The Coop Page 4

  Some of the cases were beyond belief. She actually felt physically sick whilst transcribing them. But much as she desperately wanted to leave, she knew that work for women of her age was in short supply, so had been forced to stick it out.

  Which was the reason she’d put on her navy suit and driven into work the morning after her best friend had committed suicide, and sat at her shared desk as if nothing had happened. That and the fact she found it easier typing the case notes of a tragedy that wasn’t her own, rather than remain in her flat and drown in phone calls from the press and Gina’s horrified friends.

  It had been 3am by the time she’d finally got to bed. The PC had taken for ever to write up her statement and then had the gall to suggest she give her a lift home, since she could smell alcohol on her breath. Laura was still fuming when she got back to her flat and had barely slept.

  She was speed-typing on automatic. Her mind wasn’t on an eighteen-year-old single mother accused of selling herself to feed her habit and her ten-month-old baby, but on a pretty semi-detached house in SW19 and the horror hanging inside it. Her thumbs were aching – repetitive strain injury, her doctor had told her – so she picked up her handbag and fished around in the clutter until she found her tube of Voltaren gel. She sat back in her chair and looked around the office as she applied it.

  It was described as open plan but to the untrained eye there was little that was open and even less planned. Six large desks supported the eighteen Investigative Research Officers, four Safeguarding Advisors, and two Minute-Takers. It was supposedly run by the Business Support Manager, who’d introduced hot-desking to speed up the backlog of investigations but ignored the real problem, which was understaffing. With only two Minute-Takers, keeping on top of new cases was physically impossible, even when working through lunch. But it wasn’t in Laura’s nature to be a quitter; she had her father’s integrity and her mother’s work ethic.

  “The McClaren minutes.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Laura’s boss was looming above her, loudly invading her personal space; a favourite trick of hers to assert her authority. “It gets boring having to continually repeat myself, Laura. The Mc–”

  “McClaren minutes. Yes, I heard that bit. The bit I didn’t hear was “excuse me” or “please”, or are they not in your vocabulary?”

  The riposte was out before she could stop it, propelled as much by her grief as by her anger. Not that her bully boss knew that. She cleared her throat, not used to being publicly challenged, and said, “Excuse me?”

  Laura could feel her eyes brimming with tears. She blinked them back and found herself standing face to face with her tormentor. “It’s getting a bit boring having to repeat myself. What bit of that didn’t you understand?”

  The room fell silent. Heads turned. The manager was in a quandary, not wanting to be seen to back down but sensing something irrational in Laura’s sudden anger. She eased back, lowering her voice, speaking slowly, attempting to defuse the situation. “Are you alright, Laura? You seem upset.”

  “I wonder why that is. Could it be that I object to being spoken to like an idiot?”

  “If you have a problem, we can talk about it,” her manager replied, as if reasoning with a recalcitrant teenager.

  “What, am I a child now?” mimicked Laura.

  Laura’s mobile punctured the gruelling silence. She saw the Caller ID DON, said in a strong, clear voice, “And you can fuck off, too,” picked up her bag and walked out of the room.

  Fuck her, Don Hart said to himself, and tossed his mobile aside. Besides, he had more pressing problems than Laura you’re-not-meeting-my-needs Fell. The previous night had been a disaster and his mind was still reeling with the possible repercussions.

  It was about to get worse.

  “We got any aspirin?” grunted his son, Richie, as he trundled into the kitchen, wearing only a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a black DC baseball cap.

  “Christ. What happened to you?”

  Richie’s right eye was swollen shut and the colour of an angry boil. “Nothing,” he replied, ramming a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster. “Some Rasta dude tried to jack my mobile. I sorted it. Aspirin?”

  “Did you call the cops?”

  “Yeah. He was another black bastard. Didn’t do nothing.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Wimbledon. Up on the Ridgway.”

  “Wimbledon?” Warning signals flashed in Don’s mind. “What the hell were you doing in Wimbledon?”

