Fall Down Dead

by Stephen Booth

  Darius’s interests seem to be fancy cars and golf – he’s a member at New Mills and Disley golf clubs. He married Elsa eight years ago. They moved into their property in Hayfield and changed the name to Trespass Lodge. Darius’s obsession is with the Kinder Mass Trespass of 1932, in which his grandfather took part.

  ‘Mmm.’ Cooper nodded to himself. There must be a lot of people descended from the mass trespassers, like the number of Americans descended from the Pilgrim Fathers. Most of them didn’t make a big fuss about it.

  He turned to the next sheet.

  Elsa Roth

  Mrs Roth is aged twenty-seven. Her maiden name is Montgomery. Elsa’s family are from Connah’s Quay in North Wales, but she came to Manchester when she was eighteen to attend college. She holds a Level 2 Diploma in animal care from Coleg Cambria in Northop. Her ambition was to study for a degree in veterinary medicine at Manchester Metropolitan University, but she never completed her training. She met Darius Roth at a corporate event while she was working part-time as a waitress to earn some extra money to support herself in her studies. They married fairly soon afterwards, and they’ve been together now for eight years.

  Mrs Roth is an animal lover and owns a Maine Coone cat and two pedigree French bulldogs called Buddy and Barkley.

  Cooper was struck by the contrast between Darius and Elsa, even in those brief summaries. Wealth and success seemed to have come to Darius without much effort on his part, while Elsa had never achieved her ambitions. Buddy and Barkley were the last traces of her hopes of being a vet – not forgetting the Maine Coone, who didn’t seem to have a name. Nor had the cat been evident on Cooper’s visit to Trespass Lodge.

  Jonathan Matthew

  Jonathan is aged twenty-six and is a graphic designer. He works for a large advertising agency based at the Digital World Centre in Salford Quays. He was born in Stockport and educated at Kingsway School and Stockport College. His parents live in Stockport. His father, Jack Matthew, is a partner in a local firm of solicitors, and his mother, Jennifer Matthew, is a charity co-ordinator.

  Jonathan rents a flat in Whalley Range, Manchester. He drives a Subaru Impreza but commutes to work in Salford Quays by bus and Metrolink tram.

  He’s the younger brother by four years of the victim, Faith Matthew. He was close to his sister, but not his parents.

  Jonathan plays bass guitar with a band recently set up, and he hopes to be a full-time musician, an ambition his parents disapprove of.

  Cooper read through Jonathan Matthew’s summary again. There was something about Jonathan that didn’t ring true for him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Perhaps it was his feeling from these first three summaries that everyone was living behind a façade, or aspiring to be something else.

  But here was one he could be sure was different.

  Sophie Pullen

  Miss Pullen is aged twenty-eight, a teacher at St Anselm’s Primary School in Buxton. She teaches year five, preparing pupils for Key Stage 2. She only started teaching there this term. Before that, she worked at a school in Stockport.

  Sophie was married briefly when she was twenty-one, but divorced and reverted to her maiden name. After the divorce, she became eligible for a shared-ownership scheme with a housing association and now occupies a two-bedroom semi on a new development off Manchester Road in Chapel-en-le-Frith.

  She’s local, born in Buxton, where her parents still live. There are two sisters, one older and one younger, both married with families and living in the area. Her mother is also a teacher and works at Lady Manners School in Bakewell. Her father is a GP. Sophie is a volunteer at the Chapel-en-le-Frith Playhouse.

  Cooper was surprised that Sophie Pullen had been married previously. But he moved straight on to the next summary.

  Nick Haslam

  Mr Haslam is aged twenty-nine. He works as an IT consultant with a company based on a business park off the M60 near Manchester. He helps businesses set up IT networks, so he frequently travels around the area. He lives in New Mills, where he shares a house with two other young professionals.

  Mr Haslam met Sophie Pullen at a mutual friend’s birthday party in Buxton, and they’ve been in a relationship for about two years. He faced a drink-drive charge a couple of years ago but escaped a disqualification.

