Fall Down Dead

32

It took Ben Cooper far longer than he would have liked to get from Ripley to Hayfield. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over for speeding by his Derbyshire road policing colleagues on his way back from a disciplinary hearing.

So a full team was already at the scene in the grounds of Trespass Lodge by the time he arrived. Cooper crossed the stretch of grass to the old Methodist chapel. Tape had been rolled out, lights were set up, and CSIs were busy in the interior of the chapel.

Carol Villiers met him at the outer cordon.

‘We’ve found him,’ she said, as he climbed into a scene suit. ‘It didn’t take long.’

‘What exactly happened, Carol?’

‘It seems Mr Roth fell from the gallery.’

‘Fell?’

‘I’m using the term loosely. Unlike our woman on Kinder Scout, there’s no doubt about this one from the word go.’

‘Let’s have a look.’

Inside, Cooper could see that Darius Roth’s body had landed on the flags of the chapel floor with slightly less of an impact than Faith Matthew’s body had hit the rocks below Kinder Downfall. The distance of the fall wasn’t so great, though the stone flags were just as hard and unyielding for a human body.

It was clear that the impact had fractured Roth’s skull. A splatter of blood and cranial matter had been thrown in a bright halo round his head.

‘He has cuts and abrasions on his face,’ said Cooper.

‘And on his hands too.’

‘Defensive wounds? So there was a fight.’

‘It certainly looks as though he tried to defend himself against someone. The balustrade up there is broken. Admittedly, the wood isn’t in perfect condition, but he didn’t just fall over it — he went through it with some force. We’ve found splinters of wood embedded in some of his wounds, and there are plenty of shoe marks in the dust on the floorboards of the gallery.’

‘It was somebody he knew,’ said Cooper.

‘Well, I don’t know if we can go that far. Not on the basis of the forensic evidence.’

‘Think about it. Would Darius Roth go up into the gallery with a complete stranger?’

‘He might already have been up there.’

Cooper nodded. Yes, he could picture that. It made a good vantage point, a balcony from where Darius Roth could look down like a king on — what? His followers, Cooper imagined.

‘He would have been able to see anyone who came into the chapel from there,’ said Cooper. ‘Why would he let them come in and climb the steps to where he stood if it was someone he didn’t know?’

‘OK, so perhaps he knew his attacker.’

‘And more than that — it was someone he trusted.’

‘Trusted?’

Cooper thought about it. ‘Or someone he felt he had a secure hold over.’

‘So he was overconfident, you mean,’ said Villiers. ‘That fits his personality, I suppose.’

‘Yes. I imagine in this case his hold on one individual wasn’t secure enough. His power over them failed disastrously.’

‘Do you think it was revenge for Faith Matthew’s death?’

‘What do you think, Carol?’

‘Well, it would only make sense if Darius Roth was the one who killed her. But we have no evidence to suggest it. The accounts from our witnesses are consistent on one point at least — they show Darius to be with one of the groups who split away to try to get help.’

‘With Elsa and the two students, Millie Taylor and Karina Scott. Not forgetting Nick Haslam. They were best placed to know his movements. They would have known whether he had the opportunity to kill Faith Matthew or not.’

‘Could they all be lying?’

Cooper laughed. ‘You and I know perfectly well that everybody could be lying.’

‘So what then?’

‘Revenge as a motive would make sense in two scenarios — if Darius Roth was the one who killed Faith or if someone had good reason to believe he did.’

‘That would mean they had knowledge of the incident that we don’t.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. Belief doesn’t always need evidence.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘The rest of our witnesses don’t have first-hand evidence of where Darius was, because they were in a different group and didn’t see him after they split up.’

‘Does that narrow it down at all?’ said Villiers.

‘I hope so. At least if we can get prints or DNA, we’ll have some suspects for comparison. Meanwhile, let’s see if we can focus our attention even more. Who actually found the body?’

‘The gardener.’

‘Will Sankey? You talk to him, then, Carol, and I’ll deal with Mrs Roth.’

‘Good luck,’ said Villiers.

Elsa Roth was hugging her arms round her chest as if trying to hold in some emotion. Cooper felt immediately sorry for her. Whatever his own views of her husband, Elsa’s world had just been torn apart.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Roth,’ said Cooper, ‘but we do need to ask some questions. Weren’t you concerned that your husband was missing?’

‘I don’t keep track of Darius’s movements,’ said Elsa. ‘He doesn’t like it. He gets annoyed if I ask him where he’s going or where he’s been. So I don’t ask.’

‘But you must have had an idea whether he was at home or he’d gone to work.’

‘He does a lot of his business from home. He has an office at the other end of the house.’

