The Coopers Field Murder

by Wonny Lea

  ‘For some reason, about five years ago, Peter gave up a perfectly good career and went to work for Anthony Cooper. They had known one another since their school days but I’ve never thought of them as friends, and they didn’t even go to the same university. As I remember it Anthony dropped out after one or two years, and as far as I know Peter lost touch with him.’

  ‘Anyway, he turned up again like a bad penny, and that’s how I have always thought of him. I have constantly believed that he seemed to have some sort of hold over Peter. I did tackle Peter about it when he decided to take the administrator’s job but he wouldn’t tell me anything – but I know there was something.’

  ‘He was never happy at Parkland, but Peter was always conscientious, some would say too conscientious, and he just got on with the job. Over the last two years things have been much worse, but in order to keep him as the home administrator, Anthony Cooper has been giving Peter ad hoc gifts of anything up to £1000. He has called them gifts, apparently to avoid tax, but contrary to what you would expect every time one was made Peter seemed to have a week or so of acute depression.’

  ‘Would you be able to tell me when these gifts were made?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Easily,’ replied Carol. ‘Peter said he wouldn’t touch the money, and wouldn’t put it into our usual account, and instead he opened a university fund for the girls. It currently stands at around £10,000 and each entry is shown in the building society passbook. I can’t tell you for certain why my husband chose to take his own life, Inspector, but it’s got to be something to do with Anthony Cooper. I believe that in some way, and for whatever reason, the man has been bullying my husband – I suggest you look in that direction for Peter’s demons.’

  As Carol finished speaking, the doorbell rang, and Matt let in a woman, who sufficiently resembled Carol to be recognised as the sister they were waiting for. He told her briefly what had happened, and she let out a cry and ran to the living room to cradle her sister, whose sobbing was now out of control.

  Martin pulled his car back into the car park of the nursing home, and as he and Matt got out another car pulled in behind them. It was a metallic silver Mercedes and Matt confirmed that it was Anthony Cooper behind the wheel.

  ‘What the hell are you doing back here?’ Cooper directed his question at Matt. ‘I was told the police had been sent for, so what’s it all about this time?’

  ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Phelps,’ said Matt, introducing Martin as formally and officiously as he could and with the desired effect.

  ‘Bloody hell, the crime rate must be down if DCIs are being sent out to get witness statements – I take it that’s what you are doing again?’

  This time he directed his question at Martin who threw one back at him. ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I will ask the questions, and I would like to start by asking who was it that told you the police had been sent for?’

  Somewhat thrown by the question, Cooper tried to bluff his way out of answering. ‘Oh, Christ, I don’t know, I just got a message, could have been anyone.’

  ‘No problem, sir,’ said Martin. ‘I presume the message came to you via your mobile phone, so it will be easy enough to identify the caller.’

  Martin held his hand out as if wanting Mr Cooper to hand over his phone and at the same moment Cooper’s memory lapse evaporated. ‘Of course, sorry about that, I remember now, it was Brian Prosser. We have his grandmother Enid as one of our residents, and he wanted to speak to me about her care, but I had been held up and so I asked Peter Doster, my administrator, to see him for me. Apparently when Mr Prosser got here he was told by one of my staff that there had been some sort of accident and that she was sending for the police. But why are we discussing this in the car park – shouldn’t we go inside?’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ agreed Martin and the three men headed for the main entrance. Under different circumstances the next event would have been amusing as on walking into the reception area the first thing that greeted them was agency nurse Craig, who was obviously on a recruitment drive. ‘You should join the agency,’ he was saying to one of the care assistants. ‘You would get a much better hourly rate, and if Cooper started on the bullying tactics I witnessed when I worked here you could tell him to sod off!’

  ‘What the bleeding hell do you think you are doing?’ bawled Cooper. ‘Don’t tell me Doster has approved the use of agency nurses – the man’s taken leave of his senses. You may as well pack your bags,’ he shouted at Craig. ‘There’s no way I am allowing Doster to sign your timesheet, and no way you are going to get paid out of my pocket.’

