Fall Down Dead

11

Where the narrow River Sett flowed under the bridge at the Royal Hotel, empty beer kegs stood in front of the war memorial, painted blue and yellow. Cooper passed Millie’s tearooms and chocolatier on Church Street, and an old Co-op store on the corner of Fishers Bridge.

The Mass Trespass was quite a theme here. On New Mills Road, notices outside the Kinder Lodge Hotel said, HIKERS WELCOME, and even the pub sign had an illustration of ramblers setting off towards the mountain.

‘You were very interested in the brother, Jonathan,’ said Villiers as they moved to the next address on their list.

‘Of all the group, he seems to be the odd one out,’ said Cooper. ‘Or the oddest, at least. His presence looks incongruous.’

‘And he needed money badly.’

‘That might explain why he went on the Kinder Scout walk.’

‘Do you think he asked Faith for money yesterday and she refused him too? Would that have made him so angry that he would have reacted violently?’

‘I couldn’t hazard a guess until I’ve talked to him,’ said Cooper. ‘But in my experience, if someone is under enough pressure, it may only take a very trivial thing to make them cross that line. We’re going to have to talk to them all further and see if we can get a coherent account.’

Villiers sighed. ‘I wouldn’t hold out much hope,’ she said.

Greg Barrett lived with his parents in a modern semi on the Wood Gardens estate off Swallow House Lane, a development of stone cladding and bay windows, tiny patches of garden squeezed next to each drive. The Barretts’ house was half stone cladding and half white render, with a front garden open to the road and paved to make space for two vehicles to park. Greg’s van stood there, a white Renault Kangoo with his name and phone number on the side.

It felt as far away from the wild plateau of Kinder as it could possibly be, though it was barely a mile or two in reality, just on the other side of the A624 bypass.

‘People here call it the bypass,’ said Barrett, ‘but it doesn’t bypass anything. As you can see, it comes straight through the village and divides it in half.’

Barrett was still in jeans and work boots, a multimeter and a pair of wire strippers hanging from his tool belt. He was in his early thirties, lean and angular, with deep-set eyes darkened by a troubled frown.

‘When did you last speak to Faith?’ asked Cooper.

‘It would have been Friday, I think. We talked on the phone a bit. She was going to meet with her group the next day, of course.’

‘You didn’t go on the Kinder Scout walk,’ said Cooper. ‘Why was that?’

‘I don’t fit in,’ he said. ‘Not with that lot. I never understood what Faith saw in them. She couldn’t have got me to go on one of their stupid walks. And now look what’s happened.’

‘How long had you been in a relationship?’ asked Cooper.

‘A year. Two years. I’m not sure.’

Cooper felt sure Faith Matthew would have known exactly. There would probably be a note in her diary marking the anniversary of the date they met. A year or two sounded much too vague.

‘Were you going through any problems?’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was wondering whether your relationship had any difficulties. Was Faith happy?’

‘Of course she was happy. We were fine. No problems at all. It’s not as if she was likely to go off and do anything stupid. She was sensible. Level-headed. It was one of the things I liked about her.’

‘Did she talk about Darius Roth much?’

Barrett scowled. ‘Yes, quite a lot actually. She was a bit taken with him.’

‘Taken with him? She admired him?’

‘She said he was passionate. About what he believed in, I mean. Not, you know...’

‘That can be attractive,’ said Cooper tentatively.

But Barrett shook his head. ‘I’m sure there wasn’t anything like that.’

‘Sure?’

‘Positive. Like I said, we were fine.’

‘OK. Have you spoken to Faith’s family?’

‘To her mother. Her parents don’t like me.’

‘That’s often the case,’ said Cooper.

‘But Faith has a brother too. He’s quite different.’

‘Jonathan.’

‘Yes. He might know more about Roth and that group.’

Villiers turned to Cooper as they left the Barretts’ home.

‘I suppose this means a trip into Manchester?’ she said.

‘I’m afraid so.’

The old semi-detached stood in a leafy street just off Withington Road in Whalley Range, South Manchester, near a Catholic grammar school and the International Centre for Krishna Consciousness.

All the houses here were faced in pale brick with decorative arches. The row of buzzers and flat names by the door were enough to indicate it was in multi-occupancy, even without the swarm of wheelie bins on the drive.

