Secrets of Death (7 page)

‘He can’t have taken all sixty.’

‘No, surely not. Even fifteen tablets are a lot to take at once. A larger number becomes physically difficult to swallow.’

‘So have we found the ones that were left?’

‘Not yet. We’re still looking.’

‘They could be important,’ said Cooper, though he didn’t know why and was glad that Villiers didn’t ask.

‘Kuzneski?’ she said instead. ‘What do you think …?’

‘It’s a Polish name.’

‘Yes, but he isn’t a recent immigrant. He was born in Sheffield and his family are from Sheffield too.’

‘He probably had a grandfather who settled in the area after the Second World War. There were quite a
few Poles here already before the EU. They just didn’t have the delicatessens.’

‘There’s no indication here that he left a note,’ said Villiers.

‘No, and that’s odd, isn’t it?’

‘Why?’

‘If he was married. There would usually be a letter or a message of some kind for the wife, even it’s to say, “
It’s all your fault
”.’

‘Perhaps we should ask Mrs Kuzneski again. She might have been treated with kid gloves at the time of the death.’

‘Whereas we can be tougher on her now?’ said Cooper. ‘So which of us is going to play bad cop?’

Villiers grinned. ‘I know you can’t do it, Ben. But I can.’

‘That’s why I like you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘By the way, there’s a note in the file here that Kuzneski’s funeral is this week.’

‘Interesting. That’s worth bearing in mind.’

Villiers looked up and met his eyes. ‘Lithium carbonate,’ she said. ‘It’s prescribed for the treatment of bipolar disorders. What they used to call manic depression.’

‘I know,’ said Cooper.

‘David Kuzneski had been suffering from a bipolar condition for nearly eighteen months before his death. It was why he’d been on sick leave from his job for a while. The condition was getting worse, despite the medication.’

‘Then he bought himself an extra supply of lithium
carbonate tablets online, presumably without his doctor’s knowledge.’

‘And he took enough of them to end his own life.’

‘Mmm,’ said Cooper thoughtfully. ‘I doubt his GP told him what a lethal dose would be, though. That would be totally unethical.’

‘Of course. What are you thinking?’

‘That he must have got the information somewhere else, of course. And what about our latest case, Roger Farrell. He’s from Nottingham?’

‘Right. Forest Fields,’ said Villiers. ‘We’ve managed a good geographical spread, haven’t we? Just in these last few cases, we’ve got Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield. It’s almost as if they’ve been chosen to have as little connection as possible.’

‘And their jobs too. Farrell worked as a sales representative.’

‘Yes, for a company producing memory foam beds, orthopaedic mattresses and back-care products.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘I don’t see any connection from these reports. Quite the opposite.’

‘Nor me.’

‘We need to look at each individual and check their online activity. Look for any connections between them, any links or references to suicide websites.’

Villiers made a note. ‘Okay. And there’s this one too,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it fits, though.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a man called Anson Tate, who attempted suicide from a bridge here in Edendale.’

‘I remember that,’ said Cooper. ‘The bridge incident.’

And
it wasn’t just any bridge either – it had been the seventeenth-century Bargate Bridge, much photographed by tourists, where water foamed over a stone weir and the riverbed was littered with dangerous rocks.

Mr Tate’s leap into the River Eden had been prevented by passers-by at the last moment. He’d left a note in a bag on the pavement, which had been picked up by a community support officer. In the note, he blamed loneliness and isolation, a feeling of worthlessness, the fact that no one cared about him, that there was no future for him to look forward to. It was the standard sort of suicide note, blaming no one in particular but society and life in general. It was a letter written by someone who saw himself as a victim.

Anson Tate had certainly been a loner, according to his details. He was aged fifty, a former journalist with a major newspaper group who’d gone freelance when his job had been rationalised out of existence, but had struggled to make a living. He had no family locally, having moved to Nottinghamshire from the Northeast of England many years ago. He had never married.

‘Mr Tate was the first one,’ said Villiers. ‘Well, the first of this recent surge.’

‘A survivor,’ said Cooper. ‘He’s the one we should talk to. He might have some useful information.’

