Secrets of Death by Stephen Booth Page A

stack on his desk.
    ‘There are too many,’ said Villiers. ‘We can’t review all these, Ben. And there’s no obvious pattern. These earlier ones are such a diverse bunch. A student, a single mother, a disgraced curate, an ex-soldier, a convicted paedophile. And they’re from all over the region too.’
    ‘No pattern at all,’ agreed Cooper. ‘Not on the surface, anyway.’
    ‘Sowhat should we do?’
    ‘Divide them up. You and I will take a look at the most recent. As many as we can examine in detail. We’ll let the rest of the team handle the older cases. They can trawl through them and see if they can come up with any connections.’
    Villiers took a file from the stack and slid it on the desk.
    ‘Okay, how about starting with this one?’ she said.
    On the twenty-first of May a young man had been found sitting on the bank of the River Wye at Upperdale. His motorbike was standing in the adjacent lay-by. It had recently been polished and still smelled of oil. His helmet was placed neatly on the seat. Underneath it was an envelope addressed to his mother.
    Three weeks earlier, he’d been made redundant from his job at a theme park, where he’d been helping to maintain the rides. Then his long-term girlfriend had left him when she’d discovered she was pregnant. Not because the child wasn’t his, but because she knew perfectly well he was the father. He’d been present at the conception, but she didn’t want him there for the birth. Or for the rest of the child’s life either.
    He’d lived in the Allestree area of Derby, renting a small one-bedroom flat close to the Park Farm shopping centre. He paid a month’s rent in advance – probably about all he had to his name after he’d bought food and a tank of petrol for his bike. How had he imagined he was going to support a family? Well, perhaps that was a question he’d asked himself and been unable to answer.
    The young man’s name was Alex Denning. He was twenty-two years old.
    ‘Ican’t imagine how anyone would get so desperate at that age,’ said Villiers, touching the file softly with the palm of her hand, as if she couldn’t be quite sure it was real. Or as if she was trying to read more from it than the printed words actually said.
    Cooper shook his head over the report. ‘I don’t know for sure, Carol. I think you can reach that position at any age, where you can see no point in going on. There
has
to be a point, doesn’t there? At least, we have to believe there’s one.’
    ‘But he had his whole life ahead of him. Okay, a couple of things hadn’t worked out for him, but that’s the way life is for everyone. He would have found another job. Someone else would have come along. Someone better. And it won’t happen for him now. It’s such a waste.’
    ‘Mr Denning couldn’t see that, I suppose. He wasn’t looking that far ahead, just to the next day, the final tank of petrol, the last ride out into the Peak District.’
    ‘He must have had family or friends he could talk to. He rode a motorbike – bikers tend to hang around together, don’t they?’
    ‘Yes. But I think they only talk about bikes.’
    She put the file aside reluctantly and picked up another.
    ‘Who’s next?’ asked Cooper.
    ‘David Kuzneski, aged forty. He was a credit controller for one of those outsourcing operations that have contracts with local authorities and large companies. He’dbeen there for five years, was well qualified for the job and well regarded by managers. Kuzneski worked in an office in the centre of Sheffield, but he’d been off work due to illness for several months. He lived on the outskirts of the city, at Totley. And he’s the only one on our list who was married.’
    ‘And he was found at Monsal Head,’ said Cooper, picturing the location.
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Cause of death?’
    ‘An overdose of lithium carbonate. The pathologist’s report says that the minimum fatal dose for lithium carbonate is fifteen 300mg tablets.