An aged four-wheel-drive Subaru Impreza was parked out front. It was about fifteen years old, judging by its registration number, but well maintained apart from some rust on its rear wheel arches. The colour was something quite queasy-making between blue and green, perhaps teal or viridian.

From the names on the buzzers, Cooper saw that Jonathan Matthew lived on the top floor of the house. When a tall, stooped young man with long hair answered, Cooper showed his ID.

‘Oh, is it about Faith’s accident?’

‘Yes, sir. We’ll need to get someone to take a full statement from you later. But we just have a few initial questions to help us focus our inquiries.’

‘All right. Come on in.’

Jonathan showed them into a small sitting room in what would once have been described as an attic flat but was probably listed as a loft apartment. It had been recently modernised, but its dramatically sloping ceilings and dormer windows gave away its origins.

‘I should be at work today,’ he said, ‘but I’ve taken the day off.’

‘Understandable. Your mother is at Faith’s house in Hayfield, by the way.’

‘Is she?’ said Jonathan vaguely.

‘I thought you might like to know, in case you needed to be there.’

‘I’ve spoken to Dad this morning. I don’t want to...’

‘What?’

‘To go over it all again. That’s what it would be like. Over and over again. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened. I can’t save Faith. There’s no point in trying to blame anyone, is there?’

He looked appealingly at Cooper and Villiers on the last phrase.

‘I’m sure no one is trying to allocate blame,’ said Cooper.

‘Really? Well, you don’t know my mother very well.’

Cooper glanced into the next room and saw instrument cases stacked against a wall.

‘What do you do for a living, Jonathan?’ he asked.

‘I work as a graphic designer, but I’m really a musician,’ he said. ‘I’m in a band, and we’re doing well. Really coming together. I reckon we could be going places before long. We have a gig next week, in fact.’

‘Where at?’

‘The Spinning Top in Stockport.’

‘I know it.’

‘You should come along. We cover some classic rock, as well as doing our own stuff. Some of the other guys are older and played in bands decades ago. But that’s what people want now. Tribute bands, or old rockers still touring. You have to start off like that and get your name known.’

‘Anyone I might know in your band, then?’ asked Cooper.

‘The guy who put it all together is Robert Farnley. He goes way back to the music scene in Manchester in the 1970s and he’s met everybody who was anybody.’

‘That’s before my time.’

‘It’s all coming back, you know, that kind of stuff. The kids appreciate good music. We’ve all learned a lot from Rob.’

‘I’m glad to hear it’s going well.’

‘Oh, we’re doing a demo, and some proper promotion,’ he said proudly. ‘We’ll get there.’

As Cooper watched him, Jonathan was fiddling with something metallic, turning it over and over in his hand. Cooper noticed that he had long fingers, like a lot of musicians.

‘Mr Matthew, did you ask your sister for money?’ he said.

Jonathan looked up. ‘How did you know that?’

‘It was something your mother said.’

‘Oh yeah, she would. Well, I did mention to Faith that I needed some cash. She had a big nest egg put aside, you know.’

‘But she said no?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How did that make you feel?’

He flushed. ‘What are you getting at? I was disappointed, that’s all.’

‘When did she tell you that she wouldn’t give you money? Was it the day of the walk?’

‘No, before that.’

‘When?’

‘The day before, if you must know. All right, I was a bit pissed off. I thought I could rely on her.’

‘But she let you down.’

‘Just this once. But she was my sister. She meant a lot to me.’

‘Is that why you went on the walk?’

‘Because she asked me to, yes.’

‘I have a feeling you weren’t impressed by Kinder Scout,’ said Cooper. ‘Or by the history of the Mass Trespass.’

Jonathan smiled. ‘The only thing I liked about it was the alien evacuation.’

‘The what?’

He put the metallic object down on a table. It was only a capo for the neck of his guitar.

‘Don’t you know the story?’ said Jonathan. ‘There was this guy back last century who said he’d been contacted by extraterrestrials. They told him the world was going to end, but they could rescue some members of the human race. He formed an organisation, the Aetherius Society, and they came up with a list of mountains around the world where the aliens would come and evacuate people at the right time. “Magic mountains”, they called them.’

‘And?’

‘And Kinder Scout was one of those mountains. There’s a rock up there with a cross painted on it and the guy’s initials. GK — his name was George King. That rock is the exact spot his society said the aliens would evacuate from.’

‘And when is this evacuation going to take place exactly?’ asked Villiers.

