Стивен Бут - Fall Down Dead

Cooper moved quietly into the middle of the room and was rewarded with the familiar sight of Murfin dipping his fingers into a paper bag for an Eccles cake he’d bought on the way into work. He was speaking to DC Luke Irvine, seated at the opposite desk.

‘Apparently she ran a dominatrix dungeon in a disused building at the back of the old post office,’ Murfin was saying between bites. ‘No one knew about it until Open Gardens weekend, when people heard the screaming.’

‘The dominatrix was squatting?’ asked Irvine.

‘I think she usually stands up,’ said Murfin.

Across the room, Carol Villiers was telling Becky Hurst and Dev Sharma about a new vicar who’d arrived in her village.

‘Well, when I say “arrived”, you know what it’s like these days — she’s in charge of about seven parishes, and she’s based ten miles away,’ said Villiers. ‘She has a team ministry, with three curates or assistant vicars scattered around. But when she did come to St Mark’s, the locals didn’t like her.’

‘Why not?’ said Hurst. ‘Because she’s female, I suppose?’

‘No, because she’s an evangelical. They’re old-fashioned in our village. They want to do things the same as they always have, like they did under the old vicar before he retired. The new one wants to modernise everything. Readings aren’t from the King James version any more, and she got rid of the organist and brought somebody in to play CDs through a sound system. And there was a wedding... One of the oldest families in the village. They had the church booked for months, all traditional style. And then the new vicar put the mockers on everything.’

‘What are mockers?’ asked Sharma with a puzzled frown, listening to their conversation.

‘Well—’

Cooper cleared his throat. ‘Morning, everyone.’

‘Boss.’

‘Dev, do want to bring me up to date on the Atherton murder inquiry?’

Sharma stood up and gathered some papers together. Then a call came through and was answered by Villiers. She looked across at Cooper.

‘They’ve found her, Ben.’

Cooper didn’t need to ask who. He could tell from the tone of her voice.

‘Faith Matthew? Dead?’

‘Yes.’

He sighed. ‘It took too long to find her. Where was she?’

‘Near Kinder Downfall,’ said Villiers.

He could picture the place. A narrow track between high rocks was called Kinder Gates, a landmark for walkers coming off the moors to the steep descent towards the Mermaid’s Pool. The Downfall lay a few hundred yards away. There, water streamed off the gritstone edge and sprayed horizontally as the incessantly buffeting winds battled against gravity. Sometimes the wind won and the water flowed upwards, back over the edge. It was a spectacular place, but dangerous.

‘She was found at the foot of one of the highest rocks,’ said Villiers. ‘It has its own name on the OS map.’

‘A lot of them do.’

All across Kinder Scout and Bleaklow, rock formations had been given imaginative names, often due to their shape, or their connection to an old story from Derbyshire history and legend. The Woolpacks, the Seal Stones, Pym Chair, the Druid’s Stone.

‘Which rock?’ he said.

Villiers hesitated. ‘They call this one Dead Woman’s Drop.’

Diane Fry left her apartment in Wilford a little later than usual that morning. She had no idea when the post came on her road, because she was always out, so she thought of checking her box outside the communal entrance. For some reason she’d never understood, the boxes were all named in German — Briefkasten .

There was a small pile of junk mail in there. Life insurance, a clothing catalogue, an offer of a specially minted crown coin commemorating the latest royal wedding. And three envelopes full of Christmas raffle tickets for various charities.

She felt like throwing the whole lot into the brambles that grew behind the beech hedge on the other side of the parking area. But instead she dropped them onto the passenger seat of her black Audi, where they’d sit until she could find a litter bin.

As usual, Fry called at the BP service station on Clifton Lane and bought a few supplies at the Spar shop, along with a cappuccino. Something told her she would need to stay alert today. Opposite the service station was a piece of rough ground used as a car park for the Trent River Walk. She pulled off the road to drink her coffee safely.

She’d hardly slept last night. People talked about your whole life flashing in front of you just before you died. She’d always imagined that would be horrible. She had too many incidents in her life that she might regret, if she ever had to stop and think about them. Most of the time, she managed to push them to the back of her mind, bury them in the deepest parts of her subconscious, where they never troubled her.

But the summons to Ripley had changed that. It had forced her to review the last few years of her life, to work out what in particular Professional Standards might want to interview her about. Of course, they might want to speak to her as a witness in someone else’s disciplinary hearing. So why had her subconscious spent all last night pulling out incident after incident from her career for her to worry about?

Fry took a sip of her coffee as she watched the traffic passing along Clifton Lane towards the bridge. She had to accept the fact that she’d lived a charmed life in some ways. She’d got away with things she shouldn’t have done, strictly speaking. But no one had reported her. Perhaps it had given her a false sense of security. That was fatal.

Well, it seemed likely that someone had reported her now, made a complaint about her behaviour. A member of the public, or a fellow officer?

The second was far worse. The public made complaints against police officers all the time, but most of them were trivial or malicious, and very few of them were ever followed through to the stage of a disciplinary hearing. Police officers, on the other hand, were reluctant to blow the whistle on their colleagues. It was a world of ‘us and them’ out there. No one wanted to be a grass. So it had to be something serious.

In her head, Fry ran through a list of the people she might have offended or antagonised. After a moment, she realised it was pointless. An opposite list would be a lot shorter.

She drained her coffee and poked at the junk mail on the seat, as if something there might give her a clue. So what was it to be? Misconduct or gross misconduct? Honesty, confidentiality or fitness for work? Not a criminal offence at least or she would already have been arrested, wouldn’t she?

Or would she? She wasn’t entirely sure how the PSD operated. Perhaps they were waiting to arrest her when she arrived at Ripley. So maybe she should make a run for it and try to disappear, like any other criminal?

She laughed to herself. As if there was any other option but to see it through.

Fry spotted a litter bin at the edge of the car park. She gathered her junk mail together and took it with her empty coffee cup to dispose of. If only she could gather up the debris of her past life and dispose of it in the same manner.

But that wasn’t the way life worked, was it? Your actions had a habit of catching up with you.

A damp road, damp grass, damp sheep, a stone wall dripping with moisture. As Ben Cooper headed out of Edendale towards Hayfield, he could already see the mist hanging low over the moors and drifting into the valleys. Dark copses stood out against the grey background, a series of hills getting fainter and fainter into the distance.

As he left the outskirts of the town behind, the stone slates of the roofs gradually petered out along the River Eden, the deep green of the Eden Forest swarming along the opposite hillside. Beyond the limestone hills and a patchwork of fields divided by drystone walls lay the brooding, desolate moors of the Dark Peak, rising to the plateau of Kinder Scout, the highest point in the Peak District.