Secrets of Death (13 page)

His
lack of academic qualifications sometimes made him feel uncomfortable, with that sneaking suspicion he’d walked into an environment where he didn’t belong. Right now, he felt sure Chloe Young was going to say something before long that he wouldn’t understand.

‘It’s a global problem, of course,’ said Dr Young. ‘Nearly one million people take their own lives every year, according to the World Health Organisation.’

‘I didn’t really think it was limited to the Eden Valley,’ said Cooper. ‘But we do seem to have had a bit of a surge recently …’

‘Quite an epidemic,’ said Dr van Doon cheerfully.

Cooper looked at her in surprise – partly because he knew ‘epidemic’ was an unscientific term, but also because it echoed the expression used by Detective Superintendent Branagh. He wasn’t used to her sounding quite so cheerful either. Perhaps she preferred cutting up suicides to performing post-mortems on murder victims. Or maybe she just liked having the companionship of Dr Young in the examination room. He couldn’t blame her for that.

‘I believe all your suicides have been male,’ said Dr Young.

‘Yes, that’s right. I’m aware the rate of suicide is higher among men.’

‘There are well established socio-economic reasons for that. It’s the underlying pathology that isn’t very well understood.’

Cooper made a non-committal sound, as he didn’t know how else to reply.

‘Suicides
and suicide attempts are usually associated with mental disorders, or with alcohol and substance abuse,’ she said. ‘The socio-economic factors have been well identified. But the neurobiology is less clear.’

‘Dr Young, I’m not sure …’

‘I’m talking about studies that are looking into biological abnormalities associated with suicidal behaviour. In particular, there’s work on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis.’

Cooper nodded helplessly. Then she seemed to recognise that she was talking a language he didn’t understand.

‘Well, anyway,’ she said, ‘that work requires materials such as blood cells, cerebrospinal fluid and plasma. So post-mortem brain samples from suicide victims are essential for research.’

‘As you probably know, Detective Inspector,’ said Dr van Doon, ‘brain tissue degrades very easily. So particular care is required in collecting samples. That’s Dr Young’s speciality.’

‘Forty-eight hours,’ said Dr Young. ‘Samples for post-mortem study should ideally be taken no longer than that after death, otherwise they degrade too much to be useful for study.’

‘It sounds fascinating,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s a pity I don’t have more time. I’d like to hear more about the suicide study.’

Dr Young smiled. ‘Another day, perhaps?’

‘That would be great.’

‘So where are you headed now, Inspector?’ asked Dr Young.

‘I’ve
got a funeral to go to this afternoon.’

‘What a fun life you must lead.’

David Kuzneski’s funeral was held on the outskirts of Sheffield. Cooper found the large cemetery among a network of tree-lined streets.

The suburbs themselves were flanked north and south by two supermarkets, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s. Their orange and yellow signs seemed to beckon like the colours of rival football clubs. Well, perhaps the decision about where to shop was a bit like choosing to support Wednesday or United. Shoppers cherished their loyalty cards rather than season tickets, flaunted their branded carrier bags instead of a scarf and replica shirt.

The crematorium had been built in the middle of the open space, with memorial gardens around it. The supermarkets met all the needs of daily life. The cemetery provided what the supermarkets couldn’t.

‘Just here to watch?’

Cooper turned at the sound of the voice close behind him. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching, which worried him. His instincts must be letting him down.

The woman looked about thirty, dressed all in black. Tight black jeans, black boots with rows of beads up the seams, and a wide-brimmed floppy hat of the kind his mother might have worn to a wedding – if it had been white, rather than black. Her long, straight hair seemed to confirm his initial impression. Forty years too late to be a hippy and couldn’t quite go all the way with the Goth thing.

‘Something like that,’ he said.

‘There
are people who find funerals fascinating,’ she said. ‘Or just graveyards. I can relate to that.’

‘Are you a relative of Mr Kuzneski’s?’ asked Cooper.

She laughed. ‘Ah, so you do at least know whose funeral it is. I’m a cousin. My name is Haynes. Lily Haynes.’

‘I’m Detective Inspector Cooper.’

‘A police officer. I thought you must be,’ she said.

