Secrets of Death by Stephen Booth Page B

Upperdale, the Monsal Trail ran on through two more tunnels at Cressbrook and Litton.
    ‘Sleeping pills. Benzodiazepines. They’re not as dangerous as barbiturates used to be. Well, not unless you take them in combination with alcohol or an opioid such as methadone or tramadol,’ said Villiers.
    ‘Which did Alex Denning combine them with?’
    ‘Both.Meth and a bottle of vodka.’
    ‘He would have experienced all the symptoms of impairment of the central nervous system. Intoxication, drowsiness, lack of balance, slurred speech.’
    ‘Someone who saw him earlier on at Upperdale said he was drunk. They thought he’d stretched out on the grass to sleep it off.’
    ‘I suppose that’s exactly what he did,’ said Cooper. ‘In a way.’
    Who had called sleep ‘the brother of death’? It was terrifyingly true. In a way, we died every night, he thought. He wondered how many people went to sleep at night not feeling entirely sure that they’d wake up in the morning. Or whether they wanted to.
    But people craved certainty, didn’t they? A definite end. The finality of death. That might be preferable to the ceaseless uncertainty of life.
    Alex Denning’s home was in a seven-storey block, six storeys of flats above a row of garages and service areas at ground level. It was almost opposite the Park Farm Shopping Centre, an outdoor precinct where Cooper could see a Boots, a Wilko and a Co-op.
    From a communal entrance, he walked into a tiny hallway. A sitting room, a bedroom and a kitchen with modern units. The neutral decor in all the rooms looked quite recent. The bedroom even had a small balcony overlooking the shopping centre car park. The place looked as though it must have come unfurnished. The contents were sparse and randomly matched. The sofamight have come from one of those charity shops selling second-hand furniture. Yet the TV screen was new and attached to a Sky box.
    Denning was a former pupil of Woodlands School, just a few streets away from his flat. He wasn’t a low-achiever. He’d done reasonably well in his A-levels, but had never been able to find a well-paying job. He’d been unemployed and on Job Seeker’s Allowance for eighteen months before the theme park opening came up. And that hadn’t lasted long.
    Cooper found a framed photograph on the window ledge. It showed Denning standing on a bridge with his arm round a young woman, presumably the now-pregnant girlfriend. They both looked happy and untroubled. The bridge spanned a river – Cooper could see a weir to one side and dense trees on the other bank.
    Then he looked more closely. He realised it was the Lovers’ Bridge in Edendale, but before it became completely covered in padlocks. Just a few were visible, near the standing couple. In fact, the locks seemed as much the focus of the picture as the young people themselves.
    In the car on the way back to Edendale, they were both quiet with their own thoughts. They were within a mile of West Street when Carol Villiers broke the silence. It hadn’t been an uncomfortable one, like the many long, awkward pauses he had experienced with Diane Fry. But he was glad when she spoke. It was better than the thoughts that were going through his head.
    ‘So how is the new house, Ben?’ asked Villiers.
    Coopersmiled. A safe topic.
    ‘Fantastic,’ he said.
    ‘Foolow?’ she said.
    ‘That’s right. It’s perfect. Come and see it for yourself. Call round for a drink tonight, if you like. I’ve got some beer in the fridge. One of the first priorities, after feeding the cat.’
    ‘No, I can’t. I’m going out tonight.’
    ‘Oh?’
    Cooper knew Villiers had an active social life. She had plenty of friends in the area, old mates she’d picked up with again when she returned to Derbyshire from her career in the RAF Police. She was a member of a couple of sports clubs in the Eden Valley and probably knew lots of people he didn’t. So usually he didn’t wonder where she was going and who she was going