As he stared at his map, Cooper became aware of Carol Villiers looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there watching him at work. He could see from her face that she had something to tell him.
‘I’m just back from Meadow Park Hospital,’ she said.
‘Success?’
‘I knew there was no point in trying the official channels, so I sniffed around and found some staff who’ve worked there for a while and remember her. One or two of them were willing to talk. Hospitals are a hotbed of gossip.’
‘And?’
‘Well, the talk is that Faith had an affair with one of the junior hospital doctors. He was working there as part of his training — they get assigned to different hospitals and various specialties. The trouble was, this junior doctor was married, and when it all came out, it wrecked his marriage. Faith was asked to leave, and that was when she took up agency nursing work.’
‘Did you get the doctor’s name?’
‘Yes. Dr Jake Gooding.’
Cooper wrote the name down and looked at it for a long moment. It meant something, didn’t it? There was a connection, he was sure of it.
‘Is this accurate?’ asked Villiers, looking at the map.
‘As near as I can make it, given the contradictions in the witness statements.’
‘If that’s where everyone was at the time, it only leaves one possibility,’ she said.
‘Yes, when you look at it this way, it seems obvious,’ said Cooper.
Yes, it was obvious. But perhaps too obvious? If you were planning to commit a murder, surely you would take more effort not to be the obvious suspect. Everything else had been planned. So why not this detail? It didn’t make sense. It was like presenting yourself on a plate as a prime suspect.
And yet he had rejected that obvious suspect.
And then he remembered. He heard Darius Roth’s smooth voice in his head, as clear as a bell. He was talking about Sophie Pullen bringing Nick Haslam to the walking group. She used to come with Jake. So who was Jake? Not just a previous boyfriend, as he’d assumed, but—
‘Sophie Pullen was married, wasn’t she?’ said Cooper. ‘It was in your summary, Carol.’
‘Yes, she divorced and reverted to her maiden name.’ Villiers looked at him with her mouth open. ‘So—’
Cooper held up his hand. ‘Let’s not be too hasty. We need to find out her ex-husband’s name first.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Villiers. ‘Just in case it’s a coincidence.’
But this wasn’t a coincidence, and he knew it.
The perfect murder. Cooper recalled Sophie Pullen telling him that story about Darius Roth. The idea had been in Darius’s mind for some time, and the opportunity had arisen on Kinder. He thought the fog would mean no witnesses. Had he really believed he could get away with it? It seemed such a risk for a man like Darius Roth to take.
But what actual evidence had there ever been that Darius killed Faith Matthew? It all came down to one confused witness account. One that Cooper himself had insisted must be mistaken. But one that he’d believed nevertheless.
He remembered what Diane Fry had said to him. That’s often where it all goes off the rails, isn’t it? Trusting the wrong person.
‘Faith,’ he said. ‘It’s an interesting name. Faith. That’s what it’s been about all along.’
Villiers looked up. ‘What do you mean, Ben?’
‘I mean I can’t believe I had faith in the wrong person.’
It was the end of the school day in Buxton. Pupils at St Anselm’s were looking forward to the weekend. The teachers too, no doubt. Though one teacher might have to change their plans.
Ben Cooper and Carol Villiers were sitting in Cooper’s Toyota on the street watching the gates as parents collected their children. For a while, the road was choked with vehicles, with cars on the pavement, parked on double yellow lines, leaving barely enough space for traffic to pass.
‘You never saw Darius Roth as a murderer, did you?’ said Villiers.
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘He was all façade. If his businesses went bankrupt, he might have been capable of killing himself — an overdose, a pipe from his car exhaust — but not someone else. It wasn’t part of the image he worked so hard on.’
‘And I was wrong too,’ said Villiers.
‘Were you?’
‘I said the quiet ones were the worst. But there are some who talk and talk, and say all the right things, so that you believe them even when they’re lying.’
‘You’re right, Carol,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s exactly what I did.’
‘It isn’t like you.’
‘Thanks. But it doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I failed on this one. Well, almost.’
‘What was it that misled you?’ she asked.
‘Sophie Pullen said she followed someone wearing a blue jacket to the Downfall, right to the rock where Faith Matthew fell from. There was no other member of the party wearing a blue jacket apart from Sophie herself. So it seemed to me that it could only have been Darius Roth she saw — he had a long blue scarf. In the fog, Sophie could easily have been mistaken about the item of clothing, while the colour would have been obvious.’ Cooper sighed. ‘But Darius couldn’t have been there — all the members of his group are adamant that he never left them during that time. And I believe them.’
‘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.’