‘Did you know your cousin well?’

‘We weren’t all that close, I’m afraid. Not recently. Our parents used to visit each other a lot when we were children, and my brother used to play with David and his sister Dawn. But once you grow up … well, your lives diverge, don’t they? I saw less and less of him in the last few years.’

‘So you wouldn’t have any idea about what was going on in his mind, what his mental state was?’

‘Whether he’d been thinking about suicide for a long time, do you mean?’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s what I meant.’

‘I couldn’t say. David was a strange man in many ways. Obsessive. He thought about death a lot, you know.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I don’t really know.’

‘Was he terminally ill? If so, that wasn’t mentioned at the inquest.’

‘No, not that I’m aware of. I don’t think he had any more reason to worry about dying than anyone else. It’s just that the rest of us tend to go about our lives not thinking about it. We have far too many other
things to concern ourselves with, don’t we? Trivial, unimportant things – that’s what David would have said. He thought everything was meaningless, except for the fact that we die one day.’

‘I suppose he had a point,’ said Cooper.

She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘That’s a very depressing outlook, though. There’s far more to living, isn’t there? We can’t go through our lives thinking about the day we’ll die. Well, I know I don’t.’

Cooper smiled. ‘And I’m sure you’re right. You seem very sensible and well balanced. Unfortunately, not everyone is.’

‘And those are the ones you have to deal with, I imagine,’ she said. ‘It must distort your perception of people.’

He watched the funeral party making its way slowly to the graveside, led by the coffin bearers and the vicar. It wasn’t a huge crowd – the immediate family in black and a straggle of friends and acquaintances awkwardly trailing in the rear, some glancing at their watches and mobile phones, as if they’d done their duty and should now be somewhere else.

‘Do you know everyone here?’ asked Cooper.

‘All the relatives, of course. Most of the others are David’s former colleagues – I spoke to a few of them before the service. I think the rest are neighbours and some of Stephanie’s friends here for support.’

‘Anyone who
shouldn’t
be here?’

She threw him a curious look. ‘Why are you asking me that?’

‘Because I think you’re a good observer. There might
be someone here who stands out to you. A stranger who doesn’t know anyone else, but stands to one side and watches everything.’

‘Yes, there is one like that,’ she said.

‘Oh, who?’

‘You.’

Cooper laughed. ‘Good point.’

‘You do look a bit suspicious. Everyone is wondering who you are. If you want to stay incognito, I’ll have to tell them you’re my boyfriend or something.’

‘It doesn’t matter really,’ said Cooper. ‘If you’re sure there’s no one else.’

She looked more serious. ‘It’s important, isn’t it?’

‘It could be. I can’t say more than that.’

‘Fair enough. But the answer is no – there’s no one who stands out. No complete stranger, no one who looks suspicious or shifty. Apart from yourself, there’s only one person here who has clearly never met any of the mourners before and knows nothing about the deceased.’

‘And who is that?’

‘The vicar,’ she said. ‘He’s useless. He just read from a script he’d been given.’

Cooper watched the party around the grave as the coffin was lowered in and the first spadefuls of soil were scattered. A mound of dirt lay ready to finish the job. If Dev Sharma were here, he would no doubt have been telling everyone that Hindus were cremated. They believed that burning the physical shell released the soul from the body.

Cremation was becoming more and more common
among other groups too, especially since space in village churchyards began to run out. Yet on the far side of the cemetery was the Muslim burial ground. No cremation was permitted in Islam.

Cooper wondered why the beliefs around death differed so much. He’d heard there was a current fashion to bury favourite possessions with the deceased, as if they were Egyptian pharaohs or Celtic princes. Surely no one in the twenty-first century believed that physical treasures could be carried over into the after-life. He’d even seen bereaved relatives addressing their lost loved ones on social media, as if the dead spent their time in heaven checking out Facebook.

He turned to Lily Haynes.

‘Is that Mr Kuzneski’s widow by the grave?’ he said.

‘The pale, thin one who isn’t speaking to anyone? Yes, that’s Stephanie. Do you want me to introduce you to her?’

‘If it’s convenient. It might look less intrusive.’

