Стивен Бут - Fall Down Dead

‘He’s confessed to killing his wife. He was still there holding the murder weapon when the FOSAs arrived. He says he made the call when he realised what he’d done.’

‘According to the files, there’s a teenage son,’ said Fry.

‘So?’

‘Why don’t you ask him if he made the call?’

‘And his father is covering for him? It’s a hell of a risk for Gary Atherton. He’ll get a life sentence if he’s convicted.’

‘But he won’t if there’s a flaw in your evidence,’ said Fry. ‘The timing of that 999 call. I spotted it myself.’

‘It was you who kicked the file back?’

‘I took it to Mr Mackenzie anyway. I’m sorry if it reflected badly on you.’

Cooper thought of poor old Dev Sharma’s disappointment that a hole had been poked in his case so easily. But of course he could never mention Sharma’s role. Cooper was the DI in this department. It was his team. It was part of the job to take the responsibility when things went wrong.

‘Sometimes it just needs a fresh pair of eyes to see where someone has made an assumption or accepted a statement on trust,’ said Fry. ‘That’s often where it all goes off the rails, isn’t it? Trusting the wrong person.’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘You’re right again.’

They had Jonathan Matthew waiting in Interview Room 1. He’d been treated for his injuries and released into custody. The fact that he hadn’t suffered any broken bones or internal injuries was down to a combination of seat belt, air bag and a lot of good luck. His ancient Subaru was a write-off, of course.

‘Jonathan, why did you try to run?’ asked Ben Cooper.

‘I’ve never trusted the cops,’ he said. ‘Once you fix on someone as a suspect, you never change your minds. You’ll have me in court without any proper evidence and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.’

‘Evidence of what?’

‘Of—’ Jonathan stopped and scowled suspiciously. ‘Of whatever you’re arresting me for.’

Cooper couldn’t help but laugh. He’d never heard it put quite like that before.

‘You’re here for questioning in connection with the murder of Mr Darius Roth,’ he said.

Jonathan lowered his head. Was this as far as he’d planned? An attempted escape with his guitar in the back of the Subaru, like a hippy on a road trip? But he hadn’t even worked that out properly. He’d left his guitar behind at his flat in his haste to get away.

‘Faith was behaving oddly. It was so obvious,’ said Jonathan.

‘What was?’

‘Her relationship with Darius.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ said Cooper.

‘Of course.’

‘Did Greg suspect?’

‘She’d finished with Greg Barrett.’

‘Mr Barrett doesn’t seem to be aware of that.’

‘Well, I’m sure she was intending to finish it. She’d developed other interests.’

‘With Darius?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Elsa know?’

‘I think she knew everything about Darius that she wanted to,’ said Jonathan. ‘Anything she didn’t want to know she just ignored, pretended it didn’t exist or that it never happened. She lives in her own world, that one. And it’s partly a fantasy.’

Cooper remembered his earlier conversation with Elsa Roth. Elsa herself had said, It’s like a fantasy. And perhaps it was, even more than she understood.

‘Well, what would you have done?’ said Jonathan.

His question and his suddenly penetrating stare caught Cooper off guard. He remembered Jonathan talking about the feeling of guilt at not being able to protect Faith. He’d empathised with that feeling. He’d felt the guilt himself, wondered what he might do if he got the opportunity for revenge on the person responsible. What would he have done?

‘You took the teddy bear from Faith’s house on Monday evening, didn’t you?’ said Cooper. ‘So it must have been sometime during that day, after you’d heard she was dead. You spoke to somebody then.’

‘Teddy Bear,’ said Jonathan. ‘That’s what Elsa called him. I hope he got the message.’

But Cooper wasn’t sure Darius did get the message. If his relationship with Faith had been as close as Jonathan suggested, he might have recognised the teddy bear by its red bow tie.

‘Jonathan, who told you Darius Roth killed your sister?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I think it does.’

Jonathan’s face set into a stubborn mask. He had a cut below his eye and his cheekbone was bruised. It would be difficult to tell now which injuries he’d sustained in the crash and which were inflicted by Darius Roth as he defended himself from attack on that gallery in the old chapel.

‘Did you actually see Darius push your sister off that rock?’ asked Cooper.

‘He was there,’ repeated Jonathan. ‘Who else could it have been?’

Cooper sat back. There was nothing he could say to that.

‘The perfect murder,’ said Jonathan. ‘That’s what Darius would have called it. But he made a mistake. There was a witness.’

‘Who?’

‘I can’t say. But I couldn’t let him get away with it, could I?’

‘A lot of people who commit murder think they’re doing the right thing,’ said Cooper. ‘But almost all of them are mistaken.’

Jonathan continued to look stubborn. ‘Still, there was a witness.’

‘Not really,’ said Cooper. ‘Unfortunately.’

An hour or two hitting the phones got Ben Cooper the answers he needed. When you were able to ask exactly the right question, people were much more likely to tell you the truth.

‘We’ve spoken to all the members of the New Trespassers now,’ said Villiers. ‘It’s the same with almost every one of them.’

And there was the connection. Darius Roth had a financial hold on all of them — he’d bailed out the Goulds’ nursery when their lease ran out, bought their land and leased it back to them. He was subsidising the two students through college so they didn’t have to get jobs working in bars in the evenings. He’d rescued the Warburtons when they had a pension disaster. He’d set Liam up in a nice apartment near Manchester Airport so he could move in with the Hungarian chef.

And what about Nick Haslam? He’d been facing a drink-driving charge and was likely to get banned. Roth had paid for good lawyers to save his licence. And of course he was paying for the promotion of Jonathan Matthew’s band.

Then there was Elsa herself. She was much younger than Darius, but she wasn’t the typical trophy wife. He’d married a waitress, not a catwalk model. Cooper suspected a large part of Elsa’s appeal had been her submissiveness. Men like Darius Roth seemed to like that. Cooper had never been able to see the attraction of it himself. In his opinion, if you wanted slavish devotion, you’d be better off getting a dog.

‘You’d think people would be grateful for being financially supported. But often they’re not. They hate the feeling of being dependent and they become resentful about it. Patronage, it’s called. Artists used to thrive on it. Now they’re too independent. That’s why Jonathan came to hate Darius. He longed to bite the hand that fed him. He’d become a bit unstable anyway. Darius had told him to stay off the drugs if he wanted the money to keep coming in. And he was trying. But when Jonathan felt really bad, who do you think he focused the blame on for his torment?’

‘Darius.’

‘But somebody used Jonathan, didn’t they? They made him suspect that Darius had killed Faith. They channelled his anger.’

Cooper was still thinking about Darius Roth. Many psychopaths were very charming and adept at manipulating people around them. They could pass as perfectly normal in society, even appear convincingly successful and affluent. But it was all a façade. Underneath, there was a seriously disturbed personality.