Secrets of Death (27 page)

Diane Fry slowed down as she turned her car into Forest Road. Evening was coming on, but it would
stay light for a while yet. The real business wouldn’t get under way until the sun began to set.

A few street girls operated in the area between Mapperley Park and Radford, despite repeated crack-downs by Nottinghamshire’s vice squad. It was largely residential and many independent prostitutes worked safely from the flats, all charging their clients a standard rate. On the street, the girls were cheaper and more dangerous. For years, many of them had been teenagers trying to raise cash for drugs, angering the established prostitutes by invading their patch and undercutting prices.

From her own experience, Fry had seen girls going through the care system and straight on to the street. They got hooked on cocaine in their teens and discovered that prostitution was the only way to earn enough money to feed their habit when state benefits weren’t available.

You still saw a few of them at night. The older women were identifiable by their mini-skirts, leather trousers, thigh-length boots and wigs. But the younger ones could be any teenager in their jeans and track shoes. The way they were hanging around gave them away. Most of the street girls came out after dark. They would take a position near a convenient side road or alley, or in the recreation ground. Any woman who stood around long enough in the Forest Road area would be asked how much she charged by a man in a passing car.

More recently, some Eastern European girls had been walking the streets off Radford Road. Parts of the district were upmarket middle-class suburbs, streets of solid
Victorian town houses and open parkland. Understandably, residents were exasperated with the area’s continuing reputation as the red light district of the city.

Ten years ago, there had been more than three hundred girls known to the Kerb Crawling Taskforce, but the figure had been reduced dramatically. Efforts to eradicate prostitution from the streets of Nottingham had included drop-in centres and outreach programmes, as well as rehabilitation courses for men caught buying sex who weren’t charged but given a police caution to cut reoffending.

Of course, everyone knew prostitution hadn’t disappeared. It had just moved off the street. Prostitutes worked from a crack house instead of roaming the streets around Forest Road. They had resorted to using mobile phones and computers to get custom.

There were definitely risks for men like Roger Farrell. Street prostitution was illegal and so was kerb crawling. If a police operation didn’t catch you, the girls were likely to rob you or leave you with a disease.

‘So you think Farrell is right at the centre of your inquiry,’ said Cooper, gazing out at the passing streets.

‘Yes.’

‘And our inquiry too?’

‘It would help, wouldn’t it? Since Farrell is dead.’

Fry could see Cooper didn’t like that answer. He probably thought she was being too flippant. He always worried so much about everyone.

‘These suicides of yours,’ she said. ‘Aren’t they just self-created victims?’

‘You’ve
never had much sympathy for victims, have you?’ said Cooper.

‘Not for some of them.’

It was true and she didn’t feel guilty about it. Fry thought of all the times she’d observed the behaviour of victims and felt a twinge of contempt at their weakness. Often she’d wanted to tell them that it wasn’t so bad as all that, that they should have a bit of back-bone and pull themselves together.

She’d seen plenty of genuine victims, individuals whose lives had been destroyed by some horrible crime. But so many people were just self-obsessed narcissists who deliberately over-dramatised their problems because they longed to be the centre of attention. They were the same people who dialled 999 because they’d broken a fingernail or to complain their kebab was cold.

‘Where are we going now?’ asked Cooper.

‘This is one of our few witnesses. At least, one of the few who have been willing to talk to us about what happened. I’ve been given permission to let you talk to her.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘You might not thank me afterwards.’

The girl was thin and her eyes were sunk in shadows as dark as bruises. Of course,
girl
was the wrong word for her. She was a woman, probably well into her thirties, though she looked and dressed like someone much younger, with the thin limbs of a teenager in tight jeans and a ripped T-shirt that continually slipped off one shoulder.

Cooper
guessed that if he met her at night he wouldn’t recognise her. He was seeing behind the façade. It was a privilege of a kind, he supposed.

‘Of course I’ll never forget him,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like the look of him from the word go. But you can’t be too fussy when you need the money.’

Cooper opened his mouth to ask what she needed the money for, but Fry gave him a sharp look and he changed his mind.

‘Can you describe him for us?’ he asked instead. ‘What didn’t you like about him in particular?’

