Fall Down Dead

by Stephen Booth

  Fry opened her mouth but found she couldn’t answer. Jackson didn’t look at her but kept his eyes directed down at his notes, as if he was simply waiting for a cue to read the next question. He waited what felt like an uncomfortably long time before he glanced up. He twitched an eyebrow and made a mark with his pen.

  ‘Would you like some water, DS Fry?’ he said. ‘I have a feeling we might be in for quite a long session.’

  Ben Cooper called his DS in Edendale and agreed that Sharma could cope without both Luke Irvine and Gavin Murfin for a while.

  When Murfin came on the phone, Cooper allocated him and Irvine interviews with the Gould brothers and the Warburtons, as well as the students Millie Taylor and Karina Scott.

  ‘Take their statements, show them a map and try to get them to pinpoint their exact positions. Oh, and ask them for any photos they took on their phones while they were on Kinder,’ he said. ‘Everybody does that. Gavin, I want you to go first to take statements from the victim’s family. Her mother and her brother, Jonathan.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Oh, and Gavin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘See what you can find out about an individual called Robert Farnley and his connection to Jonathan Matthew.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  Gavin Murfin put his jacket on, straightened his tie, then loosened it again. He was a civilian – he didn’t even have to wear a tie if he didn’t want to.

  He looked around for Dev Sharma. Murfin had worked under scores of different supervisors during his thirty years with Derbyshire Constabulary. When he was a young probationer, the older bobbies taught him a lot about the real world out there on the streets. As a PC, his shift sergeants had ranged from tough disciplinarians to insecure drunks who could barely hold down the job. One or two had managed to be both at the same time.

  His CID career had been no different. Murfin had stayed a detective constable right up until the moment he could claim his full pension. Ben Cooper had been his DS for a while, and so had Diane Fry. He didn’t really mind either of them. At least he knew where he stood, even if it was far down the scale of estimation in Fry’s case. But with Dev Sharma, he just wasn’t sure.

  It was a feeling Murfin wasn’t familiar with. He’d always prided himself on being able to sum people up pretty quickly, whether they were colleagues or suspects or members of the public. He’d have their number, get them pegged accurately before they’d even noticed him hanging around in the background. It was his talent, a skill he’d learned from his decades on the force. Yet DS Sharma evaded his assessment.

  Murfin patted his jacket pockets and made sure he had supplies for the trip. If he was going to Manchester, he needed something to comfort him.

  Dev Sharma nodded briskly when Murfin told him where he would be.

  ‘Don’t hang around,’ said Sharma. ‘There’s a lot of work for you to do here.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I’ve got a little list.’

  Sharma frowned. ‘We’re really busy, Gavin.’

  Murfin sighed. He couldn’t fault the way Sharma did the job. He was always efficient and fair, helped him when he needed guidance, praised him if he did something well. But it was the man behind the façade that Murfin couldn’t reach. He had no idea what sort of person Sharma was on the inside. All he knew was that this DS was someone you wouldn’t go down the pub for a drink with, wouldn’t dare to try a risqué joke on. Murfin’s wrists still stung from the number of times they’d been slapped for being politically incorrect. He was feeling uneasy and unsettled, and he didn’t like it.

  Ben Cooper was someone he could talk to. But Ben was a DI now, shut away in his own separate office like a proper boss. You had to knock on the door to speak to him these days. There might be others in the CID room who felt the same way, though.

  Murfin looked around and caught Carol Villiers’s eye. Instinctively, he smiled and winked. She raised her eyebrows and gave him a puzzled glare. Murfin switched off the smile immediately. Was he being inappropriate? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t really know what the word meant, but he’d heard it used a lot recently.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  Villiers looked even more puzzled. Murfin straightened his tie again, just for something to do with his hands, and headed out of the door.

  The Roths lived just outside Hayfield, deep in a network of lanes that no one but walkers would discover. Ben Cooper and Carol Villiers passed a small hamlet halfway up Valley Road. Beyond it, the road became even narrower, bounded by a stone wall and overhung with dense trees. One property seemed to be accessible only by a footbridge over the river.

