Secrets of Death (6 page)

‘Too many bodies in too many cars,’ she said. ‘It’s becoming an epidemic.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Cooper. ‘Or a small outbreak, at least.’

He waited, wondering why everyone had started sounding like headline writers. He could guess which phrase was coming next.

‘Suicide tourism,’ said Branagh. ‘That’s what they’re calling it, am I right?’

‘Some of them are, ma’am.’

‘It shouldn’t be encouraged. It gives a bad impression of our area.’

Cooper nodded. That was all very well, but how did you discourage your boss from using the phrase?

The Detective Superintendent’s office had been moved in the latest reorganisation of E Division headquarters. Its new location was as far as it could possibly be from the CID room and the detectives actually working on inquiries.

When he was sent for, Cooper had to climb a flight of stairs and walk down a long corridor that turned a corner twice in its length for no apparent reason. The lights were on time switches and operated by sensors. They came on as he approached, then went out again when he’d passed.

It
was a cost-saving measure, of course. The finance department probably had a spreadsheet showing how much the force’s spending was reduced by not leaving the lights on. Was it more than the sensors and installation of time switches had cost? That wasn’t a certainty. The amounts probably came from different parts of the budget, so weren’t actually added up in any way that made sense. Cooper didn’t know. It wasn’t his area of expertise.

One thing he was sure about, though. On a June day in bright sunshine, those corridor lights didn’t need to be on at all.

‘Do you think there’s something behind it, Ben?’ asked Branagh, her use of his first name indicating a more relaxed mood.

‘Yes, that’s my instinct.’

Some senior officers would have laughed and raised an eyebrow when he referred to his instinct. But Hazel Branagh knew him by now. And, for his part, he trusted his superintendent well enough to know she wouldn’t dismiss what he said.

It had taken him a while to warm to Detective Superintendent Branagh. He’d once thought of her as a negative influence in E Division. He’d even pictured her sitting in her office casting a dark spell, like Lord Voldemort. That seemed very unfair now. He’d been judging her purely from outward appearances. It was because she always looked so serious, never smiling at a joke or even at good news. And there was something about the way her face was constructed that made the corners of her mouth turn down and her
jaw fall into a disapproving grimace. With her broad shoulders and severe hairstyle, she did look intimidating. Many junior officers were frightened of her.

Cooper had worked closely with her for long enough now to know that it was only superficial, a façade she used when it was useful. Underneath, she cared deeply about the job and about the officers working for her. It was rare enough these days. She was a genuine copper.

Hazel Branagh had gone through the ranks, spent her time on the streets as a PC and working on the front line as a response officer before moving into CID. She’d followed the traditional route, moving with each promotion to a different role, from one division to another, from speciality to desk job, before ending up as crime manager in charge of E Division CID.

Like most officers, Cooper respected someone who’d got the experience under their belt. These days, with fast-track procedures, it was possible to progress from constable to superintendent in seven years. And now the first direct entrants were coming in, recruited from other professions to take on superintendent roles without any experience in the police service at all. They came from finance, law and the civil service. They were expected to bring different perspectives and be from diverse backgrounds. In other words, they were anything but police officers.

‘So do these individuals have anything in common?’ asked Branagh. ‘Apart from suicidal tendencies and a fondness for a nice view.’

‘Nothing
that we know of yet. But that’s the direction our enquiries will be taking.’

Branagh glanced at his summary of the incidents so far. She noticed the widespread and unrelated addresses.

‘And really,’ she said, ‘why are they coming here? Did it have to be our division? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It’s because of who we are,’ said Cooper.

‘You think so?’

‘Yes, it’s to do with the nature of the area.’

And he felt sure that was true. The Peak District wasn’t just the UK’s first national park, it was one of the most visited national parks in the world. That was because the Peak District wasn’t remote. It was surrounded by a ring of cities and large towns – Sheffield on one side, Greater Manchester on the other. Not to mention Derby and Nottingham, and Stoke-on-Trent and Chesterfield. There was a huge urban population within an hour’s drive of the park and they treated the place as their own backyard.

