The Goulds have a Land Rover Discovery but turned up for the walk on Sunday in the Renault Trafic van they use for the business. Theo is the elder of the two by a few years. He’s fifty-two, and Duncan is forty-eight. Theo has hearing loss, wears a hearing aid.
No story of wealth and success there. If the nursery was small-scale and their landscape gardening seasonal, it was hard to see how they made enough profit for the two of them to live on, even without families to support. It sounded as though the Goulds didn’t live a very lavish lifestyle. In fact, their existence sounded a bit precarious.
Liam Sharpe
Mr Sharpe is aged thirty, a check-in supervisor at Manchester Airport. He recently moved into a penthouse apartment in Bramhall, close to the airport. He’s in a relationship with a Hungarian chef called Tamás Horváth, who he shares the apartment with.
Mr Sharpe comes from a big Liverpool Irish family, with five siblings, but he doesn’t seem to have much contact with any of them as far as we can tell. He’s a graduate of Edge Hill University, Liverpool, with a BSc in business management.
Villiers had added a footnote to the reference to Bramhall. It said:
A very upmarket area where a lot of the Manchester United and Manchester City footballers live. Two-bedroom apartments go for upwards of half a million pounds. The rent on this one is two thousand five hundred pounds a month.
The unspoken inference was a question mark over how Liam Sharpe had been able to afford the expensive apartment. Check-in supervisors presumably didn’t earn huge salaries. So what about the Hungarian boyfriend? Just because he was a migrant worker from the European Union, it didn’t mean he was on the minimum wage or a zero-hours contract. He might be a celebrated chef in charge of the kitchen at a Michelin-starred restaurant, or from a well-off Czech family.
And finally:
Millie Taylor and Karina Scott
Miss Taylor and Miss Scott are both nineteen, students at Manchester Metropolitan University. They’re in their second year studying tourism management at the School of Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management on Cavendish Street.
Millie comes from Oldham, and Karina is a Yorkshire girl from Sheffield. They met at university and became close friends. They’re living in student accommodation at Daisy Bank. As part of their course, they’ve been studying the impact of tourism on national parks like the Peak District, hence their interest in Kinder Scout. They’ve done various part-time jobs working in bars and restaurants to make ends meet. They’re very environmentally conscious, support the Green Party, are members of the Manchester Metropolitan Environment and Geography Society, and do volunteer work for Hulme Community Garden Centre. Millie wants to be a chartered environmentalist, and Karina plans to work in sustainable tourism.
And that was the lot. Manchester again, but that was the only evident connection. Besides, Millie Taylor and Karina Scott had the most credible motive for being on Kinder Scout that day. It was just a pity for them they’d linked up with Darius Roth’s walking group.
And yet... there was one among them who hadn’t linked up with Darius through the walking group or through any interest in the Kinder Trespass. One individual had a link to him that was much more personal.
That interested Cooper. It was like finding the odd one out in a puzzle. And of course, personal feelings were a much more credible motive for a violent crime. If financial and emotional stability were threatened, anyone might lash out to defend their position. Even the quietest of women.
19
Diane Fry waited patiently, watching her interviewer take his time. She had no problem with awkward silences. She used them herself, and had never felt any compulsion to fill the void by blurting out information. If Martin Jackson hoped that was going to work, he was wrong.
‘So, your sister,’ said Jackson at last. ‘She travelled to Sheffield from the West Midlands, didn’t she?’
‘Apparently.’
‘And formed associations that were... shall we say... undesirable?’
‘I don’t know anything about those years Angie spent in Sheffield.’
‘And you might say that those sorts of associates were inevitable, given her drug habit.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘It’s very relevant, though, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? Relevant to what?’
He didn’t give her an answer. ‘And how much do you know about what your sister has been doing in the meantime?’
Now it was Fry’s turn to interpret her interviewer’s tone of voice. There was no doubt from his manner and the sudden tension in his posture that this was a crucial question.
‘Not very much,’ she said warily.
‘Do please share what you can,’ he said.
‘She turned her life around,’ said Fry. ‘In fact, my sister was recruited by the National Crime Agency as an informant.’
‘We know that. It was why she didn’t want to be contacted by you in Sheffield. Your interference might have damaged a major operation by the NCA.’
‘I wasn’t aware of it at the time,’ said Fry. ‘I only discovered her involvement with the NCA later.’
‘Your sister told you, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘She shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Did she share any confidential information with you?’ asked Jackson.
‘No, not at all.’
‘Are you sure of that, DS Fry?’
‘Yes, absolutely.’
‘So did you ever meet a man named Craig Reynolds?’
‘I don’t know the name.’
‘That’s not an answer to my question.’
‘If I don’t recognise the name, I can’t tell you whether I’ve met him,’ said Fry.
‘As it happens, Craig Reynolds is the father of your nephew, Zack.’
‘Oh, him. My sister mentioned him a few times, but I don’t believe I ever heard his surname. And no, I never met him.’
Fry waited to be asked whether she’d had suspicions about Craig, but the question didn’t come. There would have been only one thing she could say. There were times when it was better not to know.
Over the past months, she’d formed an image in her mind of Angie’s boyfriend, Craig, the father of her child. She knew he drove a Renault hatchback and was involved in some kind of business that brought him to Nottingham occasionally. She was sure it was dodgy, probably illegal. But she deliberately hadn’t asked.
Then Craig had disappeared suddenly from Angie’s life. The next time she arrived at Diane’s home in Wilford, Angie was in a new relationship. His name is Sunil Kumar. Everyone calls him Sonny. And there was a kind of mother-in-law in the background too, referred to as Manjusha, who didn’t mind looking after the baby. Free childcare was a useful extra.
Craig? Angie had said. I couldn’t have left Zack with him for the day, let alone his mother. She’s a drunken old slag.
Fry still didn’t know what else was coming from Martin Jackson. But she was aware that not long ago an officer had faced allegations of breaching the Standards of Professional Behaviour in respect of ‘honesty and integrity’ and ‘discreditable conduct’ after he was found guilty of three charges of fraud.
So she decided to take the initiative.
‘What exactly is it we’re here for?’ she said. ‘Are you looking for a reason to suspend me?’
Jackson sat back in his chair and observed her like an interesting specimen in a zoo.
‘As you may know, very few police officers or members of staff are suspended from duty,’ he said. ‘The force policy is to seek to redeploy officers to low-risk roles instead. Any decision to suspend is made by the DCC and is reviewed monthly.’