‘It wasn’t my case, you know,’ said the pathologist. ‘It was Professor Webster’s.’
‘I realise that. But Professor Webster has retired.’
‘Not only that. He’s dead.’
‘Oh, is he?’
‘I’m afraid so. I had him on the table a few weeks ago.’
‘Suspicious death?’
‘Accidental. That was the conclusion anyway, based on my findings.’
‘Which were?’
‘A fractured skull.’
‘But not suspicious?’
‘Not really. He’d fallen off his roof trying to mend the guttering.’
‘Ah. Not a good thing to do when he was – how old?’
‘Seventy-eight. He’d just been awarded an MBE in the New Year honours list when he fell off that roof. It was the high point of his career.’
Cooper looked at her closely to see if she was joking. But she rarely did. Dr van Doon’s sense of humour consisted of ironic comments, which often seemed cruel, though they were usually accurate.
‘Well, he’s dead anyway,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it wouldn’t have been very professional to ask me to review a case of his. In the circumstances, however . . .’
‘I’m very grateful.’
That was what Dr Van Doon had wanted really. An acknowledgement that she was doing him a favour.
‘The injuries . . .’ he said.
‘Multiple. She had fractured ribs, a broken collar-bone, serious injuries to the skull, causing brain lesions. Internal injuries . . . ah, a ruptured spleen, punctured lung. Fairly typical of a road accident victim. An airbag doesn’t protect you in a major impact.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘There were serious burns too, and much of the skin tissue was destroyed. It makes it much more difficult to make an assessment. But the injuries were consistent with the collision. It was quite horrific, you know. Her car was crushed and went half underneath the other lorry, then it was caught up in the subsequent fire. The remains weren’t pretty when they arrived here.’
‘Could I have a copy of the report, please?’
‘Photographs as well?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Certainly. Much good may it do you, though. It’s an old case. A man was convicted and sent to prison, wasn’t he? I recall seeing it on the TV news.’
‘Yes, it was dealt with,’ said Cooper.
Dr van Doon frowned, suddenly anxious. ‘Is there some doubt about the conviction?’
‘No, it was a cut and dried case.’
She looked as though she didn’t quite believe him. But she went to get a copy made for him anyway.
‘There was nothing unexpected about the post-mortem results on the suicide, by the way,’ said Dr van Doon when she returned.
‘Oh, Scott Brooks,’ said Cooper. ‘I didn’t think there would be.’
‘Usual ligature marks, no signs of a struggle. A nice, neat job. I suppose we have the internet to thank for that.’
‘I imagine so,’ said Cooper.
He left the mortuary with the report on Ashley Brooks tucked safely under his arm.
In New Mills Pat Turner was just getting out of her car when Cooper’s Toyota drew into the housing development and pulled up outside her house. Both her hands were full with two Co-op carrier bags full of shopping and she saw Cooper as she turned to bang her car door shut with a thrust of her hip.
‘Oh hello,’ she said, without any enthusiasm.
Cooper was getting used to people being lukewarm in their greetings when they saw him. He knew he wasn’t always welcome. But he helped Mrs Turner with her bags as she unlocked her front door and she couldn’t help but invite him into the house out of politeness.
The kettle went on automatically, but it boiled and switched itself off again while she sat and listened to his questions.
‘Yes, Scott got to know her at Swizzels,’ she said. ‘I think he’d met her before in a pub somewhere and he fell for her right there and then. My brother was like that. Impulsive, not thinking about the consequences for himself, or for other people. He got a job at the factory after he was sacked as a teacher. He was very vulnerable at that time. A real soft touch for her. Do you know, she used to pass those Love Heart messages to him down the line at Swizzels?’
‘We found some of those messages in his house,’ said Cooper.
‘That’s typical. He got totally soppy about her. As for Ashley, she thought he was a catch, a step up the social ladder from the Flynns.’
‘There was one message we found that didn’t seem to fit,’ said Cooper. ‘It wasn’t from a Love Heart. It said, “Come Back to Me”. Do you have any idea what your brother might have meant by that?’
Mrs Turner sighed deeply. ‘Personally, I never had any doubt she was just using him. Ashley went elsewhere for a bit of excitement. But he would never listen to me. As for those brothers of hers . . .’
‘There was a problem between them?’
‘Well, it was never as happy a marriage as Scott thought. He was very naive, you know. But I knew she was seeing someone else. You can’t keep a secret like that in New Mills.’
‘Who was she seeing?’ asked Cooper.
‘That I couldn’t tell you. For all I know, there may have been more than one. She was that sort of girl. She could get away with it right under Scott’s nose and he wouldn’t be any the wiser. He was blinkered about Ashley. He saw her as something perfect.’
Cooper recalled the photos he’d seen of Ashley Brooks, from the posed wedding shots in Scott’s house to the horrific images of her blackened corpse which were even now lying on the seat of his car. No doubt Scott would have wanted to remember her as she was on their wedding day. But even then she hadn’t looked perfect. Not to Cooper, anyway. But love could completely change the way you saw someone.
