Fall Down Dead

by Stephen Booth

  ‘He’s going out of town,’ said Murfin. ‘I’ve still got him in sight.’

  ‘Where do you think he’s going?’ Villiers asked Cooper.

  ‘If he’s southbound on the A6, I’ll bet he’s going to his parents’ house in Stockport.’

  ‘I thought Jonathan didn’t get on with his parents. He didn’t even want to speak to his mother the day after his sister was killed.’

  ‘True,’ said Cooper. ‘But where else is he going to go when he knows he’s in trouble? He must be aware that we’re looking for him, but he doesn’t know what to do. He can’t escape, so he’ll head for a sanctuary.’

  ‘He’ll go home to Mum.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Murfin reported that the Subaru had left the A6 at the turning for Stockport Crematorium.

  ‘There he goes,’ said Cooper. ‘His parents live in Heaviley, Gavin. He’ll be home in a few minutes.’

  ‘Oh, hold on,’ said Murfin. He swore under his breath. ‘Damn, I think he’s spotted me. He must have seen me following him from Whalley Range. It was too obvious when I turned off to the crematorium right behind him.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ demanded Cooper.

  ‘He’s turning round. Heading straight back onto the A6 again.’

  ‘Still southbound?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, Ben.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Let me know straight away if he turns off again.’

  Cooper parked his Toyota in a layby on the A6 and watched for Jonathan Matthew’s Subaru to come by. Then he fell in behind Murfin’s green Skoda a couple of vehicles back. When they hit Hazel Grove, he rang Murfin.

  ‘You can drop out now, Gavin.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Ten miles later, Jonathan’s car left the A6 at the Blackbrook exit near Chapel-en-le-Frith and turned onto Sheffield Road. Once they were in Derbyshire, the rising altitude was evident from the banks of mist rolling down from the hills. At a few hundred feet above sea level, the climate was completely different. It could be inches deep in snow here while Manchester barely experienced a drizzle.

  ‘He’s stopped,’ said Villiers after another mile or two.

  ‘The Chestnut Centre,’ said Cooper. ‘What does he want there?’

  But he stopped for only a moment, as if to get his bearings. He set off again, driving up the hill at Slackhall from the Chestnut Centre and taking the back road to Sparrowpit to reach the A623.

  ‘Do you think he’s lost?’ said Villiers.

  ‘I don’t know. But if he stays on these roads, we’ll have to call in a Road Traffic unit for a pursuit.’

  Cooper knew the narrow back lanes were dangerous at the best of times if you were travelling at speed, but the thickening fog would make anyone think twice. You had no idea what might be coming round the next bend until their headlights were in front of your bonnet and there was no room to pass.

  But Jonathan seemed to have ceased to care. Instead of staying on the main road, he swung north again at Peak Forest and followed the winding lanes round the Limestone Way and Hucklow Moor.

  The Eden Valley railway line emerged from a tunnel here on its way from Edendale to the junction at Doveholes. Straight ahead was a level crossing on a lane that led from Hucklow and climbed over the moor towards the furthest edges of the town. Visibility was growing worse, the isolated farmsteads on the lower slopes sinking into mist like ships disappearing under the waves.

  Then red brake lights flared ahead.

  ‘He’s slowing down,’ said Villiers. ‘Is he stopping again?’

  ‘I think the crossing gates are down.’

  ‘We’ve got him, then.’

  But instead of stopping, Jonathan Matthew’s car swung suddenly to the right and the brake lights went out.

  ‘No. He’s going round the gate,’ said Villiers.

  ‘Idiot. He can’t see anything in this fog. There could be—’

  But it was too late to complete the sentence. The front end of a diesel locomotive emerged from the fog, the beams of its lights briefly catching Jonathan Matthew’s shocked face through the window of his Impreza.

