Secrets of Death (21 page)

It felt so peaceful, he could imagine why a place like this drew people who were planning to end their lives. It was a perfect spot to say goodbye to the world, if that was your firm intention.

It made him wonder, though. Did they begin to
think differently as the evening grew late and night gradually fell? When it was dark on the outside, but even darker inside? An uncontrollable drift into the final blackness.

Cooper shuddered. He was finding it too easy to imagine. He would have to stop thinking about it. Focus on something else. But what?

He saw from his phone that Matt had rung earlier on. He ought to call back and see how his brother and his family were getting on after the incident that day.

Ben got out of the car and walked into the dusk. He always felt there was something unnatural in this period between light and dark. Sometimes, its grey malevolence made him shiver.

Matt sounded okay when he answered at Bridge End Farm. Well, as okay as he ever did. He was never absolute sweetness and light when he picked up the phone. If he ever did give up farming, a job as a receptionist or in a call centre would not be top of his list.

‘The girls are a bit quiet,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we’re fine. Another family of caravanners left, but we expected that. They were perfectly nice about it, but I suppose we’ll be getting negative reviews on TripAdvisor.’

‘It was hardly your fault,’ said Ben. ‘It’s not as if it was some failure in the advertised facilities on the caravan site. It could have happened anywhere.’

‘Well, it didn’t.’

Ben sighed. ‘No. And I can’t tell you why, Matt. You’ve given your statement, haven’t you? So that’s all done with.’

‘Yes,
I’ve done that. I suppose I’ll start getting all those leaflets now.’

‘There’s no avoiding it, I’m afraid.’

In Derbyshire, anyone who reported or witnessed a crime became subject to the ‘Justice Information Guide Supporting and Advising Witnesses’, a clumsy-sounding phrase designed to produce the acronym JIGSAW. It was all about the way the ‘jigsaw’ of the criminal justice system was pieced together. Sometimes, it wasn’t very clear where the victims of crime fitted into it, let alone the witnesses.

Ben knew he must have mentioned it at some time during a spell of grumbling about the bureaucracy and paperwork he was beset by now. Matt always seemed to appreciate those conversations, especially as he’d spent years boring everyone about the bureaucratic nightmare farmers had to cope with. The idea that his younger brother had the same issues seemed to give him a peculiar satisfaction.

‘Where are you, by the way?’ asked Matt. ‘You’re not at the new house.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I can hear water, a stream. There’s a pheasant out there somewhere. And sheep. I know sheep when I hear them.’

‘Can you hear all that from Bridge End?’

‘Clear enough.’

‘I’m out at Heeley Bank, in the car park.’

‘At night?’ said Matt. ‘I didn’t know you were into dogging.’

‘What?’

Then
Ben realised his brother was making a joke. He did it so drily, in such a matter-of-fact tone, that it wasn’t always easy to tell. Now Ben felt genuinely reassured that Matt was okay.

Ben turned at the sound of a loud rattling coming towards him in a wave across the adjacent field. He could see nothing at first and it took him a few seconds to work out what was happening. It was only when the first series of impacts hit the edge of the tarmac that he realised what was coming.

He dashed for his car as a scatter of hailstones began to land on his head and shoulders. He slammed the door and sat in the driving seat listening to the drumming on the roof and watching the crystals build up on his windscreen. Within a couple of minutes, the surface of the road had turned white, as if there had been a sudden snowfall.

‘What’s happening?’ Matt was saying. ‘Ben, are you there?’

Ben shook hailstones off his jacket and out of his hair.

‘It was hailstones, that’s all.’

‘For a moment, I thought something had happened to you.’

‘It was just a shower. It’s gone now. I guess it will be heading your way.’

‘We’re all inside for the night,’ said Matt.

‘Sounds great.’

Ben ended the call and sat listening for a little while longer after the hailstone shower had stopped. Eventually, as night came on, the noises receded. They
left just the lonely call of a bird on the moor and the sound of his own heart beating in his ears.