‘Yes, Ashley had been having an affair,’ said Mrs Turner. ‘I think everyone knew it, except Scott. I couldn’t stand to see him being betrayed like that. He was so innocent, so vulnerable. So I took it on myself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I went to see Ashley. One day when I knew Scott was out, I called at the house to talk to her. Of course, she reacted the way I would have expected. She was quite the little madam beneath that deceptive surface. Talk about “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth”. She tried to deny it at first. Got all angry and offended. But that sort of thing doesn’t wash with me.’
‘So you told Ashley that you knew she was having an affair?’ said Cooper.
‘Yes.’
‘And what did you do then? Threaten to tell your brother?’
‘I would have done that. And she knew I would. But she caved in when she saw she couldn’t deny it, that she couldn’t get out of it by blustering at me. I told her she would have to end it, or it would all come out.’
‘And you think she was planning to do that?’
‘Oh yes. She would have done it. I made her promise me. In the end she knew which side her bread was buttered on.’
‘When you say she would have done it . . . ?’
Mrs Turner shrugged. ‘Well, she never got the chance, to be fair. It was just before she was killed in that crash. So everything went to pieces anyway, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it did.’
Cooper regarded her, reflecting that Pat Turner was a much tougher person than her brother had been. He could imagine that Ashley might have been scared of her when she was on the warpath.
‘More recently, did something happen that brought it all back to your brother?’ he said. ‘I mean, the crash and the death of his wife.’
Mrs Turner nodded. ‘Yes, Scott said he’d seen the lorry driver. I told him to forget all about it. It was time he got over the whole thing. It was eight years ago, for heaven’s sake.’
‘But he didn’t forget, did he?’
‘No, quite the opposite. It consumed him totally. I was afraid he would do something stupid.’
‘Were
you?’
She twisted a tissue in her hands until she pulled it apart and fragments fell into her lap. Cooper could see the build-up of tension in her. She had the look of a woman who’d screwed herself up to say something she could no longer keep to herself.
‘Do you think he killed Malcom Kelsey?’ asked Cooper.
A panicky look came into Mrs Turner’s eyes. She didn’t quite know what was happening now, or how she was supposed to react. That toughness had suddenly fallen apart.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid he might have done something like that. But I’m sure Scott never meant for that to happen. They misunderstood him.’
‘Who did?’
She went pale then. ‘Everyone. Just everyone.’
‘I see.’
Cooper stood up to leave. People always thought they’d been misunderstood when things went wrong. The consequences of their actions never matched their intentions. Or so they said.
‘That’s fairly damning,’ said Carol Villiers when Cooper arrived back at West Street. ‘If even his sister thinks he was guilty.’
‘You don’t have a sister, do you, Carol?’
‘Well, no.’
Cooper looked at Sharma, who smiled. No matter how close your family was, your nearest and dearest could still think the worst of you. Cooper’s own sister, Claire, had never understood his job, or approved of his work. She thought he was tainted by the association with crime and would eventually become as bad as the criminals he had contact with. Claire probably thought he was capable of murder, and worse.
‘There’s no evidence to show where Scott Brooks was on Monday night,’ said Villiers. ‘None at all. So he could have been at the Cloughpit Lane bridge, for all we know.’
‘And he might not have been,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s impossible to prove either way. We’ve had fingerprints taken from his body. But they don’t match anything from the scene.’
‘His suicide and the note that he left definitely suggest guilt,’ said Villiers.
‘He didn’t do it on his own, though.’
‘No. Someone brought Kelsey to him at Shawhead.’
‘I think that’s unarguable.’
‘But surely Malcolm Kelsey was the wrong lorry driver,’ protested Sharma.
‘Scott Brooks must have been confused,’ said Villiers stubbornly. ‘He would have seen Kelsey at the trial, because he was called as a witness. Scott just got them mixed up. It’s understandable after eight years, isn’t it?’
Cooper recalled the cuttings book that Becky Hurst had found in Brooks’ house in Peak Road. Given his obsession, how many hours must Scott have spent poring over that?
‘No, I don’t think he got them mixed up,’ he said.
There were going to be a lot of frustrated drivers on the A6 today. Sally’s Snack Box was closed temporarily. Sally herself had been brought into Edendale and was fidgeting irritably in an interview room. Since she’d been brought straight from the cafe, she was filling the small space with a distinct aroma of cooking fat and fried onions.
‘Your real name is Lucy Armitage,’ said Cooper, looking at her across the table.
‘Oh, you’re starting with the difficult questions,’ she said with a mocking smile.
Cooper didn’t respond to the jibe.
‘We can get this over with a lot more quickly if you just cooperate,’ he said. ‘Then you can get back to your customers.’
‘This is damaging my business, you know. It won’t do me any good for people to start saying I’m not always there, or I just close the place up when I feel like it.’
‘Tell them you were helping the police with their enquiries,’ suggested Cooper.
She snorted. ‘That won’t help me either.’
Cooper waited patiently until she saw that he wasn’t going to be provoked.
‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I’m Lucy Jane Armitage. Aged forty-three. Write that down. I suppose you want my address too?’
‘Yes, please.’
