Стивен Бут - Fall Down Dead

‘It’s unlikely for them all to agree on the point unless it was true.’

‘Not just because of that. Darius was the sort of person who liked to be the centre of attention. He would have been leading the way, giving instructions, chivvying his followers along. He would have been very much present .’

‘So there’s no way he could have just sneaked off for a few minutes without them noticing.’

‘No. On the other hand, there are some people you might not notice very much, so you wouldn’t realise if they’d slipped away. Then you couldn’t really be sure if they were there or not when you were asked later on.’

‘So it must have been someone else that Sophie Pullen was following,’ said Villiers. ‘Could she have been so easily mistaken?’

Cooper was shaking his head. ‘No, you’re still not getting it, Carol. We only have Miss Pullen’s word that she followed anybody.’

‘Oh.’

‘And yet, and yet... we do have her own testimony that she left her group. She told us that herself. She volunteered the information but misdirected us by claiming she’d followed someone. She cast suspicion onto someone else even as she drew it to herself. So clever. I should have known. She was always the smartest of the group. I recognised that and took notice of everything she said, all the details she claimed to have observed. I thought she was my most valuable witness. Now she’s made me feel an idiot.’

‘Was it Sophie who told Jonathan that Darius Roth killed his sister, then?’

‘Yes. I think he’ll confirm it now, when we put it to him.’

‘How do you know?’

‘When we interviewed him, Jonathan referred to Darius’s story about getting away with the perfect murder. Sophie Pullen told me about that story. But Sophie said only she and Elsa were present when Darius told it. That was a giveaway. Sophie must have passed it on to Jonathan in her efforts to persuade him of Darius’s guilt.’

‘Was it true? Did Darius tell that story?’

‘I don’t know. We can ask Elsa if she remembers it, but Sophie might have made it up. It didn’t really matter, as long as Jonathan believed her.’

‘All that stuff about the blue jacket...’ said Villiers.

‘She forced me to put two and two together and make five,’ said Cooper. ‘She led me by the nose, and I did exactly what she wanted me to do.’

Cooper groaned quietly. He could hear her now. Sophie Pullen had insisted it was a blue jacket that she’d seen near Dead Woman’s Drop. She’d listened politely as he contradicted her several times, told her it was impossible, that she must have made a mistake. She was the only person wearing a blue jacket that day, he’d said. Perhaps it was a blue hat or a scarf she’d seen. And she’d shaken her head at that.

To Cooper, it had seemed clear that she was wrong. Not lying, just mistaken. Sophie had seen things wrong in that fog, jumped to an inaccurate conclusion. In fact, he had been feeling frustrated that she couldn’t recognise her own mistake. She was such a good observer of the details in other ways. He’d so wanted her to admit it was a blue scarf, the kind that Darius was wearing. He’d almost tried to persuade her of the fact. That was a fatal flaw in his interview technique. It filled him with anger at himself that he’d made such an error.

He just hadn’t put two and two together properly. What should he have done? He should have pointed out to Sophie Pullen that if someone in a blue jacket was near that rock, then it must have been her.

It seemed so obvious now. At the time, it had been too obvious. Sophie Pullen had put the simple fact there, lain it right out on the table in front of him and watched him look the other way. How often had he seen stage magicians pull off that trick? It was the old distraction technique.

Sophie had known that another member of the group might have seen her, at least recognised the jacket through the fog.

She already had her explanation on record.

When she left St Anselm’s Primary School for that last time, Sophie Pullen seemed unsurprised to see Cooper and Villiers waiting for her at the gate.

‘You’re parked on the “no waiting” signs,’ she said.

‘I think we’ll get away with it this once.’

Sophie looked around at the school gates and the empty yard.

‘We waited until the children had all gone,’ said Cooper. ‘We thought it would be better that way.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s very considerate.’

They put her in the back of the car. Cooper looked at Sophie for a moment. She looked so composed, as if this was nothing unusual or unexpected. Perhaps it had been part of her planning. Option B: co-operate if arrested by the police.

‘Faith deserved to die, you know,’ said Sophie Pullen. ‘I knew it from the start that day. Right at the beginning of the walk. I could see what was going to happen. I could see what I was going to do. And I didn’t want to stop it from happening.’

She was in the same interview room that Jonathan Matthew had sat in the day before. Looking across the table at her, Ben Cooper thought she seemed a different woman from the one he’d admired for her power of observation, the detailed recollections she had of the walk on Kinder Scout. Apparently she’d reported everything she could remember, apart from the one most significant incident of all, the act of murder.

‘She wanted to take Nick off me,’ said Sophie. ‘It was so obvious that day on Kinder. It was the final straw.’

‘Were Nick Haslam and Faith Matthew having an affair behind your back?’ asked Cooper.

‘I don’t know that I’d call it that. They were certainly becoming closer. Faith knew things about me that I didn’t tell her myself, like my new job teaching at St Anselm’s. She must have got that from Nick. It explains why he was so awkward around her on the walk. He didn’t know how to behave towards her in front of me, couldn’t even make a joke of it. Nick was always such a joker.’

‘He doesn’t come across as a joker to me. Bad-tempered and sarcastic maybe.’

‘He wasn’t always like that,’ said Sophie, suddenly keen to defend him. ‘He’s changed recently. She did that.’

‘So it became obvious on the walk.’

‘She was more blatant, of course. But poor old Nick tried to hide their relationship and pretend he didn’t like her. He tried too hard, though. He always does. I saw straight through him.’

‘Miss Pullen, do you feel so strongly about Mr Haslam that you’d kill for him?’

She hesitated, taken aback at the direction of the question.

‘No, of course you don’t,’ continued Cooper. ‘But that’s not the point, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think we should talk about someone else entirely. About Dr Jake Gooding. That is your ex-husband, isn’t it?’

She shrank a little, deflated by his mention of the name.

‘You obviously know.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘I met Jake Gooding through my father. He’s a GP, you know,’ said Sophie.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I fell for Jake straight away. He was so good-looking, confident and charming. I was a complete pushover. We married within a couple of years. Perhaps it was too soon.’

‘And then you heard about his affair.’

‘Yes.’

She pursed her lips, as if she didn’t want to say any more, as though her ex-husband’s affair was the one subject she’d been hoping to avoid. If that was the case, it was the one subject Cooper was going to press her on.

‘You heard it involved a nurse at the hospital where Jake was working,’ he said. ‘Someone tipped you off, I suppose. They thought you ought to know about it?’

‘I dare say it sounds so mundane to you. You must hear this sort of thing every day.’