Secrets of Death

by Stephen Booth

  ‘We’re trying to avoid using that term, if possible.’

  ‘I told him it was inappropriate.’

  ‘Good.’

  It dawned on Cooper that Luke Irvine might take more notice of Dev Sharma’s disapproval than anything his DI said. Now, that could be very useful.

  ‘I’d like you to supervise DCs Irvine and Hurst, who should be sifting through a stack of suicide cases recorded over the last few months. Chase them up. Make sure they let you know any potential links they find.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And Irvine is doing an online search on suicide websites.’

  ‘I could take that over,’ said Sharma immediately.

  Cooper considered it briefly. ‘No, let Luke run with it, but keep a close eye on him.’

  Sharma nodded. ‘I notice we have DC Murfin back again too,’ he said.

  ‘Ex-DC. He’s a civilian now. Bear that in mind, but use him wherever possible.’

  ‘And I imagine there are quite a few memos and emails for me to catch up on?’ said Sharma.

  ‘Yes.’ Cooper smiled. ‘Better get on with it, then, Dev.’

  Sharma stood up to leave. With his hand on the door handle, he turned back to Cooper.

  ‘You know, DI Cooper – I heard one of our spiritual leaders at the Geeta Bhawan Temple in Peartree talk about the subject of suicide once. He told us it was always wrong because it disrupts karma. He said the important thing to remember is that your suffering is justified.’

  ‘Justified?’

  Sharma gazed at him, his brown eyes suddenly intense.

  ‘Yes, justified,’ he said. ‘People fully deserve what they’re experiencing, because it’s a consequence of their own actions. Their actions in a former life.’

  And of course Diane Fry had arrived at West Street too. She entered the CID room as if she’d never left E Division. With a nod to Cooper, she cast a critical eye around the room.

  ‘Isn’t that Gavin Murfin?’ hissed Fry when she got Cooper on his own.

  ‘You know perfectly well it is. You worked with him for long enough. You could hardly have forgotten what he looks like.’

  ‘But he retired, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, a few months ago.’

  ‘And not before time. So what is he doing here?’

  ‘Civilian support,’ said Cooper.

  That was the phrase he’d been given when he asked. That was the job description on Murfin’s ID card attached to the lanyard round his neck. Civilian support. It was a nice-sounding phrase. It had echoes of Sir Robert Peel’s Principles of Law Enforcement: ‘The police are the public and the public are the police’.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Fry.

  That sounded unduly harsh to Cooper. It was bizarre and illogical, yes. But very little that senior management did was unbelievable. And Gavin Murfin was very much a believable presence.

  He studied Fry more closely. She looked a bit harassed, with dark shadows under her eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping properly for some reason.

  ‘Are you okay, Diane?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine. I’ve just been having a bad week.’

  ‘That’s tough,’ said Cooper.

  If it had been him, if he was going through a really bad week, he would have gone for a drive over the Snake Pass or taken a long walk on the moors, whatever the weather. As far as Cooper was concerned, there was nothing like a good blow to clear the mind and make you feel better. There wasn’t any point in suggesting it to Diane Fry, though. Whatever was troubling her, she would deal with it in her own way. If it was a person, she would probably kill them.

  ‘Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif have been picked up this morning,’ she said. ‘They’re being processed now. We’re going to let them cool their heels for a bit in the custody suite and consult with their briefs, then we’ll be interviewing them fully this afternoon.’

  ‘Can I sit in on the interviews?’

  ‘I’ll ask.’

  ‘I suppose they’ll go “no comment”.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise.’

  Cooper nodded. No comment. Every police officer had to get used to it. So often in the interview room, he’d grown tired and exasperated by the repeated use of ‘no comment’, interviewees who gave the same reply to each question, as if they’d forgotten how they answered the last one. Sometimes it was like trying to interview a goldfish, with a memory span of three seconds. What was the point?

  ‘You can examine their phone records, though. Their email, bank accounts. You can give their computers a going-over. Sharif is a web designer. He has the capability.’

  ‘Capability? Oh, you’re still thinking there’s a website.’

  ‘I know there’s a website,’ said Cooper. ‘Or at least there was. Secrets of Death.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  A bit reluctantly, Cooper showed her one of the business cards in its funereal black with gold edging. He’d kept it back because it felt like the only advantage he had, the one thing that Diane Fry and the Major Crime Unit didn’t know about. Now was the time to share it.

  ‘We found this one in Farrell’s car, on his dashboard,’ he said.

  ‘Secrets of Death. What is it?’

  ‘I have no idea. As I said, I’m working on the theory that it’s a website of some kind.’

  ‘I see. I assume you’ve had the card examined for fingerprints?’

  ‘Of course. There were only Roger Farrell’s own prints on it.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘Two of our other suicides had them too. I recovered a similar card from Gordon Burgess’s house, which is under examination now. And another was destroyed by the victim’s wife.’

  There was a shout from across the room. It sounded like Luke Irvine crying ‘Eureka!’.

  ‘What have you got?’ asked Cooper.

