Scared to Live

13

In Matlock Bath, houses seemed to climb on top of each other in their haste to escape the valley floor. Above them were the two Victorian pleasure grounds on Masson Hill — the Heights of Jacob, the Heights of Abraham. Their biblical slopes were occupied by modern leisure parks now, the fairy-tale shapes of castles and towers poking up among the trees.

For the past twenty years, there had been no need for anyone to slog up the winding paths to reach the hilltop park at the north end of the village. Strings of white cable cars now rode high over the valley from a base station near the railway line, carrying visitors up to enjoy the play areas, the Treetops gift shop, the Hi Cafe and the Summit Bar. A grey stone tower was visible on the summit, a flag fluttering in the breeze.

The weather had been warm right through into October, which felt wrong in the Peak District. After another dry summer, the trees had burst into an explosion of yellows and golds. Where the turrets and battlements of Lilliput Land Castle had lurked among dense foliage all summer, now they were emerging slowly from a sea of reds and golds. Some of the other features of Gulliver’s Kingdom were being revealed, too, like the chairlift and the campanile on Fantasy Terrace.

Cooper could see the new indoor facility standing out prominently on the hillside. It was designed to stay open during the winter, and it housed everything from Wild West shoot-outs to an ice palace. Or so his nieces told him. He supposed he’d have to take them there one day, when he got some time off.

Turning left out of the aquarium, he called at the neighbouring properties, which happened to be the two villas housing B amp;Bs. There was a chance that Rose Shepherd had come into Matlock Bath to meet someone who was staying here, although there didn’t seem to be any reason why she should have killed time next door in that case.

Drawing a blank, he walked a bit further up North Parade, where he found another amusement centre and a shop selling hand-made chocolates, both of which were closed.

Across the road was the Jubilee Bridge — wooden planks and iron girders, with an old gas lamp on a central arch. It led across the river to a bandstand and the remains of a switchback. There were more wooded slopes lying above Lovers’ Walk. Their steepness called for erosion controls: log revetments, brush and board hurdles, a dead hedge. Here and there, sycamores and beeches had been felled, no doubt condemned because they weren’t native to Derbyshire.

An artist had set his easel up on the bridge, trying to capture the scene downriver towards the Pavilion, with trees reflected in the moving water. Cooper often came across painters, though usually in the summer. He had to admire the effort they put in, if only to carry their equipment from the car. But they were setting themselves a hopeless challenge. This landscape was constantly changing. No set of watercolours was going to preserve it on a canvas.

He noticed that Life in a Lens stood on the other side of the aquarium, with a Victorian tea room on the ground floor. This was his chance to call in and ask about the webcam.

When he came out a few minutes later, a school party was queuing to enter the mining museum further down the road. There were two cameras on the outside wall nearby, but they were focused on the entrance to Brody’s nightclub. When he was a teenager, Brody’s had been known to the local kids as ‘The Pav’, because it was located on the upper floor of the Pavilion, above the mining museum and the tourist information centre.

But where the heck was Gavin Murfin? Cooper stood by his Toyota for a while, looking up and down the street. Then he walked a few yards along South Parade, past the ice-cream parlour and the antiques centre to the corner, where he found that a science-fiction bookshop he remembered had closed down. He supposed it had been a mistake to let Gavin take the interview with the waitress at the tea rooms. The smell of fish and chips on the promenade was so inescapable that he must be giddy with hunger by now.

Finally, Cooper pulled out his phone and called Gavin’s number. Strangely, the ringing tone seemed to be echoed by a tune playing somewhere nearby. He turned and looked into the windows of the building behind him. There was Gavin, eating a choc ice. And waving.

‘OK, I did the waitress at the Riber Tea Rooms,’ said Murfin when Cooper got him away from his choc ice. ‘Nice lass, name of Tina. Get this — reckons she saw Rose Shepherd talking to two other people at a table in the cafe on Saturday afternoon.’

‘Wow, you got more than I did,’ said Cooper.