Cooper wrote the details down, taking his time while she watched him impatiently.
‘You’re the owner of a roadside cafe known as Sally’s Snack Box,’ he said.
‘You know that. That’s why they call me Sally. She was the original owner. I bought the cafe from her and kept the name.’
‘You recall that I visited your cafe on Thursday to ask you about the fatal collision that took place on the A6 eight years ago?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I didn’t see the crash, I just heard it. Then there was the fire, and the fire engines and ambulances and all that stuff going on for hours afterwards.’
‘It’s actually what happened just after the crash that I wanted to know about,’ said Cooper.
‘Is it?’
Cooper watched her, observing the change in her manner. There was definitely something she’d seen. She could no longer deny it, now that he was asking the right question.
‘The driver of the van,’ said Cooper. ‘You do remember the van?’
She sucked her teeth.
‘Everybody was talking about it,’ she said. ‘I could hardly not know. There were two lorries, a van and the poor girl who got trapped in between them in her car. Terrible, that was.’
‘You saw the van driver immediately after the crash, didn’t you?’
Cooper had almost called her Sally, and had to check himself and look at the name he’d written down.
‘Lucy, you saw the van driver. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes. I stepped out of the cafe when I heard the crash. An awful bang it was, then more crashes and all the metal flying about, and the horrible whoosh when the petrol went up.’
She gazed past his shoulder at the wall of the interview room as the memory came back to her. He could see the shock of it reflected in her eyes.
‘By the time I got to the door, it was all over but for the flames,’ she said. ‘You could barely make out what was tangled up in all that mess, especially with the smoke. But then I saw the van driver jump out of his cab. He wasn’t badly hurt, you know.’
‘No, he just suffered a few bruises.’
She nodded. ‘Which made it so hard to understand what happened next.’
‘Why, what did he do?’
‘It’s more what he didn’t do,’ she said. ‘He ran back to where the car was crushed and he stared at the injured girl in the driver’s seat. But that’s all he did. He made no attempt to get her out of the car.’
Cooper trawled through his memory of the witness statements presented at the trial of James Allsop.
‘The van driver said in his statement to the police that the fire was too bad for him to get near the car.’
But Lucy Armitage shook her head as she continued to stare at the wall, seeing the scene being replayed in front of her.
‘He could have got her out before that,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he could. But he just stood and watched that young woman burn.’
Cooper showed her the photograph of Malcolm Kelsey again. She’d seen it already when he called at the Snack Box. Yet she still regarded it blankly.
‘I wouldn’t recognise him,’ she said. ‘Was that the same man?’
Instead of answering, Cooper let her relax and put the memory aside.
‘Why were you at the cafe so late that night when the crash happened?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you close at tea time? Your business falls off by then.’
‘I was cleaning up. I’ve got to keep the place hygienic.’
‘It doesn’t take that long.’
She scowled, tight-lipped, saying nothing.
Cooper thought about his conversation with Charles Bateman at Rowarth. If Malcolm Kelsey was involved in a smuggling operation, it brought money back into the equation as a possible motive.
But what if it wasn’t Kelsey? Lots of foreign lorry drivers used the A6. Where more natural for them to stop than a roadside cafe? There must be plenty of storage space in that second s
hipping container. Enough for a few thousand smuggled cigarettes, at least. And after dark, when the ‘open’ sign was switched off, no genuine customers would come calling.
‘The Polish driver,’ said Cooper. ‘His name was Artus Borzuczek.’
‘I didn’t know his name.’
‘But you knew what he was there for. Had he stopped in the wrong lay-by? It was right over on the other side of the carriageway. How were you supposed to manage that?’
Her face had gone rigid again now. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said.
There was no point in pursuing it now. But it would be something to mention to the intelligence unit.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re free to go.’
Before she left, Lucy stood and looked down, leaning over him with a sudden intensity.
‘He ought to have got her out,’ she said. ‘What was he thinking about while she burned? He could have saved her from the fire.’
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t think he could.’
When she’d been shown out, Cooper sat for a moment and thought about what must have been going on in that roadside cafe after the fatal collision. He recalled what he’d been told yesterday. It was talked about in here for a long time afterwards. People who come in like to have something to talk about. They have their own opinions. I can’t blame them for that.
And he found he could picture it quite clearly. He could imagine the muttering and shaking of heads over all-day breakfasts and mugs of tea in a steamy cafe during those following days, with evidence of the fatal collision still visible on the tarmac a few yards away.
Even before the hearing against James Allsop had begun at Derby Crown Court, a separate and more informal trial had been taking place in Sally’s Snack Box. Solely on the grounds of Sally’s own witness statement, Malcolm Kelsey had been found guilty. The jury had been unanimous in their verdict.
No one had been there to stand up in Kelsey’s defence or speak on his behalf, let alone Mac Kelsey himself. Guilty, then. But who had carried out the sentence?
28
Dense fog had settled in the Goyt Valley by the time Cooper reached Shawhead that evening. Traffic on the A6 had been driving on headlights, cars picking their way through the fog like explorers in a cave.
The Murder Road: A Cooper & Fry Mystery Page 27