  Irvine was reading out loud from his screen.

  ‘Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death’s house.’

  ‘What the heck is that, Luke?’

  ‘It says here it’s a quote from Oscar Wilde. The Canterville Ghost.’

  ‘Are you reading ghost stories?’

  ‘No, it’s this website.’

  ‘You said there are a lot of those websites.’

  ‘Yes, but we matched a phrase on this one.’

  ‘What phrase?’

  ‘There are three secrets of death. It’s right there on their home page. It reads: There are three secrets of death. The first is a secret of the heart, the second a secret of the mind. The third secret of death is one you can only find out when you die.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  There was a legal table of suicide methods ranked by lethality, the likelihood of causing death. Disturbingly, it also listed the average length of time each method took and, in a column headed ‘Agony’, a rating for how painful it was.

  By checking through the list, you could choose the quickest or least painful form of death, or you could opt for certainty. Death by firearm was at the top of the list. But by using a shotgun, not a 1930s service revolver. According to the table, a shotgun to the head led the competition with 99 per cent lethality. It was definitely an option chosen in rural areas like the High Peak and Derbyshire Dales, where the possession of shotguns was higher than the average. The method was also quick, taking an average of less than two minutes to produce death, which would pretty much be considered instantaneous in the circumstances. It looked far preferable to being hit by a train, when apparently you could take eighteen minutes to die, or an overdose of illegal drugs, when death could take two hours.

  The most painful was death by fire, which didn’t surprise him. Cooper had always thought it must be the worst way to go.

  He glanced at Sharma. Was it just a coin
cidence that Luke Irvine had suddenly found what he was supposed to be looking for? Or was it due to the presence of his DS in the CID room? But Sharma’s face was impassive. Perhaps that distant manner really worked.

  ‘Can we see the rest of the site?’ asked Cooper. ‘There must be some private area where you can log in with a password like the one on Roger Farrell’s card.’

  ‘Yes, there seems to be a members’ area,’ said Irvine.

  ‘Can you get into it?’

  ‘Not without registering and requesting a password.’

  ‘Do it, then.’

  Irvine hesitated. ‘I have to enter my name and address.’

  ‘You can’t give the office.’

  ‘Do you want me to use my home address?’ said Irvine. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Are you sure, Luke? It’s a big thing to ask.’

  Irvine began to type again. ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll survive. By the way, I’ve also done a WHOis look-up on the domain name, but it’s privacy protected. You have to go through the registrar.’

  ‘What’s the domain?’

  ‘It’s called secretsofdeath.org. The website itself is hosted by a company in China. It’s going to be tricky getting any information out of them, if not impossible.’

  Cooper’s eye was caught by a line at the top of the members’ log-in page.

  And this is the second secret of death. You have to let go. You have to learn to say goodbye.

  ‘The second secret of death,’ said Villiers. ‘Are there more?’

  Irvine turned to look at her. ‘At least one more, according to the introduction on the landing page.’

  ‘I wonder what the third secret can be.’

  ‘I have no idea. And I’m not sure I want to find out.’

  Irvine checked his phone for an email.

  ‘Yes, here it is. It’s an automated message, of course. But there’s a password. A string of numbers and letters. Oh, and …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It says I’ll get my membership card through the post.’

  ‘Like the cards the others had.’

  ‘Don’t say “the others” as if I’m one of them,’ protested Irvine.

  ‘Sorry, Luke.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I’m going to talk to Anson Tate again,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Fry.

  ‘A failed suicide.’

  ‘Am I coming with you?’

  Cooper looked at her, noticing the determined set of her mouth in spite of her tiredness. ‘Can I stop you, Diane?’ he said.

  ‘Probably not.’

  25

  ‘Detective Inspector Cooper again,’ said Anson Tate when he answered the bell. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘I’d just like to ask you a couple more questions, sir, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t say it was a pleasant surprise.’

  Tate turned to examine Diane Fry as she appeared at Cooper’s shoulder. Because she was behind him, Cooper couldn’t see Fry’s expression or the look she gave Tate. But the tension between them was immediately palpable. Tate’s face tightened and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  ‘And who is this person?’

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Fry. She’s my colleague from the Major Crime Unit in Nottingham.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tate. ‘That does sound important.’

  Cooper restrained a smile as Tate spoke about Diane Fry as if she weren’t there, rather than speaking to her, which would have been much more courteous. Now he could imagine her expression.

  ‘I can’t tell you any more than I already have,’ said Tate. ‘Personally, I feel we exhausted our useful exchange of information on your last visit. In fact, this is starting to look rather like harassment.’

  Fry glanced at Cooper and raised an eyebrow. She could get a lot of meaning into one eyebrow lift. This one expressed surprise and a question she wanted to ask him about what had happened last time. And there was also a hint of approval, a suggestion that, whatever it was, she might have done the same.

  ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘Yes, do that. And you can listen while I phone and make a complaint about harassment.’

  ‘That’s your decision, sir.’