‘That’s why I thought I deserved a reward.’

‘What time was this, Gavin?’

‘Around two thirty, she thinks.’

‘That must have been after Miss Shepherd came out of the aquarium.’

Murfin used the tip of one finger to wipe a bit of chocolate from his front teeth. ‘I chatted Tina up a bit, and I got her to do her best with descriptions. But the tea rooms were full that afternoon. She did say the woman she recognized from the paper was wearing a dark jacket.’

‘That fits. What about the other two?’

‘Ah, there she was struggling a bit, poor lass. She says they’d come in earlier, a man and a woman. But she had no reason to take particular notice of them. The Shepherd woman came in about a quarter of an hour later, and she was on her own, which is more unusual. She ordered a coffee, paid for it, then took her time looking round, and went and sat at the couple’s table.’

‘Did she seem to know them?’

‘That’s what Tina’s not really sure about. There were no empty tables, so Miss Shepherd would have had to sit with someone, and she chose those two.’

‘Right. We don’t know why, though?’

‘Maybe because they looked the most harmless. All Tina can say is that when she took the coffee to the table, the three of them weren’t talking and the atmosphere seemed cool. But they did chat a bit later on. The couple left the cafe first, and Miss Shepherd went out right after them. The money for the couple’s bill was left on the table.’

Cooper unlocked the car. Standing at the kerb behind it was an entire family of bikers — mum, dad and two small children, all dressed in matching leathers and gathered round a pair of purple Suzukis.

‘Well, it’s something at least, Gavin,’ he said. ‘She must have come down into Matlock Bath for a reason.’

‘Oh, and I did a couple of shops,’ said Murfin.

‘Yes, the ice-cream parlour. I saw that.’

Murfin groaned theatrically. ‘You know, Ben, you’re getting as bad as Miss.’

‘Get in the car, Gavin. We’ve got to call at Masson Mill.’

Masson had been the world’s oldest working textile mill until production stopped fifteen years ago. Here, in the middle part of the Derwent Valley, was where industrial history had changed. It had all started for Sir Richard Arkwright at Cromford Mill, just downstream. But Masson was his great flagship.

Cooper couldn’t remember details of the innovations that led to Arkwright’s success, the industrial secrets German manufacturers had gone to great lengths to get hold of. But he could see how Arkwright’s status had risen purely by looking at the building. This mill hadn’t been built, but designed. Instead of a dark, cavernous shed, it was an edifice intended to impress. The three central bays were built out towards the road and decorated with half-moons of glass between Venetian-style windows. Above the windows stood a shuttered cupola, and Sir Richard’s name spelled out on the brickwork in proud capital letters.

One of the later extensions to the mill had been converted into a car park. Cooper drove up a ramp and parked on the roof near a side entrance to the shopping village. Over the wall, he could see the convex weir built to take advantage of an outcrop of rock on the opposite bank of the river. From there, the water ran into a goyt, the fast-flowing channel that had driven the mill’s waterwheels.

‘What are we looking for here, Ben?’

‘Eva Hooper. She runs a retail unit on the road level.’

Murfin opened the door into the shops. ‘Mmm, cakes.’

There were four open-plan retail levels, accessed from a central staircase like an old-fashioned department store. Each floor was divided into areas selling discount designer clothes, furniture, food, golf equipment. The mill clock was still on the wall at road level, but for some reason it had stopped at twelve noon. On the lowest level was a restaurant, lined with windows overlooking the river. A patch of brown scum had formed on the water, as if a few gallons of coffee had been spilled there.

‘Gavin, why don’t you find the offices and ask about CCTV footage? There’s a camera over the main entrance.’

‘All right.’

Cooper had seen signs on this floor for the working textile museum. Could it have been part of Miss Shepherd’s afternoon out, before her visit to the aquarium? Perhaps Arkwright’s legacy had some significance for her. Come to think of it, she was old enough to have worked here at the mill. Had she been revisiting old haunts, re-living memories one last time?