It was that phrase ‘the other end of the house’ that reminded Cooper he was in a different world. Back home at Tollhouse Cottage, he was aware of every sound in the house, knew which room the cat was in from the sound of her snoring or the click of her claws on the floorboards.

Here at Trespass Lodge, it was possible for Elsa Roth not to know whether her husband was at home or not, and vice versa. They seemed to have occupied different ends of the lodge for much of the time, and the property was so large that there would be no sounds reaching from one end to the other.

He imagined they would probably have phoned each other if they needed to speak. Darius could even have got one of his cars out of the garage and driven away without Elsa knowing, if he wanted to.

‘So you didn’t notice your husband had gone down to the chapel?’

‘No.’

‘And did you see anyone else this morning?’

‘Only the gardener, Will. And we have a cleaner, Milena. She was here this morning. But she’s very discreet.’

‘Discreet?’ repeated Cooper.

Why was he interpreting that word to mean that Milena wouldn’t tell him anything? Was that what Elsa intended? Perhaps. A discreet servant might notice things but wouldn’t talk about them. He felt sure Elsa wouldn’t refer to Milena as a servant, though. That was very Edwardian.

‘Who knew about the old chapel?’

‘All the members of the club, of course,’ she said.

‘You mean the New Trespassers Walking Club.’

‘Of course.’

‘And previous members too?’

‘I suppose so.’ She looked around vaguely, as if she couldn’t remember anything before today. ‘Yes, they all came here at some time.’

‘Did your husband often come down to the chapel from the house at that time of night?’

‘He might have done, now and then. We have separate bedrooms. Sometimes he came home late from a meeting or a dinner, or something like that, so he arranged our rooms so that he wouldn’t disturb me. But there were a few times when I was woken up by something in the early hours of the morning and thought it was Darius arriving home in his car. When I looked out of the window, though, I saw him walking up the garden from the lake, so I know he spent time down here on his own.’

‘On his own?’ repeated Cooper.

Elsa looked puzzled. ‘Well, I assumed...’

‘What?’ said Cooper. ‘What did you assume your husband was doing down here, Mrs Roth?’

She shrugged feebly. ‘Just that he wanted to be on his own, and this was his place to do it. Some people are like that, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, it’s true.’

‘Well, then?’

‘Did it never occur to you that Darius might not be on his own at the old chapel, that he could be meeting someone?’

‘I don’t know who that would be,’ she said.

Again she hadn’t asked questions. From what she said, it seemed Elsa hadn’t even raised the possibility in her own mind. A saying of his mother’s came into Cooper’s head: There are none so blind as those who will not see. Where did that quotation come from? Or was it one of those ancient proverbs attributed to ‘Anonymous’, their origins lost in time? It was amazing how accurate they could still be.

Cooper went back out to his Toyota, which was parked on the gravel at the front of Trespass Lodge. Carol Villiers was waiting for him when he reached his car.

‘I’ve talked to Will Sankey,’ she said. ‘It seems he’d worked his way down to that end of the grounds as usual by late morning and he noticed the door of the old chapel was open. He says it wasn’t unknown for Darius to be down there, but he never left the door open. So Sankey went in to check. And there was the body.’

‘Did he see anyone else?’ asked Cooper.

‘He says he didn’t see anyone in the grounds or at the house this morning except Darius and Elsa Roth themselves.’

‘Where did he see Elsa?’

‘He spoke to her briefly in the garden room when he arrived. He parks his van at that side of the house so it isn’t visible to visitors.’

Villiers raised an eyebrow at him. What did that mean?

‘Do you think something is going on between Elsa and Sankey?’ said Cooper.

‘No. Nothing from his point of view, anyway. I have a feeling from what he said that Elsa might sometimes feel a bit... lonely.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘Me neither. But Will Sankey is too cautious to get involved in anything like that. I think he’s in the clear.’

‘Good. It would be too bad if it turned out to be the gardener who did it,’ said Cooper. ‘Too much of a cliché.’

‘Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the vicinity for the time when Darius Roth was killed. Only Sankey. And Elsa, of course.’

‘And you’ve just said Sankey is in the clear.’

‘Well, all right. I don’t want to jump to conclusions.’

‘You don’t like Elsa much, do you?’ said Cooper.

‘To be honest,’ said Villiers, ‘I haven’t met one of them that I like so far.’

‘And there’s one other, by the way,’ said Cooper.

‘Who?’

‘The cleaner, Milena,’ he said. ‘But she’s too discreet.’

Villiers looked at him oddly.