  When they reached the flat, Tate made no effort to use the phone. Instead, he stood in the middle of the worn carpet and glared at them. There was no offer of herbal tea this time or even for them to sit down in the lumpy armchairs.

  ‘So?’ Tate said impatiently.

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll change your mind,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m hoping you’ll want to help us to prevent more people from dying.’

  ‘Of course, I would – if I could.’

  Cooper showed Tate the printout from the cached web page Irvine had given him.

  ‘Does the name of this website mean anything to you?’

  Tate took the printout and stared at it intently. He gazed at it for such a long time that Cooper began to think he’d made a mistake letting him see it. Tate’s fingers gripped the paper so tightly at the edges that it crumpled in his fingers.

  ‘Secrets of Death,’ he said. ‘What a strange title. What does it mean, Detective Inspector Cooper?’

  ‘I thought you might know,’ said Cooper. ‘Have you ever come across it before?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I would remember, if I had. It’s very … ominous.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Does this website encourage acts of violence?’ asked Tate.

  ‘In a way.’

  Tate looked pained. ‘I don’t approve of violence,’ he said. ‘People should be able to die a gentle, painless death.’

  Fry had been leaning forward, watching him carefully.

  ‘Jumping off the Bargate Bridge wouldn’t have been painless,’ she said.

  Tate winced again. ‘Who can say? No one. Not until you’ve done it yourself.’ He peered more closely at Fry. ‘It’s my life, you know. No one else’s. It’s my life, from start to finish. It’s the only thing no one can take away from me.’

  ‘Mr Tate, did you ever have contact with any of these people?’ asked Cooper, pressing on determinedly. ‘Alex Denning or David Kuzneski?’

  Tate had already begun shaking his head. ‘I’ve no idea who they are.’

  ‘Bethan Jones or Gordon Burgess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about Roger Farrell?’ added Fry.

  ‘None of them,’ said Tate. ‘Though wait a minute …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Farrell, you said?’

  Fry leaned forward a bit more. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I read a story about someone … yes, here it is.’ Tate fiddled in a magazine rack next to his chair and pulled out a copy of that week’s Eden Valley Times. ‘Yes, a man who took his own life at Heeley Bank was identified by police as Mr Roger Farrell, aged fifty, of Nottingham. Would that be the one?’

  Fry didn’t respond and Tate turned back to Cooper. ‘Detective Inspector?’

  Cooper didn’t like Tate asking the questions. But he wasn’t obliged to answer them.

  ‘Have you ever heard of him before?’ he said.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Then Tate held the newspaper up as if it smelled of something more than ink and newsprint.

  ‘Do you think he and I have something in common?’ he said. ‘You imagine we must be old friends, is that it? It’s rather insulting.’

  ‘There’s always a right time and place to die,’ said Cooper, quoting from Roger Farrell’s voicemail message.

  ‘Thank you, Detective Inspector Cooper,’ said Tate. ‘I would actually agree with that.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Fry when they were back outside in the daylight. ‘What a creep.’

  ‘You didn’t like Mr Tate very much, then?’ said Cooper.

  ‘You’re always so perceptive.’

  ‘Don’t say I should be a detective.’

  ‘Have I said that before?’

/>   ‘More than once, I think. When you thought I was wet behind the ears.’

  ‘Well, that was years ago,’ she said.

  Fry began to laugh. Cooper glared at her, daring her to say what she was thinking.

  ‘Detective Inspector Cooper,’ she said with a sardonic smile. ‘I keep forgetting you’re a more senior officer.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that.’

  ‘Oh, have I been disrespectful?’

  ‘That’s not the word I would have used.’

  Fry laughed again. ‘No, don’t tell me your word. I’d be shocked.’

  ‘Perhaps you would.’

  She glanced sideways at Cooper. ‘Tell me something,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m wondering why you haven’t transferred to another unit? I know tenure rules aren’t enforced any more, but you’ve been in E Division CID a long time now. Much too long.’

  ‘What unit would I go to?’ said Cooper. ‘Back into uniform? Traffic? Intelligence Officer? A training role?’

  ‘I was thinking Community Relations might suit you.’

  ‘Thanks for the suggestion.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Inspector.’

  Cooper shut himself in his office, closing the door firmly against the possibility of Diane Fry wandering in after him. It was one of the few privileges he had, this tiny office of his own. That door was a good psychological barrier.

  Within a few minutes, he was getting restless. He paced the narrow strip of carpet for a while, then went back into the CID room. He was no good on his own. He needed somebody to bounce off.

  And there was Carol Villiers, the perfect person. Diane Fry was sitting at a spare desk at the back of the room making a phone call.

  ‘What’s up, Ben?’ asked Villiers when he appeared.

  ‘We mustn’t lose Anson Tate,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, he’s all we have at the moment. Tate possesses vital evidence, I’m sure of it. And I’m terrified of losing his evidence for good. He’s never going to make a complaint for harassment, but he’s going to make some other kind of move.’

  ‘Do you think so? What, though?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘I would have put some surveillance on him, if only we had the resources. But he knows you and me now, Carol, and he’ll be on his guard.’