The Coop Read online

  “Gina! Are you in there?”

  She was knocking louder now. The bitch wasn’t going to leave. She was going to do something stupid, he knew it, and he’d be caught like a rat in a trap. He bit the back of his hand and waited.

  He was right. Laura was getting increasingly concerned. Why wasn’t Gina answering the door? She couldn’t be in bed at ten thirty; she was a real night owl. Besides, it looked like all the downstairs lights were on. It was odd. She decided to ring Gina’s mobile.

  Abba started up in his trouser pocket. He scrambled for Gina’s mobile, desperate to smother its ringtone, to switch it off.

  Outside, Laura could hear it too – and then the connection suddenly went dead. Someone was in there! She lifted the brass letter box and leaned down to look inside.

  “Jesus!”

  A shape crash-wiped the letter box frame inches from her face. Panicking, she dropped the flap and staggered back.

  Nephilim could hear her calling for help as he raced out through the kitchen. He re-locked the back door and replaced the key. Threw his shoes over the fence onto the railway siding, scrambled after them and ran.

  Everton Bowe

  Police Constable Everton Bowe was standing with a skin-and-bones girl, watching her boyfriend bleeding from his nose into the gutter below his Nike trainers.

  “He’s fucking nuts! Look what he did to Richie and me!” She couldn’t have been more than sixteen and was missing a front tooth, which gave her a slightly comic piratical look. “Go on, Richie. Show him. Go on. He could have fucking killed us.”

  Bowe ignored her. His mind was on something else. Richie’s blood dribbling down into the gutter struck him as a metaphor for his miserable career. He’d applied for Sergeant. Failed. Reapplied a year later. Failed again. Tried Heathrow – passed the firearms test, and didn’t even make the shortlist. And now, at forty-five, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. His career had disappeared, like Richie’s blood, down the drain.

  “Oi! You listening to me?”

  Bowe pulled his dark thoughts back to the more immediate problem at hand. Not only the irate girl but the wiry Rasta guy standing opposite him. “You admit you hit them?”

  “Yeah, man. They were trying to jack my Galaxy.”

  “Liar! We never did nothing! He’s a fucking psycho! Needs locking up!” The girl’s voice was like a buzz saw.

  Bowe was finding it hard to concentrate. His tinnitus was playing up and her shrill whine wasn’t helping. “So, let me get this straight. You say you hit her twice?”

  “No, man. I hit him twice and her once. When she done bit me.”

  “Liar! You attacked me, you black prick! Don’t just stand there, do something!”

  Bowe wasn’t sure who she was talking to – him or the other “black prick”. He popped a piece of calming Nicorette gum and waited for her to run out of steam. She didn’t, and the mosquito inside his head began shifting from ear to ear, like the Doppler effect of a passing train. He knew it wasn’t there. That it was the tinnitus. His brain compensating for his loss of hearing, but it was getting worse, driving him crazy.

  “Well don’t just fucking stand there! You’re a copper, do something!” the youth bellowed, his indignation fuelled by Bowe’s lack of interest and the dregs of a bottle of Tesco value range vodka that lay smashed on the pavement.

  Bowe did. He pulled out a handkerchief. He always kept a couple on him; one for wiping drunken gob off his uniform and one for personal use. He handed the youth the soiled one. Took the assailant’s arm and directed him under the awning of Headmasters, one of the plethora of expensive hair salons in Wimbledon Village, sheltering them from the November rain and the youth’s invective.

  “Hold on,” complained the Rasta, “They tried to mug me. It was self-defence–”

  “Liar!” crowed the youth, jabbing an accusing finger inches from the Rasta guy’s face. “Why’d we phone the cops then, eh? Eh? Come on! Why? Come on…?”

  Bowe took the man’s arm and eased him further away, feeling his biceps contract and then, thankfully, ease in submission. “Okay. Listen. They called 999. There’s no CCTV. No witnesses. And there’s two of them and one of you–”

  “And I’m black.”

  Bowe held up his hands in weary surrender and said, “And I’m not Nelson Mandela trying to change the world. Do yourself a favour and walk away.”