  “Going for a drink,” said Richie, yanking open the fridge door, retrieving a packet of frozen peas from the freezer and holding it gingerly to his eye.

  “You’ve got an exclusion order.”

  “It expired Saturday. We got any aspirin?” He began searching the kitchen cabinets, spilling the frozen peas from the open bag. “Anyway, I didn’t do nothing–”

  “Anything. I didn’t do anything – and you’re spilling the peas!”

  Richie banged the cabinet door shut and slouched out. Soon he was venting his anger by committing a drive-by shooting on Grand Theft Auto.

  Don opened his laptop and immersed himself in the possibilities of another virtual assignation on PlentyMoreFish.com. He’d normally ignore his mobile but, checking the Caller ID, found it was Iris the social secretary of the Chill Out group, and he remembered her adventurous tongue when he’d once given her a lift home.

  “Don.”

  “Iris. What’s wrong?”

  He prided himself on his intuition – in his business you needed it – and knew already that it was more bad news.

  Everton Bowe had a Homedics sound machine next to his bed. It was supposed to lull him to sleep with sounds from the seashore or rainforest. It didn’t work. His tinnitus was worse at night, like a high-pitched tuning fork in his head, and he needed more than nature to stop it. He’d taken a Zolpidem at 6am and it hadn’t touched his tiredness. Then another along with his Propananol at eight thirty which had done the trick but given him bad dreams.

  He was having a heart attack, lying under a kidney-shaped dressing table and calling his wife for help. She entered the bedroom with another man and stared down at him. He tried to reach out to her but his arms wouldn’t move. He was panicking. His chest was constricting, crushing the life out of him, and still she did nothing, just stood and watched. He felt himself falling and heard another voice calling him.

  “Everton! Are you in there?”

  Now there was a different ringing in his ears. He groaned, realising it was his doorbell, and muttered, “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

  He hauled himself up and out of bed, pulled on his towelling dressing gown and Uggs – his feet were like ice and never really thawed – and shuffled into the lounge. The remains of his post-work dawn snack lay on the Ikea coffee table: a half-eaten bacon sandwich, a cold mug of tea and the roach of a spliff.

  “Are you going to open up or what?” Her finger was permanently glued on the bell and it was beginning to irritate Bowe.

  “Stop doing that!” he bellowed as he pocketed the spliff, shoved the sandwich into his mouth and made his way out into the tiny vestibule that constituted his hall to open the front door. “I heard you. Okay?” he grunted and turned back into the flat.

  Helen followed him inside the boxy new-build lounge. “Well, look who got out of bed the wrong side,” she said, ignoring another grunted response. “Are those my Uggs you’re wearing?”

  “They’re not Uggs. They’re fake Uggs. And they’re not yours – they’re your present to me.”

  “Ooh, grumpy.” She grinned, opening the double-glazed windows and letting in a blast of cold air. “Dope will do that to you.”

  “Do you want something, DC Lake or is this just a social call to annoy me?”

  “A bit of both,” she replied. “Tea?”

  Bowe watched her as she made her way into the galley kitchen. Even through a headache, she looked good, and she moved like she knew it. She’d pull
ed her brambly hair back in a simple ponytail, exposing her long slender neck… He scrubbed his face with his palms, washing away the memory, and walked into the bathroom.

  “Your milk’s off.”

  “I like my coffee black,” he said, shutting the door on her and the conversation.

  Helen glugged the coagulated milk down the sink, made two cups of black coffee, then carried them back into the lounge to wait for Everton. She disliked what he’d done to his flat; it reminded her of an Ikea-inspired minimalist painting. It was neat and tidy but had no heart. And Everton, beneath all his sarky bullshit, did. It was what had attracted her to him in the first place. He was slightly damaged goods and so was she. And being a detective made her feel more in control of their brief relationship. He’d been her booty call first, and become her friend only after they’d mutually finished it.

  She took a sip of her coffee, burnt her lip on the mug, grimaced and called, “I heard you had a suicide last night?”