‘A failed suicide, though. He won’t be feeling any better about himself, knowing he can’t even do that right.’

‘It says here he was referred to the mental health team. He should have been getting counselling since the incident.’

‘Working
on his feelings of failure?’ said Villiers doubtfully. ‘Well, I suppose it works for some people.’

‘We need to track him down and talk to him.’

‘There’s an address for him in Mansfield. I’ll get someone to check it out and see if he’s still there.’

‘To see if he’s still alive even.’

Villiers collected the files together. ‘So what do you want to do, Ben? How are we going to handle it?’

‘We should visit Roger Farrell’s home first,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s probably all we’ve got time for today.’

‘Nottingham? I’m ready.’

‘And tomorrow I’d very much like to visit some of these locations.’

‘To do what?’

‘To look at the view,’ he said. ‘And to think about death, of course.’

‘You know, my mother always used to say it was caused by the weather,’ said Cooper as he and Villiers sat in his Toyota in the West Street car park.

‘What was?’

‘Suicide. It was an old belief, I think – that the cold and rain, and the long nights of winter, were what led people to get depressed and want to kill themselves.
The weather of our souls reflects the weather of the skies
.’

‘Is that what she said?’

‘It was something like that.’

‘She was quite a wise woman, your mother,’ said Villiers. ‘I think I remember her. Or I remember people talking about her anyway.’

‘Wise
woman? You make her sound like the local witch.’

‘No, not that. But she was full of local lore, wasn’t she? Everyone used to quote her, just as you did now.’

Cooper nodded. ‘You’re right, Carol. I don’t know where she got it all from. My granny probably. She was just the same.’

‘I can imagine.’

They were silent for a moment, watching police officers and civilian staff passing in the car park.

‘It’s not true, though,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s nothing to do with the weather or even the long dark nights. Statistics show that the suicide rate falls in the winter and starts to increase again in the spring. I looked it up.’

‘Really? So the actual peak time …?’

‘Is about now, yes.’

‘I don’t understand why that would be. Look at it – the grass is growing, the flowers are out, the lambs are in the fields. And the air … well, you can feel it in the air, can’t you?’

‘Of course,’ said Cooper. ‘But that’s exactly the problem, don’t you think?’

‘What do you mean?’

He paused, trying to find the right words to explain himself properly. He hadn’t analysed it fully in his own head, but as he was speaking to Villiers he found his thoughts clarifying.

‘It’s seeing and feeling everything around you bursting into new life, while your own existence is still frozen in some desolate, permanent winter. It
emphasises the chasm between you and everyone else. It makes you realise you don’t belong in the world. That your time is over, along with the winter.’

Cooper knew he had finished the thought sounding too convincing for comfort. As he spoke the last sentence, he heard Villiers catch her breath. She seemed to be avoiding looking at him. An uncomfortable silence developed in the car, the kind of atmosphere he’d been used to with Diane Fry, but not with Carol. Slowly, Cooper began to realise that he might have gone too far, expressed too much.

‘Shall we move on?’ she said finally. And at least her voice sounded normal.

‘Yes, let’s do that,’ said Cooper, and started the car.

It
took them almost an hour and a quarter to reach the Forest Fields area of Nottingham via Chesterfield and a trip down the M1. Traffic was already beginning to stream out of the city towards the suburbs, so at least they were heading in the right direction: going in.

Roger Farrell’s address was in Berridge Road, a semi-detached property with a bay window and a small glazed porch, and a dormer window in the roof where an attic room had been converted. These properties weren’t big, and some of the houses a few doors down were in poor condition, with tiles missing and weeds sprouting from the guttering. Cars were parked tightly on both sides of the road. The space caused by the absence of Farrell’s blue BMW had already been claimed by the driver of a white Transit van.

But the area was close to the city, seconds from the tram line and with schools within walking distance. Farrell’s street ran straight as an arrow downhill to the Forest recreation ground and the trees beyond the park-and-ride, so from here he seemed
to be looking out into the countryside rather than towards Nottingham city centre.