  “They tried to mug me!”

  “And you beat the crap out of them. Good for you. Walk away. You were never here. I never saw you. Go.”

  The man hesitated, wisely abandoned his principles and walked away. The youth was apoplectic.

  “What? No fucking way! You ain’t letting him go?”

  Bowe waited until the man had disappeared around the corner and turned back to the youth, sporting a look of confusion. “Whoa. Calm down. What are you talking about? I’m letting who go?”

  “Him! That black fucker that did this to me and her!”

  “Where?” said Bowe, indicating the now empty Ridgway. “What black fucker?”

  The youth went berserk. Bowe allowed himself a moment to savour the small victory, and excused himself to answer the burglary-in-progress shout on his personal radio.

  And at that precise moment, his life changed for ever.

  Specials, or “hobby bobbies” as they are referred to by the rank and file of the Met, are universally mistrusted, seen as a cheap alternative to real coppers. So, Bowe’s heart sank as he slewed his patrol car to a halt outside 16 Caxton Road and saw one engrossed in an animated conversation with an attractive, middle-aged blonde woman in a trench coat.

  The bright-eyed eager beaver was infected by the sort of enthusiasm that brought streetwise cynics like Bowe out in a rash. He was forced to listen as the Special breathlessly reported that he’d had no response to his calls or banging the front door so had proceeded to the rear of the property, where he found the back gate still bolted. He finally gained access through a neighbour’s back garden, whereupon he found no sign of disturbance or forced entry… blah de blah de blah… Bowe turned away and strolled over to the lounge window.

  Laura Fell couldn’t believe his laissez-faire attitude. “Look. Someone was inside! Someone answered my phone call!”

  The big cop didn’t even look back at her as he trampled through Gina’s flower beds to get a look inside.

  Laura called indignantly after him, “Excuse me! You’re ruining the–”

  “Wait by the gate! Do not move.”

  “What? Why? I haven’t done anything,” she protested, misinterpreting his sudden change of demeanour as doubt in her story.

  Bowe turned, grabbed her by the arm and manhandled her over to the Special, barking, “Put her in the back of the car and radio for an ambulance. Do it!” Then turned, took a run at the front door and kicked it in.

  It felt like a weird out-of-body experience; Laura sat in the rear of the police car watching her life unravel, powerless to play any part in it or affect it. She watched in horror as the Special followed the surly black cop inside and moments later re-emerge, ashen-faced, and throw up in the flower bed. The medics push their way through the gaggle of inquisitive neighbours who’d congregated outside the gate. A uniformed sergeant glanced in at her as if she were a criminal, as he strode past shouting instructions to a PC. But still no-one told her what was happening. Who or what they’d found inside. She’d been abandoned to her imagination and it was terrifying. She just wanted to go home and sleep. Sleep and wake up from the nightmare she was in.

  Her mobile jerked her out of her reverie. It was Don Hart. “It’s me. I just wanted to say sorry about not making the, uh, get-together.”

  “Chill Out,” she corrected.

  He waited for her to speak. But the expected reprimand didn’t come. “What’s the matter? Laura? Are you alright?”

  “No.” She cut the connection, watching with growing apprehension as the black cop made his way out of the house with the female PC and over to the car.
He opened the door and squatted down beside her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  She suddenly felt very vulnerable, like a lost child frightened to ask a stranger for help. “Is she… dead?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” He offered her his clean handkerchief, expecting – hoping – she’d break down, that her grief would fill the terrible silence. That she wouldn’t ask.

  “How?”

  But they always did. He had himself when his brother had OD’d on ketamine, crashed a stolen car and drowned in his own blood.

  “She took her own life. I’m sorry. I know it must be a terrible shock for you.” He was running out of words. Why didn’t the bloody PC do something, say something? He flashed her a warning look and said, “PC Carter will take a statement from you. Okay?”

  Laura grabbed his arm as he started to rise and said, “What about the other person I saw?”

  “There was no other person. There was no one else there.”

