Scared to Live bcadf-7

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Yes, I see. So you’re quite sure you didn’t go into the sitting room, or touch the door maybe?’

  ‘I’m sure. Look, I can’t understand why you’re asking me these questions.’

  ‘It’s for purposes of elimination, Mr Mullen. It will help us to establish the cause of the fire.’

  ‘What? Are you saying it was started deliberately?’

  ‘It’s one of the possibilities we have to leave open. We can’t rule anything out until it’s been confirmed one way or another. That’s why it’s important to establish your movements, Mr Mullen. If the fire investigators find evidence of someone entering that room during the night of the fire, we’ll know it wasn’t you, won’t we?’

  Fry smiled at him, but he didn’t look reassured. She often found that reaction. Perhaps she ought to work on the smile.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. But — ’

  ‘Don’t worry about it now. You have a lot of things to think about. Let us know if we can be of any assistance. They’ve offered you counselling …?’

  ‘Yes, all of that stuff,’ said Mullen impatiently.

  ‘And you do have some family in the area to support you?’

  ‘There’s Lindsay’s parents. My dad is in Ireland. I don’t know when he’ll be coming over. He hasn’t been well himself, so he might not make it.’

  ‘Is there no one else locally?’

  Mullen shook his head. ‘There’s only John.’

  ‘John?’

  ‘John Lowther. My brother-in-law. But Henry and Moira say he’s devastated about Lindsay.’

  Fry stood up. ‘Well, take care, sir. We’ll keep you informed.’

  Mullen looked up at her, anxious now that she was leaving. ‘I tested that smoke alarm regularly, you know. It was working all right.’

  ‘Yes, well don’t worry about that now.’

  Mullen sank back on to his pillow, as if he’d put a lot of effort into that last statement and was now exhausted. Fry began to move quietly away, but his voice stopped her.

  ‘We promised Luanne we’d take her to see the illuminations in Matlock Bath,’ he said, his voice whispering with hoarseness. ‘You know, with the parade of boats on the river, and the fireworks? We were going to take all the kids there, for a treat. The illuminations started a couple of weeks ago, but we were going to wait until half-term. The boys always liked the boats, but it would have been Luanne’s first time. We won’t be taking them now, will we?’

  Fry hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘No, sir. I’m sorry.’

  She walked out of the ward and past the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of Brian Mullen. At times, the emotions underlying his responses had been too complicated to pin down. But one thing she was sure of. Despite what Mr Mullen had pretended, the idea that the fire might have been set deliberately had come as no surprise to him at all.

  12

  Upriver from Matlock Bath, the town of Matlock was going through another of its transformations. In the eighteenth century it had been John Smedley’s ‘mild water cure’ that had changed the place for ever. Nearly thirty hydros had opened to exploit the thermal springs, with vast numbers of infirm visitors pouring in to immerse themselves in warm baths and try out the treatments on offer. On the hillside, Cooper could still see Smedley’s Hydro, the biggest of them all. The vast building was now full of local government workers, soaking the public on behalf of Derbyshire County Council.

  ‘It’s right at the roundabout and over the bridge,’ said Murfin.

  ‘I know the way, Gavin.’

  ‘And watch out for pedestrians on the bridge. Some of them are suicidal.’

  ‘Gavin, I’m not your wife. I don’t need you to tell me how to drive.’

  He followed the A6 out of the town towards Matlock Bath, and drove into the gorge where the River Derwent snaked beneath the face of High Tor. He slowed briefly at the point where the ‘box brownie’ sign came into view, warning of speed cameras ahead. The roundel gave the speed limit as fifty miles an hour. Despite the sign, there were no permanent cameras installed here. The safety team’s van might be parked by the side of the road occasionally, that was all. And the van hadn’t been in this area on Saturday. He’d already checked.

  Although it seemed to form one continuous promenade along the west bank of the river, Matlock Bath’s main street was split into two halves: North Parade and South Parade. In the middle were a couple of three-storey stone villas that had somehow escaped being converted into amusement arcades or fish restaurants.