Cooper shook himself. He’d begun to imagine the victim having some kind of premonition that she was about to die. But no one knew the time of their death in advance, unless they had some terminal illness. Or they were intending to commit suicide. That was the only way to be really sure.

The museum was reached by leaving the shopping area and passing through an echoey room over uneven wooden floors that creaked and shifted underfoot, worn by decades of use by Arkwright’s millworkers. Bobbins and shuttles were on sale here, along with other mementoes of the textile industry that had once employed so many.

He found a man taking money on a flight of stairs that led down into the spinning and weaving sheds.

‘Do you issue admission tickets here?’ he asked.

‘No. You get a leaflet with a map of the route through the rooms of the museum — see?’

‘Were you working on Saturday?’

‘In the afternoon.’

‘Do you remember this woman coming in?’

The man looked at Cooper’s photograph.

‘No, sorry.’

In the rooms below, two enormous machines rattled away unattended, and stacks of shuttles sat in alcoves along the walls. There were wicker baskets and wooden trolleys, shelves full of old tools and equipment. An ancient typewriter, dusty cardboard boxes. Cooper could smell lubricating oil and hear the chug of the looms, leather belts spinning over wheels in the glass-roofed sheds. A tiny cubicle looked to be an overseer’s office, dusty ledgers still open on the desk, wire-framed glasses poking out of an ancient spectacle case. Visitors’ direction signs pointed towards a distant doorway — the bobbin room.

Cooper turned back. ‘Thanks for your time,’ he said.

In a distant corner of the shopping village, he found Eva Hooper. Her unit sold prints of Peak District landscapes, ethnic gifts, pottery, leather-work, gemstones. And, of course, a range of postcards, calendars and greeting cards — anything that tourists might be interested in.

‘Yes, I think she was here,’ she said. ‘It was Saturday, so we were quite busy.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘If it had been during the week, I might have remembered her better.’

‘Did she buy anything?’

‘I’m not sure. If she paid by cash, there won’t be any record of her name.’

‘OK.’

‘You could ask my assistant, but she’s not here today. She works for me part-time when I’m busy.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Frances — we call her Fran.’

Cooper paused with his pen poised over his notebook. He’d spoken to a Frances very recently. It wasn’t a common name, but coincidences did happen …

‘Frances what?’

‘Birtland. She lives a couple of miles away, in Foxlow.’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘I know.’

Fry was satisfied that she’d done everything she could to prevent any further loss of evidence from the house at Darwin Street. She’d taken all the actions necessary to preserve the scene and create a log. The examination had been thorough. True, in an ideal world, it could have happened a bit sooner. But since when had this world been ideal? At least it had been done before any cleaning up or salvage operations started.

Now she was anxious to get Brian Mullen back at the scene as soon as she could, in case any more items came to light that needed to be recovered. Once that had been done, she could relax and let the clean-up get under way.

The good news from the fire officer was that significant evidence often remained, even after the most destructive of fires. She recognized some of the terms he used, but mostly his optimistic tone. The experts had even agreed on where the fire started, though apparently Quinton Downie had insisted on defining a radius of error about a metre around the likely source.

One of the SOCOs assigned to Darwin Street was Liz Petty. Some people turned up everywhere. Inside the hallway of the house, Petty was unpacking another holdall full of stepping plates.

‘Watch where you’re walking,’ she said, without looking round.

‘Yes, all right.’

She looked up then. ‘Oh. Hi, Diane. How are you doing?’

‘Fine.’

‘Making progress on the enquiry?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘There’ll be some publicity on this one, I suppose. There was a TV news van outside earlier. I don’t know what they were filming.’

‘They can film what they like. There’s nothing for them to see.’

She was aware of Petty watching her as she moved around the room. But after a moment, Fry became focused again. She was noticing all the changes that were taking place in the house — the plastic sheeting, the evidence containers, the yellow markers and flags that decorated the carpet, creating a bizarre new pattern on what had once been Lindsay Mullen’s cream Wilton.