  He could see her confusion and felt for her. But what could he do? It was the truth. Everything else was a platitude. He handed her his card and turned away, thinking, Christ, I have to get out of this job.

  Laura watched him trudge wearily back into the house and a terrible thought welled in her mind. If there had been no one else, it had to be Gina that she’d seen; which meant she was still alive and she could have stopped her.

  She lowered her face into her hands and screamed.

  Chinese whispers

  DC Helen Lake swung left out of the Queens Road Police Station in her unmarked Ford Focus heading towards South Wimbledon and into “bandit country” – Mitcham. She knew the area well – every copper in Merton did – but she also had a more personal reason. Her father, Frank, had been an inpatient at the Wilson Hospital for over a year, suffering from Alzheimer’s. Helen and her sister hadn’t been able to cope with his violent mood swings and finally agreed to put him into care. A somewhat ironic term, considering what Helen had witnessed of her father’s treatment. She’d have liked to have visited him whilst she was in the vicinity, but she didn’t really have the time. In truth, his condition had deteriorated so rapidly that he no longer recognised her, often confusing Helen with her mother, who he blamed for abandoning him, which made it doubly distressing. She shut it from her mind and headed into Mitcham.

  Statistically, Merton has one of the highest crime rates in London. Not because it’s a particularly dangerous place, but because Mitcham and the notorious Phipps Bridge Estate are counted as within its boundaries, and they account for over seventy per cent of all crime in the borough. However, you’d never have thought that approaching the Hurst’s house.

  Helen walked past the for sale sign and under the pergola still spattered with late-blooming white roses and stopped in her tracks. The house was like something out of a Constable painting. Flowers tumbled from the stone urns and troughs in the walled front garden and a wisteria clung to the clapperboard walls. There was even a dovecot.

  “Hello. Are you the police?”

  The man was in his sixties, with a neatly trimmed white beard and contrasting thick coffee-coloured hair. Helen wondered if he dyed it, and how he knew she was a cop. She prided herself on her dress sense; today she was wearing a fashionable grey Boho trouser suit and Doc Martens.

  “Yes. DC Lake,” she said, flashing her warrant card. “We spoke on the phone.”

  “Eric Hurst. My wife, Anne, is inside.” He looked relaxed, which was surprising considering he’d found a traumatised naked woman in his garden only a few hours earlier.

  “I’m with the Missing Persons Unit, Mr Hurst.”

  Helen had been seconded to the unit after three women had gone missing in fourteen months from South West London. The number wasn’t significant, but their ages were; the majority of missing people being in their teens or early twenties, whilst these women were all middle-aged. Mature women with homes, jobs and friendships don’t normally just disappear. Plus, they had something else in common: like Tessa Hayes, they’d all been using online dating sites.

  The interior of the Hurst’s cottage was, if possible, even more beautiful than the exterior. It was full of antiques and objet d’art, which Eric explained they’d collected during their years as antiques dealers. Anne, despite Helen’s protestations, insisted on making tea and busied herself in the kitchen. Eric conducted Helen to a drop-end Chesterfield facing the large French windows that allowed light to flood into the room.

  “You have a really beautiful home, Mr. Hurst.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re trying to sell it if you’re interested,” Anne chimed in from the kitchen.

  “On my salary, I’m not sure I could afford it. Has it been on the market long?”

  “Five months. Three viewings. No offers,” Anne cheerily replied. “What do they say? Location. Location. Location.”

  Helen hoped she wasn’t right because she lived next to the main Waterloo train line, but nodded along in polite agreement.

  “Anyway, I’m glad you like it,” interjected Eric, moving the conversation on to a happier topic. “It’s seventeenth century. It used to be an old watermill.”

  “Really? How long have you lived here, Mr. Hurst?”

  “Eighteen years–”

  “Sixteen,” Anne said from the kitchen.

  “I stand corrected,” said Eric good-naturedly. “And please call me Eric.”

  “And me Anne or Annie if you prefer. I answer to both.”