  A mournful horn blasted out. But there was no time for the train driver to brake. Cooper heard a smash and a screeching of metal as the locomotive struck the car and pushed it along the track until it lurched sideways and began to slide down the banking. It came to a halt with a loud thump and a shattering of glass.

  ‘It sounds as though it’s hit a tree.’

  ‘Let’s see if he’s still alive.’

  They got out of the car. As they crossed the line, Cooper saw movement in the fog. Something falling from above. But they were just leaves, wafting slowly down from the trees and settling onto the wet track.

  34

  Diane Fry walked into the police station at West Street. She’d almost forgotten what a dump it was. It was hard to think that she’d worked here for years and had put up with these conditions. She hoped she never had to come here again.

  She went straight to Ben Cooper’s office and walked in with a perfunctory tap on the door.

  Cooper looked up.

  ‘Diane?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘DCI Mackenzie wants to know what’s happening with the Darius Roth murder inquiry. He thinks you might be taking matters into your own hands.’

  ‘Tell Mr Mackenzie it’s all under control. We already have a suspect in custody.’

  ‘I know that. Have you interviewed him yet?’

  ‘We’re just about to. Do you want to sit in?’

  Fry hesitated. ‘No. But keep us informed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Without waiting for an invitation, she sat down on a chair in front of his desk, suddenly feeling weary.

  ‘And have you sorted out the problem with the Atherton case?’ she asked.

  Cooper raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you know about that?’

  ‘A conflict in a witness statement from the neighbour, isn’t there? The timing of a phone call.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘It’s probably quite simple,’ she said.

  ‘It may look simple to you, Diane, but it isn’t so easy when you’ve got a witness to interview who might be mistaken about what happened.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s mistaken,’ said Fry. ‘I think you are.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve been trusting Gary Atherton to tell the truth.’

  ‘He’s confessed to killing his wife. He was still there holding the murder weapon when the FOSAs arrived. He says he made the call when he realised what he’d done.’

  ‘According to the files, there’s a teenage son,’ said Fry.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him if he made the call?’

  ‘And his father is covering for him? It’s a hell of a risk for Gary Atherton. He’ll get a life sentence if he’s convicted.’

  ‘But he won’t if there’s a flaw in your evidence,’ said Fry. ‘The timing of that 999 call. I spotted it myself.’

  ‘It was you who kicked the file back?’

  ‘I took it to Mr Mackenzie anyway. I’m sorry if it reflected badly on you.’

  Cooper thought of poor old Dev Sharma’s disappointment that a hole had been poked in his case so easily. But of course he could never mention Sharma’s role. Cooper was the DI in this department. It was his team. It was part of the job to take the responsibility when things went wrong.

  ‘Sometimes it just needs a fresh pair of eyes to see where someone has made an assumption or accepted a statement on trust,’ said Fry. ‘That’s often where it all goes off the rails, isn’t it? Trusting the wrong person.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘You’re right again.’

  They had Jonathan Matthew waiting in Interview Room 1. He’d been treated for his injuries and released into custody. The fact that he hadn’t suffered any broken bones or internal injuries was down to a combination of seat belt, air bag and a lot of good luck. His ancient Subaru was a write-off,
of course.

  ‘Jonathan, why did you try to run?’ asked Ben Cooper.

  ‘I’ve never trusted the cops,’ he said. ‘Once you fix on someone as a suspect, you never change your minds. You’ll have me in court without any proper evidence and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘Evidence of what?’

  ‘Of—’ Jonathan stopped and scowled suspiciously. ‘Of whatever you’re arresting me for.’

  Cooper couldn’t help but laugh. He’d never heard it put quite like that before.

  ‘You’re here for questioning in connection with the murder of Mr Darius Roth,’ he said.

  Jonathan lowered his head. Was this as far as he’d planned? An attempted escape with his guitar in the back of the Subaru, like a hippy on a road trip? But he hadn’t even worked that out properly. He’d left his guitar behind at his flat in his haste to get away.

