Free Secrets of Death by Stephen Booth

crime unit for examination if he wanted information on Farrell’s recent emails or online activity. The same with the small pile of USB memory sticks in the drawer of the table. He unfastened the folder and flicked through the papers. They seemed to be mostly household utility bills – council tax, bank statements, MoT certificates. So he bagged up the laptop and memory sticks, then turned to the next room.
    He was looking for a sign of some kind. Anything that might explain why Mr Farrell had killed himself, or what he’d been thinking. Even a hint of his intention. Whatever Cooper could find might be useful, could cast the faintest of lights on what was happening.
    In one of the neighbouring divisions, a teenage girl who committed suicide had been found with a semicolon drawn on her wrist in ballpoint pen, like a temporary tattoo. It had become a well-known symbol, indicating that the individual was suffering depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts, or was self-harming. A semi-colon was said to represent a sentence that theauthor could have ended but chose not to; the author was you, and the sentence your life.
    Roger Farrell hadn’t left a note, though. He didn’t even say goodbye. Well, who did he have in his life to say goodbye to? They all seemed to have left him already.
    But wait. Here was what he’d been looking for. An envelope, pinned to a corkboard in the kitchen. One sign, such as it was, that Roger Farrell had planned ahead, had been thinking past the moment of death and that flood of endorphins. Inside the envelope was a reservation for a plot at a woodland burial site in the Golden Valley near Ripley, booked about three weeks ago.
    Cooper knew exactly where the site was, too. It lay barely a stone’s throw from Derbyshire Constabulary’s headquarters and was bounded on one side by a heritage railway line. Mr Farrell had booked himself a single grave there with a tree, costing him a little over £800. There were woodland burial sites around the Peak District too. Buxton, Hope, Thornsett. There, the dead helped to create new woodlands and provide habitats for wildlife.
    For a few moments, Cooper looked at the booking form and brochure, wondering what they really told him about Roger Farrell’s intentions. The location of the burial site stood out. The Golden Valley. It sounded exactly the sort of place you might expect to end up when you reached that distant white light.
    When they left, a man was leaning over the fence from the next house, watching them. He was black-hairedand unshaven, and his arms were covered in tattoos.
    The man laughed as Mrs Laws ducked her head, turned away from him and scurried back to her car. He narrowed his eyes as he faced Cooper and Villiers.
    ‘You look like police,’ he said bluntly.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Villiers, showing her ID. In Edendale, it was usually considered a good thing to have neighbours keeping an eye on each other’s property.
    ‘What are you doing here, then?’ he said.
    ‘Making enquiries about your next-door neighbour, Mr Farrell.’
    ‘Oh, him. What’s happened to him?’
    Cooper waited while Villiers weighed up how much information to give out. It was hardly a secret, though. The fate of Roger Farrell would soon be in the local news.
    ‘We’ve found his body,’ she said.
    The man grinned as if she’d just told him he’d won the lottery.
    ‘Topped himself, did he? Not before time.’
    Villiers looked taken aback.
    ‘Do you have no concern at all that your next-door neighbour is dead?’ she said. ‘No curiosity about what might have made him do that?’
    ‘Oh, should I pretend to care?’
    ‘You could try, sir. But it would be a bit late now.’
    The man nodded smugly, as if he’d just won an argument. ‘There you go, then.’
    ‘Do you know your neighbour well, Mr …?’
    He didn’t fall for that one. He was somebody accustomed to police officers trying to get his details.
    ‘Myname doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I dare say