  So Nick Haslam was the first one of the group who had a criminal record. He didn’t come across as the most responsible of people. What did Sophie Pullen see in him?

  Well, that was the eternal puzzle, wasn’t it? No one could analyse the mysteries of mutual attraction. Often couples seemed to be complete opposites of each other. There was no point trying to figure that out.

  The next two had been grouped together.

  Sam and Pat Warburton

  Mr and Mrs Warburton are both retired, aged sixty-seven and sixty-four respectively. Sam was a firefighter with Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue, and retired as a station officer, while Pat was a care worker for many years in nursing homes. They’re from Manchester and live in the quiet suburb of Didsbury.

  They spend their time cruising, touring with their caravan and visiting grandchildren. They particularly like Scandinavian cruises – the Norwegian fjords, Icelandic glaciers, etc. They have a son and a daughter. One lives in London, and the other emigrated to Australia. There are several grandchildren. Mr and Mrs Warburton are planning to fly to Australia next year to see the daughter’s family. They’re keen walkers, but Sam has a history of heart problems. After the incident on Kinder Scout, he was diagnosed with low blood sugar.

  Was a connection emerging? Darius Roth and the Warburtons were from Manchester, Elsa had moved there for college, and Jonathan Matthew lived there. But it was hardly significant. Manchester was the nearest big city to that side of the Peak District, a huge urban sprawl. Half of the people who lived in the Hayfield area would have a link to Manchester in one way or another. It was statistically irrelevant.

  Theo and Duncan Gould

  The Gould brothers are Derbyshire people from a farming family. They run a small-scale plant nursery just outside Chinley. Neither of them has ever married and they have no immediate family. They share an old farmhouse next to the nursery. It’s a bit run-down, left to them by their parents, who were farmers. Most of the land was sold off when their father died and their mother went into a nursing home. They kept the land and the buildings they needed to establish the business. They also do a bit of landscape gardening on the side. But it’s seasonal work, as is the nursery.

  The Goulds have a Land Rover Discovery but turned up for the walk on Sunday in the Renault Trafic van they use for the business. Theo is the elder of the two by a few years. He’s fifty-two, and Duncan is forty-eight. Theo has hearing loss, wears a hearing aid.

  No story of wealth and success there. If the nursery was small-scale and their landscape gardening seasonal, it was hard to see how they made enough profit for the two of them to live on, even without families to support. It sounded as though the Goulds didn’t live a very lavish lifestyle. In fact, their existence sounded a bit precarious.

  Liam Sharpe

  Mr Sharpe is aged thirty, a check-in supervisor at Manchester Airport. He recently moved into a penthouse apartment in Bramhall, close to the airport. He’s in a relationship with a Hungarian chef called Tamás Horváth, who he shares the apartment with.

  Mr Sharpe comes from a big Liverpool Irish family, with five siblings, but he doesn’t seem to have much contact with any of them as far as we can tell. He’s a graduate of Edge Hill University, Liverpool, with a BSc in business management.

  Villiers had added a footnote to the reference to Bramhall. It said:

  A very upmarket area where a lot of the Manchester United and Manchester City footballers live. Two-bedroom apartments go for upwards of half a million pounds. The rent on this one is two thousand five hundred pounds a month.

  The unspoken inference was a question mark over how Liam Sharpe had been able to afford the expensive apartment. Check-in superviso
rs presumably didn’t earn huge salaries. So what about the Hungarian boyfriend? Just because he was a migrant worker from the European Union, it didn’t mean he was on the minimum wage or a zero-hours contract. He might be a celebrated chef in charge of the kitchen at a Michelin-starred restaurant, or from a well-off Czech family.

  And finally:

  Millie Taylor and Karina Scott

  Miss Taylor and Miss Scott are both nineteen, students at Manchester Metropolitan University. They’re in their second year studying tourism management at the School of Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management on Cavendish Street.