  They were like a double act. Happily correcting and answering the other’s questions. Helen realised that they weren’t frightened at all, but rather enjoying the excitement of being the centre of a police investigation.

  Eric caught her quizzical look. “One of the perks of old age, Detective, is that you stop worrying about what other people think of you and become more concerned about what you think of yourself.”

  It was the gentlest of rebukes but a rebuke nevertheless. Helen made a mental note of it. “Can you please show me where you found the woman, sir?” she enquired, reverting to formality to demonstrate her respect.

  “Of course. If you’ll follow me into the garden, I’ll show you.”

  There was no back garden as such, only a long wooden balcony that ran the length of the cottage and hung six feet above the bank of the River Wandle. Perhaps twenty feet wide, the river formed a natural barrier between the cottage and the parkland opposite. This was fortunate because, though pleasant during daylight, at night the park took on a more sinister character, populated by gangs and dealers.

  But as she looked at it now, Helen could only marvel at its beauty. The water was crystal clear, no more than three feet deep and looked more like a trout stream than a London river. Moorhens and coots busied themselves between the reeds and a young cygnet swan sashayed through them and honed in on Eric like an old friend.

  “Eric feeds them,” explained Anne, who’d joined them, carrying a tray of tea and home-made cakes, which she placed on a small wicker table. “That’s when we knew something was wrong. There weren’t any. No birds. None.” She handed Helen a porcelain cup and saucer and filled it from a silver teapot. “It’s Lapsang Souchong. I do hope that’s alright?”

  Helen couldn’t remember ever having had Chinese tea, let alone drinking it out of a bone china cup. She took a sip. It was so weak she could barely taste it.

  “It’s delicious,” she lied. “So, you sensed something was wrong? What time was this?”

  “Seven forty-five,” said Eric. “I remember because Annie was making breakfast–”

  “We always have it on the terrace. Summer, winter, rain or shine. It’s a bit of a ritual.”

  “I was listening to Radio Four and Thought for the Day had just started, which I hate.”

  “He’s an agnostic,” apologised Anne. “Hates being preached at.”

  The double act had come on for an encore. Helen put down her tea and tried to steer them back to the question. �
��What exactly did you see?”

  “Well, nothing to start with. It was what I heard,” said Eric, pointing to a bed of tall broken reeds on the far side of the riverbank. “There was this terrible splashing and grunting noise, like an injured animal. I thought a fox had got one of the swans. But then I saw her thrashing about in the weeds.”

  “Did she say anything to you? Call for help?”

  “No. She was incoherent – definitely on something. Annie had to help me pull her out.”

  “She was covered in bruises and cuts from falling. It was a miracle she hadn’t drowned,” Annie added, offering Helen a warm scone.

  Helen shook her head in refusal, turned back to Eric and asked, “Did you see or hear anyone else?”

  “No, nothing, and the park gate would have still been locked.”

  “So how do you think she got into the river?”

  “The nearest road is a hundred metres upstream. It’s possible she could have got in there.”

  “Or been dumped in by someone else?”

  Eric looked shocked. Fishing a naked junkie out of a river was one thing, but the thought that someone might have tried to murder a woman was quite another. “Are you saying she’s not a drug addict?”

  “Her name is Tessa Hayes. She’s a middle-aged, middle-class woman, Mr Hurst. Not the normal profile of a junkie. And someone shaved her hair off, she didn’t do it to herself.” Helen’s mobile cut the interview short. “Excuse me,” she said, and turned to answer it.

  It was her DCI, Malcolm Teal, brief to the point of rudeness as usual.

  Helen’s hackles rose despite herself. “With respect, sir, 16 Caxton Road isn’t a missing person’s enquiry…”

  Annie could sense from the tone of his barked reply, that Helen’s boss wasn’t taking no for an answer. She shot a quizzical look across at Eric. He shrugged, picked out a blueberry from the muffin and fed it to the swan.

  Hounslow Council’s quality assurance department did not, as the name suggested, deal with PR and complaints, but child protection. Laura Fell had been employed there for over eight months on a short-term secretarial contract, and she hated it.