  ‘Faith was behaving oddly. It was so obvious,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Her relationship with Darius.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did Greg suspect?’

  ‘She’d finished with Greg Barrett.’

  ‘Mr Barrett doesn’t seem to be aware of that.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she was intending to finish it. She’d developed other interests.’

  ‘With Darius?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did Elsa know?’

  ‘I think she knew everything about Darius that she wanted to,’ said Jonathan. ‘Anything she didn’t want to know she just ignored, pretended it didn’t exist or that it never happened. She lives in her own world, that one. And it’s partly a fantasy.’

  Cooper remembered his earlier conversation with Elsa Roth. Elsa herself had said, It’s like a fantasy. And perhaps it was, even more than she understood.

  ‘Well, what would you have done?’ said Jonathan.

  His question and his suddenly penetrating stare caught Cooper off guard. He remembered Jonathan talking about the feeling of guilt at not being able to protect Faith. He’d empathised with that feeling. He’d felt the guilt himself, wondered what he might do if he got the opportunity for revenge on the person responsible. What would he have done?

  ‘You took the teddy bear from Faith’s house on Monday evening, didn’t you?’ said Cooper. ‘So it must have been sometime during that day, after you’d heard she was dead. You spoke to somebody then.’

  ‘Teddy Bear,’ said Jonathan. ‘That’s what Elsa called him. I hope he got the message.’

  But Cooper wasn’t sure Darius did get the message. If his relationship with Faith had been as close as Jonathan suggested, he might have recognised the teddy bear by its red bow tie.

  ‘Jonathan, who told you Darius Roth killed your sister?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I think it does.’

  Jonathan’s face set into a stubborn mask. He had a cut below his eye and his cheekbone was bruised. It would be difficult to tell now which injuries he’d sustained in the crash and which were inflicted by Darius Roth as he defended himself from attack on that gallery in the old chapel.

  ‘Did you actually see Darius push your sister off that rock?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘He was there,’ repeated Jonathan. ‘Who else could it have been?’

  Cooper sat back. There was nothing he could say to that.

  ‘The perfect murder,’ said Jonathan. ‘That’s what Darius would have called it. But he made a mistake. There was a witness.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I can’t say. But I couldn’t let him get away with it, could I?’

  ‘A lot of people who commit murder think they’re doing the right thing,’ said Cooper. ‘But almost all of them are mistaken.’

  Jonathan continued to look stubborn. ‘Still, there was a witness.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Cooper. ‘Unfortunately.’

  An hour or two hitting the phones got Ben Cooper the answers he needed. When you were able to ask exactly the right question, people were much more likely to tell you the truth.

  ‘We’ve spoken to all the members of the New Trespassers now,’ said Villiers. ‘It’s the same with almost every one of them.’

  And there was the connection. Darius Roth had a financial hold on all of them – he’d bailed out the Goulds’ nursery when their lease ran out, bought their land and leased it back to them. He was subsidising the two students through college so they didn’t have to get jobs working in bars in the evenings. He’d rescued the Warburtons when they had a pension disaster. He’d set Liam up in a nice apartment near Manchester Airport so he could move in with the Hungarian chef.

  And what about Nick Haslam? He’d been facing a drink-driving charge and was likely to get banned. Roth had paid for good lawyers to save his licence. And of course he was paying for the promotion of Jonathan Matthew’s band.

  Then there was Elsa herself. She was much younger than Darius, but she wasn’t the typical trophy wife. He’d married a waitress, not a catwalk model. Cooper suspected a large part of Elsa’s appeal had been her submissiveness. Men like Darius Roth seemed to like that. Cooper had never been able to see the attraction of it himself. In his opinion, if you wanted slavish devotion, you’d be better off getting a dog.

