Secrets of Death (12 page)

Tate sat down opposite Cooper, nursing his cup. He’d made peppermint tea for himself. The two aromas mingled in an exotic mist between them. Ginger and peppermint, and a chat about suicide. Sometimes, this job seemed very strange.

‘I suppose you want to know why I wanted to do it?’ asked Tate.

‘Well, if you’d like …’

‘I had a job once,’ said Tate, without needing any more encouragement. ‘It was a rubbish job. Boring and pointless. It was badly paid too. I spent all day doing things I had no interest in with people I cared about even less. It was
my
job, though. It made me feel as though I had something, that I belonged somewhere.
When I put that ID card lanyard round my neck, it was like putting on a disguise. All the people who passed me in the corridor, or saw me in the canteen – they accepted my right to be there. Some of them even knew who I was. One or two actually said hello now and then.’

There was a book on the table, a bookmark protruding from a page about halfway through. Tate absent-mindedly picked up the book, opened it at the bookmark and closed it again. Cooper couldn’t see the cover, but it looked like a novel. Dark colours, a splash of red. A thriller, perhaps.

‘I suppose it doesn’t sound much, does it?’ said Tate. ‘But it was
something
. It gave me a purpose. I don’t have any of that now. And I’ve got to ask myself – if I can’t do anything with my life, what’s the point of being alive at all?’

‘Surely …’

‘Well?’

Tate leaned closer, as if hoping for a meaningful answer. Yet Cooper didn’t have an answer at all. He’d asked himself the same question many times.

‘I see.’ Tate sighed. ‘When you’re living alone, you become invisible. We’re surrounded by invisible people. It’s no surprise that they long to do something, anything, to make themselves visible to the world, if only for a while. It doesn’t mean they’re cowards.’

Cooper blinked. Was it cowardly to plan your own death, to face up to that final unknown prospect and meet it without flinching? On balance, he thought not.

Yet Tate seemed oddly angry. Cooper wasn’t sure
what target his anger was directed at – life, fate, society, himself? That was probably a question for his psychiatrist or his counsellor to be asking.

‘Doesn’t it seem wrong to you that sick animals are put out of their misery by vets, but we aren’t allowed to end our own wretched existences?’ said Tate. ‘What is it about a human life that makes it so different, so sacrosanct? We’re just animals too, aren’t we? Why should we be forced to suffer?’

He stopped talking. Cooper stared at him through a swirl of herbal steam.

‘Do you understand?’ said Tate. ‘I hope you do.’

He looked at Cooper, his eyes darting anxiously back and forth across the detective’s face, as if seeking something.

Then Tate smiled a small, sad smile.

‘No, you’re too young,’ he said. ‘You still have delusions of hope.’

‘Hope is important.’

‘Really? Do you know the three most common regrets that people express on their deathbeds? They say “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” or “I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends”. And they regret not letting themselves be happier. I wish I’d known that. I’ve never had friends, I’ve never known happiness. All I had was my work. And when my eyes were opened and I saw the futility of that … well, what did I have left? I’m sure there are lots of people like me. You must see them yourself.’

‘We see all kinds of things in this job.’

Tate nodded. ‘Well, perhaps you’ve heard people say
this before. That every day you’ve got this awful thing nagging at you, as if there’s something terribly wrong. And then suddenly you see the truth. You know what wasn’t right. And you know what to do about it too. It’s a kind of release.’

‘It’s the people left behind,’ said Cooper. ‘The family and friends. A spouse, the parents. The children.’

‘I know,’ said Tate. ‘Everyone talks as if suicides are selfish, that they don’t care what they’re doing to other people. But when you’ve reached that stage in your life, you genuinely think you’re doing everyone a favour. You believe that your family and friends will be better off without you, that their lives will be easier when you’re gone. And do you know what? For many men, that’s actually true.’

Cooper took a drink of his lemon and ginger, gathering his thoughts. He’d lost control of the interview, of course. It was understandable. Tate had been using him as he would a counsellor, pouring out his feelings, his justifications. Somewhere in there might be a useful detail.