  Like so many resorts, this place was biker heaven. Even today, motorbikes were parked against the kerb on South Parade. Kawasakis, Suzukis and Ducatis, all polished and gleaming. Most of the bikers on the pavement seemed to be well past their youth, though. Their leathers bulged in the wrong places, and when they took off their helmets, their hair was grey and straggly, or missing altogether. There didn’t seem to be one aged under fifty.

  ‘Hell’s Granddads,’ said Murfin. ‘They don’t bother doing the ton any more, they just park up for a cup of tea and a fairy cake.’

  ‘And to show off their bikes to each other, by the looks of it.’

  ‘That’s it, Ben. Nothing too strenuous at their age.’

  But the statistics told a different story, and it wasn’t funny. Despite the road being lined with Think Bike signs, a motorcycle rider forming each ‘i’, a map behind the Pavilion car park kept a record of the rising toll. New markers were added frequently to show where bikers had died in Derbyshire. Last year, two had lost their lives in one day in the Matlock area. That had been in October, too, but on a Sunday. One of the victims had been in his forties, the other in his fifties.

  In fact, this stretch of the A6 was one of the designated ‘hot routes’ — the most popular roads among bikers, especially on bank holiday weekends. There was another section between Buxton and Taddington, but it was the Cat and Fiddle road into Staffordshire that had received most attention, ever since a bikers’ magazine described it as more exciting to ride than the Manx TT. The latest figures showed motorcyclists accounting for a quarter of all fatalities and injuries on the roads in the county. No surprise, perhaps, when they seemed to be drawn to the most dangerous places.

  Despite their appearance, some of these bikers would be riding circuits around the valley later in the day. And if it was a good day, no one would actually die.

  ‘So where are these people who think they saw the shooting victim on Saturday?’ said Murfin, yawning extravagantly.

  ‘Rose Shepherd was seen at the Riber Tea Rooms on South Parade, and the Aquarium on North Parade. Oh, and the Masson Mill shopping village. That’s a bit further down the road from here.’

  ‘We’ll have to split up, I suppose.’

  ‘It’ll be a lot quicker, Gavin.’

  ‘Hey, we’re not going in all these shops, are we?’

  ‘We ought to go into any that are close to where Miss Shepherd was seen. We’ve got to be thorough, while we’re here. The DCI wants a picture of what the victim was doing here, and who she met in the hours before she died.’

  ‘Shopkeepers, eh? I just hope they’re friendly.’

  ‘You’ll survive.’

  Murfin wasn’t the only officer Cooper had heard expressing reluctance to enter shops on duty. Talking to shopkeepers had been part of the routine in his father’s time. But that was before they started measuring police performance against key indicators — which didn’t include retail crime. So shoplifting had become low priority. The larger businesses hired their own security guards and adjusted their budgets to account for ‘slippage’. Small businesses couldn’t do that. And an unsuspecting police officer made a handy target for a shopkeeper’s frustration.

  He managed to park the Toyota on the roadside between Hodgkinson’s Hotel and a shop called The Biker’s Gearbox. Then he and Murfin took a parade each.

  ‘Tell the missus I died a hero’s death,’ said Murfin as he got reluctantly out of the car.

/>   Cooper had drawn North Parade, and had to walk back the way he’d come. There must be a dozen cafes and fish restaurants in this length of road alone: Taste of the Waves, Frankie and Joe’s, the Promenade Fish Bar … And then there were all the pubs and restaurants, and the big hotels on the hillside.

  Between them, they accounted for the most distinctive feature of Matlock Bath, a characteristic that Cooper remembered so well from previous visits and which was still present now, undiminished by the years. It was the smell of fish and chips, hot and vinegary, hanging permanently over the promenade like a haze.

  Many of the shops, amusement arcades and restaurants were closed. Of course, it was a weekday and out of season, with the children back at school for the new term. But some had opened to cater for the bikers and a few other visitors.