  Craig looked startled but was mostly puzzled. Surely Mr Cooper must know that the person he rudely referred to as ‘Doster’ would not be doing anything – and certainly not signing his timesheet.

  Martin took control and suggested to Mr Cooper that staffing issues could wait as there were things he needed to know and could they please use the relatives’ room to talk in private.

  As soon as they were in the relatives’ room, Martin told Mr Cooper that Peter Doster was dead.

  At first the home’s owner said nothing, and this was followed by a considerable period of silence that Martin did not break because he wanted to hear Cooper’s reaction to the news. Finally Anthony Cooper asked ‘How did he die? – was it a heart attack? He was certainly heading for one.’

  As well as listening to the words Martin was trying to judge what effect this news was having.

  ‘We can’t be certain, but we are fairly safe in assuming that it was an act of suicide, as he was found by Sister Thomas hanging from one of the beams in his office.’

  ‘What in the name of hell is this going to do to the reputation of Parkland?’ was his first reaction. It was followed by ‘What a bloody nuisance – trust him to make a mess of everything. Suicide! I didn’t think he had the balls, but maybe it was more like he didn’t have the balls to live. What do you think, Inspector?’

  Martin stared with open hostility at this man who had shown not one sign of concern or compassion for someone he had known for most of his life. ‘In my experience,’ Martin said bluntly, ‘suicide is a very complex situation, and no two cases are ever alike. I cannot possibly imagine what level of torment a person must reach in order to perform such an act, and my sympathies at the moment are with his family. We had just returned from breaking the news to Carol Doster when we saw you in the car park, and she was clearly devastated.’

  ‘Oh, yes, her,’ responded Cooper. ‘I suppose I will have to go and offer my condolences.’

  Matt interrupted. ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you, because you certainly wouldn’t be welcome.’

  Mr Cooper shrugged his shoulders and Martin asked him if he could think of any reason why Peter Doster had taken his own life.

  ‘How do you expect me to know?’ was his predictable reply. ‘I had enough trouble thinking of reasons for some of the idiotic things he did at the best of times, but this takes the biscuit. Christ! I’ve just thought of something: I hope they don’t shut us down. Where’s Sister Thomas? She should be notifying Care Standards and whoever else needs to be told. That’s her job, not mine.’

  For one moment Martin thought Matt was going to put himself in danger of a GBH charge. Instead he treated Anthony Cooper to a tirade of verbal abuse the level of which he had probably not used since his last game of rugby.

  ‘I don’t have to take that!’ was Cooper’s response. ‘Did you hear that, Inspector? Your sergeant has no right to speak to me like that and I will be making a formal complaint to the Superintendent. I know him personally.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Martin. ‘I was busy looking at these folders I asked PC Davies to bring here for me. Did I miss something?’

  Martin’s obvious ploy in defence of his sergeant had the desired effect, and Cooper started to rant and rave about the lack of respect the police gave to law-abiding citizens. Ignoring the outburst, Martin started setting out the eleven sets of notes on the table in fron
t of him and this action produced an immediate reaction from Mr Cooper and a simultaneous but very different reaction from Matt.

  ‘Where the hell did you get those from?’ demanded Cooper. ‘You have no right to be looking at medical records, it’s only allowed on a need-to-know basis.’

  ‘Look at those names!’ said Matt excitedly. ‘The top three are a match to Sarah’s list but no, look – there’s more than three that match. This can’t be a coincidence, can it?’

  ‘You know me, Matt,’ said Martin. ‘I don’t really subscribe to the theory of coincidence. Let’s get this lot back to Goleudy and see what we can make of it all. There’s nothing else we can do here anyway.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Mr Cooper but he wasn’t shouting now. He was looking decidedly pale and was very unsure of his position. Nevertheless he persisted. ‘You can’t just take medical records without the proper authority.’

  ‘I think you will find,’ smirked Matt, ‘that we are the proper authority.’