  Millie comes from Oldham, and Karina is a Yorkshire girl from Sheffield. They met at university and became close friends. They’re living in student accommodation at Daisy Bank. As part of their course, they’ve been studying the impact of tourism on national parks like the Peak District, hence their interest in Kinder Scout. They’ve done various part-time jobs working in bars and restaurants to make ends meet. They’re very environmentally conscious, support the Green Party, are members of the Manchester Metropolitan Environment and Geography Society, and do volunteer work for Hulme Community Garden Centre. Millie wants to be a chartered environmentalist, and Karina plans to work in sustainable tourism.

  And that was the lot. Manchester again, but that was the only evident connection. Besides, Millie Taylor and Karina Scott had the most credible motive for being on Kinder Scout that day. It was just a pity for them they’d linked up with Darius Roth’s walking group.

  And yet . . . there was one among them who hadn’t linked up with Darius through the walking group or through any interest in the Kinder Trespass. One individual had a link to him that was much more personal.

  That interested Cooper. It was like finding the odd one out in a puzzle. And of course, personal feelings were a much more credible motive for a violent crime. If financial and emotional stability were threatened, anyone might lash out to defend their position. Even the quietest of women.

  19

  Diane Fry waited patiently, watching her interviewer take his time. She had no problem with awkward silences. She used them herself, and had never felt any compulsion to fill the void by blurting out information. If Martin Jackson hoped that was going to work, he was wrong.

  ‘So, your sister,’ said Jackson at last. ‘She travelled to Sheffield from the West Midlands, didn’t she?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘And formed associations that were . . . shall we say . . . undesirable?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about those years Angie spent in Sheffield.’

  ‘And you might say that those sorts of associates were inevitable, given her drug habit.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘It’s very relevant, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? Relevant to what?’

  He didn’t give her an answer. ‘And how much do you know about what your sister has been doing in the meantime?’

  Now it was Fry’s turn to interpret her interviewer’s tone of voice. There was no doubt from his manner and the sudden tension in his posture that this was a crucial question.

  ‘Not very much,’ she said warily.

  ‘Do please share what you can,’ he said.

  ‘She turned her life around,’ said Fry. ‘In fact, my sister was recruited by the National Crime Agency as an informant.’

  ‘We know that. It was why she didn’t want to be contacted by you in Sheffield. Your interference might have damaged a major operation by the NCA.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of it at the time,’ said Fry. ‘I only discovered her involvement with the NCA later.’

  ‘Your sister told you, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Did she share any confidential information with you?’ asked Jackson.

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Are you sure of that, DS Fry?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  ‘So did you ever meet a man named Craig Reynolds?’

  ‘I don’t know the name.’

  ‘That’s not an answer to my question.’

  ‘If I don’t recognise the name, I can’t tell you whether I’ve met him,’ said Fry.

  ‘As it happens, Craig Reynolds is the father of your nephew, Zack.’

  ‘Oh, him. My sister mentioned him a few times, but I don’t believe I ever heard his surname. And no, I never met him.’

  Fry waited to be asked whether she’d had suspicions about Craig, but the question didn’t come. There would have been only one thing she could say. There were times when it was better not to know.

  Over the past months, she’d formed an image in her mind of Angie’s boyfriend, Craig, the father of her child. She knew he drove a Renault hatchback and was involved in some kind of business that brought him to Nottingham occasionally. She was sure it was dodgy, probably illegal. But she deliberately hadn’t asked.

  Then Craig had disappeared suddenly from Angie’s life. The next time she arrived at Diane’s home in Wilford, Angie was in a new relationship. His name is Sunil Kumar. Everyone calls him Sonny. And there was a kind of mother-in-law in the background too, referred to as Manjusha, who didn’t mind looking after the baby. Free childcare was a useful extra.

  Craig? Angie had said. I couldn’t have left Zack with him for the day, let alone his mother. She’s a drunken old slag.

