Scared to Live

3

Detective Constable Ben Cooper opened his fridge door, then closed it again quickly when he caught the smell. Another thirty seconds of breathing that in, and he’d lose his appetite for breakfast. He had a brief after-image of something nasty wrapped in plastic, caught by the interior light like an exhibit at a crime scene, sordid and decomposing, its DNA degrading beyond use.

‘Well, do you want me to call in and see the solicitor again tomorrow morning?’ he said into his mobile phone. ‘I can manage that, if you like, Matt. But I’m not sure it’ll do any good.’

‘He wants a kick up the pants, that’s what’ll do him some good. Maybe I ought to go in and see him myself. What do you reckon? I’ll go straight into his office when I’ve finished the muck spreading tomorrow.’

Cooper smiled at the thought of his brother bursting into the offices of Ballard and Price, his overalls covered in slurry. Matt could be a bit intimidating at the best of times, especially in an enclosed space. In his present mood, the solicitors’ receptionist would probably call the police to have him removed.

‘It wouldn’t help, you know.’

Matt sighed in frustration. ‘Bloody pen pushers and bureaucrats. They seem to spend their time making life difficult for everyone else.’

‘I suppose Mr Ballard has a job to do, like the rest of us.’

‘Oh, yeah. He takes a lot longer about it, that’s all.’

Cooper ran a finger round the fridge door, checking the rubber seal for gaps. It hadn’t occurred to him things could get as bad as that so quickly, just because he hadn’t bothered checking inside for a few days. It wasn’t as if the weather was particularly warm or anything. It was nearly the end of October, and summer was over in the Peak District. But the fridge had come with the flat, so he wasn’t sure how old it might be.

‘I don’t know what else I can do,’ he said. ‘You’re the executor, Matt.’

‘I hadn’t forgotten.’

Of course, he knew what was bothering his brother and making him so impatient. Probate on their mother’s will was taking so long that he was starting to get worried about the future of Bridge End Farm. If money had to be found from the estate, the only way it could happen would be if assets were sold off.

‘I thought you’d know a bit more about the law than I do,’ said Matt.

‘Well, not this part of the law.’

He didn’t bother to tell Matt that his knowledge of criminal law was also a bit sketchy. There were eight thousand criminal offences on the statute books — and more than a thousand of them had been invented since Cooper became a police officer. Without the manuals, he’d be lost, like everyone else.

Cooper left the fridge alone and crossed the kitchen, dodging the cat that was sitting looking at him expectantly, having heard a rumour there might be food. On the days he was at home, meal times seemed to come round every hour.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘don’t forget how much Mr Ballard charges for his time.’

‘You’re right, Ben. Just a phone call then, I suppose.’

‘At least it’ll keep the subject fresh in his mind.’

There was silence for a few moments. The Cooper brothers had always been comfortable with silence. They’d grown up together on the farm hardly needing to speak, because each understood what the other was thinking. But that was when they were physically together. You could read a person’s thoughts in their face, in the way they moved or breathed, or what they did with their hands. It was different on the phone, though. Silence felt awkward and wrong. Not to mention a waste of money. With his mobile pressed to his ear, Ben started to wonder whether he could get a reduced tariff from Vodaphone for the amount of non-talk time he used.

But in this case, he sensed that there was more to his brother’s silence than awkwardness.

‘Is there something else, Matt?’

‘Yeah …’

Ben felt his stomach tighten. For a second, he thought he was going to be sick, and he looked to see if the fridge door had fallen open again and released the nauseous smell into the room. After the death of their mother, there surely couldn’t be more bad news already. But he could read a lot into one word from his brother.

‘What is it? Something wrong with one of the girls?’

‘No, they’re fine,’ said Matt. ‘Well, I think so.’

‘You’re not making much sense, Matt.’

‘Look, Ben, I’ve made an appointment to go into the surgery on Friday. I want to talk to Dr Joyce. And if necessary, I’ll ask to see the specialist who treated Mum.’

‘Why? We know what happened to her — it was a series of strokes. It happens all the time in people of her age.’

‘I don’t mean the strokes. I mean the other problem.’