‘Actually, I heard you weren’t getting on well with Quinton Downie,’ said Petty.

Fry turned. ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘People talk. Even firefighters have ears, you know. Otherwise, their helmets would fall off.’

‘Very funny.’

Petty looked up at her from her position crouched over a stepping plate. ‘Downie is very well respected in his field. He lectures regularly at Centrex.’

But Fry wasn’t impressed by the mention of the police training centre. ‘That doesn’t mean he has any right to lecture me.’

Downie was in the sitting room packing his equipment away. He looked satisfied with his efforts, reminding Fry of the fire service dog, the chocolate Labrador. He wasn’t quite wagging his tail, but it was a close-run thing.

‘Liquid accelerants are volatile, so it’s good that we collected debris samples early,’ he said when Fry entered. ‘Arsonists tend to use petrol products, because they’re easy to obtain and have a low flashpoint. But petrol has rather a narrow flammability range — it stops burning when the oxygen level is reduced. Hydrogen and acetylene are far more dangerous.’

‘The accelerant in this case could have been a butane-based lighter fluid.’

‘Butane? Well, the flashpoint is about the same as petrol, well below ambient temperature.’ Downie looked around the sitting room. ‘In fact, you’re lucky we’re not looking at radiation-induced flashover.’

‘What?’

‘In a closed room like this, there normally isn’t sufficient ventilation for unlimited burning. In fact, if it had been a bit more airtight, the fire might have gone out. But there was just a little bit of ventilation, and that made it worse. The room was pretty cluttered, items of furniture pushed close together, flammable materials on the floor. In conditions like this, flashover can happen very quickly. If you’re there to see it happen, it’s quite dramatic.’

‘OK, I believe you.’

Downie smiled, a man who enjoyed the small details of his job. ‘Old houses are the worst. A lot of them are like bonfires waiting for the first match. Wooden floors, wooden beams and window frames. With a bit of breeze blowing through, you can get a fire going that’s hot enough to melt the fillings in your teeth. Of course, it isn’t actually the wood that burns but the gases released from it by heat. The solid material disintegrates, and you’re left with a pile of ashes.’

‘But the victims died upstairs,’ said Fry. ‘Smoke inhalation.’

‘Oh, yes. Absolutely lethal. If you get a lungful of smoke from a house fire, you’re in trouble.’

‘I can’t understand why the victims never even made it to the stairs.’

‘Look, it goes like this …’ Downie demonstrated by closing his eyes and clutching his throat. ‘You’ve taken a breath and you can’t open your eyes because as soon as you do they water. You take another breath and the irritants hit the back of your throat. You retch and take an even deeper breath — it’s a natural, involuntary reaction. It fills your lungs with toxic fumes. That disorientates you, makes you dizzy, and puts you down on the floor. While you’re incapacitated, the toxicity takes over.’

To Fry’s amazement, he lay down on the floor and demonstrated what it was like to be dead. She’d never seen anybody look less dead in her life. But if there had been a weapon handy, she might have felt tempted to help him achieve authenticity.

Then he opened his eyes and looked up. ‘We used to say you had seven minutes to get out of a burning building. Now, with all the materials we’ve put inside them, it’s more like three minutes.’

‘And that’s why we advise people to install smoke alarms.’

‘Ah, yes. The smoke alarm. Pity about that.’

‘It was functioning, wasn’t it?’

‘After a fashion.’

‘Mr Mullen says he tested it regularly.’

‘No doubt he did. But, like most people, all he was doing was pressing the button. That proves the sound works, and the batteries aren’t dead. It doesn’t tell you whether the detector is functioning.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I took a look at the smoke alarm earlier. And I’d say your Mr Mullen never bothered reading the manufacturer’s instructions. He should have vacuumed around the detector regularly to prevent the build-up of dust. Apart from battery failure, there’s nothing worse than accumulated debris for interfering with an alarm. This one hadn’t been cleaned for a long time. There was even a thin layer of cement and plaster particles, so I’m guessing the family had building work done in the kitchen at some time.’

