Secrets of Death (32 page)

His frustration was that he hadn’t asked for her number when they met at the Barrel Inn the night before last. All he had on his caller list was the number of the mortuary office and that was no use. Of course, he could be misleading himself. It might simply have been an informal meeting to talk about her study into
suicides. Was that all they’d talked about? No, it wasn’t.

Cooper fed the cat. That was one job he never missed. The cat flap had been installed and he could tell that Hopes had been out exploring the neighbourhood. When he arrived home, she’d been sitting on the adjoining wall between Tollhouse Cottage and the neighbours. And there had been another cat with her, a ginger-and-white tom. His cat was better at making friends than he was himself.

‘Well, I’ll see you next time,’ said Diane Fry. ‘Make it very soon, won’t you? And Zack – I can’t wait to see him walking.’

Angie had everything packed ready to go. A bagful of used nappies had gone in the wheelie bin. The baby was asleep. The sun outside was shining. And Diane smiled.

‘Of course, Sis. I hope everything goes well.’

The Renault hatchback turned in from Clifton Lane. The exhaust was a bit too loud, but Diane didn’t care. The man at the steering wheel nodded curtly to her, but didn’t get out. Angie waved and trotted to the car to begin loading everything. Zack went into the baby seat without stirring. Within a few minutes, they were ready to go.

Diane waved them off until they’d disappeared. Then she heaved a deep sigh, went back into her apartment and poured herself a very large drink.

First
thing that morning, Cooper had to brief his team and give them assignments. In the CID room he was met by a set of expectant faces.

‘Anson Tate,’ he said. ‘He was a journalist, wasn’t he?’ He looked to Carol Villiers, who always seemed to have that sort of detail at her fingertips.

‘Yes, he worked for one of the major regional newspaper publishers, but he was made redundant three or four years ago when they went through a phase of centralisation. Tate went freelance, but couldn’t make a living at it.’

‘What sort of stories did he cover as a freelance?’

‘I have no idea.’

Cooper turned to Irvine. ‘Luke, see if you can find out, will you? Research Tate’s journalism background. A lot of stuff is online.’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Look for any possible links. Did he do a feature at some time about suicide websites? Any stories about actual suicides? There may be some way that he came across the
Secrets of Death
site or the people
operating it, and knows more about it than anyone else.’

‘It might take a while,’ said Irvine.

‘Just do what you can, will you?’

‘Yes, okay.’

Cooper turned to Murfin.

‘Gavin, I want you back on surveillance at Tate’s flat. Keep me up to date on what he’s doing.’

Murfin didn’t look pleased. ‘Couldn’t you just ask him to come in for a chat?’

‘I don’t want Tate slipping away from us. It’s possible he spotted you outside his flat yesterday.’

‘Well, I doubt it. I’m trained to blend in, like.’

‘Even so. I don’t want him doing anything stupid. He needs watching.’

‘But—’

‘Just do it, Gavin. You’re not here to ask questions.’

‘Fair enough.’

Everyone turned then and stared at each other. Cooper knew they hardly ever heard him speak like that to one of his team. He didn’t have time to worry about it. Right now there was a horrible thought in his head that he wanted to concentrate on before it escaped him. He took no notice as Murfin slouched out of the room, grumbling quietly.

‘Tate could be crucial in making a case against the two suspects the Major Crime Unit have picked up,’ said Cooper. ‘He’s the only credible witness we may have at our disposal. Diane Fry and her colleagues in Nottingham need something concrete to put to Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif.’

‘Hull
and Sharif?’ asked Dev Sharma in a puzzled tone.

Cooper realised that not all his team were aware of the connection with EMSOU’s murder inquiry. He brought them up to speed as far as he could.

‘It puts a whole different light on Roger Farrell,’ said Irvine. ‘A pity we didn’t know about all this from the start.’

‘It couldn’t be helped.’

‘By the way, we’ve got some preliminary results from the laptop you recovered from Roger Farrell’s address,’ said Villiers, picking up a report from her desk.

‘Well, that’s something.’

Cooper could at least breathe a sigh of relief that he’d made the decision to seize the laptop when he had. Otherwise, he felt sure it would be gone now. And the preliminary results had come through quickly, which was helpful.

‘Not really,’ said Villiers. ‘Unless you think no news is good news. The initial examination reveals no sign of involvement with a website called
secretsofdeath.org
. His browser history and email records contain no references to
Secrets of Death
or anything resembling it. They’ve drawn out a list of contacts from his address book, so we can have a trawl through those.’

Villiers passed across a list and Cooper ran his eye down it without seeing any name he recognised.

‘But otherwise,’ said Villiers, ‘the forensic examiner says it appears to be a perfectly straightforward device for personal and business use. Farrell did his household
accounts on a spreadsheet, wrote letters in MS Word, used online banking and watched films on Netflix. He liked obscure sci-fi movies, apparently.’

Cooper put the list down, disappointed. ‘Ask them to keep trying.’

‘I will.’

‘Okay, there’s plenty to get on with. Let me know straight away if you turn up anything significant.’

When the phone rang, Carol Villiers had news that took all Cooper’s attention.

‘They’ve found what?’ he said.

‘A burned-out car. It’s been identified as a black Land Rover Discovery.’

‘Where?’

‘On a track at the top of Sycamore Crescent,’ said Villiers. ‘That’s on the Woodlands Estate. Do you know it?’

‘Know it?’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve already been there once this week.’

When Cooper arrived on the Woodlands Estate, the burned-out wreck was being winched on to a low-loader. He could see for himself that it had been a Land Rover Discovery. The shape was quite distinctive.

The colour of it was less obvious. The blaze had stripped the paint off the bodywork, leaving bare, scorched metal. It had also melted the tyres, blown out the windows and consumed the interior, leaving just the metal seat frames. The doors, bonnet and boot had all been left open to allow the flames to spread. This was no simple engine fire. Large amounts of
accelerant had been used to make sure the job was done properly.

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.