  Up ahead lay a pedestrian access to the campsite where Sam and Pat Warburton had stayed. But just before a terraced row of houses, Cooper turned the Toyota onto a track and headed away from the river. A neat sign at the bottom of the track indicated that he was approaching Trespass Lodge.

  After a few bends, the house came into view among the trees. From this viewpoint, it seemed enormous – a long Georgian frontage with perfectly symmetrical mullioned windows and a stone portico at the front door. An extra wing had been added at some time, tastefully designed by some previous Victorian owner. Cooper wondered what the house had been called back then. The Victorians had no idea of the Mass Trespass, and would never have approved. It was only after the First World War that the working class started to get bolshie.

  Imitation gas lamps lined the drive near the house. A water feature resembling a miniature version of the Emperor Fountain at Chatsworth House stood in the middle of a neat swathe of grass, alongside a large pond that had ambitions to be a lake, with a patch of rushes but no bird life. Beyond it was a stable block and paddock, but Cooper could see no sign of horses. A range of garages looked much better used, and other outbuildings had been converted and modernised, perhaps as guest accommodation or for holiday lets.

  A pair of French bulldogs scampered about on the lawn. They turned their snub noses and bat ears towards him as he approached. He could imagine what his brother would say about dogs like this. For Matt, working dogs were the only kind that mattered. These Frenchies he would dismiss as fashion accessories.

  Cooper parked on the gravel and Villiers rang the bell. Elsa Roth answered the door herself. She was slim and dark-haired with bright eyes that assessed Cooper and Villiers instantly.

  ‘Yes, please come in,’ she said. ‘Darius is expecting you.’

  They were led into a large hallway through the porticoed entrance, which seemed out of keeping with the age and style of the house. The huge sitting room had black sofas with black cushions round a wood-burning stove and a massive flat-screen TV. Through a stable-type door the kitchen boasted a four-oven Aga and a long pine table beneath exposed beams. When Roth opened another door, Cooper got the distinctive whiff of chlorine. An indoor swimming pool somewhere.

  ‘We’d like to talk to you too, Mrs Roth,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I suppose you will. Though I don’t know anything really.’

  ‘I take it you know about the Kinder Mass Trespass, though? Your house is named after it.’

  She looked vague. ‘It’s an interest of Darius’s. Something one of his family was involved in.’

  ‘Do you know when it was?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure. I’m not good on historical dates.’ She laughed. ‘Before my time anyway.’

  Cooper was struck by the womb-like silence of the lodge. Every house he entered had a different soundscape. The acoustics depended on the thickness of the walls, the depth of the carpet, the ratio of tiles to curtain, the size of the windows and the effectiveness of the double glazing. And the sounds changed, depending on the time of day, the atmospheric conditions, the number of people in the room.

  Here, the sound was so different from the Athertons’ semi-detached in Edendale with its rustling scene suits, the voices of busy professionals, the noise of traffic in the road outside. He might as well have been in another world, a different country.

 
The furnishings were expensive, he could see that. The carpets were thick, the wooden floors highly polished, the Georgian plasterwork beautifully preserved. But there was something about the furniture, the choice of pictures on the walls that suggested there wasn’t the taste to go with the wealth. It was something he often noticed in stately homes. Each owner wanted to put their own mark on a property, and their tastes didn’t always fit in.

  ‘We were the founders of the New Trespassers,’ said Darius. ‘One of my ancestors took part in the original Kinder Trespass in 1932.’

  ‘That must have been – what, your grandfather?’

  ‘Yes, his name was Daniel Roth. He was only a young man at the time of the trespass. Just eighteen years old, I believe. But he was a man of strong principles, like a lot of his friends. He stood up for what he believed in, and he became a martyr. I think those are the sort of people we should be remembering, don’t you?’