  He passed the photograph museum, Life in a Lens, and noticed that a Victorian tea room had been opened on the ground floor. He’d have to call and ask about the webcam later.

  The aquarium had a window display of a deep-sea diver and a treasure chest, but the ground floor was taken up by an amusement arcade. He asked at the pay booth for the member of staff he wanted and was directed past the slot machines and up the stairs into the aquarium.

  ‘He’ll be with you in a minute.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  At the top of the stairs, he waited by the original petrifying well. This was what the first visitors to Matlock Bath had come to see — ordinary items apparently turning to stone. Thermal water still ran down a channel through the building, pumped up into sprays and gurgling ominously somewhere beneath his feet. The objects he could make out under their layer of calcium included teapots, a bird’s cage, a telephone and a deer’s skull, complete with antlers. As usual, visitors had thrown coins into the water, forever hoping for a bit of good fortune. This was one belief that seemed to survive, no matter what — an enduring faith in the magical properties of water.

  Cooper wondered if Rose Shepherd had tossed a coin in here on Saturday. She sounded like a woman who’d desperately needed a bit of good luck.

  Suddenly, a man was standing beside him.

  ‘Is it me you’ve come to see?’

  ‘Yes, if you called the police in response to our appeals.’

  Cooper fumbled for his ID, but the man didn’t even look at it.

  ‘I’m a bit busy, so you’ll have to keep up with me while I’m working. I have to check all the safety precautions and signs while it’s quiet.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Through this way, then.’

  ‘Before we go any further, is this the woman you remember seeing here on Saturday?’

  The man glanced at the photograph. ‘Yes, that’s her. It’s the same photo that was in the papers, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I’m just making sure. The reproduction is sometimes a bit poor.’

  In the aquarium itself, red-eared terrapins basked on a concrete beach under halogen spot lamps. There were vegetarian piranhas and South American snakeheads that swam with their long bodies hanging in graceful curves, ready to travel across land to find more water if their habitat dried up. One glass tank contained only the hands of an unseen man scraping the silt off the bottom.

  ‘She came in on Saturday afternoon, about two fifteen. Didn’t stop here for long. She had a quick walk round, then spent a few minutes by the thermal pool.’

  ‘What made you notice her?’

  ‘Well, it’s not often we have people coming in on their own. A woman of sixty or so? She seemed harmless, but you never know.’

  ‘So you kept an eye on her?’

  ‘Discreetly. On my own initiative.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Pretty much what you did — stopped at the petrifying well, then came through here and looked at the fish. She liked the terrapins, as I recall.’

  He opened a door, and they walked out of the heat of the aquarium on to a cool, tiled walkway beside an outdoor pool.

  ‘This was the original baths, you know. The Victorians thought the water cured rheumatism. The pool is still fed by the thermal spring. It’s a constant twenty degrees centigrade.’

  Cooper looked over the side of the pool. It was full of colourful Japanese fish and fat mirror carp.

  ‘Twenty degrees centigrade? Lucky fish.’

  ‘The lady stood out here for a bit. There were some children feeding the fish. See? You can buy a carton of food from the machine for twenty pence.’

  ‘Did she speak to anyone?’

  ‘No, she was just watching.’

  Despite the temperature of the water, it was much cooler out here, because the pool was open to the sky, with only a few rusty girders remaining of the roof. Looking up, Cooper noticed a camera mounted on the wall, focused on the feeding station.

  ‘Are you sure? No one standing near her? Or someone that she took a particular interest in?’

  ‘Only the children.’

  Cooper waited on the red and black tiles while the man walked off to check a side door. There was a plop as one of the larger fish surfaced at the other end of the pool. And then he saw that people had thrown coins in here, too. Instead of buying food for the fish, visitors had tossed their twenty pence pieces into the water, so they lay glinting on the bottom.

  ‘We go out this way. Through the hologram gallery.’

