Poppy sighed. ‘She should never have come out with us on something like that. We didn’t know she had a heart condition.’
‘I don’t think she knew either.’
‘If she had a family history of heart disease, she ought to have gone to her GP for a review. I bet she was a prime candidate for heart disease. A bad diet, smoking, too little exercise, a family history…’
‘So. At some point on this particular evening she simply dropped down dead in front of you,’ said Cooper.
‘Pretty much.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I’ve got to admit, I had no idea what to do. I was about ready to panic, to be honest. But Jason said he’d done a bit of first-aid training. He tried CPR. You know, pressing on her chest, mouth-to-mouth, and all that.’
‘But no one called an ambulance, did they?’
‘No. Well … no, we didn’t.’
Cooper was silent for a moment. ‘No matter how long Mr Shaw performed CPR, it was pretty useless without defibrillation, which is what actually restarts the heart.’
‘That’s what I said to Jason. I mean, we both knew that Sandra was dead. It was so obvious. There was no way she was going to be brought back to life. Right in those first few seconds, she was dead. She was already a ghost.’
Cooper shivered at her choice of phrase. The factory had made him feel uneasy as soon as he’d entered it. If your imagination ran in that direction, you might think there were phantom presences here, the spirits of the former occupants imprinted in the walls. But his senses were warning him of whispers and movements in the darkness. He couldn’t tell yet whether they were real or illusory.
‘We both panicked a bit, then,’ said Poppy. ‘Jason had touched her hat and her torch, so he took those away with him, in case of fingerprints. Then we rolled her body off the bridge. Her head hit the rocks, which was a bit nasty. But she wasn’t feeling any pain by then, was she?’
She was actually appealing to him for reassurance.
‘No, Poppy,’ he said.
‘It was funny, but it was only when I got home that I thought about her mobile phone. But it must have been in the river, I suppose. I dropped my phone in water once. It didn’t work too well after that.’
Cooper took a cautious step towards her, but she noticed and backed out of the light. That was worse. Now she was almost invisible and he was the one standing directly beneath the opening, bathed in the odd light. He could see the green tinge on the skin of his hands, like the discoloration of flesh after death.
‘Poor Jason was upset,’ said Poppy. ‘He was quite keen on Sandra. He likes them a bit weird, I think.’
Cooper could have kicked himself as he listened to her story. He’d noticed all those people coming forward and telling him part of the truth, as if they’d been told to do that. The Nadens, Jason Shaw, even Brendan Kilner. But he’d never thought to himself: And what about Poppy Mellor? She’d come forward voluntarily and appeared to be a willing witness. But she’d only told part of the truth too.
Yes, she’d been clever in some ways. Yet she was so young, so inexperienced about life. And about people too.
‘And George Redfearn?’ he said.
‘Unfortunate. But it was just like Sandra’s death.’
‘No.’ Cooper shook his head. ‘You can see a heart attack coming. It’s there in the tests. It’s in the blood. But this is different. You don’t see a murder coming.’
‘Sometimes you can.’
‘But it wasn’t you who killed George Redfearn, Poppy. That’s something I can’t believe.’
‘Can’t you, really? But it’s so easy, isn’t it? To get someone up on a high place like that and shove them off. You don’t need much strength.’
‘No, that’s true.’
And he had to admit it was true. A quick push, a momentary loss of balance. He’d imagined it himself on the sharp ridge of Parkhouse Hill just yesterday.
But Poppy was still backing away from him as he crossed the walkway.
‘You are right, though,’ she said.
‘Right?’
‘It wasn’t me. I was back home by then. You can check with my dad, if you want. He’ll be only too happy to talk to you.’
Cooper held his breath, listening for a sound, any sound, in the darkness. He was beginning to feel disorientated by the blackness all around him. His eyes couldn’t adjust because of the light he was standing in. He felt like a character on a stage, pinned by the spotlights, and about to perform his big scene in front of an audience he couldn’t see.
‘You’re a different person from the one I met before, Poppy,’ he said.
‘I was in character before.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I took a joint honours in drama studies at De Montfort,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t great. But good enough.’
Poppy was backing away steadily and Cooper had to follow to keep her in view.
‘And you coached the rest of your group, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘They all played their parts well. Congratulations.’
‘Thank you,’ said Poppy again. Then she paused. ‘But the final act isn’t over yet, I’m afraid.’
Cooper found himself at the foot of a flight of metal steps leading up on to an overhead walkway. It might once have passed over the cheese vats, but now there was nothing but a bare concrete floor below.
He thought he saw Poppy’s pale figure above and ahead of him, and he mounted the steps on to the walkway.
‘Where are you?’ he said.
But the voice came from behind him.
‘I’m here. Very close.’
Cooper stopped moving. He became certain that there was more than one other person in the factory with him. Someone had been here all the time. They’d been keeping very quiet in the darkness. But now he could hear their breathing and a footstep coming closer. So Jason Shaw had come after all. Or had he?
41
Diane Fry slammed her foot down on the accelerator pedal as her Audi hurtled down the A515 towards the Hartington turn-off.
Ben Cooper wasn’t answering his phone, which was typical. He’d probably got himself into a situation where he couldn’t answer it or had no signal. Or perhaps he’d simply turned it off.
Fry cursed him under her breath. Did he really need her help, after all? Had his call been a test: request her help knowing she wouldn’t come, just so he could point to a final betrayal? She couldn’t let him have that satisfaction.
There was a marked car behind her, but the other had taken Jason Shaw back to the custody suite in Edendale, where Becky Hurst would process him. With Luke Irvine in the car with her, she hoped there would be enough manpower. There was no one else available at such short notice, unless she sounded the alarm. And she couldn’t do that yet, without any clear idea about what was happening.
‘Turn here, Diane,’ said Irvine, pointing at the junction to the left.
He seemed to be as worried as she was herself. But then, Irvine knew as well as anyone that his DS was capable of doing something rash.
‘Try Ben’s phone again,’ she said. ‘And keep trying.’
Another face appeared from the darkness, lit for a second by a bursting firework, a blue-and-white flash and crackle through the broken skylights high in the roof of the old cheese factory.
‘Are you on your own?’ said a voice.
‘What do you think?’ replied Cooper.
‘I think you might just have made a mistake.’
Cooper experienced another disorientating memory. The thickset, middle-aged man who’d been raking leaves in the churchyard at Hartington vigorously. He was wearing the same baseball cap, forcing those same untidy clumps of grey hair to stick out at the sides. Cooper remembered that grimly determined expression as he’d lashed out with his rake at the weeds. A deep anger in his expression, an intense physical concentration.
‘Hello, Mr Naden,’ he said.
Naden didn’t reply. Cooper looked from him to Poppy and back again. These two made an unnerving team.
‘It should have been obvious you were the leader,’ said Cooper. ‘I could see it on that photo taken on the testing grounds at Harpur Hill. The one on the old coffin road. The photo that Poppy took, I imagine, since she wasn’t in the shot herself.’