Cooper was only half paying attention to the road on his way back from Heeley Bank. It was dark now, properly dark in the way it only ever was in the countryside where there were no street lights. The sky had clouded over as night fell and there were no stars or moon visible. There were just his headlights picking out the shapes of the trees and gateways, and the flicker of a sheep’s eyes in the darkness.

At first he didn’t notice the lights behind him. Though there was little traffic on this road at night, it wasn’t so rare as to draw attention. It was only when the headlights steadily came closer and closer that he became conscious of the glare in his rearview mirror.

‘What on earth are you trying to do?’ he muttered.

Some drivers were far too impatient and took ludicrous risks to overtake in dangerous situations. On this road there was barely room for one car, let alone a safe overtaking manoeuvre. The bends and the stone walls prevented you from seeing what was coming in the other direction, even in daylight. At night, it was only the last-minute glimpse of an approaching headlight that warned you to slow down and swing over on to the verge as you passed. Everyone knew that who was used to driving on these narrow back roads. This must be some tourist, perhaps heading home from an evening at a country pub after too much to drink and deciding to take the scenic route.

Cooper
peered ahead, trying to spot a place to pull in so he could let the other driver past. But there were only walls close on either side, a stretch of rocky banking and a gnarled hawthorn tree poking its branches into the road.

The headlights came closer still, until the interior of the Toyota was flooded with light. Cooper found he was clutching the steering wheel tighter.

‘Idiot,’ he said.

He sounded his horn, a couple of sharp beeps to warn the other driver. The car kept coming, closer and closer. Had the driver taken him for a tourist and decided to have some fun by pressuring him to drive faster and faster on the narrow road? If so, he’d chosen the wrong person.

Cooper switched his hazards on, opened his driver’s side window and waved a hand to indicate to the driver to slow down. He couldn’t brake, because the other car was too close and the road was slippery after the shower of hailstones: there would certainly be a collision. The Toyota was his own vehicle, not police property, so any damage to his rear end and the subsequent insurance claim would be a nightmare, just like Gareth Cook’s experience.

Then Cooper felt a jolt and was thrown forward into his seat belt.

‘What the hell—’

He realised the car behind had deliberately hit him. He gazed in surprise into his mirror and was just in time to see the car lurch forward again and collide with his bumper. Cooper put his foot on the accelerator,
but had to swing the wheel sharply to the right as he went into a bend.

The other vehicle accelerated too. He could hear the roar of the engine and the squeal of the rubber from the tyres a second before he felt the impact, harder this time, a shunt that spun his Toyota out of control. Though he frantically twisted the wheel, he found himself sliding off the road and bouncing over a grass verge in a hail of scratching branches and stones scraping the underside of the car.

The brakes were useless on this surface as he skidded into a slope. His front wing bounced off something and his view through the windscreen was suddenly obscured by a mass of leaves and twigs from a dense shrub.

By the time Cooper undid his seat belt and pulled himself out of the Toyota, the other car was a hundred yards away, round the bend and out of sight.

Cautiously, Diane Fry unlocked the door of her apartment, pushed it open an inch or two and sniffed.

A pungent odour reached her nostrils. Several pungent odours. They mingled like a fatal disaster in a perfume factory. That meant her sister and the baby were still in residence. Life wasn’t yet back to normal.

‘It’s only me,’ she called as she entered the hall.

There was no reply. Perhaps they were asleep. She pictured Angie sprawled out on the bed in the spare room. And the baby? Where would the baby be? You weren’t supposed to leave them unsupervised, were you? They could lie in the wrong position and their
faces would go flat. She was sure she’d read something like that.

She had to admit that the baby terrified her. It seemed to keep staring at her and demanding things. No,
he
. She was supposed to say
he
, not
it
. His name was Zack. She’d even managed to say it out loud once or twice and she was quite proud of her achievement.

Diane found Angie dozing on the settee in front of the TV, with the baby on her lap and a reality show unwatched on the screen. At least there was no sign of the mysterious boyfriend.

