‘Which of them was it who had an OS map in his pocket?’
‘Actually two of them. Nick Haslam and Liam Sharpe. But they don’t seem to have used them much.’
‘And Mr Sharpe was already incapacitated after his fall,’ said Villiers.
‘There’s the older couple, the Warburtons. They’re keen walkers.’
‘Sam Warburton has a history of heart problems,’ said Irvine. ‘At the scene, he was diagnosed with low blood sugar. Once glucose was administered, he recovered well. One of the Mountain Rescue team’s mobile units took him to hospital later as a precaution, because there were no more ambulances available. But they didn’t keep him in. He’s back in Hayfield now.’
‘In Hayfield? Don’t the Warburtons live in Manchester?’
‘Yes, but their caravan is still on the campsite outside Hayfield.’
‘On the walk, they seem to have been trailing at the back,’ pointed out Villiers. ‘Besides, they were always together. Practically inseparable. It’s hard to imagine one of them creeping up on Faith Matthew from behind.’
‘I agree.’
‘So that just leaves us with the women.’
Cooper nodded. ‘So it does.’
‘Elsa Roth and the two students, Millie Taylor and Karina Scott.’ She glanced up at Cooper. ‘And not forgetting Sophie Pullen.’
‘Miss Pullen has been by far our best witness to date,’ said Cooper. ‘She’s very observant. She noticed what everyone was doing — as much as she could, in the circumstances. All the other witness statements look vague and confused compared to hers.’
Villiers looked stubborn. ‘But she still can’t tell us who killed Faith Matthew,’ she said. ‘Her statement is useful, but there’s no evidence in it that helps us to identify a specific suspect.’
‘All right, all right. She stays on the list too.’
‘Millie Taylor and Karina Scott seem harmless,’ said Irvine. ‘They were the most distressed by their experience, and in a state of exhaustion when they were rescued. They don’t look capable of planning something like this, let alone carrying it out and covering up their guilt.’
‘So if we put the students aside, who’s top of our list?’ he asked.
He could already work out the answer. It was a process of elimination, as someone else had once said. There seemed to be just one name left.
‘Elsa Roth,’ said Villiers. ‘The quiet ones are often the most dangerous.’
‘But wasn’t it Elsa who wanted to call the walk off when she saw the fog coming down?’ asked Irvine.
‘Yes, but she didn’t tell us that detail, did she?’ pointed out Villiers. ‘It’s in the statements from a couple of the others. I bet she knew no one would take any notice of her but would carry on with the walk. And she also figured that some of the others would mention it when they were questioned. She had her fellow walkers summed up accurately.’
Villiers turned to Cooper. ‘And us too, perhaps,’ she said.
Cooper smiled. It was always good to see Carol Villiers thinking in the same direction, even if it was for different reasons. Elsa Roth was the only one on the list who hadn’t connected through the walk but had already been with Darius when the others came along one by one. What had she thought as she watched those relationships fostered by her husband, apparent evidence of his need for more approbation, and more loyalty? More love, perhaps.
And Villiers was right. That buttoned-up individual standing in the background was often the one you needed to watch out for.
21
Ben Cooper had asked both the Roths and Sophie Pullen to come into Edendale to make their formal statements. He was particularly interested in talking to Darius and Elsa Roth out of their normal environment. Being in a police station often made people think differently, or decide to tell an alternative story. It was as if the mere suggestion of being a suspect persuaded them to play a different role.
‘Elsa Roth’s background checks out,’ said Carol Villiers as they waited to speak to the Roths.
‘So why did she try to cast suspicion on Jonathan? I wonder,’ said Cooper.
‘And implicate Faith too.’
‘Yes. I don’t like that, Carol. It smells of victim-blaming.’
The Roths were shown into Cooper’s office. Darius perched uncomfortably on a chair as if he found it too small. He gazed around the room, and his eyes seemed to focus on the damp patch in a corner of the ceiling that Cooper had reported weeks ago. Villiers hovered by the door, paying most of her attention to Elsa.
‘No, I know nothing about a note,’ said Roth when Cooper asked him. ‘A threatening note sent to Faith? It’s bizarre.’
Cooper didn’t find him convincing. Everything about Roth was bizarre, yet when he said the word himself, it seemed to mean nothing.
‘We found it at her house,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea who might have sent it?’
‘None.’
‘Or who might have had a reason to threaten her?’
‘No again.’
Cooper thought about asking him if he’d met Faith Matthew during his stay at Meadow Park Hospital, but he changed his mind. It would be revealing that Elsa had spoken to him privately.
‘How dare anyone do this to one of my group?’ said Roth.
‘Your group?’ said Cooper. ‘You know, I still don’t quite grasp what unites you as a group.’
‘What unites us? We’re united by an attraction to the moors, specifically to Kinder Scout. It has a magic that gets into people’s souls.’
Cooper could understand that. He’d felt the magic himself. Kinder was a place like no other, a different universe, a world away from life in the city. But that didn’t explain what kept the group together, when there was so much to be gained by experiencing the moors alone.
‘It’s so much safer in a group,’ said Roth as if anticipating his question. ‘You can easily come to grief on your own, or even with just two of you. Safety in numbers, that’s what we always say. Enjoying the experience as a family.’
Cooper nodded. But it hadn’t been safe, had it? And the New Trespassers Walking Club were one of the most dysfunctional families he’d ever encountered.
‘What you don’t understand is that we’re not just recreating the Mass Trespass of 1932. We’re perpetuating it, moving the principles behind the trespass forward into the future. It’s about the rights of the people against the will of a small, powerful minority who rule our lives. That’s still happening now, as much as it was in my grandfather’s time.’
Roth took a deep breath.
‘And it’s no longer just landed aristocracy like the Duke of Devonshire,’ he said. ‘Some of them are large corporations who decide where we can go, and when. Our group is small, but we’re here and we’re persistent. And we get attention — I make sure of that. It’s a warning to all those who like to go back to the 1930s and keep the masses in their place.’
‘Forgive me, but you’re an odd choice for a working-class hero,’ said Cooper.
Roth laughed. ‘You know nothing about me. I came up the hard way. As I told you, my great-grandfather Adam worked in a railway yard in Gorton — the Beyer Peacock locomotive factory, which closed in the 1960s. My grandfather, Daniel, took all the overtime he could get in a boiler works until he’d saved enough money to open a small corner shop. My father helped him in the shop until it went bust, forced out of business by the supermarkets. He had to get a job at the Slack & Cox mineral-water factory and put his effort into supporting me, because he wanted us to do all the things he never could.’
Darius had a smooth, persuasive voice. Cooper felt he could listen to that voice all day. But he wouldn’t believe a word it said.
‘Didn’t your family run a textiles business?’ he asked.