‘Though you’re right about the people left behind,’ said Tate. ‘No matter who you are, your death isn’t just your own experience. It affects other people. The final event of your life will live on in the memories of your loved ones. Wouldn’t you prefer their memory of you to be one of freedom from indignity and pain? My mother … my mother never had that choice.’

‘Your mother?’ said Cooper.

That hadn’t been in the notes on Anson Tate’s suicide
attempt. There was nothing about his mother. No mention of her in his suicide note either.

‘What happened to your mother, Mr Tate?’

Tate fiddled with the bookmark, sliding it in and out of the page in his book.

‘She died of pancreatic cancer. Do you know the survival rate for that type of cancer? Two per cent. It took her a long time to die and she was in constant pain and distress.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’

‘Why should you? But I had to watch it happening. She had chronic pain from the tumour pressing against her internal organs. She also had all the effects of the medication, the use of opioids – the thirst, the nausea, the itching, the constipation, the despair …’

Tate took another deep breath before he continued.

‘As a result of that illness,’ he said, ‘she left me with memories of seeing her in constant agony and of her loss of dignity. In the end, I was unable to see her as the person I wanted to remember. The fact is, if I’d been allowed to end her life before she got to that stage, I would have done it gladly. I’d have done it in the knowledge that she would thank me for it, if she could. But mercy has become a crime.’

‘I don’t think that’s true, sir,’ said Cooper.

‘For me, it was.’

Cooper looked round the tiny flat. He was trying to ease the atmosphere, to give Anson Tate a moment to collect himself and become calmer. Seeing the sparseness of the surroundings reminded him of an important question he’d come here to ask.

‘Do
you have a computer, Mr Tate?’

‘No, I don’t need one. Why?’

‘When you started to think about going down that route,’ said Cooper, ‘I mean, about taking your own life – did you go to anyone to get advice, support or information?’

‘No, it was my own decision,’ said Tate. ‘Entirely my own.’

Cooper nodded. That wasn’t quite what he’d asked. Tate had used a common evasion technique, answering a different but similar question.

‘Did you look on the internet for guidance, for example?’ said Cooper.

‘On the internet? Why would you ask that?’

And there was another technique. A question answered with another question.

‘It’s what people often do these days,’ said Cooper. ‘Everyone checks out their own symptoms online before they go to the doctor. It’s second nature to Google for information.’

‘It didn’t occur to me.’

‘One final thing, then, sir.’

‘Yes?’

‘When you made your suicide attempt, you were living at an address in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Tate.

‘But since then, you’ve moved to Edendale.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask why?’

Tate smiled. ‘Because I like it here.’

Cooper felt the hairs on the back of his neck stirring
uncomfortably. This was a man who had travelled nearly thirty miles into the Eden Valley to kill himself. He was one of their suicide tourists, though an unsuccessful one. When he came the first time, he’d wanted to die in Edendale. And now he’d decided to live here. Because he ‘liked it’.

From anyone else thinking of moving into the area, that would have sounded fine and Cooper wouldn’t have questioned it. He understood why anyone would want to live in his town. Well, almost anyone.

From Anson Tate, the motive had to be questionable. Was he here in Edendale just because it was a nice place to live? Or was it because he found it more convenient? Next time he decided to kill himself, it would save the hour-long commute.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Cooper said. ‘I think that will be all for now.’

Tate showed him to the door.

‘Detective Inspector,’ he said, as Cooper turned to leave.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Don’t judge anyone’s choice. Not until you know what options they had to choose from.’

Emerging into the sunlight on Buxton Road was like coming out of a cinema after watching the matinee of a two-hour horror film. Stepping back into daylight, Cooper found the real world difficult to adjust to.

He was disturbed by his conversation with Anson Tate. When did the right to die become a duty?

Yet he still had nothing. And there ought to be something.
In particular, there should have been some sign left by Roger Farrell before he took his own life at Heeley Bank. But there had been no note or letter with the body, no goodbye to a loved one.

And then it occurred to him. He rang Carol Villiers back at the station in West Street.

‘Carol, have you listened to the outgoing message on his voicemail?’ asked Cooper.

‘No. Why?’ said Villiers.

‘Try it, will you?’

‘I’ve got the number here. I’ll ring it.’

‘Put it on speaker.’