For some people, it was also a place to go to die.

‘My feeling is that there’s some element of organisation behind this wave of suicides,’ he said. ‘It’s more than a series of coincidences.’

‘Organisation?’ said Branagh. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. An orchestrated trend? Are you sure, Ben?’

‘Well, no,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m not. But it’s a possibility.’

‘I sincerely hope you’re wrong,’ said Branagh. ‘That sounds very disturbing.’

‘I agree.’

‘We need to get to the bottom of it, anyway. Whether
organised or not.’ She looked at Cooper for a moment. ‘Are you happy to stay with this, Ben? I can let you have time, and of course your existing team. We’ll find a way to ease the current workload so you can concentrate on this issue.’

‘It’s considered that important?’ said Cooper.

‘Well, it can’t be allowed to go on. It’s starting to attract the attention of the media. The press office have been getting enquiries from national newspapers. We can all imagine the headlines, can’t we?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I appreciate it wouldn’t normally be something that lands on your desk, but these are unusual circumstances.’

‘We’re on top of it already,’ said Cooper.

‘Good.’

‘There’s just one condition,’ he said. ‘If I may?’

Now Branagh did raise an eyebrow. ‘And what’s that, DI Cooper?’

‘I’d like to see Carol Villiers moved up to Acting DS.’

‘Really?’

‘Her promotion is long overdue, ma’am.’

‘She came to us with a lot of experience, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, from her service with the RAF Police. Besides, we’ve lost DS Sharma to liaison with Immigration Enforcement.’

‘You’re probably right.’

Cooper was pleased to hear her say that. He’d been recommending a promotion for Carol Villiers for the past year or so, without any success.

He knew he could always rely on Villiers to support
him, and without the sarcastic and dismissive comments he would have got from Diane Fry when she was in E Division. So there was nothing he wanted more than a promotion to detective sergeant for her. The irony was that she might then get transferred away from E Division, since there was no vacancy at Edendale at the moment.

Branagh made a note. It always looked official when she made a note. If she didn’t, it suggested she was going to forget what he’d said as soon as he left the room.

Then she looked again at his summary of the suicide cases.

‘At least these locations are relatively remote,’ she said.

‘So far, ma’am.’

‘Yes, so far.’

It was a nagging worry in the back of Cooper’s mind that an incident would happen one sunny weekend in a packed tourist hotspot like Castleton or Dovedale. That would cause chaos.

The entire population within the national park was no more than the size of a couple of small towns. The people who lived and worked in the area were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of visitors, who numbered in their millions. The Peak District’s proximity to major conurbations meant that about twenty million people lived within an hour’s drive.

Yet the distribution of visitors was very uneven. There were vast areas of the Peaks you could go to where you might see no one all day. You just needed a bit of energy and determination to get there.

On
the other hand, Dovedale alone received an estimated two million visitors each year. The famous and much photographed stepping stones across the River Dove were like a tourist highway in the summer, with their own traffic jams and their own incidents of road rage. Or stepping stone rage. So far, there had been no injuries apart from a few wet feet when someone went into the water.

Then there were Bakewell, Castleton, Chatsworth, Hartington – their role as honey pots attracting crowds of visitors created ever more pressure. The last thing they needed was suicide tourism.

‘As for the staff situation …’ began Branagh.

‘Yes, ma’am?’

‘Of course, the senior management team is very much aware of the pressure on front-line resources,’ she said, as if reading from a press release. ‘We’re currently looking at ways of supplementing staff levels.’

‘Really?’ said Cooper.

The superintendent gave him a surprised look, as if he’d just flatly contradicted her. But he wouldn’t have been able to do that, since he wasn’t clear what she was saying.

‘That’s good news, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Absolutely. I knew you’d be pleased.’

Cooper left Superintendent Branagh’s office and walked back down the corridor, watching the lights come on and off as he passed through the sensors. He was wondering whether he really was going to be pleased, or not.