Against her better instincts, Diane felt a rush of affection for her sister. Lying there with eyes closed, mouth open and a pool of baby dribble on her T-shirt, she looked peculiarly vulnerable in a way that Diane hadn’t seen her for a long time. It took her all the way back to their teens when they were growing up in foster homes together and were as close as sisters could possibly be. What had happened between them since then to drive them apart?

The baby stirred, kicked its legs, gurgled and woke up. In a moment, it would begin to cry and wouldn’t stop for hours.

Well, that was one thing that had come between them. This child had driven a wedge in their relationship. It stirred up so many mixed emotions in her that she could hardly bear to have it in the house a minute longer.

Diane headed to the bathroom for the shower, thinking, Not it,
he
. She supposed she would get used to the idea one day, when baby Zack had grown up,
left school and was earning a living for himself. Then she turned the shower up full blast, so that she couldn’t hear the baby crying.

Carol
Villiers did a double-take and stared across the staff parking area behind E Division headquarters. She walked over, then stopped and shook her head in disapproval.

‘So what happened?’ she said.

‘Some idiot,’ said Cooper, climbing out of the driver’s door and gazing at the scratches in the car’s paintwork.

‘Some idiot what? Some idiot was driving his red Toyota RAV back from the pub and hit a stone wall?’

‘Well … no, it wasn’t like you’re thinking.’

‘You’ll need a new wing anyway,’ said Villiers. ‘And a respray. Have you made an insurance claim?’

‘I might have difficulty with the insurance company.’

‘Why? Where had you been?’ She looked at the expression on his face. ‘Oh, you were at the pub. Seriously, Ben?’

‘I was drinking fruit juice,’ he said. ‘You know me better than that.’

‘So what did happen?’

‘Someone ran me off the road.’

‘Deliberately?’

‘I
don’t know. I can’t be sure.’

‘You didn’t get the registration?’

Cooper sighed. ‘Not even the first letter of it.’

He could have kicked himself for that. It was one of the first questions you asked people who were involved in a hit-and-run or a road traffic collision where one of the parties left the scene. Didn’t you get the registration number? And so few people did.

‘But you’re okay, are you?’ said Villiers as they entered the building.

At last, she was expressing concern for his welfare rather than only about the damage to his car and his blood alcohol level.

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said. ‘Just a bruise or two. I’ll let you know if I suddenly develop whiplash. I could be wrong,’ he went on. ‘It may have been some fool who’d had too many drinks and wasn’t used to the road.’

‘They didn’t stop, though,’ said Villiers. ‘That’s a serious offence right there. They were probably trying to avoid getting breathalysed and banned. You’re sure it wasn’t deliberate?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘I really don’t know.’

He followed Villiers up to the first floor and headed for his office. No, he didn’t know for sure what had happened last night. All he could feel certain of was the tangled undergrowth he’d had to clear from the front of his car, the branch he had to wrench out of his wheel arch, the mud covering his headlight.

He also didn’t know whether his brief glimpse of
the other car had been accurate. He couldn’t be sure that it really had been a Land Rover.

‘So what’s going on this morning?’ he asked when they reached the first floor.

‘The body in Ladybower last night,’ said Villiers. ‘His name was Christopher Yates. You know Luke Irvine was right on the spot?’

‘Yes, I heard.’

‘Mr Yates was only a young man. Twenty-three. He has an address in Dronfield. We don’t have anything else on him yet. Becky Hurst is out taking some statements.’

‘Okay.’

Cooper sat at his desk and turned over some paperwork without reading it. He realised Carol Villiers was still standing there watching him. He wondered what she was thinking, what she might see in him that was different this morning. Apart from the dents on his car, that was.

‘Carol, what do you think of assisted suicide?’ he said.

‘Assisted suicide? It’s illegal, isn’t it?’

‘Both active euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under English law,’ said Cooper. ‘Depending on the circumstances, euthanasia is treated either as manslaughter or murder. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment. Assisting suicide is also an offence under the terms of the 1961 Suicide Act. It’s punishable by a maximum of fourteen years in prison.’

‘You’ve been looking it up,’ said Villiers.

‘I
don’t carry a law book in my head.’

‘It’s legal in some countries, though.’