The family had rarely referred to Isabel Cooper’s condition by name. For a long time, it had been ‘Mum’s problem’. Towards the end, before she died in Edendale District General from a brain haemorrhage, it had become ‘the other problem’. Now, it seemed to Ben there was no point in trying to avoid spelling it out. Mum wasn’t around any more to be upset if it inadvertently slipped out in her presence.

‘Oh, the schizophrenia.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t understand, Matt. What do you want to find out that we don’t already know?’

‘I can’t talk to you about it on the phone — it’s too complicated. Can you come over some time? I’ve got a lot of stuff to show you.’

‘Well, I’m going to be a bit busy this week — ’

‘So what’s new?’

‘All right, what if I call at the farm tonight when I come off duty?’

‘That’ll do.’

‘See you, then.’

Cooper put out a bowl of cat food and placed it on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. Randy was an animal with a fixed routine and firm ideas about his territory.

Then he went back to the fridge, took a deep breath and eased open the door. He scooped out some rotten tomatoes, half a carton of sour milk, and a wedge of Stilton with its blue veins blossoming into a furry carpet. They all went into a plastic bin liner. He wasn’t sure any of the items accounted for the smell, though. Poking in the salad tray at the bottom of the main compartment, he found a liquefied lettuce, which probably did.

When he’d got rid of the worst, he tied up the bin liner and put it to one side. Now he ought to remove everything else from the fridge and give it a good clean. Probably it could do with defrosting, too.

But then Cooper hesitated. It would do later on, wouldn’t it? Tomorrow, even. He closed the fridge, put the bag near the back door, and returned to the sitting room. He put on his shoes and jacket, and checked how much money he had in his wallet. Then he made sure his phone was fully charged. Allowing your phone battery to go flat was as bad as letting your car run out of petrol. Both things happened now and then, but it was better if they happened to someone else.

Finally, he left the flat. For once, even the smell of the morning traffic was like a breath of fresh air.

He was unsettled by his conversation with Matt. He hoped his brother wasn’t having to cope with too many worries at once. There were certainly some decisions to be made about the future of Bridge End, though. The new farming support payments favoured the more productive farms in the valleys, and an upland farmer’s income could be halved, unless he changed his ways. The suckler herd might have to go, for a start — no matter how environmentally friendly and picturesque they were, grazing cattle were becoming as economically unviable as sheep.

Matt could intensify the dairy herd, or leave part of the land unfarmed, in return for environmental grants. On the other hand, he could abandon the idea of running a profitable farm altogether and get himself a job stacking shelves in a supermarket.

On his way through the market square, Cooper pulled out his mobile and chose a number from his phone book. His call was answered almost straightaway.

‘Hi, it’s me. How are you this morning?’

She sounded pleased to hear from him, and the sound of her voice alone made him feel better. He didn’t know how she did it; perhaps it came of being a civilian.

‘Oh, I’m fine, too,’ he said. ‘No, really. There’s nothing wrong at all. I just wanted to find out how you were.’

He listened to her talk for a while, neither of them saying much, but enough to put a smile on his face as he crossed Hollowgate towards the Raj Mahal and the pedestrianized area.

He had to end the call when a couple of acquaintances stopped to say hello. Cooper couldn’t place their names at first. But he knew so many people around Edendale that it wasn’t surprising. Faces from his childhood haunted him constantly. He’d see an old schoolfriend passing in the street, then immediately another and another. It was like the way a phrase he’d heard for the first time suddenly seemed to be repeated everywhere, as if someone was trying to send him a message. What sort of message could these familiar faces be trying to convey? This is where you belong, perhaps.

Later that morning, Cooper found himself watching a man in a grey sports jacket approaching a cash machine outside Somerfield’s supermarket. Running his finger along the edge of the card slot, the man glanced over his shoulder with an apologetic smile. He wasn’t sure whether he liked being watched or not.

There were two ATMs at Somerfield’s, both set into the outside wall near the trolley park, about fifteen yards from the main entrance. A small queue of shoppers had formed at the other machine, fidgeting with their carrier bags and purses.

‘If you feel an obstruction of any kind, don’t use it. That’s the best advice. Usually there are a couple of tiny prongs. Here, see?’

With a flick of the finger, the man pulled out a thin, clear sleeve of rigid plastic. He held it up to reveal a loop at the back.

