‘None.’
‘Her honesty?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Some of your colleagues might disagree.’
‘She’s been unfairly portrayed by some as dishonest or unprofessional. I’m here to put the record straight.’
Jackson nodded almost imperceptibly. He no longer looked quite so satisfied. Cooper could see him preparing to change tack. It was a standard interview technique, designed to catch your interviewee off guard.
‘And I believe you’ve met DS Fry’s sister,’ said Jackson. ‘Is that right?’
‘Angie? Yes, I have.’
‘Are you familiar with her background, and her associates?’
‘Some of them,’ said Cooper. ‘But I’m sure DS Fry made every attempt to distance herself. I’m confident she had no involvement in anything that would bring the force into disrepute.’
Then he was asking questions about an incident in Nottinghamshire that he could truthfully say he knew nothing about, and Diane Fry’s visit to Birmingham when her cold case was reopened. For a while after that, Jackson repeated the same questions, phrasing them differently, probing for inconsistencies. Cooper kept to simple answers, resisting the temptation to say more than he already had.
Finally, his ordeal was over.
‘Thank you for your input, Detective Inspector,’ said Jackson. ‘Your contribution to this inquiry is duly recorded. We’ll let you go back to your duties. I’m sure you’re very busy.’
From Jackson, it sounded patronising. But Cooper smiled politely and leaned over the table as he stood up.
‘There’s just one more thing,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
Cooper opened the folder he was carrying and placed a small stack of documents on the table.
‘Yes, there’s this.’
‘What is it?’
‘Evidence of a conspiracy among serving officers in West Midlands Police. Oh, only a small handful of them, it’s true. But they have a long reach in these cases, don’t they? They want to bring Diane Fry down because they think she has information that could compromise them. I spent all last night reading this stuff. It made me want to get outside so the fresh air could blow the stink away. It’s clear to me that officers in the West Midlands undermined a witness and deliberately deterred her from testifying in DS Fry’s rape case to prevent it from going to court.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘So their own complicity wouldn’t come to light. It was a case that could have been prosecuted successfully years ago. When DS Fry began her own inquiries in Birmingham, they were afraid she would dig up the truth. As you’ll see, they’ve been busy trying to build a case to discredit her, clutching at any straw they could find. You’ve been fed the ammunition, sir.’
‘But why now?’ said Jackson. ‘This case was some time ago.’
‘I’m afraid it stems from Fry’s sister.’
‘Ah. Angela Jane.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Angie has been speaking too freely. Her former boyfriend was pulled in for drugs offences last month, and he shared everything he’d heard, or overheard. When certain officers discovered who Fry had been talking to, they wanted to strike first. They wanted to make sure she was silenced.’
Still Jackson seemed reluctant to touch the documents.
‘So where did you get these from?’
‘It hardly matters, does it?’ said Cooper. ‘We both know that there are ways and means of getting information when it’s needed. You could have got this for yourself, if you’d tried.’
He left the office without looking back, and hurried downstairs, expecting to be called back at any moment. But he handed in his visitor’s pass and reached his car without anyone stopping him. He felt like a criminal leaving the scene of a crime.
As he drove out of the headquarters complex on the one-way system, Cooper gazed at the buildings he passed. He was amazed — not at the questions he’d been asked but at the answers he’d given. He’d gone to the interview without preparing what he was going to say, just knowing that he had to say something. And now he was surprised by all the things he’d come out with, the views he never knew he had.
He smiled as he put distance between himself and Ripley. There had still only been one lie too.
Another call from Carol Villiers was waiting on his phone for him to answer.
‘Ben,’ she said when he called back. ‘We’ve had a report from Trespass Lodge, the Roths’ property. Mrs Roth has reported her husband missing. She says she hasn’t seen Darius since last night.’
32
It took Ben Cooper far longer than he would have liked to get from Ripley to Hayfield. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over for speeding by his Derbyshire road policing colleagues on his way back from a disciplinary hearing.
So a full team was already at the scene in the grounds of Trespass Lodge by the time he arrived. Cooper crossed the stretch of grass to the old Methodist chapel. Tape had been rolled out, lights were set up, and CSIs were busy in the interior of the chapel.
Carol Villiers met him at the outer cordon.
‘We’ve found him,’ she said, as he climbed into a scene suit. ‘It didn’t take long.’
‘What exactly happened, Carol?’
‘It seems Mr Roth fell from the gallery.’
‘Fell?’
‘I’m using the term loosely. Unlike our woman on Kinder Scout, there’s no doubt about this one from the word go.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Inside, Cooper could see that Darius Roth’s body had landed on the flags of the chapel floor with slightly less of an impact than Faith Matthew’s body had hit the rocks below Kinder Downfall. The distance of the fall wasn’t so great, though the stone flags were just as hard and unyielding for a human body.
It was clear that the impact had fractured Roth’s skull. A splatter of blood and cranial matter had been thrown in a bright halo round his head.
‘He has cuts and abrasions on his face,’ said Cooper.
‘And on his hands too.’
‘Defensive wounds? So there was a fight.’
‘It certainly looks as though he tried to defend himself against someone. The balustrade up there is broken. Admittedly, the wood isn’t in perfect condition, but he didn’t just fall over it — he went through it with some force. We’ve found splinters of wood embedded in some of his wounds, and there are plenty of shoe marks in the dust on the floorboards of the gallery.’
‘It was somebody he knew,’ said Cooper.
‘Well, I don’t know if we can go that far. Not on the basis of the forensic evidence.’
‘Think about it. Would Darius Roth go up into the gallery with a complete stranger?’
‘He might already have been up there.’
Cooper nodded. Yes, he could picture that. It made a good vantage point, a balcony from where Darius Roth could look down like a king on — what? His followers, Cooper imagined.
‘He would have been able to see anyone who came into the chapel from there,’ said Cooper. ‘Why would he let them come in and climb the steps to where he stood if it was someone he didn’t know?’
‘OK, so perhaps he knew his attacker.’
‘And more than that — it was someone he trusted.’
‘Trusted?’
Cooper thought about it. ‘Or someone he felt he had a secure hold over.’
‘So he was overconfident, you mean,’ said Villiers. ‘That fits his personality, I suppose.’
‘Yes. I imagine in this case his hold on one individual wasn’t secure enough. His power over them failed disastrously.’
‘Do you think it was revenge for Faith Matthew’s death?’
‘What do you think, Carol?’
‘Well, it would only make sense if Darius Roth was the one who killed her. But we have no evidence to suggest it. The accounts from our witnesses are consistent on one point at least — they show Darius to be with one of the groups who split away to try to get help.’