  Fry still didn’t know what else was coming from Martin Jackson. But she was aware that not long ago an officer had faced allegations of breaching the Standards of Professional Behaviour in respect of ‘honesty and integrity’ and ‘discreditable conduct’ after he was found guilty of three charges of fraud.

  So she decided to take the initiative.

  ‘What exactly is it we’re here for?’ she said. ‘Are you looking for a reason to suspend me?’

  Jackson sat back in his chair and observed her like an interesting specimen in a zoo.

  ‘As you may know, very few police officers or members of staff are suspended from duty,’ he said. ‘The force policy is to seek to redeploy officers to low-risk roles instead. Any decision to suspend is made by the DCC and is reviewed monthly.’

  ‘And the tendency is for officers to resign while they’re suspended.’

  ‘That’s sometimes the case. You should also be aware that if an officer is allowed to resign while suspended, the constabulary provides a reference with the words “Resigned while under investigation”. All cases are taken to conclusion, even if an officer has resigned, so that the individual’s details can, where appropriate, be included on the College of Policing’s Disapproved Officer Register.’

  ‘I understand all that.’

  ‘Interesting. Very few officers have occasion in their careers to even think about the possibility of suspension, let alone look into the consequences.’

  ‘I remember all this from my training,’ said Fry.

  ‘So it hasn’t been on your mind?’

  ‘Is there a reason why it should have been?’

  Again he didn’t answer, but turned a page of his notes. Fry began to feel frustrated, as she did in an interview room when a suspect deflected every question with a ‘No comment’.

  ‘So let’s turn our attention back to your sister,’ said Jackson, and her heart sank. ‘When exactly did she tell you what she’d been involved in?’

  Ben Cooper arrived at the mortuary at Edendale District General Hospital, wondering if Chloe Young could show Darius Roth’s theory to be wrong. There must be some evidence, one way or the other, to establish whether Faith Matthew simply fell to her death or was pushed. If there was nothing from the post-mortem, he would be entirely dependent on forensic evidence from the scene.

  At work, Young’s hair was always tightly wound into a bun, two ponytails tied close together and secured with pins. She was still wearing her green mortuary coverall but had taken off the mask and cap, and was peeling off her glove
s as he entered her office.

  ‘Well, it’s tricky,’ she said. ‘There’s an extradural haematoma resulting from a skull fracture, which was the immediate cause of death.’

  ‘I’m interested in the position of the injuries on her body,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I know. As I suspected at the scene, the victim’s injuries are consistent with her falling while her body was twisting to the side. She fell with most of her weight on the right arm and leg, which were underneath her body. There are serious internal injuries, as well as the fracture of the skull, which could have caused her death on its own. But those are grouped on the right side too.’

  ‘And on the left side?’

  ‘The left side of her body is damaged in a relatively minor way,’ she said. ‘Mostly contusions from the rock, and a break in the left femur.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So cause of death is a combination of multiple trauma, internal injuries and the skull fracture. I’m not sure that really helps you.’

  ‘Is it possible she fell in that way?’ asked Cooper.

  Chloe Young shrugged. ‘Well, I’m afraid so. All I can say is that she was turning to the side for some reason. Inconclusive, perhaps. But that’s often the way it is, Ben.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  Young looked at him with a half-smile. ‘What were you hoping for, Ben?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest,’ he said, ‘I was hoping for something that looks suspicious but isn’t conclusive enough to confirm murder and oblige me to call in the Major Crime Unit.’

  ‘Well, that’s lucky,’ she said. ‘Because, as far as I’m concerned, that’s exactly what you’ve got.’

  The conversation with her sister was one Diane Fry had been hoping to forget. At her flat in Wilford, she’d shared her yuk sung chicken and vegetarian spring rolls with her unexpected visitor, conscious at first of an unusual awkwardness. Then Angie had sat back and taken a deep breath.

  ‘There’s something I should have told you a long time ago,’ she’d said. ‘About a part of my life I’ve always kept from you.’