Perhaps he really was so deluded.

  ‘I’m helping to bring people happiness,’ said Tate. ‘Don’t you understand that? Doesn’t anyone understand?’

  ‘Happiness? That’s nonsense,’ said Cooper. ‘It can’t be true.’

  ‘Oh? Tell me, these people you’ve been finding – don’t they always look peaceful? Well, I see you won’t answer. But I know they do. It’s the ultimate peace, which living people can’t understand.’

  ‘Do you really think you’ve been helping them?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Of course. I told you so.’

  ‘And yet that wasn’t your entire purpose, Mr Tate. Perhaps not even your main purpose. I’m thinking it was just a side effect, a bit of useful camouflage.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Tate stubbornly.

  ‘Yes, you do. I’m talking about Roger Farrell. It’s no coincidence that your suicide website was taken down after Farrell’s death. You’d achieved your purpose then. The others were just unfortunate, weren’t they? Collateral damage. Don’t you feel the least bit of guilt about them? Alex Denning and David Kuzneski? Gordon Burgess and Bethan Jones?’

  ‘If they came to me, I helped them to achieve what they wanted most in the world,’ snapped Tate. ‘I was doing them a favour. People should be thanking me.’

  Diane Fry had appeared behind him. She could move very quietly when she wanted to, as Cooper knew very well. She’d crept up on him unexpectedly far more times than he cared to remember. Now he was very glad to see her.

  He kept his eyes fixed on Tate’s, as if absorbed in what he was saying. Tate loved attention. Even at this moment, he couldn’t resist the feeling of power it gave him to have another person’s complete concentration.

  So the shock on his face was total when Fry grabbed his arm and forced him to the floor, while shouting that he was under arrest. She had the cuffs on him before Cooper could get near enough to assist. But then, she didn’t need his assistance. She rarely had.

  When Anson Tate had been taken away in the back of a car, Cooper leaned against his Toyota in the viewpoint car park at Monsal Head.

  The trail had been reopened and
a few people were beginning to walk and cycle across the viaduct again. The valley looked even greener, the foliage denser and more vibrant. The landscape was only just now coming to life. In another couple of weeks, it would be high summer in the Peak District and this area would be packed with visitors, like all the tourist hotspots.

  Right now, this was a place he would like to sit and spend some time. He would give anything to be able to stretch out on one of those benches in the sun, eat an ice cream from Hobb’s Café, listen to the birds, watch the silver glint of the river as it ran down from Litton Mill and Cressbrook through Water-cum-Jolly Dale. He could close his eyes and imagine the peace of the dale further upstream, the hidden corners of Ravensdale, the cool streams and sunlit rocks. How pleasant it would be to drift off with that all around him and never have to wake up again.

  Cooper found himself feeling almost envious of David Kuzneski, the man who had escaped from his own particular torment by doing just that. And Anson Tate had helped him to achieve his peace.

  30

  The rest of the day was filled with interviews, which went on well into the evening. Ben Cooper and Diane Fry shared the interviewing between them, while Dev Sharma and the team of DCs hit the phones to make background enquiries and check details over and over until the picture began to come clearer. Ella Webster was being brought in again, but she could wait for a while.

  Detective Superintendent Branagh came down at some point to get an update, probably just before she knocked off and went home for the day.

  ‘That man, Anson Tate,’ she said. ‘Were you aware that he made a complaint against you for harassment?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Cooper.

  So Tate had been playing the role of the innocent victim to the hilt, trying to persuade Hazel Branagh that he was being persecuted. He was very persuasive too. Cooper expected Branagh to say something about the complaint being referred to Professional Standards, but it didn’t happen.

  ‘It was a lot of nonsense he was telling me, though. I sent him away with a polite flea in his ear.’

  ‘Did you, ma’am?’

  ‘Absolutely. To be frank with you, Ben, I thought he was a bit of a creep.’

  Fry had stayed in Edendale, but was in constant touch with her colleagues at St Ann’s. Cooper overheard her talking to Jamie Callaghan and thought he detected a change in the tone of her voice. It was a tone that had once been familiar to him, but which he’d almost forgotten.

  ‘Simon Hull is still talking about Roger Farrell,’ said Fry when she came off the phone. ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to stop him now he’s started. Jamie says his solicitor is going hairless.’

  ‘Hull knew Farrell from working at the car dealership in Arnold, didn’t he?’ said Cooper.

  ‘He knew Farrell very well indeed. They were good friends. When Farrell swapped cars after the murders, it was Hull who bought the old car off him and sold him a new one. But it didn’t last. Over time, he came to hate Farrell. Hull told me he found some evidence in one of the cars Farrell got rid of, a Škoda Octavia.’

  ‘Would that be the car he was using when Victoria Jenkins was killed?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Fry. ‘Hull found some photographs of her in the glove box, which Farrell must have overlooked. Some were taken with a long lens while she was still alive. Some were taken when she was dead.’

  ‘So Hull knew exactly what Farrell was doing.’

  ‘Of course. And he felt used, made guilty by association. He felt betrayed by his old friend. So he decided to get what he could out of the situation. He told me he recruited Anwar Sharif to help him blackmail Farrell, to create a bit of distance so that Farrell wouldn’t suspect him.’

  ‘No one likes feeling used.’

  ‘Farrell was certainly a man who used people. And he made the wrong enemies along the way.’

