Scared to Live

‘When you were looking up all this information on the internet, did you come across any advice? What do they say you should do?’

‘Talk to a psychiatrist.’

‘And that’s what you’re going to do, right?’

Matt sighed. ‘According to some of these websites, the genetics of mental illness will be much better understood in twenty years’ time. But there isn’t much chance of research having practical applications within five years – when it would be useful to me. Or useful to you, Ben.’

‘I’m not planning on having kids any time soon.’

‘You’re past thirty. You won’t want to wait that much longer. Men have a body clock, too.’

‘If you say so.’

‘What about that girlfriend of yours?’

‘Liz? We’re just … Well, we’re just going out together, that’s all.’

Matt raised his eyebrows and gave him a sceptical glance.

‘What?’ said Ben.

‘Nothing. I just think you’ve been different since you got together with her.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

His brother snorted. ‘Be that as it may. In the end, Ben, you’ll have to face the fact that no one can tell you whether a child of yours will be healthy, or vulnerable to schizophrenia.’

‘That’s one thing I’m not going to worry about,’ said Ben firmly.

A few minutes later, he left his brother in the office and went out into the passage that ran through the centre of the house. When he was a child, the passage and stairs had been gloomy places. He remembered dark brown varnish, and floorboards painted black alongside narrow strips of carpet that had lost its colour under layers of dirt.

Things were very different now. There were deep-pile fitted carpets on the floor, and the walls were painted white. Or maybe it was some shade of off-white. Kate would know the exact name from the catalogue. The wood had been stripped back to its original golden pine and there were mirrors and pictures to catch the light.

Reluctantly, Ben turned and looked up the stairs. At the top, he could see the first door on the landing, the one that had been his mother’s bedroom. After the death of his father, she had gradually deteriorated until the family could no longer hide from each other the fact that she was mentally ill.

Isabel Cooper had been diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia, and finally the distressing incidents had become untenable, especially with the children in the house. Ben shuddered at the memory. He never wanted to witness anything like that, ever again.

On a Monday night in October, Matlock Bath’s Derwent Gardens were deserted. There was no one to be seen on the paths between the flower beds and the fountain, no one near the bandstand or the tufa grotto. The sycamores along the riverside were turning golden yellow. Their leaves drifted across the paths, undisturbed by passing feet.

At the far end of the gardens, past a row of stalls under striped awnings, was a temporary fairground. An old-fashioned waltzer and a ferris wheel, a train ride, a set of dodgem cars, all silent and still.

A figure approached from the direction of the Pavilion, a man in an overcoat, walking along the river bank, past the jetty where boats were tied up ready to take part in Saturday’s parade. He wandered apparently aimlessly, kicking at tree roots, making the fresh, dry leaves crackle under his feet.

He passed the waltzer and ferris wheel and found himself near a small hut that served as a ticket booth for the rides.

By the door of the hut, he stopped. There was no one visible in the darkness inside. But still he kept his eyes turned away, gazing up at the tower on the Heights of Abraham, high above the village. That was the place he’d rather be, surrounded by rushing air, with the wind loud in his ears. But the hilltop amusement parks had closed for the day.

‘It’s done, then? All over with.’

He froze. The whisper might have come from the hut, or from the river bank behind him. Or it might have been inside his head.

‘Yes, all over,’ he said.

Beyond the hut, he could see the dodgems lurking in the gloom of their wooden circuit, like a cluster of coloured beetles. There was a Rams windscreen sticker on a Leyland truck, backed up on the other side of the circuit. One of the operators of the fairground must be a Derby County fan. He wondered if the truck contained the generator that ran the cars, bringing life to the beetles, making them crackle and spark.

‘You’re evil, aren’t you?’

‘Am I?’ he said.

‘Really evil.’

He was distracted by the sound of the fountain splashing. A spray of water caught by the breeze spattered on to the rose bushes. Tip-tap, like tiny footsteps.

‘I’m not listening any more.’

Laughter swirled in his mind, making him shiver. ‘Too late.’

John Lowther pulled his overcoat closer around his shoulders as he walked away, scuffing his feet in the leaves. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. And he wasn’t at all sure about the voice, that awful disembodied whisper. It had sounded like the voice of a child.

10 (#u85de6a30-c750-5369-ab1c-8f2eeb654e00)

Tuesday, 25 October

An incident room had been opened up in Edendale for the Rose Shepherd enquiry. A fatal shooting was still rare enough in Derbyshire to make Miss Shepherd’s murder a high-profile case, even if she hadn’t been a respectable middle-class woman gunned down in her own home.

Watching the staff arriving at E Division headquarters, Cooper deduced that the HOLMES system was being activated. He recognized an allocator he’d worked with on a previous enquiry. The others would be data inputters, a receiver, an analyst.

With no obvious lines of enquiry that might lead to a quick conclusion, the HOLMES computer indexes would be vital in sniffing out correlations as information came in. One tiny detail could send the investigation in a new direction.

Before the morning briefing started, Cooper joined a small crowd examining the display of crime-scene photographs from Bain House and the field behind it. Some of the interior shots showed the victim from different angles before her body was removed to the mortuary. On the lower part of her torso, where it was in contact with the floor, there was a large, bruise-like discoloration that he hadn’t noticed before. That was dependent lividity – the effect of gravity on blood that was no longer being pumped through the veins. At least it showed that no one had moved the victim after she was killed.

‘The victim was killed with a semi-automatic weapon, at least three shots fired in rapid succession,’ said DI Hitchens, opening the briefing. ‘We know it wasn’t a bolt-action rifle. Since even one of the shots would have put her down on the floor, the second shot has to have followed rapidly to strike the victim before she fell. Otherwise, she’d have been out of sight below the window sill, with no chance of a second shot hitting its target.’

Officers around the room began to call out questions, their voices difficult to distinguish.

‘What about the third shot?’ asked someone.

‘If we follow a rough trajectory from the impact to a point in the field where the suspect’s vehicle was positioned, we see that the third shot passed through the window at about the same height and the same angle as the others. Exactly where the victim had been standing, in other words. So the third shot was probably fired after she’d already started to fall. That’s why it missed.’

‘Could that have been the first shot, rather than the third? I mean a miss, followed by two hits when the shooter got the range?’

‘Possibly. But the other two shots were very accurate. A head shot, and one near the heart. Besides, if you heard a shot and felt a high-velocity bullet whizz past your head, your first instinct would be to dive for cover.’

They all looked at the photographs of Rose Shepherd with a dark hole in her chest and another near her left eye. Her right eye remained open, staring in amazement at the ceiling.

‘This lady did none of those things, so far as we can judge,’ said Hitchens. ‘It appears the bullets struck her before she could react. But we’ll get the opinion of the pathologist, of course.’

The DI paused, but there were no questions, so he continued: ‘We’ve got preliminary reports from the teams on house-to-house. We’re looking for a blue Vauxhall Astra that was seen in Foxlow in the early hours of Sunday morning, about the time of the shooting.’