  Roth pushed a lock of his wavy blond hair back into place. He was reclining in an armchair, his long legs stretched out on a Wilton rug. His most prominent facial feature was his nose, which Cooper thought was the type referred to as aquiline. It made him think of Roman emperors and Egyptian pharaohs, someone noble and aristocratic.

  ‘Most of the group came from Manchester, didn’t they?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yes, they were mostly young working-class men,’ said Roth with a pleased smile. ‘My grandfather Daniel worked in a railway yard in Gorton. They made steam locomotives. When the weather was good, they could see the upper slopes of Kinder Scout from where they lived. It must have looked like a promised land from the back streets of Gorton.’

  Cooper was examining the elegant surroundings. A lot of money had been invested here.

  ‘You’re in the property business, I believe?’ he said.

  ‘For my sins, yes. Property development. We have a substantial portfolio of properties in Greater Manchester and right across the North-West.’

  ‘Has that always been your family concern?’

  ‘Not at all. We used to be in textiles,’ said Roth. ‘We got out of that business in my father’s day. It was one of the best things I persuaded him to do. No one can compete with the Chinese these days. Property is a different matter.’

  ‘Is your father still alive?’

  ‘Sadly, no. We lost him ten years ago. A heart attack. He was only seventy, but he pushed himself very hard all his life. You have to do that if you’re going to make a success in business. So we inherited control of the business from Dad when he died.’

  Cooper doubted whether Darius pushed himself so hard that he’d end up in an early grave. He treated himself too well, perhaps enjoyed the trappings of wealth without feeling the compulsion to add to it in the way his forebears had. It was often the case when money was inherited. It all came too easy. And it could disappear just as readily.

  But there was only one aspect of his family history that Darius Roth really wanted to talk about.

  ‘I’ve got an archive of everything published about the Mass Trespass,’ he said. ‘All the newspaper cuttings, everything. I employed a researcher to do a proper job for me. Look, there’s a framed photograph over the fireplace. My grandfather is the one in the middle.’

  Cooper dutifully studied the photograph. And there they were – five of those laughing young men with the Brylcreemed hair, the tweed jackets and shorts. They all carried heavy-looking backpacks as they linked arms ready for the expedition onto the forbidden territory of Kinder Scout.

  ‘They called it rambling in those days,’ said Darius. ‘It sounds a bit too aimless for us now, doesn’t it? As if there’s no real purpose or destination to it. We can’t stand that idea in the twenty-first century. So most of us call ourselves walkers. The more serious ones are hikers.’

  ‘But October isn’t the anniversary of the Mass Trespass, is it?’ said Cooper.

  Roth nodded approvingly. ‘No, the original walk was in April when we began it eight years ago. But that’s a bad time of year for most of us.’

  Cooper looked round and noticed that Elsa Roth had disappeared. At some point she’d slipped quietly out of the room and left Darius to do all the talking.

  ‘There’s been a suggestion that Faith Matthew didn’t fall but was pushed,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Who told you that?’ demanded Roth. ‘It’s ludicrous.’

  ‘I can’t tell you where the suggestion came from, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Pushed? I don’t believe it for a second.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we have to make inquiries.’

  ‘Well, if it’s true, there must have been someone else on the moor, then,’ said Darius. ‘It can’t have been one of my group.’

  ‘What? Someone followed you onto Kinder Scout to attack Faith Matthew?’

  ‘Isn’t it possible that Faith wasn’t always intended to be the victim? She might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been any one of us.’

  ‘Did you actually see any signs of anyone else up there?’

  ‘Well, there were noises,’ said Darius. ‘I couldn’t have put a name to them myself. I didn’t really take any notice.’

  ‘Did you see any lights?’

  ‘Like a torch, you mean? They’re not much use in fog, are they? The beam doesn’t travel very far.’

  ‘No, that’s right.’

  Roth walked to the window and gazed out at a manicured lawn. The grounds of Trespass Lodge seemed to be extensive. From here, Cooper could see nothing that resembled a boundary – only trees, flower beds and swathes of grass gently undulating towards a spectacular view of Chinley Head and the Sett Valley, with a dark copse of trees covering the southern slopes of Kinder Scout itself.