  ‘Well, we knew Hull was an old friend of Farrell’s,’ said Cooper, ‘as well as a colleague. We’ve got him in the photo. I suppose Farrell had that photo with him in the car because it showed him with his wife, perhaps one of the few photos he had from the time before she died. It apparently didn’t occur to him to cut Simon Hull off. Or maybe …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s possible he might have done it deliberately. Perhaps he was leaving a clue for us, a message. He thought it would lead us to track Hull down.’

  ‘But that was the wrong message,’ said Fry.

  Cooper sighed. ‘Aren’t they all?’

  Fry sat down in Cooper’s office without being asked. She acted as though the chair belonged to her.

  ‘So what next?’ she said.

  Cooper wondered for a moment why he should tell her what his plans were. But they’d got to this stage together, worked out the answer at pretty much the same time, though in their own way. She did deserve a bit of credit.

  ‘I want to talk to Ella Webster again,’ he said.

  Fry nodded approvingly. ‘Roger Farrell’s daughter? Yes, that’s logical.’

  ‘I feel sure Tate must have been asking questions of Farrell’s family, still claiming to be a journalist,’ said Cooper. ‘And of course he was, in a way. He had credentials. He still possessed his NUJ card as a freelance reporter. That’s often all people need to open the door. Tate hadn’t actually sold a story for months and months before that. He was spending far too much time being obsessed with Roger Farrell to pursue a career.’

  ‘He must have run out of money then, with no income,’ said Fry.

  ‘Oh, I think it had probably been difficult for him to make a living for a good while before that. He sold the house in Mansfield because he couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments and he used the money to continue funding his enquiries, and his Secrets of Death website too.’

  ‘Then he targeted Farrell and probably revealed that he knew the truth about him.’

  Cooper nodded. ‘Farrell must have been aware that he was living on borrowed time. He would have been expecting someone to come for him sooner or later. Though not Anson Tate, I bet.’

  ‘Probably us,’ said Fry gloomily.

  ‘Maybe. Or Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif.’

  ‘So Farrell had nowhere to turn.’

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Cooper. ‘Between Hull and Sharif on one hand and Anson Tate on the other, and with the knowledge that the police might knock on his door at any moment. His family had turned away from him too. There was nothing left for Roger Farrell. Where else did he have to go? There was only one option left for him. And Tate made sure he knew that.’

  ‘Have you asked Tate about Victoria Jenkins?’ asked Fry.

  ‘Not yet. I’m saving that little titbit. He’s talking, but not about that. I think he’s trying to avoid the subject, perhaps hoping we don’t know about the connection with her.’

  ‘So you’re going to pull that out of the bag at the right moment.’

  ‘I think when I produce the photo of Victoria Jenkins with her A-level results it will break him down.’

  ‘Personally, I still think he might have been one of her customers,’ said Fry. ‘They say that can develop into an obsession for the wrong man.’

  ‘Well, whatever his reason for it, he seems to have been devastated by her murder. And with no one being charged for it after all that time? Tate turned into a vigilante. And you can see why, can’t you?’

  ‘It was just a question of time,’ protested Fry. ‘We would have got there in the end.’

  ‘I’m sure you would. In the end.’

  ‘So he was able to identify Roger Farrell as the killer before we did,’ said Fry. ‘How did he manage that?’

  ‘Don’t feel bad about it, Diane,’ said Cooper. ‘The fact is, journalists can do a lot of things the police aren’t able to do. They can ask questions we can’t, go places we can’t, cut corners, break the rules.’

  ‘All right. There’s no need to go on.’

  ‘So Fay Laws needs to be spoken to again.’

  Fry made a note. ‘I�
��ll get Jamie Callaghan to speak to her. Unless you wanted to do it yourself?’

  ‘No, that’s fine.’

  ‘And what else was there?’ said Fry. ‘Oh, yes, the website. Were you going to give me the details of that?’

  Cooper handed her the printouts from secretsofdeath.org.

  ‘It was just a question of time,’ he said.

  ‘It’s horrible stuff,’ said Fry after a glance through the printouts.

  ‘Luke found dozens of other websites of a similar nature,’ said Cooper. ‘One of them has instructions for slitting your wrists that match exactly the method that Bethan Jones used. So whether she used the secretsofdeath.org website in particular or some other site, I don’t know. But we have a definite connection for Farrell, and for three of the others – Burgess, Kuzneski and Denning.’

  ‘Through the business cards.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could we find out where they were printed? It would provide some firm evidence against Tate.’

  ‘There are too many possibilities. We could try local companies, but we don’t have the resources to extend the inquiry any further than that. I suspect it was probably an overseas printer anyway – it’s easy enough to do online and practically untraceable.’

  ‘And the combination of letters and numbers were a password?’

  ‘Yes, providing access to a sort of members’ area where you could get personal guidance. That’s where all the more detailed stuff comes from, thanks to Luke Irvine. I picture Tate luring Farrell in, or instructing him to go there.’

  ‘Was Tate trying to blackmail him?’ asked Fry. ‘If he was, he would have been unsuccessful. Hull and Sharif were already bleeding him dry.’

  ‘Personally, I think it was more than blackmail. Tate wanted to get fun out of it.’

  ‘Fun?’

  ‘The feeling of power,’ said Cooper. ‘Playing with someone’s life. You can only do that if it’s someone you’re convinced is worthless or deserving of their fate. It wasn’t just about money.’

  ‘And the card itself?’

  ‘The card may only have been for one purpose. Yes, it was a message. But it was intended as a message from Anson Tate to Roger Farrell. Imagine that Secrets of Death card coming through his letterbox one day. It would have shaken Farrell to the core, the realisation that Tate knew where he lived.’