They were met in the house by Roger Farrell’s older sister. Fay Laws was a woman in her mid-fifties who looked as though she’d dressed in a hurry. Her hair was blonde with grey streaks, and strands of it had escaped in a random fashion.

Mrs Laws had been visited by local uniformed officers earlier in the day and had travelled to the mortuary in Edendale to officially identify the body of her brother. As she unlocked the door of the house, Carol Villiers asked her how she was. She said she was fine, which was what people always said, even when they weren’t.

She went on to tell Villiers that she lived on the other side of Nottingham, in West Bridgford, with her husband and two grown-up children, one of whom was still living at home, though he was in his twenties.

Cooper didn’t know West Bridgford, but he thought it must be a different type of area from Forest Fields. Mrs Laws looked over her shoulder twice as she was unlocking the door. Even while she was talking to Villiers. She ushered them into the hallway, then checked outside again before locking up.

‘I’m sorry if the identification was distressing,’ said Villiers.

‘I don’t suppose it could be any other way.’ Mrs Laws stood hesitantly in the passage, gazing at three identical doors that led off it and looking up a flight of stairs.

‘How long had your brother lived here?’ asked Cooper.

‘About
ten years. He moved here when Natalie died.’

‘Natalie?’

‘His wife. She was killed in a car accident. A multiple pile-up on the M1 in fog. Roger gave up the house in Arnold, said he couldn’t bear to live there any more. He changed his job too. He left the car dealership where he was making good money as a salesman and he came here to be nearer his new job. He said it would be convenient.’

She said the word
convenient
in a tone of disbelief, as if it couldn’t be an important quality in a property you were considering.

Cooper watched her as she continued to hesitate. He had the impression that she didn’t know which door to open.

‘Did you visit your brother here much?’ he said.

‘Not often, no.’

Well, there was no hesitation about that. Maybe she had never been here at all – though she was in possession of a set of keys, so perhaps her brother had lived in hope.

‘Roger has a daughter, you know,’ said Mrs Laws. ‘Ella. She lives in Spain.’

There was a definite emphasis there.
She
lives in Spain. The daughter had much more sense than to be here in Forest Fields.

‘I’m sure she’s been informed,’ said Villiers.

‘Yes, she knows what’s happened. She’s flying over tomorrow.’

Cooper was surprised to see that Fay Laws was crying. Quietly, unobtrusively, but the tears were definitely
creeping down her cheeks. She wiped them away with a damp-looking tissue.

‘It feels like a punishment,’ she said suddenly.

‘What does?’

‘Roger’s death. The way he died. As if he’s punishing those of us left behind. Punishing
me
, anyway.’

Cooper and Villiers exchanged glances. They could both see what was happening. Mrs Laws hadn’t cared enough about her brother for the past ten years and now she was feeling the full, devastating impact of guilt.

‘Did your brother ever mention having suicidal thoughts?’ asked Villiers.

‘Once or twice he said that he wished it was all over, that he didn’t have to go on. It was only when he’d been having a particularly bad week. So I didn’t think he meant it. People say things they don’t mean all the time, don’t they?’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Well, I suppose I should have taken more notice. I ought to have told him to get help, to speak to someone about the way he felt. But I never did. I was so sure he wasn’t serious. That means it’s partly my fault, doesn’t it? I let him down.’

‘There’s always a feeling of guilt in these cases,’ said Cooper. ‘People who commit suicide get rid of the pain by leaving it behind for everyone else.’

She looked at him then, calmer on the surface but with something flickering uncertainly behind her eyes.

‘Well, he’s done that,’ she said. ‘He’s certainly done that with me.’

Slowly,
they went through the rooms. The place was untidy but in a lived-in sort of way. Newspapers had been left in a pile on the floor by an armchair. In the kitchen, dishes had been washed but left to dry. Only one bedroom had been in use, the duvet thrown back on the bed for the last time, a washing basket full of clothes that would never be washed.

Cooper picked up a photograph. ‘Is this your brother’s wife?’

‘
Was
his wife,’ said Mrs Laws. ‘Yes, that’s Natalie.’

‘She’s been dead for ten years, you said?’