  “Can’t talk. I’m shitting,” came the terse reply.

  She let it go, knowing that Everton and his ailing body were slow starters in the morning. She idled away the time by mentally listing his ailments from the head down. Tinnitus: He’d been prescribed hearing aids but given up on them because it would have meant him joining the ranks of the shiny arses, and although he hated being a copper, he hated pushing papers even more. Uveitis and/or iritis: She was never quite sure which one it was, but it was excruciatingly painful. Like a migraine inside your eyeball was how he’d described it, and it made you hypersensitive to light. High blood pressure: 140/95, which added to his ear and eye problems and caused occasional bouts of vertigo.

  She’d urged him to jump on the bandwagon and sue the Met, claim his medical conditions were all stress related. But he’d refused, insisting his health problems were symptoms of his own private failures rather than the job. It was another thing, despite herself, that she admired him for: his brutal honesty.

  Everton yanked open the bathroom door and walked, naked and dripping, across the lounge and into the bedroom.

  Helen picked up his coffee and followed him. “You’ve put on weight.”

  “Do you mind? I’m trying to get dressed.”

  “If you didn’t want me to look you should have put some clothes on,” she said, handing him the coffee and making her way back into the lounge. “Does the name Celia Lewis mean anything to you?”

  “Should it?”

  “She’s the mother of your suicide.”

  “So?”

  “The new government enquiry into child abuse in London – she’s chairing it.”

  Bowe buttoned up his 501s and digested the implications.

  “The press is all over it like a rash.”

  “Flies like shit. What can you do?”

  “You should know. You married one.”

  “We’re getting divorced. You want to get to the point?”

  “Mrs Lewis. She wants to speak to the cop who found her daughter ASAP.”

  “Sorry. Going to see my son play football,” said Everton, who spent every Tuesday he could sitting in his car, secretly watching his estranged son, who blamed him for the breakdown of the marriage, playing for his school team.

  “That’s an order from the DCI – put your uniform on.”

  Bowe groaned and unbuttoned his jeans.

  The news of Gina Lewis’ suicide spread like a gruesome Chinese whisper through the Chill Out group, gaining momentum as each new recipient struggled to acquire the information they needed to dispel their disbelief. Within hours, Gina’s death became a feeding frenzy – not only fed by the press but by her friends.

  Megan Howell came home from work during her lunch break to feed and walk her two King Charles Spaniels. She always gave them identical bowls of Bob and Lush kibble to stop any squabbling; a dry food containing no artificial sweeteners. Perfect for King Charles Spaniels since they were prone to weight gain.

  They knew she was going back to work and were sulking, lying dolefully beside the kitchen radiator on their quilted blankets. Megan ignored them; a trick she learnt at a very early age to bring her parents to heel when they refused to bow to her wishes.

  She wasn’t a particularly precocious child but had an extraordinary sense of self-worth and demanded it be recognised. Despite her veneer of privately educated, middle-class respectability, she’d been brought up in a working-class home. Her father, a bus driver in Cardiff, met her mother over the counter in the company canteen. He was a member of the UNISON, like his father before him, and proud of his working-class Welsh heritage. Their only daughter was not. She had aspirations far above the smell of stale chip fat that clung to her mother’s clothes and hair.

  Her father finally bowed to her ferocious teenage ambition and agreed to let her try for university. When she was later offered a place at Bristol to read English Literature, he’d applied and won a maintenance grant from the TUC. Megan gratefully accepted the money but never acknowledged it had come from a Trade Union.

  Her parents were thrilled with her 2:1, but she was disappointed and asked for her final dissertation to be re-marked. Her request was to her mind unfairly rejected and from that day on her CV read that she’d been awarded a first-class-honours. And amazingly, few employers had ever questioned it.

  It reinforced her belief in herself, added to her self-confidence. She practised never asking questions, only making statements, not following but being seen to lead and, above all, not caring if she was disliked as long as she was respected. It became her mantra, and until three years ago it had served her well in her career and her personal life.