Back
in his own office, Ben Cooper sat down with Carol Villiers to go through the reports again. Individually, the cases were sad. Taken as a whole, they were part of a growing tragedy. But was there a pattern?

There were always a small number of suicides to deal with. But the figures plotted on to a chart showed a steep upward trajectory in recent weeks, a worrying trend that couldn’t be ignored. Four in April, only two the month before. Then six in May. Now June was looking even worse. It was still early in the month, yet the suicides were mounting up.

So the reports made a large, daunting stack on his desk.

‘There are too many,’ said Villiers. ‘We can’t review all these, Ben. And there’s no obvious pattern. These earlier ones are such a diverse bunch. A student, a single mother, a disgraced curate, an ex-soldier, a convicted paedophile. And they’re from all over the region too.’

‘No pattern at all,’ agreed Cooper. ‘Not on the surface, anyway.’

‘So
what should we do?’

‘Divide them up. You and I will take a look at the most recent. As many as we can examine in detail. We’ll let the rest of the team handle the older cases. They can trawl through them and see if they can come up with any connections.’

Villiers took a file from the stack and slid it on the desk.

‘Okay, how about starting with this one?’ she said.

On the twenty-first of May a young man had been found sitting on the bank of the River Wye at Upperdale. His motorbike was standing in the adjacent lay-by. It had recently been polished and still smelled of oil. His helmet was placed neatly on the seat. Underneath it was an envelope addressed to his mother.

Three weeks earlier, he’d been made redundant from his job at a theme park, where he’d been helping to maintain the rides. Then his long-term girlfriend had left him when she’d discovered she was pregnant. Not because the child wasn’t his, but because she knew perfectly well he was the father. He’d been present at the conception, but she didn’t want him there for the birth. Or for the rest of the child’s life either.

He’d lived in the Allestree area of Derby, renting a small one-bedroom flat close to the Park Farm shopping centre. He paid a month’s rent in advance – probably about all he had to his name after he’d bought food and a tank of petrol for his bike. How had he imagined he was going to support a family? Well, perhaps that was a question he’d asked himself and been unable to answer.

The young man’s name was Alex Denning. He was twenty-two years old.

‘I
can’t imagine how anyone would get so desperate at that age,’ said Villiers, touching the file softly with the palm of her hand, as if she couldn’t be quite sure it was real. Or as if she was trying to read more from it than the printed words actually said.

Cooper shook his head over the report. ‘I don’t know for sure, Carol. I think you can reach that position at any age, where you can see no point in going on. There
has
to be a point, doesn’t there? At least, we have to believe there’s one.’

‘But he had his whole life ahead of him. Okay, a couple of things hadn’t worked out for him, but that’s the way life is for everyone. He would have found another job. Someone else would have come along. Someone better. And it won’t happen for him now. It’s such a waste.’

‘Mr Denning couldn’t see that, I suppose. He wasn’t looking that far ahead, just to the next day, the final tank of petrol, the last ride out into the Peak District.’

‘He must have had family or friends he could talk to. He rode a motorbike – bikers tend to hang around together, don’t they?’

‘Yes. But I think they only talk about bikes.’

She put the file aside reluctantly and picked up another.

‘Who’s next?’ asked Cooper.

‘David Kuzneski, aged forty. He was a credit controller for one of those outsourcing operations that have contracts with local authorities and large companies. He’d
been there for five years, was well qualified for the job and well regarded by managers. Kuzneski worked in an office in the centre of Sheffield, but he’d been off work due to illness for several months. He lived on the outskirts of the city, at Totley. And he’s the only one on our list who was married.’

‘And he was found at Monsal Head,’ said Cooper, picturing the location.

‘That’s right.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘An overdose of lithium carbonate. The pathologist’s report says that the minimum fatal dose for lithium carbonate is fifteen 300mg tablets. When we examined his computer, we found that David Kuzneski bought sixty tablets for less than thirty pounds on a US internet site, without the need for a prescription.’