  ‘Pushed?’ said Roth again. ‘It’s unbelievable. Just incredible.’

  As if by magic, Elsa reappeared and took Roth’s arm.

  ‘It’s OK, Teddy Bear,’ she said.

  Reluctantly, Roth allowed himself to be led away.

  ‘Teddy Bear?’ said Villiers with a twist of her mouth as if she’d tasted something too sour. ‘Really?’

  Cooper shrugged. ‘I’ve heard worse.’

  ‘I suppose what goes in relationships can be surprising. But they should keep that kind of intimate stuff to themselves.’

  ‘It does rather ruin Mr Roth’s image,’ said Cooper.

  Villiers laughed quietly. ‘I’ll think of it every time now when he starts getting pompous.’

  Elsa came back on her own as they were leaving. Cooper had stopped at a large framed photograph in the hall. It showed a climber looking up at the camera from a dizzying height as he clung to a sheer rock face. A printed caption said the photo was taken on the Black Dog Arête at Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire.

  ‘Who is this, Mrs Roth?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s Darius’s brother, Magnus.’

  ‘He’s a rock climber?’

  ‘He was, until the accident.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He was killed climbing in the Alps,’ said Elsa. ‘He fell sixty feet when the edge of an arête cut his rope.’

  ‘I’m sorry. When was that?’

  ‘Six years ago.’

  ‘Were he and Darius very close?’

  ‘Very. Magnus gave Darius someone to live up to.’

  Elsa walked them out to their car.

  ‘You don’t seem to know much about the history of the Mass Trespass yourself, Mrs Roth,’ said Cooper.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me, to be honest,’ she said. ‘I come on the walks because of Darius really. He likes me to be with him.’

  ‘Where did you originally meet him?’

  ‘Oh, some swish dinner at a hotel in Manchester. A conference, or a trade organisation that Darius was a member of. I can’t remember the event exactly.’

  ‘You can’t remember? But if you were at the dinner too—’

  She laughed. ‘Oh no. I was a waitress working at the hotel. I must have caught Darius
’s eye that night. He asked for my phone number. A lot of blokes used to do that, but Darius actually rang the next day. And’ – she threw out her hands as if gesturing at the elegant house around her – ‘the rest is history. It’s been like a fantasy for me.’

  13

  Sophie Pullen wore a set of gold bangles that glittered whenever she raised her hand. If she’d been his teacher, Cooper would have found that distracting. But when he was at school, any flicker of light was appealing.

  ‘We were all so cold and exhausted,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s hard to remember exactly what happened or who said what.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Cooper had always had a soft spot for redheads. Sophie Pullen had that pale, translucent skin that often went with her hair colour. She had blue eyes too, intense and penetrating, the sort of eyes that didn’t miss very much. He imagined she might have let her hair grow long when she was younger, but now it was cropped short and businesslike. A plain grey skirt with a white blouse and black cardigan only seemed to emphasise her looks.

  ‘I’d been walking near Liam Sharpe,’ she said. ‘Liam is a bit slower than everyone else on a steep uphill stretch, but he always catches up eventually. He never gives in.’

  Cooper considered that for a moment. Whenever he went out walking with a group himself, the fittest members always slowed down to stay together with the slowest. They never left people behind and forced them to catch up. The Trespassers sounded more and more as if they were out to compete with each other and humiliate the weakest.

  ‘But later on?’ he said.

  ‘There was a cry,’ said Sophie. ‘I thought it was from an animal of some kind. A fox, perhaps.’

  ‘Not during the day.’

  Cooper was listening intently to Sophie as she described her experience on Kinder Scout. He always tried very hard to listen to what people were saying and absorb small details. A detail was often what came back to him later, a memory of something apparently trivial that a witness had mentioned.

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Well, a bird, then. I don’t know. It seemed to come from a long way off. Some distance across the moors.’