‘He had those spider eyes,’ she said.

‘He had what?’

‘Spider eyes. Do you know what I mean?’

She stared at him, then turned away and looked at Fry, as if suddenly realising that Cooper was a man and wouldn’t understand.

‘They crawled all over your body,’ she said. ‘It made my flesh creep where they touched me.’

Fry just nodded. ‘And what did he say to you?’

‘When I turned him down, he got really angry. He said he’d kill me. He reached out to try and grab me. So I started running and screamed. He panicked then. He got back in his car and drove off. Went hell for leather up towards Alfreton Road.’

From time to time, Cooper thought she looked even younger – almost like a child, as she hugged her knees for comfort at the memories.

‘And the other one,’ said Fry. ‘Tell us about the other man.’

She looked really frightened then.

‘You
mean the one who came after him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know which was worse.’

‘So who was she talking about?’ asked Cooper when they were back in Fry’s car. ‘The other man?’

‘There are two other men who came into our enquiries,’ said Fry as she started the car. ‘Simon Hull and Anwar Sharif. The plan was to arrest Roger Farrell and question him to establish what his relationship was with the other two. Now we can’t do that.’

‘Were they his friends or accomplices?’

‘Personally, I don’t think so. I believe they knew what he was doing, though.’

‘Might they have being trying to stop him?’

‘By what means? Persuasion, intimidation? We don’t know.’

‘Blackmail?’ said Cooper.

‘Ah, now,’ said Fry, ‘you might be talking some sense.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve been analysing Roger Farrell’s bank accounts. There was some unusual activity during the past year. A series of large cash withdrawals at monthly intervals.’

‘Cash? So you can’t trace who it went to.’

‘Exactly.’

Fry drove around for a while, then parked in front of a row of shops. Cooper had no idea where he was now. Many of the streets looked indistinguishable. He wasn’t sure how he would choose one from the next. This city seemed to go on for ever and there was no indication when you’d passed from one area into another. He supposed people here must know whether
they lived in Forest Fields or Hyson Green, but he couldn’t tell.

Fry pointed out a bulky figure in a hooded jacket.

‘There. That’s Simon Hull,’ she said.

‘Does he live in this area?’

‘Not far away.’

Cooper watched the man but couldn’t see his face from here.

‘What sort of car does he drive?’ he asked.

‘A black Jeep.’

‘A Grand Cherokee?’

‘Yes, I think so. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, it looks a bit like a Land Rover, if you don’t know much about cars.’

Fry frowned, but let it pass as an irrelevant comment. She’d got used to having to do that when she worked regularly with Ben Cooper in Edendale.

‘And what job does Hull do?’ asked Cooper.

‘He runs a small garage in Radford. Servicing and MoTs. You know the sort of thing. If I’m right, that may be a direct to link Farrell, given his tendency to change cars so often. Why, what does that make you think of? Land Rovers again?’

‘No, I was wondering if he was an internet wizard of some kind. A web designer perhaps.’

‘A web designer?’ said Fry. ‘Oh, that would be Anwar Sharif. He works in managed IT services. His employers are based on a new business park out by the motorway. Companies outsource to them for network infrastructure, technical support, data security, that sort of thing.’

‘Interesting.’

Simon
Hull disappeared into a house and Fry pulled away from the kerb again, turning the corner into another almost identical road.

‘Diane …’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

He gestured out of the car window. ‘Is this what you left Edendale for?’

Fry stamped her foot on the brake a bit too hard as a light turned amber, making Cooper jerk against his seat belt.

‘Yes, this is part of it,’ she said. ‘Just a very small part of it. Here in the city is where we see what’s actually happening. I don’t suppose you can even begin to understand that. You and your rural idyll up there in the wilds of the High Peak. You don’t realise how cut off you are from the real world, how divorced you are from what’s going on in society.’

‘Oh, I’m aware of it,’ said Cooper. ‘I just don’t want to be so much a part of it as you’ve become.’

‘Me? I always was a part of it. You never changed me into a country girl.’

‘No, I realise that. It wasn’t going to happen.’

‘Never.’