  She walked out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. She loved her mansion flat’s understated elegance. It might be only rented, but it had high ceilings and its own terrace accessed through the French windows, which was a boon. Especially with Bathsheba and Gabriel Oak. She’d taught the dogs to use the litter trays hidden behind some pots containing rosemary to mask the occasional smell. It took her weeks to train them, but she firmly believed that anything or anyone was trainable.

  It was what had made her successful as a teacher – and, in the end, was the cause of her fall from grace. But now she was resurrecting herself and her career and letting go of the past. Even if part of her past refused to let go of her.

  The phone rang as if to remind her. She picked up the receiver, listened for a second and quickly cut the connection. Her mobile vibrated on the oak mantelpiece. She checked the Caller ID – Iris Costa – and, relieved it was the secretary of Chill Out, answered it.

  “Iris. Why are you – what?”

  Colin Gould, was a lecturer in Modern European Cinema at St. Mary’s University, an attractive Gothic pile within a stone’s throw of the Thames at Twickenham. He loved his subject, but was an uninspiring teacher and immune to the indifference of his students.

  Colin came late to teaching, after retiring from HMRC as a tax inspector. He’d always loved the arts and thought of himself even then as creative. Crafting a narrative for each of his investigations, he pursued his prey mercilessly and each success felt like a warm kill. During his career, he’d been punched, throttled and once nearly had his eye gouged out, which was why he now wore glasses.

  He was supposed to be meeting Frieda Cole, one of the Chill Out group, for lunch. He rarely went to the staff canteen since some egalitarian had suggested it be opened to the post-grads to allow them to keep in touch with their tutors, whatever that meant. Every day at twelve fifty-five he’d pull on his ten-year-old camel coat and make the five-minute jog over to the river to sequester one of the benches. But today Frieda was disappointingly late and he’d been finally forced to surrender her place to a hugely pregnant woman and her garrulous mother. Unwilling to give up the bench entirely, he retreated into his head, thinking about how his life had so radically changed since meeting Frieda.

  He met her whilst working at the tax office and bumped into her four years later at a Sunday matinee of
the Red Balloon at the Curzon in Richmond. Afterwards, they had coffee and chatted, and she told him about Chill Out, confiding that the group was short of eligible, intelligent, men, which had fed his ego and interest.

  Frieda wasn’t possessive – she wasn’t interested in him in that way – so he got a considerable amount of attention from the other women in the group. Iris Costa asked him to share traditional Greek meze at her Twickenham cottage and made a pass at him. It was the first time he’d been kissed by a woman in years, and her wet, garlicky tongue in his mouth made him ejaculate in his pants, which he found acutely embarrassing, although, thank God, she never knew. A few weeks later, Gina Lewis, who loved the cinema and his knowledge of it, asked him to Arthur’s, a pretty bistro on The Green in Twickenham, which themed dinners to match the films they screened on Sunday evenings.

  It was the start of their secret relationship, shared with no one and even more special because of it. He began to believe there might actually be attractive, intelligent women who liked him for who he was and what he knew, not what he looked like: a geeky guy in wire-rimmed glasses. His Monday nights at The Telegraph soon became sacrosanct.

  But Don Hart’s arrival put all that at risk. Within a couple of weeks, he was ruling the roost, swapping risqué jokes with Gina and Iris, hogging the conversation with his too-easy wit and interminable stories. Only Megan Howell remained aloof from his charm. He sought her out as an ally. But she refused to take him seriously, laughing that jealousy was unbecoming in a man his age. He felt humiliated and began to hate her as much as he hated Don Hart.

  “Your mobile’s ringing,” the chattering mother prompted as she nudged him back to the present. He forced a polite smile, picked up his lunch box and thermos and walked away to answer it. The Caller ID displayed the name Iris Costa, and a flashing signal below it indicated ‘3 MISSED CALLS’, all from her.