‘This is the old Lebanese Loop trick. The loop retains a card when it’s inserted. Since the machine can’t read the magnetic strip, it keeps asking you to re-enter your PIN. Someone standing behind you watches you tap your number in. When you walk away, the suspect removes the card and empties your account. Bingo.’

‘Surely that type of device is easy to detect?’ said someone in the watching group. ‘We just saw you do it.’

‘But I know what to look for.’

PC Steve Judson had greying hair, a little longer than favoured by most police officers. He worked with the Plastic Crime Unit, a team struggling to deal with a mounting wave of cash and credit card fraud. According to the latest figures, it was big business — worth at least forty million pounds a year across the country.

Judson looked at the queue for the adjacent cash machine. ‘This is a typical location. The ATMs would be more secure inside, but the store isn’t open twenty-four hours. Some customers want to use them late at night, when this car park is probably deserted.’

‘Is that when the biggest risk is, rather than when the cash machines are busy?’ asked a female DC, one of two who’d driven over the hills from B Division for the plastic crime session.

‘The risk is different. If you look at the people in the queue there — they’re close enough to each other to make shoulder surfing easy. But at night, when the place is empty, you’d be pretty damn suspicious of somebody who came and peered over your shoulder, wouldn’t you?’

There were other officers present in the car park who’d come from Nottinghamshire and even from Leicestershire. Strangers, but probably future colleagues. No one was talking about their future this morning, but it must have been in everyone’s minds when they greeted each other.

‘It isn’t so long ago that the NCIS bulletins were warning of cash machine gangs spreading out of London down the M4 to the West Country. Did they get it wrong?’

‘No, not at all. Those gangs did good business in the West Country, so they decided to go nationwide. Now they operate in any place they can recruit enough illegals.’

‘Illegals?’

Cooper could hear a few sets of antennae going up, alert for derogatory remarks. It was always a tough call, knowing when to report a colleague for political incorrectness. If you tolerated it, your own career could be on the line.

But PC Judson seemed not to have noticed the reactions from the group.

‘Some illegals are being trained for cash machine work within twenty-four hours of coming off the boat. That way, they can pay back the traffickers. It’s better than slogging your guts out in a carrot field in East Anglia for two quid an hour, I suppose.’

Nobody laughed, or even dared to nod in agreement. A Nottinghamshire detective next to Cooper shuffled his feet in the shredded tree bark around the roots of an ornamental birch.

Somebody at the front asked a question about identity theft, which set Judson off on a new tangent. The Nottinghamshire officer leaned towards Cooper.

‘Are you Derbyshire?’ he said quietly.

‘Yes, I’m based right here in Edendale. DC Cooper.’

‘Ross Matthews. Hi. What’s it like working here?’

‘It’s OK,’ said Cooper defensively.

Matthews nodded. ‘I’m at St Ann’s, and it’s a nightmare. I might put in for a transfer when we go global.’

He didn’t need to explain what he was talking about. Everyone knew that the number of regional police forces would soon be reduced dramatically. A government commission had concluded that any force with fewer than four thousand officers was too small to deal with serious crime. So Derbyshire was certain to disappear. Even its bigger neighbour, Nottinghamshire, had suffered highly publicized problems that had led its chief constable to admit his detectives couldn’t cope. Within a few months, all the officers here this morning might be working for one huge East Midlands Constabulary.

‘Why not?’ said Cooper. ‘We can always do with some help here.’

He realized that Judson had finished speaking and was looking at him over the heads of the group, waiting for his attention.

It was then that Cooper’s mobile rang. Probably he should have switched it off. He bet everybody else had put theirs on to silent vibrate, but he’d forgotten this morning.

He looked at the number on the display, and saw it was Diane Fry. His DS shouldn’t be calling him, not when she knew he was on the plastic crime exercise. Cooper looked at Judson and shrugged apologetically, then walked a few paces away from the group.

‘Yes, Diane?’

‘Where are you right now, Ben?’

‘Somerfield’s supermarket.’

‘I suppose that makes sense, does it?’

‘They have ATMs,’ said Cooper. ‘You know — cash machines.’

‘Yes, I know what an ATM is. Wait — you’re on the plastic crime initiative.’

‘Did you forget?’

‘No, I’ve been a bit busy this morning, that’s all.’