  A moment later, Cooper was back in darkness, standing in front of a pocket watch that seemed to float in mid-air. When he moved his head, the time on the watch face changed. The hands flicked from eight minutes before ten o’clock to six minutes past, and then to a quarter past. Disturbingly, the Roman numerals were in the wrong place, too. He wondered if it was symbolic. Look, it’s later than you think.

  ‘Before you ask, there wasn’t anyone else in here. Did you think the lady might have come in the aquarium to meet someone?’

  ‘It was a possibility. Was she carrying anything when she came in?’

  ‘Come to think of it, yes. A carrier bag of some kind.’

  ‘And did she still have the bag when she went out?’

  ‘I can’t recall.’

  In another hologram, Cooper watched an elephant turn into a pig, then a hippopotamus. Further along the wall, a man metamorphosed into a werewolf, and Dr Jekyll became Mr Hyde. Piped music played in the background, something soothing and a bit New Agey. But it was interrupted by noises from the amusement arcade downstairs: the rattle of coins, the blaring music of the video games. Real life intruded, even into a room full of illusions.

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘Yes, that was it. Then she left.’

  ‘Back down the stairs?’

  ‘You have to exit through the amusements, but she didn’t stop in there. She was in a hurry to get out by then.’

  ‘When she got out on to the street, which way did she go?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘All right. Did you notice anything unusual about her manner?’

  ‘No. I got the impression she was killing time. In fact, I’d have said she came in to get out of the rain — except it wasn’t raining that day.’

  ‘How was she dressed?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. A jacket of some kind. Not a coat … Like I said, it wasn’t raining, or even particularly cold.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Black, I think. And slacks — trousers, you know, not jeans. She wasn’t scruffy.’

  ‘Oh? Did you get the impression she’d dressed up a bit to come out?’

  ‘Well, she’d made an effort, definitely.’

  ‘But not to come here? She was just killing time, right?’

  ‘She wasn’t looking for anyone in here, I don’t think. She hardly seemed to notice other people, except the children. She looked like a self-contained sort of person. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. Thank you for your time.’

  As he left, Cooper noticed that a view from the camera in the thermal bath was projected on to a screen
over the entrance. On a busier day, you could watch from the street as children fed the fish or threw their coins into the water, hoping for good luck.

  In fact, if he’d been standing here at the right time on Saturday afternoon, he would probably have seen Rose Shepherd. Cooper imagined a ghostly likeness of her now, superimposed on the tiles. For a second, Miss Shepherd really seemed to be standing at the edge of the pool in her black jacket, clutching her carrier bag. But the moment he moved his head, she disappeared again, vanishing like an image in one of those holograms. And she’d given him no sign — no clue at all why she’d come here on Saturday, all dressed up for an afternoon out in Matlock Bath.

  There wasn’t much chance to talk at a Home Office post-mortem. There were always too many people present — the SIO, crime-scene examiner, photographer, pathologist and her assistant. And without the distraction of conversation, Fry found it difficult not to think about the smell.

  She had no problem with the sights, or with being passed unidentifiable, bloody items for packaging now and then. She wasn’t even bothered by the pathologist eating a snack during the proceedings, as some of them did. But the smell was something else.

  Some old hands suggested putting Vicks VapoRub up your nose before attending a PM. Others pointed out that Vicks was designed for clearing the nose, so it actually heightened your sense of smell, instead of masking odours. Two extra strong mints might help, though, they said. Fry hadn’t found anything that worked.

  ‘In the absence of any other priorities, I’ve scheduled them in the order they came in,’ said the pathologist, Juliana van Doon. ‘So it’s fire victims first. But since there are three of them, I’ve requested a colleague to come in and assist me. So we shouldn’t be too long getting to your shooting.’

  ‘That one isn’t mine. I’m on the house fire.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you’d been promoted.’

  Everyone in the autopsy suite was fully suited and booted to avoid infection. The suits were also supposed to prevent your clothes from trapping the smell, so that members of the public and their dogs didn’t shy away from you and throw up when you went out on to the street.