Villiers dialled Roger Farrell’s mobile. They heard the phone ringing. Twice, three times, four times. Then the recorded message cut in. It seemed strange hearing Farrell’s voice. He sounded entirely calm and unperturbed, almost content. Cooper was reminded of the bereaved relatives who constantly called the number of someone they’d lost just to hear their voice and remember them the way they’d been in normal life. It became a unique form of reassurance, a suggestion that their loved one might still be there at the other end of the phone, just too busy to take their call right now.

But this wasn’t Mr Farrell the way he’d been in normal life. He’d recorded his message when he was preparing for death. From the background noises, he may already have been sitting in the car park at the Heeley Bank visitor centre. Was that his first task when he arrived? He’d composed a farewell message, then turned off his phone so that no one could contact him
in those last few hours. His words were quite simple, but chilling:

‘So this is the first secret of death. There’s always a right time and place to die.’

The
mortuary behind Eden Valley General Hospital was an inconspicuous building with hardly any windows. It was no more welcoming inside. Cooper was glad he didn’t work here all the time. Daylight and fresh air were among his essential requirements.

The people working in a gloomy mortuary like this should really be pale, hairless trolls with lopsided grins who wheeled dead bodies down endless corridors. In fact, they were quite the opposite.

Dr Juliana van Doon had been working here for a long time and was one of the most experienced forensic pathologists in the region. Today, she had a younger woman with her, whom she introduced as her colleague Dr Chloe Young.

Dr Young was no more than five feet six, possibly less. Her hair was dark, almost black, with a sheen that caught the light reflected from the stainless steel dissecting table and autopsy instruments. She wore it knotted at the back in a kind of French twist, leaving the smooth lines of her face clear.

When he came in, she removed a pair of protective
glasses and studied him through cool green eyes. Or were they brown? Perhaps hazel. He couldn’t decide and he realised he was staring too hard trying to work it out.

Cooper had become so used to seeing Dr van Doon in the Edendale mortuary that he’d developed a fixed idea of what pathologists looked like – that lean, hunched posture, with an exasperated expression, a sharp eye and a mouth turned down in disapproval. Dr Young looked nothing like that at all.

He was conscious that Juliana van Doon was getting close to retirement. She had even hinted at it once or twice with the suggestion that the only reason she hadn’t left already was because there was no adequate replacement. Was the replacement going to be Dr Young? From Cooper’s point of view, it didn’t look like a bad swap.

‘So, Detective Inspector Cooper,’ said Dr van Doon. ‘Your suicide case. You seem to be making a habit of suicide recently. Is there something you’d like to tell us?’

‘I wish there were. I was hoping there’d be something you could tell me.’

‘Well, no surprises here,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that’s the way you like it.’

‘Suffocation?’ he said.

‘Certainly. Death would have been quick and painless, given the method used. Very efficient.’

She sounded admiring. Perhaps it was the response of one professional for another at a job done well.

‘Anything else?’ asked Cooper.

‘There’s
nothing obvious on toxicology. No alcohol or drugs in his blood. No sign of physical trauma or disease. The heart wasn’t in great condition, but that’s no surprise either. A well-nourished Caucasian male aged around fifty. It’s pretty much what we’d expect.’ The pathologist gave him a sardonic look. ‘This gentleman ought to be alive really. Not lying on my examination table.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’

‘As if you would,’ said Dr van Doon with a thin smile.

Cooper had spent years being slightly in awe of the pathologist, ever since he had first encountered her as a young detective and realised that even the older, more senior officers were a bit frightened of her.

‘By the way, my colleague here has obtained permission to take some samples of brain tissue,’ she said. ‘Dr Young has been taking part in a neurobiological study of suicidal behaviour.’

‘Oh, really?’

Cooper had a sinking feeling that he was about to be baffled with science. He had almost no idea what ‘neurobiological’ meant. Unlike many of the younger officers recruited to Derbyshire Constabulary over recent years, he’d left the education system at eighteen with a couple of A-levels and had never tried to get into university. He’d never even considered it. High Peak College had been the limits of his ambitions, because a degree hadn’t been necessary back then. And even if he had taken a degree, it wouldn’t have been in neurobiology.