‘But October isn’t the anniversary of the Mass Trespass, is it?’ said Cooper.
Roth nodded approvingly. ‘No, the original walk was in April when we began it eight years ago. But that’s a bad time of year for most of us.’
Cooper looked round and noticed that Elsa Roth had disappeared. At some point she’d slipped quietly out of the room and left Darius to do all the talking.
‘There’s been a suggestion that Faith Matthew didn’t fall but was pushed,’ said Cooper.
‘Who told you that?’ demanded Roth. ‘It’s ludicrous.’
‘I can’t tell you where the suggestion came from, I’m afraid.’
‘Pushed? I don’t believe it for a second.’
‘Nevertheless, we have to make inquiries.’
‘Well, if it’s true, there must have been someone else on the moor, then,’ said Darius. ‘It can’t have been one of my group.’
‘What? Someone followed you onto Kinder Scout to attack Faith Matthew?’
‘Isn’t it possible that Faith wasn’t always intended to be the victim? She might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been any one of us.’
‘Did you actually see any signs of anyone else up there?’
‘Well, there were noises,’ said Darius. ‘I couldn’t have put a name to them myself. I didn’t really take any notice.’
‘Did you see any lights?’
‘Like a torch, you mean? They’re not much use in fog, are they? The beam doesn’t travel very far.’
‘No, that’s right.’
Roth walked to the window and gazed out at a manicured lawn. The grounds of Trespass Lodge seemed to be extensive. From here, Cooper could see nothing that resembled a boundary — only trees, flower beds and swathes of grass gently undulating towards a spectacular view of Chinley Head and the Sett Valley, with a dark copse of trees covering the southern slopes of Kinder Scout itself.
‘Pushed?’ said Roth again. ‘It’s unbelievable. Just incredible.’
As if by magic, Elsa reappeared and took Roth’s arm.
‘It’s OK, Teddy Bear,’ she said.
Reluctantly, Roth allowed himself to be led away.
‘Teddy Bear?’ said Villiers with a twist of her mouth as if she’d tasted something too sour. ‘Really?’
Cooper shrugged. ‘I’ve heard worse.’
‘I suppose what goes in relationships can be surprising. But they should keep that kind of intimate stuff to themselves.’
‘It does rather ruin Mr Roth’s image,’ said Cooper.
Villiers laughed quietly. ‘I’ll think of it every time now when he starts getting pompous.’
Elsa came back on her own as they were leaving. Cooper had stopped at a large framed photograph in the hall. It showed a climber looking up at the camera from a dizzying height as he clung to a sheer rock face. A printed caption said the photo was taken on the Black Dog Arête at Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire.
‘Who is this, Mrs Roth?’ he asked.
‘That’s Darius’s brother, Magnus.’
‘He’s a rock climber?’
‘He was, until the accident.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He was killed climbing in the Alps,’ said Elsa. ‘He fell sixty feet when the edge of an arête cut his rope.’
‘I’m sorry. When was that?’
‘Six years ago.’
‘Were he and Darius very close?’
‘Very. Magnus gave Darius someone to live up to.’
Elsa walked them out to their car.
‘You don’t seem to know much about the history of the Mass Trespass yourself, Mrs Roth,’ said Cooper.
‘It doesn’t mean anything to me, to be honest,’ she said. ‘I come on the walks because of Darius really. He likes me to be with him.’
‘Where did you originally meet him?’
‘Oh, some swish dinner at a hotel in Manchester. A conference, or a trade organisation that Darius was a member of. I can’t remember the event exactly.’
‘You can’t remember? But if you were at the dinner too—’
She laughed. ‘Oh no. I was a waitress working at the hotel. I must have caught Darius’s eye that night. He asked for my phone number. A lot of blokes used to do that, but Darius actually rang the next day. And’ — she threw out her hands as if gesturing at the elegant house around her — ‘the rest is history. It’s been like a fantasy for me.’
13
Sophie Pullen wore a set of gold bangles that glittered whenever she raised her hand. If she’d been his teacher, Cooper would have found that distracting. But when he was at school, any flicker of light was appealing.
‘We were all so cold and exhausted,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s hard to remember exactly what happened or who said what.’
‘I understand.’
Cooper had always had a soft spot for redheads. Sophie Pullen had that pale, translucent skin that often went with her hair colour. She had blue eyes too, intense and penetrating, the sort of eyes that didn’t miss very much. He imagined she might have let her hair grow long when she was younger, but now it was cropped short and businesslike. A plain grey skirt with a white blouse and black cardigan only seemed to emphasise her looks.
‘I’d been walking near Liam Sharpe,’ she said. ‘Liam is a bit slower than everyone else on a steep uphill stretch, but he always catches up eventually. He never gives in.’
Cooper considered that for a moment. Whenever he went out walking with a group himself, the fittest members always slowed down to stay together with the slowest. They never left people behind and forced them to catch up. The Trespassers sounded more and more as if they were out to compete with each other and humiliate the weakest.
‘But later on?’ he said.
‘There was a cry,’ said Sophie. ‘I thought it was from an animal of some kind. A fox, perhaps.’
‘Not during the day.’
Cooper was listening intently to Sophie as she described her experience on Kinder Scout. He always tried very hard to listen to what people were saying and absorb small details. A detail was often what came back to him later, a memory of something apparently trivial that a witness had mentioned.
Sophie shrugged. ‘Well, a bird, then. I don’t know. It seemed to come from a long way off. Some distance across the moors.’
‘All right.’
‘And there were lights,’ she said. ‘Lights on the moor. I could see them through the mist, moving around.’
‘How far away were they?’
‘I couldn’t tell. You know what it’s like in those conditions.’
‘Very difficult to judge.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Did they look like torches?’ asked Cooper. ‘Another party of walkers, perhaps?’
She shrugged. ‘I really couldn’t be sure. I didn’t hear any voices. Besides, if that’s what they were, why didn’t they come over to us? Our group was making enough noise, with the argument—’ She stopped suddenly and stared defiantly at Cooper as if he’d deliberately interrupted her.
‘What argument?’ he said.
Sophie shook her head. ‘It was nothing.’
‘I need to know about it.’
She sighed. ‘It was Darius and Nick, as usual. They were often at each other’s throats. But it’s not relevant.’
‘Why don’t you let me decide what’s relevant?’ said Cooper impatiently.
She looked abashed at his tone. ‘Sorry. I suppose we all seem pretty stupid to you. Getting lost on Kinder Scout, going onto the moors without being properly prepared, and then being so hopeless when things went wrong.’
Cooper opened his mouth, but she waved a hand dismissively.
‘Oh, I overheard some of the Mountain Rescue team talking about us,’ she said. ‘I suppose they have to do that sort of thing all the time. Rescue useless people like us.’