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.’
‘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.’