‘Well, they said it would be 2015.’

‘That’s a bit disappointing.’

‘It’s a good story, though.’

Jonathan went suddenly quiet, and his face darkened. He’d been enjoying himself for a moment, and now he was angry at his own apparent callousness. It was probably the words ‘a good story’ that had penetrated his exterior.

Cooper recognised that feeling. Sometimes you heard a phrase coming out of your mouth and it struck deep into your own heart while meaning nothing to anyone else who heard it.

Now Cooper regretted having led him down that path.

‘I’m really sorry about your sister,’ he said.

Jonathan looked away. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But nothing will help with the guilt.’

‘You feel guilty for her death?’

‘Of course I feel guilty,’ said Jonathan. ‘I should have been there with her. She always looked after me when we were kids — you know, the big-sister thing. But I wasn’t there when she needed me. I lost sight of her in the fog and she died.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Cooper. ‘Everybody was disorientated. The group had split up. You were lost. You were all suffering from cold and exhaustion.’

Jonathan’s expression didn’t change.

‘It doesn’t matter what you say. You can make all the excuses for me you like. The fact is, I wasn’t there for her. I let Faith down. I’ll always feel guilty for that.’

Cooper nodded. Despite what he’d said to Jonathan Matthew, he fully understood those feelings of guilt. He’d suffered them himself, and was still experiencing them now, those sharp pangs of despair whenever he thought about what had happened to his fiancée Liz. He’d been there when the abandoned pub had been set on fire, trapping them both in the blazing building. He’d been unable to save her. He should have been able to bring Liz out alive, but he hadn’t.

That kind of guilt didn’t respond to logic. And he supposed it would never go away.

‘Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm your sister?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Harm her? Are you saying she was deliberately killed? I thought it was an accident?’

‘We’re not sure yet. But I have to ask. Can you think of anyone—’

‘Nobody at all. Faith got on with everyone. Why would anyone want to do something like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what we’d like to find out.’

What he could have said to Jonathan Matthew was that he’d lost count of the times he’d heard friends and family members say that a victim ‘got on with everyone’. Sometimes they were in denial. But often there was always a small, secretive corner of someone’s life that was unknown even to the people closest to them.

Jonathan stared miserably at Cooper.

‘You’ve got to be wrong,’ he said. ‘What happened to Faith — it must have been an accident.’

Cooper sighed. ‘I wish I could tell you that, sir. But I’m not sure it would be true.’

Chloe Young had been accompanied down to the body by a crime scene examiner and was wearing a safety harness provided by the Mountain Rescue team, in case she inadvertently went too close to the edge.

Ben Cooper stood on the overhang and watched her working. Mist still surged below Dead Woman’s Drop, masking the distant valley bottom and making the fall from here seem even further. He felt as though he’d be falling for ever through the cloud if he lost his footing.

Each stage of the process was photographed from every angle as Young inspected the body bit by bit, then gently began to turn it onto its side.

That was when Cooper caught his first glimpse of Faith Matthew’s face, shockingly pale against the red of her jacket. There was blood around her right temple where she’d hit the rock. Young examined Faith’s face and neck, then checked the limbs that had been hidden under the body.

Young turned and looked up, as if judging the distance of the fall. She caught Cooper’s eye and gave a small smile and a shake of the head. Cooper wasn’t sure what that meant.

‘In my opinion,’ said Young, when she’d returned to the top of the cliff and freed herself from the harness, ‘and it’s a provisional view, you understand...’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, the victim was already turning round when she fell.’

‘Turning?’

‘The position of the body and the location of the injuries would be consistent with that scenario.’ Young twisted her own body to demonstrate a half-turn, as if looking at something over her shoulder. ‘You see, one arm and leg were underneath her. She fell sideways.’

‘Which means she didn’t just step off the edge in the fog,’ said Cooper.

‘I think she would have fallen at an entirely different angle.’

‘Perhaps she was turning because she heard something behind her.’

‘Possibly.’

Cooper thought of the angled shoe mark he’d seen. If that was found to match one of Faith Matthew’s boots, it would support the idea that she was turning away from the drop.

‘I can see what you’re thinking, Ben,’ said Young. ‘Obviously I can’t offer an opinion on what happened up here.’

‘Of course not.’

But Cooper had the certainty that Chloe Young agreed with him. Faith Matthew hadn’t fallen from Dead Woman’s Drop. She was pushed.