‘Yes, they had new units put in about six months ago, and an extractor fan installed.’

‘There you go, then. Cement and plaster, with a couple of layers of dust. It was almost as if they’d built a wall inside the detector. I’m sorry for the chap, and all that. But facts are facts.’

‘What about where the fire started?’

‘Now, that’s interesting,’ said Downie. ‘The point of origin would normally be near the area of greatest damage. But there are three items of furniture in this room with differing upholstery. The nature of the upholstery makes a big difference.’

‘Do you mean polyurethane foam?’

‘Well, all three items contain polyurethane foam padding. It’s the covering that matters. Anyway, it appears to me that the initial fire was started by applying flame to a quantity of papers adjacent to this chair here, right among these toys.’

‘But the other chair seems to have suffered most damage. That, and the settee.’

‘It’s rather deceptive at first glance, isn’t it? You see, the chair this side of the room is upholstered with a thick cotton weave. It was probably a nice piece of furniture.’ Downie moved across the room. ‘The settee, on the other hand, was padded with polyurethane foam and covered in a partly synthetic fabric mixture, probably poly-cotton. Now the third item of furniture. This, I’m afraid, is a cheaply upholstered armchair, with a wholly thermoplastic cover over polyurethane foam, without any inter-lining.’

‘So the quality of the furniture varied. Perhaps the Mullens should have gone to Ikea and bought a complete suite. But they probably couldn’t afford it.’

Downie didn’t seem to hear her. ‘You see, despite the fire having been lit directly adjacent to it, the cotton-weave chair sustained less damage than the other two items. The natural fibre cover charred and pyrolized, but the weave didn’t fall away, so it provided some retardation of heat release. However, the cheaply constructed armchair was completely consumed, and the synthetically upholstered settee was also severely damaged. Both would have been ignited by radiated heat. The thermoplastic material melts and falls away to expose the underlying foam to the fire. Not so good.’

‘I think I see,’ said Fry, surprised to realize that she actually did.

‘Excellent,’ said Downie. ‘Well, that’s my theory for now. I’ll examine remaining fabric from the three items and test their burning characteristics. But the carpet is probably going to be most helpful to us. Carpet absorbs accelerant well, and retains residue longer.’

Petty had moved into the sitting room and was concentrating her attention on a heavily damaged area of carpet.

‘Is this where the accelerant was used?’

‘We think so. It’s one of the sites identified by the dog.’

Petty was photographing the burn pattern before she began to cut into the carpet. She rolled up a sample with the foam backing on the inside and eased it vertically into a container.

Fry left the house to look outside. Someone was bound to have left their fingerprints somewhere in the house, in an area undamaged by the fire. The trouble was, it might well be a firefighter or a police officer. Not to mention members of the household and their various friends and relations. The footwear impressions were going to be useless, too. The layer of mud wasn’t deep enough, and the lab would never get a match, or identify a pattern.

She watched Downie carefully placing his evidence samples and control samples separately in his van. And she saw that he’d completed the most important items of all — the chain of custody forms.

Then she spotted Wayne Abbott standing in the road near one of the Scientific Support vehicles and walked across to him.

‘Is there any particular reason we got Liz Petty?’ she asked him.

Abbott turned in surprise, and she saw that he had a mobile phone pressed to his ear. ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said, and held the phone away to free both ears. ‘What was that?’

‘I wondered how we came to get Liz Petty,’ said Fry.

He stared at her, reflecting her hostility like a mirror. ‘Liz attended an inter-service fire investigation course at Ripley not so long ago. She was the obvious choice for this job. Why?’

‘Oh, no reason.’

‘She was up to her neck in volume crime, dealing with burglaries on the Southwoods Estate,’ said Abbott. ‘But we gave this priority for you. What’s the problem?’

‘Nothing.’

Abbott turned his back and resumed his phone call. ‘Sorry … no, it was just someone wasting my time.’