  Mr Cooper tried another tack and in a voice that was full of reason and cooperation he asked Martin why there was a need for the records to be removed. ‘What possible connection has this got to poor Peter’s suicide?’ he asked.

  Martin looked Cooper straight in the eye and replied. ‘At this moment in time I am thinking that these records may well be his suicide note, and hopefully they will ensure that he didn’t die for nothing.’

  Matt said he was going to see what was happening with Sarah and Maria, and he left Martin after agreeing to meet him in the car park in ten minutes. Anthony Cooper was a shadow of his former self, and he followed Martin just like a forlorn puppy as the detective made his way back to the administrator’s office to speak to PC Davies.

  They both stopped at the foot of the short flight of stairs and Martin said curtly. ‘Sorry, sir, but you won’t be allowed up there until we have finished our investigation, and nothing must be taken from the office until I say so.’

  ‘But there are things I need, like the names and addresses of people I need to contact. Doster kept all that sort of thing. There are the relevant authorities that I have a statutory duty to notify, and you can’t stop me doing what the law says I must.’

  ‘Well, on no account will you be allowed into that room. PC Davies will be there for the foreseeable future, so I suggest that you use the phone from your office to this office and he will help as he sees fit. Thank you, Mr Cooper, you may go about your business for the moment.’

  Enraged at being dismissed in the way he normally did the dismissing, Anthony Cooper turned on his heels and marched from one end of the nursing home to the other and then slammed the door of his office. During this relatively short route march the façade of compliance had disappeared from his face, and it now displayed a purple rage, but also something unfamiliar to him – abject fear!

  He turned the key in his door, locking himself in, and sitting at his over-sized desk he phoned a number he didn’t need anyone to find for him because he knew it so well.

  The voice that answered was also well known to him and he skipped the usual pleasantries. ‘Fucking well get yourself here – and I mean now! Doster’s topped himself and there are police swarming all over the place, taking medical records and all sorts. I’m bloody well not taking the rap for this – it was your fucking idea, not mine.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bully on the Back Foot

  It was gone seven o’clock in the evening and the two detectives were drinking coffee in Martin’s office. ‘Can you believe it’s only Thursday?’ asked Matt, rubbing his eyes. ‘What a week. What’s the plan now?’

  Before Martin had a chance to reply his phone rang and Mrs Williams gave him the message that the professor had finished the PM and had gone home. He had asked her to let DCI Phelps know that the PM findings were consistent with suicide and no one else was involved with the death. Professor Moore had also asked her to say that his Edinburgh trip had been called off so he would be around tomorrow if the DCI wanted a word.

  ‘Good,’ said Martin, as he put the phone down. ‘I was going to need a medical person to help with the interpretation of these residents’ case notes, and if the Professor is going to be around tomorrow he will fit the bill nicely.

  ‘I’m trying to get my head around what we’re looking at here, and the worst-case scenario is that these possibly premature deaths could be murder. It’s going to be a case of looking into every nook and cranny, and in particular looking at who had motive, means, and opportunity.’

  ‘I’m going to get some of Alex’s team to empty the administrator’s office and bring every piece of paper that exists to Incident Room One, and we can make a start on going through the lot after a good night’s sleep.’

  Those were the best words Matt had heard all day, and he rose to his feet. ‘As I mentioned on the way back, Sarah and Maria have now gone off duty and I have asked them both to come here for formal interviews tomorrow at ten o’clock. Sarah was planning to go away but, as she said, things have overtaken those plans and she’s changed them.

  ‘She’s been in contact with the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales, that’s the official regulatory body for Care Homes that provide nursing care. So far she has told them about Mr Doster’s death and that the police are conducting an investigation into possibly premature deaths at Parkland.’ Then Matt laughed. ‘I can’t do the impression like Sarah,’ he said. ‘Apparently the woman she spoke to at the CSSIW went into a panic, saying she had done the last inspection and that everything was in order then.’