‘Something on?’

He heard Fry hesitate. ‘Don’t get excited. Just something I’d like you to take a look at when you’re finished. Get away as soon as you can, will you?’

‘Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’

‘A house fire last night. Multiple fatalities.’

‘Where?’

‘One of the Edendale estates. The Shrubs, I think they call it.’

‘I know where you mean.’

For all the time she’d served in E Division, Fry still didn’t seem to know the area all that well. Perhaps she didn’t think it was worth the effort because she wasn’t intending to stay long enough. Yes, that was the impression she gave. A visitor caught in a depressing stop-over while she waited for a connection to somewhere better.

Cooper remembered a few of the initial reactions to Fry when she’d first transferred from West Midlands. ‘A bit of a hard-faced cow’; ‘Could be a looker, but she doesn’t bother’; ‘Too tall, too skinny, no make-up’; ‘Stroppy bitch’. None of them had been fair, of course. But Fry hadn’t done much to make herself popular with her colleagues. In fact she seemed to relish her image.

In the background, he could hear Judson answering a question. ‘A blank piece of plastic, embossed and encoded with a stolen account number. Some of these plastic crime merchants practically steal your identity.’

‘Can you hear me, Ben?’

‘Yes, you mentioned a fire on the Shrubs.’

‘Great. Well, three deaths. A mother and two children.’

‘Evidence of suspicious circumstances?’

‘Not yet. But …’

‘You’re expecting some?’

‘We haven’t had the forensics yet. But I want to know if you’ll be around.’

‘OK,’ said Cooper, trying not to sound surprised. ‘I’ll see you back at the office after the session with Steve Judson. Is that OK?’

‘Yes, that’s absolutely fine.’

When he ended the call, Cooper frowned. Somehow, Fry hadn’t sounded her usual self.

Judson caught his eye across the group and raised an eyebrow. ‘They get your PIN by focusing a camera on the keypad,’ he was saying. ‘At the end of the day, they retrieve discarded receipts. They match up the time of your withdrawal with the tape from the camera, and they’ve got both your PIN and your account number. They can produce a duplicate card and make fraudulent withdrawals as easily as if they’d stolen the genuine card. And you won’t even know anything’s happened until you see your next bank statement. That’s more than bingo — it’s the jackpot.’

Edendale District General was on the northern edge of town, occupying a greenfield site where new wards could be added as funding became available. Fry had never seen the old hospital on Fargate. It had closed years ago, its Victorian buildings so primitive and crumbling that nobody had bothered saving them from demolition. But its location must have been very handy. Even at this time of the morning, it would take her fifteen minutes to get across town to the new site, once she got away from Darwin Street.

‘Tell me again, who made the emergency call?’ she asked Murfin when he came off the radio to the control room.

‘One of the neighbours dialled 999 when he saw the smoke. Bloke by the name of Wade. A bit of a know-it-all, by the sound of him. FOAs took a statement earlier.’

‘You know, we should have made sure we had complete information before we came out.’

Murfin looked aggrieved. ‘You said you wanted to get the job out of the way as soon as possible. In and out, and turn it over to the coroner, that’s what you said.’

‘OK, Gavin, thanks.’ Fry didn’t like her words being quoted back to her, especially when she’d been wrong. ‘It’s a bit irritating, that’s all.’

‘Is that why you made me look in that last bedroom?’

She sighed. ‘It had to be done, Gavin. You aren’t here just to wreck the place and make stupid jokes. There was nothing in the bedroom, anyway.’

‘You didn’t know that at the time.’

‘Right. How come the hospital staff have more information than we do, eh? So the youngest child wasn’t even at home, but with the grandparents? It shouldn’t have needed a call to the ward sister to find that out.’

Murfin was silent as he watched her get into her car. ‘You know I’ve got kids of my own, don’t you?’ he said quietly, before she closed the door.

Fry bit her lip, caught out by a moment of tricky human emotion when she hadn’t expected it. ‘Sorry, Gavin.’

But he didn’t seem to have heard her as he walked away. And by the time she caught up with him later, he was back to his old self, so she didn’t mention it again.