‘When we came here the first time, we managed to approach the chapel without passing the house,’ she said. ‘We reached it from the footpath through the woods. Anyone else could have done that.’

‘Of course, if they knew about it.’

Cooper looked around the front of Trespass Lodge, noting the glint of lenses angled high on the walls under the eaves.

‘Let’s try the cameras first,’ he said. ‘It isn’t often we get a chance to look at CCTV footage in this part of Derbyshire.’

‘By the way,’ said Villiers, ‘the Major Crime Unit are on their way from EMSOU. DCI Mackenzie will be senior investigating officer. It’s going to take them a while to get here yet, though.’

‘If they can find it at all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They’ll be trying to follow their satnavs,’ said Cooper. ‘I wish them luck with that. They’ll probably end up in Stockport.’

Trespass Lodge was well equipped with security lights and cameras, of course. A computer screen in a study showed live images from the front of the property.

Cooper was able to scroll back to the previous evening. Just before it went dark and the system switched to infrared, a camera trained on the drive had recorded footage of a vehicle approaching the lodge but stopping at the gates. It stood there for a while before turning round and leaving. It was too far away for the make of the car to be established. But its colour was — what? Teal or viridian, perhaps.

‘Carol, take Luke and bring in Jonathan Matthew for questioning,’ Cooper said. ‘Try his flat at Whalley Range, and if he’s not there, he might be back at work in Manchester.’

‘There’s no sign of Jonathan Matthew at his home or office. His employer says he’s still taking time off because of the death of his sister. So I phoned his mother. She says she spoke to Jonathan last night, and he told her he was in Manchester rehearsing with his band all evening.’

‘Have we got a number for Robert Farnley?’

‘Gavin should have one.’

Cooper got the number and called.

‘When did you last see Jonathan Matthew, Mr Farnley?’

‘He was here for rehearsals last night.’

‘Until what time?’

‘We worked late. There were a couple of songs we were having trouble with. We were still here at midnight.’

‘Midnight?’

‘Yes. Then we had to pack up and get our gear into the cars. I don’t suppose we actually left the mill before half past twelve.’

If that was true, there was no way Jonathan Matthew could have got to Hayfield by the time his car was shown on the CCTV camera at Trespass Lodge. If it was true.

‘Gavin, where was that place the band was rehearsing, where you talked to Robert Farnley?’ he called.

‘Brunswick Mill,’ said Murfin. ‘It’s in Ancoats. One of those big old mill buildings facing onto the Ashton Canal. You can’t miss it.’

Diane Fry was following DCI Alistair Mackenzie’s car towards Hayfield. DC Jamie Callaghan sat in the passenger seat of the Audi, quietly texting and checking messages.

‘Jamie, can you have a look at the map?’ she said. ‘I don’t think this is right.’

Callaghan looked up. ‘Where are we?’

‘That’s the point. I don’t know.’

Callaghan opened up an app on his phone. ‘It shows our present location as somewhere on the A6 near Whaley Bridge,’ he said.

‘I think we should have turned off at that last exit. We’re almost in Greater Manchester.’

‘But Mr Mackenzie—’

‘He’s wrong,’ said Fry. ‘I’m going to head back at this roundabout. Call him and tell him what we’re doing?’

‘Me?’ protested Callaghan.

‘I’m driving, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

Fry swung back southwards onto the A6 as she listened to Callaghan explain to their boss. She couldn’t hear what Mackenzie was saying, but she could imagine how irritable he would sound. He was probably looking at his watch too, calculating how much time they’d lost heading in the wrong direction.

They worked through Hayfield and finally found the road to Trespass Lodge. Several police vehicles were already parked in front of the house.

‘How did these guys find it?’ complained Mackenzie when he clambered out of his Mercedes.

‘Local knowledge?’ suggested Fry.

They were directed to the back of the house and across an expanse of grass until they reached the old chapel.

‘Is this the crime scene?’ said Mackenzie. ‘Give me a nice back alley in Nottingham anytime.’

Fry couldn’t argue with that. This was definitely the middle of nowhere. Ben Cooper country if ever she saw it. Murders happened here too.

But Ben Cooper himself wasn’t to be found. Instead, he’d left a message for the Major Crime Unit. He was following a line of inquiry and expected to apprehend a suspect soon.

‘It sounds as though we’re too late,’ said Mackenzie. ‘I think this might be your fault, DS Fry.’

The A6 from Buxton ran straight through Stockport before it headed in towards Manchester city centre. In Gorton, a junction on Hyde Road also marked the end of the A57 from Sheffield over the Snake Pass.