  ‘You’d think people would be grateful for being financially supported. But often they’re not. They hate the feeling of being dependent and they become resentful about it. Patronage, it’s called. Artists used to thrive on it. Now they’re too independent. That’s why Jonathan came to hate Darius. He longed to bite the hand that fed him. He’d become a bit unstable anyway. Darius had told him to stay off the drugs if he wanted the money to keep coming in. And he was trying. But when Jonathan felt really bad, who do you think he focused the blame on for his torment?’

  ‘Darius.’

  ‘But somebody used Jonathan, didn’t they? They made him suspect that Darius had killed Faith. They channelled his anger.’

  Cooper was still thinking about Darius Roth. Many psychopaths were very charming and adept at manipulating people around them. They could pass as perfectly normal in society, even appear convincingly successful and affluent. But it was all a façade. Underneath, there was a seriously disturbed personality.

  ‘None of the walking-club members ever thought to question his façade as a wealthy property developer. Why should they? And Elsa certainly didn’t care. She had no curiosity about his business dealings as long as the money was coming in to support their lifestyle. She knew he went off to meetings and had business calls in his office at home, but she never inquired what they were about.’

  ‘I’m sure he would have discouraged her from inquiring if she ever showed an interest. The one thing Elsa Roth was good at – doing what Darius wanted. She would have avoided anything that might annoy him.’

  ‘She must have felt in a very precarious position, I suppose.’

  ‘But she was his wife. Even if he divorced her, she would have been in line for a handsome settlement.’

  ‘I think it was more than just financial self-preservation. I believe she was very afraid of him. She must have sensed something in Darius that the others didn’t.’

  ‘What a pity she didn’t tell us before it was too late.’

  So there were only two people in that group Darius didn’t have a financial hold over. Faith Matthew and Sophie Pullen. One of them was dead. And perhaps he’d been right to trust what the other was saying.

  ‘Any one of them might have killed Faith to protect Darius. I wonder what story he told them in the clubhouse that night.’

  ‘Whatever it was, I’m sure he was very convincing.’

  So Darius had bought their loyalty. He’d paid for their friendship. And with Elsa it was more than just friendship. Perhaps it was with the students too. Which one of them had been willing to go even further for him and commit murder?

  What about previous members? Had they angere
d him in some way and had their financial support withdrawn? Or did they just have enough? They’d been forced to pander to his obsessions. Yet they were all just part of his façade, an elaborate role play that must have gone some way to satisfy his ego.

  ‘What about Faith, though?’ said Cooper.

  ‘There’s no financial connection with Darius Roth that we can see.’

  Cooper considered that for a moment.

  ‘Carol, I need you to go to that hospital where Faith Matthew worked,’ he said.

  ‘Meadow Park?’

  ‘Yes. See if you can find out why she left. We know Darius was a patient there. I want to establish if there’s a previous connection between them. If so, it might have begun at the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll get straight on to it in the morning.’

  ‘It was all about to come to an end anyway,’ said Irvine.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at the figures.’

  Cooper’s ability to read spreadsheets was a recently acquired skill. Some of it meant little to him, but he recognised a downward trend, knew what figures meant when they were printed in red or placed in brackets.

  Irvine’s inquiries into his company showed it to be on the verge of collapse. Darius had been syphoning off the profits and selling assets until the business was on its knees. The money was about to run out. Within months he would be bankrupt. Liam Sharpe’s rent wouldn’t be paid, the Goulds’ land would be sold off, and the students’ allowances stopped.

  Did Jonathan Matthew find out there was no money? Did he confront Darius Roth, furious to find himself indebted to his sister’s killer? Maybe Roth had lorded it over him, as just another beneficiary of his patronage. But if so, he’d chosen the wrong person to patronise. The life of Jonathan’s sister had meant more to him than money or music.

  But someone else had used Jonathan Matthew to target Darius. Was it another member of the group who got wind of the problem? Had their funding failed? It was interesting to speculate what might have happened next time the walking group met in that clubhouse in the old chapel.

  ‘You see, Darius inherited control of the businesses when his brother died six years ago,’ said Irvine. ‘In October.’