Brian Mullen was in a side room off one of the newer wards, with a PC on duty outside the door. Mullen was in his early thirties, sandy-haired, with a faintly pink complexion, as if his skin had been freshly scrubbed. His hands were bandaged, but otherwise he looked quite fit and healthy.

He was also sedated and deeply asleep, as motionless as the dead. There was no point in asking questions of a comatose body.

‘Naturally, he was in a very distressed condition when he was admitted,’ said the ward sister. ‘Apart from his physical injuries.’

‘But otherwise he’ll be well enough to be interviewed later?’ asked Fry.

‘You’ll have to get permission from the doctor.’

Fry didn’t like hospital doctors much. They seemed inseparable from a smell of disinfectant and a tendency to interfere. White coats and professional obstinacy; both unwelcome obstacles when she was intent on finding the truth.

‘Were you on duty when Mr Mullen’s parents-in-law came in this morning, Sister?’

‘Mr and Mrs Lowther? Yes, I spoke to them myself. It was helpful they came, because we’ll be able to reassure Mr Mullen his daughter is safe, at least. She was with them last night, apparently. Oh, but you’ll know that — someone called earlier.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Fry. ‘So when will Mr Mullen come out of sedation?’

‘Some time this afternoon.’

‘I need to know as soon as he’s awake and fit to answer questions, Sister.’

‘I’ll inform the officer over there, shall I? I presume he’s going to carry on hanging around here making a nuisance of himself?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Well, I hope we have less trouble with the patient when he wakes up. He almost injured one of my nurses when we had to sedate him earlier.’

Fry had been about to leave the ward, but she stopped halfway through the swing doors. ‘What do you mean, you had to sedate him?’

‘He was completely wild, shouting that he couldn’t stay here, he had to get out. You know, we see some troubled cases in this hospital, but Mr Mullen was in a dreadful state.’

‘He must have wanted to go back to his house. He knew his family were trapped in the fire.’

‘Probably you’re right …’ The sister hesitated, sounding doubtful. ‘I suppose it’s not my place to say this, but that wasn’t the way it seemed. If you’d asked me at the time, I would have said he was frightened.’

‘Frightened?’ Fry glanced back at Brian Mullen, lying motionless in his bed. ‘Well, whatever it was, I expect he’ll have forgotten it when he wakes up, won’t he?’

‘Not necessarily. It’s his brain and body that are sedated. Deep-rooted fears are in the subconscious. And the subconscious never sleeps.’

After a wasted trip across town and back, Fry was feeling even more irritable. When she pulled up near the Mullens’ house, she found just one miserable-looking uniformed officer standing outside the gate. He had his hands folded behind his back, and he was bouncing slightly on his toes, as if auditioning for a part in The Pirates of Penzance. At any moment, he might burst into ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one …’

‘Where’s the fire officer?’ she asked, when Murfin emerged from the house.

‘He’s nipped off to get a bit of something for a late breakfast, lucky bugger. He said to tell you he wouldn’t be long.’

‘SOCOs here yet?’

‘There’s someone on the way, I’m told.’

Fry looked around at her available resources. One Gilbert and Sullivan extra, and Gavin Murfin. There was nothing like trying to do things on your own, was there?

Coming up behind the same tractor one more time, Bernie Wilding had to slow down on the road between Foxlow and Bonsall. But the tractor driver pulled over into a lay-by to let him pass, and the postman saw that it was Neville Cross, who owned Yew Tree Farm. His land ran right up to the garden of Rose Shepherd’s property.

Bernie slowed to a halt alongside the tractor and tapped his horn to get the farmer’s attention.

‘Morning,’ said Cross.

‘Just thought I’d mention — I couldn’t get any answer at Bain House earlier on. You know, Miss Shepherd’s place? I wondered if you’ve seen her about at all?’

‘Can’t say I have. We don’t see her in the village much.’

‘No, I know. I thought it was a bit funny, though. Her post was still in the box from yesterday, too.’

The farmer nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘I’ll keep an eye out.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

Bernie waved and drove off, watching the tractor pull into the road again as soon as he’d passed. He’d probably get behind it again when he reached Bonsall. Sometimes he thought these farmers drove around the lanes all day just for the sake of it. They loved being a bloody nuisance with their tractors, and their trailers full of slurry. Now and then, Bernie wished he could put a bomb under one of them.