Lily Haynes’s hat flapped in a sudden breeze across the cemetery and she clutched at it with a hand, the fingers of which were covered in rings.

‘Much good it will do you,’ she said. ‘Stephanie isn’t in much of a state to talk.’

When the mourners began to disperse, Cooper and Lily Haynes walked over and he was introduced to Stephanie Kuzneski.

He offered his condolences first. He was aware that commiserations probably sounded hollow and Mrs Kuzneski seemed to feel the same. She nodded vaguely at his words. Then he asked if he might call on her at
home next day to ask a few questions. She gave no answer, but instead just nodded again, a glassy look on her face.

Cooper realised Mrs Kuzneski had been listening politely without taking in a single word. And she had not looked him in the eye when he was speaking. Instead, she watched his mouth, as if his lips were saying something quite different from the words he used. It was very disconcerting. What did she read there that she couldn’t see in his eyes?

Of course, he’d seen this before. Mrs Kuzneski was a woman who wished she were anywhere else but here, who wanted to be hearing anything except all these well-meaning platitudes she was bombarded with. Her mind had probably disconnected her from the reality of the cemetery and taken her somewhere else.

All he could do was repeat his request.

‘I’m sorry to bother you with this, Mrs Kuzneski,’ he said. But he might as well have been talking to the wall of the chapel.

A male family member standing nearby stepped in, told Cooper with a scowl that it would be all right, then took Mrs Kuzneski by the arm and led her away.

Cooper said goodbye to Lily Haynes and walked back through the cemetery to the car park, passing among rows and rows of gravestones, memorials to generations of the dead of Sheffield. How many of these had died natural deaths or had decided to take their own lives? It was a fact never recorded on a gravestone. It was an act no one wanted to acknowledge.

*  *  *

Bethan
Jones sat looking out over a hillside at the upper end of the Eden Valley, then stared at her wrists. The skin seemed very pale over her veins. Pale, thin and translucent. Where they snaked over the tendons, her blood vessels were like a tracery of branches from some strange blue plant. The more she stared at them, the stranger her wrists looked. They were like the limbs of an alien creature or a lifelike plastic model.

Bethan had plenty of time. But she knew it was already working. This was how you did it. You trained yourself to see your body as nothing but an object. It wasn’t the real you, it didn’t contain your soul, it was just a shell. Shells were made to be cast off, like a used skin. Sometimes your body became useless. Less than useless – a burden, a pain, a torment.

All of the dialogue had already taken place inside her head, with her own voice dominant and insistent as she ran through her arguments. Irrefutable arguments. She didn’t need to be convinced any more.

She had the door and windows open to let in the summer air. From the big window running the width of the lounge area, she was looking straight across the valley. There wasn’t another human being in sight. On the far side of a dry-stone wall, she could see a herd of black-and-white cows grazing. Half an hour ago, she’d watched them ambling back to their field from milking. The air of serenity hanging over them made her smile.

Beyond the cows, the valley itself looked deep and green, a place to dive into like a cooling lake. Sheep dotted the opposite hillside and the moors blended
into the sky as they ran away into the far distance. A helicopter passed overhead. Somewhere nearby, a child laughed.

Bethan took another drink of water. She thought about her sister and then about all the plans she’d made. She’d done what she could. There was no more. Nothing left for her to do with her life.

She pushed back the door of the shower unit. The water would be nice and hot now. Then she unwrapped the small packet on the worktop and carefully slid out the first razor blade. She tested the edge with her finger. A tiny drop of blood oozed from her skin and fell on to the worktop. She was more than ready.

That
evening, Ben Cooper was sitting in the backyard of his new house enjoying the early evening sun, when he heard voices. He frowned. One of the voices seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it and he couldn’t hear what was being said.

After a few minutes of conversation, two or three people laughed together. Now he recognised one of the voices. It was
very
familiar. Yet it was so out of context that he’d failed to put a name and face to it. Even now, he couldn’t quite accept this was true.

He got up and peered cautiously over the low wall. His neighbours from up the row were just about to go back into their house – the one with the wrought-iron gate. And ambling towards him along the path was a third figure.