Fry took him to the police station at St Ann’s, where the Northern Command of EMSOU’s Major Crime Unit was based. To Cooper’s eye, the St Ann’s area was another huge housing estate. And someone had spent money on the building where Fry worked too. There probably weren’t any leaky corners here or sink holes in the car park.

The
station on St Ann’s Well Road was used as a base for officers, but had no front counter and wasn’t open for members of the public to visit. It gave the building a different atmosphere from West Street, where the lobby and front reception desk were often busy with visitors.

There was another difference here. Back home, Derbyshire Constabulary was divided into geographical divisions, all of which contained some urban areas. Nottinghamshire Police openly divided themselves into just two – City Division and County Division. It was reminiscent of the days when the city had its own separate police force, before amalgamation in the 1960s. It seemed a tacit admission that policing in the city was different from that in a rural area.

It was late by now, and the station was unnaturally quiet. Upstairs, Fry introduced him to a tall, dark-haired officer who was alone in the MCU office.

‘This is my colleague, DC Jamie Callaghan,’ she said. ‘He’s working a late shift.’

‘Inspector,’ said Callaghan with a brief nod.

Cooper studied the pin board. The photograph of Anwar Sharif meant nothing to him. He was an Asian man aged in his late thirties, with a trimmed beard and gelled hair. But the head shot of Simon Hull made him frown and look more closely.

‘What is it?’ asked Fry.

‘I’ve seen this man before. Simon Hull.’

‘I showed him to you earlier on.’

‘Well, not the man himself,’ said Cooper. ‘I mean a picture of him. A younger him.’

‘I
don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘There was a photograph in Roger Farrell’s car when we found him. It showed two couples. I’m pretty sure the other man in it was Simon Hull.’

‘I’d like to see that.’

‘It’s at Edendale with the rest of the stuff we recovered from his car.’

‘Such as?’

Cooper shook his head. ‘Nothing important.’

‘If Simon Hull denies knowing Roger Farrell,’ said Fry, staring at the photos, ‘it would be very useful to have photographic evidence we can present to him to prove otherwise.’

‘So what are you going to do about these two men?’ asked Cooper.

‘We’re picking them up in the morning,’ said Fry. ‘A couple of early calls have been arranged. DC Callaghan and I will be conducting interviews with them here at St Ann’s later tomorrow.’

‘It sounds like a bit of a fishing expedition,’ said Cooper.

‘Don’t let DCI Mackenzie hear you say that. He might change his mind.’

‘Well, I hope that’s helped to put you in the picture,’ said Fry when they got back in to the Audi. It was dark now and she turned on her headlights as they passed through the barrier on to St Ann’s Well Road.

‘Absolutely,’ said Cooper. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘So what are your thoughts about Roger Farrell now?’

‘It’s a different perspective. I’ll have to give it some consideration.’

‘Is
that it?’

‘For now.’

Fry gritted her teeth as she drove back towards Edendale. They left the street lights of the city behind and hit the darkened roads of North Derbyshire.

‘Isn’t it your birthday later this month?’ said Fry after a while.

Cooper was surprised. ‘Fancy you remembering that.’

‘I wasn’t planning to send you a card or anything,’ said Fry. ‘I just remembered that you’re Cancer. A crab in its shell.’

‘Thanks.’

Half an hour later, Cooper got out of Fry’s car at West Street and stood looking at her for a moment before he closed the door.

‘By the way, Diane …’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Do you know you’ve got a white stain on your jacket?’

‘Really?’ Fry looked at the mark and brushed at it ineffectually. ‘I don’t know what that can be.’

‘Strangely enough,’ said Cooper, ‘it smells like sour baby milk.’

The
clouds had settled over the Eden Valley next day. A thin white layer stretched to the horizon, with a hint of deeper grey that might produce rain. Ben Cooper knew it could happen in the blink of an eye, that change from light to dark, from warmth to chill. Up there on the moors, you had to be vigilant.

Even driving through Edendale, Cooper couldn’t get one obsessive thought out of his mind: the expectation of another suicide. That was the way it worked with epidemics, wasn’t it? You just got more and more cases until you finally discovered the cause.