Стивен Бут - Fall Down Dead

‘Quite often,’ said Cooper. ‘But it doesn’t always lead to such a tragic outcome.’

Sophie looked down at the table.

‘I never knew who the nurse was at the time,’ she said. ‘In every story you read, the wronged wife always demands the name of the other woman, doesn’t she? But it was one of those things I didn’t want to know, the sort of detail I would have felt tainted by. It was such a betrayal. Jake agreed to a divorce without a murmur. I thought he’d gone straight to her , you know. He was certainly living with someone soon after — everyone told me that. But it turns out it was a different woman. There could have been more of them when we were together, I suppose.’

‘Did you never meet her?’

‘No. I only saw her once, in the distance. I was so angry that I went to Meadow Park Hospital to confront him. I wanted to embarrass him at work. I suppose everyone knew what was going on anyway. He was frantic when I turned up. A nurse was just leaving the doctors’ office on the ward, and the guilt was written all over his face. I hardly needed to ask him if it was true.’

‘So when did you realise who Faith was?’

‘During the walk on Kinder Scout on Sunday.’

‘Actually during the walk?’

‘Yes. It was after we’d stopped, in fact. When were lost in the fog and Liam Sharpe fell and injured his leg. Everyone else went off to call for help, but Faith stayed with him. It was seeing her bending over Liam to tend to his injury, and someone saying, “Of course. You’re a nurse, aren’t you?” Just in that moment, I had a vivid flashback. It was like that figure I described to you, the monstrous shadow in the fog. I suddenly saw her in her nurse’s uniform walking down the ward and leaning over a patient. It’s the way someone moves that gives them away, isn’t it? Their walk, the angle they hold their head. With Faith, it was the way she pushed back that red woollen hat from her face. I’d seen her straightening her nurse’s cap and it was exactly the same gesture. That memory made such a lasting impression on me that I knew it was her. I was a hundred per cent certain. I could picture her with Jake and imagine what they might have been doing. The image hit me so hard I thought my legs would give way.’

Cooper let her replay the memory for a moment. It was ironic that Sophie Pullen’s imagination and her power of observation, which he’d valued so much before, appeared to have been too sharp for her own good. It would have been much better if she’d taken no notice of Faith Matthew at the hospital and had never recognised her on Kinder Scout. Better not just for Faith but for both of them.

‘I loved Jake,’ she said. ‘I still love him now. It was the biggest mistake I ever made, letting him go like that. If only I could have just let it pass.’

Sophie began to cry, the tears creeping slowly down her cheeks. Cooper had seen a lot of suspects burst into tears in the interview room. Sometimes it was through remorse at what they’d done. Often, though, it was out of pity for themselves. Even the most intelligent person could cling to a conviction that they were the victim. Sophie’s life had been destroyed, but largely through her own decisions. Faith Matthew had become the target for all her bitterness.

‘I couldn’t let her escape justice,’ Sophie said through her tears.

‘Justice is a subjective concept,’ said Cooper. ‘When we take it personally, we can get it very wrong.’

Sophie glowered at him.

‘She deserved to die a hundred times.’

‘That’s been said before, Miss Pullen.’

‘Because it’s true.’

‘Perhaps. But murder is still murder.’

She tossed her head dismissively.

‘And justice is still justice.’

Half an hour later, after Sophie Pullen had been returned to a cell, Nick Haslam slumped in the same chair. He looked a beaten man. There was no effort at a joke, sarcastic or otherwise.

‘Yes, it felt uncomfortable on the walk,’ he said when Cooper asked him about the day on Kinder Scout. ‘She was pestering me, playing some kind of game.’

‘She?’

‘Faith, of course. I knew Sophie would be jealous, so I tried to ignore Faith and pretend it was nothing.’

‘Sophie saw straight through it, you know.’

Nick cursed under his breath.

‘I should have known she would. She tends to over-imagine things at the best of times. But throw in a bit of jealousy and well...’ He gestured with his hands as if describing an uncontrollable explosion. ‘The fact is, though, Faith was just a nuisance. It would never have come to anything. I really like Sophie. I just have trouble saying it. I suppose I’ve completely messed everything up now.’

‘You would have been better telling her the truth from the start,’ said Cooper. ‘It could have saved a lot of trouble. It might even have saved two people’s lives.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

Haslam looked even more dejected. But would this knowledge change his behaviour in the future? Cooper doubted it.

Back in his office, Ben Cooper reviewed the evidence on his desk. What had he missed? Sophie Pullen’s prints had been taken and matched those finally retrieved in the lab from the threatening note. FALL DOWN DEAD, she’d written. So how long had Sophie been planning the murder of Faith Matthew? Was it longer than she said, her plan conceived well before the walk? More questioning was needed. It seemed Sophie was still lying, even now.

Well, the photographs taken on Kinder Scout had been pretty accurate, anyway. They showed a fog of confusion. Most of the witness statements had been truthful too, as far as they could be. But the group had been prone to visual and auditory hallucinations, illusionary memories that would be hard to get rid of. In the intricate structures of the human brain, the imagination lay next to the memory. It only took a single misfiring synapse for one to intrude on the other.

Sophie Pullen had no need to be too secretive about her movements. Nobody had any idea where they were.

And there had been no scream when Faith Matthew fell from Dead Woman’s Drop. It was one sound the walking group hadn’t heard on that foggy moor. Faith would have been too surprised to react as she made that half-turn and saw Sophie behind her.

Even the Kinder Mass Trespass was nothing more than a smokescreen. There was no connection to the death of Darius Roth’s brother. It wasn’t even linked to the imminent collapse of Roth’s businesses. At the end of the day, it was nothing to do with politics or principles, or even money. It was a much, much simpler story than that. A tale as ancient as time. It came down to one of the age-old reasons for murder. This was a story of jealousy.

He imagined the fall had been too sudden. The cold air would have snatched the breath from her throat as she fell. The impact on the rocks had been instantly fatal. Yet it, too, had been muffled by the fog, her body shrouded from sight by the dank miasma.

Cooper put the papers away in a box file and slid it onto the shelf of his office with the others. Yes, Faith Matthew’s ending was sad, rather than dramatic. She went with hardly a whimper, let alone a bang. And that was the way it usually happened. It was so simple to make one slip. So easy to meet your downfall.

A meeting at West Street had just finished. Three murder cases concluded and the files finalised for the CPS. DCI Alistair Mackenzie from the Major Crime Unit made a quick exit with the excuse that he had another meeting to get to back at EMSOU.

But Ben Cooper noticed that Diane Fry seemed in no rush to leave.

‘Do you want to get a coffee?’ he asked. ‘We can drink it in my office.’