Inner-city areas like Gorton were where all those young working-class men had flocked from to join the Mass Trespass on Kinder in 1932. Since then, the streets of terraced houses had disappeared in Manchester’s slum clearances, entire communities moved to new estates in Wythenshawe and Hattersley.

Cooper recalled that in the early 1960s, the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, had been inconspicuous clerks working in a Gorton chemical factory. In their case, they’d driven out of the city on summer evenings for the purpose of murdering children and disposing of their victims’ bodies on Saddleworth Moor.

Then the factories themselves had closed and Gorton itself had died. So now the descendants of those factory workers lived miles out of the city in Hayfield and Glossop.

Cooper turned off the A6 and went through Ardwick towards Ancoats, glimpsing the stands of the Etihad Stadium, where Manchester City played.

He recognised Brunswick Mill straight away from Gavin Murfin’s description. Ancoats had been described as the world’s first industrial suburb, one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution — and Brunswick Mill was a huge relic of that industrial past. Boarded-up windows overlooked Bradford Road, where the mill’s seven storeys loomed over rows of modern townhouses.

But Gavin was wrong about one thing. The mill wasn’t ‘backing onto’ the Ashton Canal. The mill’s loading bays all faced the canal. That was where the raw materials had come in and the finished products had gone out.

He found Robert Farnley in one of the practice rooms, just as Murfin had said he would be. Farnley had two other musicians with him, but there was no sign of Jonathan Matthew.

‘He hasn’t turned up,’ said Farnley when Cooper asked. ‘It’s a real nuisance at this stage. And you can tell him that from me if you find him.’

‘Do you have any idea where he might be, Mr Farnley?’

‘He lives in Whalley Range.’

‘We’ve tried there.’

‘Or he might be at work. He has a job—’

‘We’ve tried there too. He told his mother he’d be here rehearsing.’

‘Well, we haven’t seen him today, have we?’

The other musicians muttered their agreement.

‘He’s missing,’ said Cooper.

‘I hope this isn’t going to affect the band,’ said Farnley. ‘We’ve got a gig coming up next week in Stockport.’

‘I’m afraid Jonathan Matthew won’t be playing with you, sir.’

‘That’s a real shame.’

‘I’m sure there are plenty of session guitarists hanging around Brunswick Mill.’

‘You don’t know much about music, do you? You can’t just turn up and do a gig without putting in some rehearsal time together. Jonno is an important part of the band. When will we get him back?’

Cooper smiled. ‘By the time you see him again, Mr Farnley, I’m afraid he’ll be long out of practice.’

‘It’s a shame,’ said Farnley. ‘I liked Jonathan. But the truth is, bass players are always a bit unreliable. Temperamental. It’s a complication for us, though. Jonno was putting up the money for promotion and to make a proper demo. That’s why we let him join the band in the first place. He’s not a brilliant bass player, to be honest. I could have got someone better.’

‘But he wasn’t going to be able to provide the money, was he?’

‘Oh yes, he did. Just this week. He came through on his promise.’

‘Really? Did he tell you where he got it from?’

‘No. And I didn’t ask him.’ Farnley laughed. ‘Wait — you’re the cops. He hasn’t robbed a bank or something, has he?’

‘Well, it wasn’t Jonathan’s money anyway,’ said Cooper. ‘And we believe he may have killed his benefactor.’

‘Oh well. He wouldn’t be the first person to think there’s something more important than money.’ Then Farnley stopped laughing. ‘You’re not kidding with me, are you?’

‘Hardly, Mr Farnley. This is a murder inquiry.’

‘Darn. That puts a different light on things.’

‘Oh? Do you want to change your story, sir?’

Farnley shifted uneasily on his stool.

‘All right. Jonathan wasn’t here at all last night,’ he said. ‘He asked me to say he was, if anyone asked. But I wasn’t expecting it to be you asking. I never thought... Well, Jonno said his mother might call, and he’d told her he was here rehearsing.’

‘His mother?’

‘Mrs Matthew is a bit of a dragon, apparently. She doesn’t approve of him being in a band. She rang here once before trying to get hold of him, so I didn’t think too much of it when he asked me to do him a favour.’

‘If he wasn’t here, then where was he?’ said Cooper. ‘Did he tell you?’

‘Again I didn’t ask.’ Farnley smiled and almost winked. ‘I thought it was probably a private matter. Something he didn’t want his old mother to find out about, if you understand me.’

Cooper heaved another sigh. Keeping secrets became so natural to people that it made his job very difficult sometimes. But there were secrets and secrets. This was on a different level to anything Robert Farnley might have been imagining.

‘This, sir,’ he said, ‘is definitely something Jonathan Matthew wouldn’t want his mother to find out about.’