  Before leaving the building Matt went to his own office to pick up a present he had left there earlier. It was his niece Ellie’s birthday tomorrow, and he planned to drop the gift and card off on his way home. Already in the office was DS Janice Dilworth, and she was putting items into a cardboard box on her desk. It looked as if she was packing up her belongings, but at least she wasn’t in tears, and Matt felt able to comment. ‘Moving out?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ she responded. ‘I thought everyone had gone home. Yes, I put in for a transfer a few weeks ago and was told earlier this week that it had been turned down. That’s when you saw me having a “feeling sorry for myself moment”, I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ was Matt’s reply. ‘I was just torn between going after you to see if you were alright and minding my own business. So what’s happened, has someone up there changed their mind about your transfer?’

  ‘I don’t think they would have done,’ replied Janice. ‘I had applied to go to Essex, that’s where I did my degree and that’s where I met Anne and, well, we became more than just good friends. Problem is, Anne is a DCI and had been married to the Chief Super – but they had never been happy and were divorced even before I arrived on the scene.

  ‘Anyway to cut a long story short, after my transfer was turned down one of their detective sergeants requested a move to Cardiff, and so basically we are doing a straight swap, starting Monday.’

  Matt had enjoyed working with Janice, but after this revelation of her sexual preference he didn’t know whether to kiss her, shake her hand, or just run. He chose the first, gave her a big hug, and kissed her cheek. ‘Look after yourself,’ he told her and then ‘I don’t suppose you know who we are getting in exchange for you, do you?’

  Janice laughed and her whole face was full of mischief as she said. ‘I don’t know the lady personally, but you’ll need to watch out, Matt, as rumour has it she’s something of a man-eater.’

  Matt picked up his parcels, and with a final wave towards Janice he made his way to the car park. He would drop the gifts off at his sister’s house on his way home, and there was a fair chance that she would take pity on her bachelor brother and offer him a meal. They both lived in the Pontprennau area of Cardiff, with just a matter of ten minutes’ drive separating their houses. If Beth wasn’t up for cooking, Matt would double back to Waitrose and get one of Delia or Heston’s ready meals.

>   On his way to Beth’s house, Matt found himself hoping that Janice was not making a big mistake. Working with someone with whom you are personally involved was, in his view, never a good idea, and when it was something other than a straightforward heterosexual relationship it would surely be fraught with difficulties. It would be just like him and Martin being a couple! The thought made him laugh aloud, and he was still laughing when he was invited into Beth’s kitchen just in time to share their later-than-usual evening meal.

  Leaving his office Martin reflected briefly on the happenings at Parkland and then his thoughts returned to Shelley. Her rich auburn hair and dark blue eyes were never far from his mind, and he had tried to phone her earlier but her phone had gone straight to the messaging service. He had left a message but she hadn’t responded and he felt a bit dejected as he started up his car and headed out of the city.

  It was a stunning summer’s evening and people were strolling around making the most of the good weather that had been a long time coming. As he took the road towards the coast, Martin thought more and more about Shelley and admitted to himself that he was head over heels in love with her. So what was he going to do about it?

  Turning the final corner towards home and seeing the familiar much loved row of terraced cottages his heart missed a beat.

  Shelley’s car was parked on his drive – so she had got his message.

  Feeling a bit like a silly schoolboy, Martin stopped the car before he got to the drive and walked quietly up the path. He let himself in as silently as if he were a burglar and then for a few moments just stood and watched Shelley as she stood at his kitchen-sink.

  ‘This is a sight I want to come home to everyday,’ he said quietly and with a lump in his throat.

  Shelley shrieked. ‘Crikey! Martin, you scared me to death.’

  ‘You look very much alive to me,’ he responded. ‘Very much alive, and you look far too beautiful to be washing dishes.’ Martin picked up a towel and tried to dry Shelley’s hands, but she tossed the towel aside and threw her arms around his neck, covering them both with soapsuds. They laughed and kissed, and as the kissing grew more intense they moved from the kitchen towards the bedroom.