Scorned

by Denver Murphy

  ‘Why are you being like this, Cooper? Last night you spoke about wanting to be a better detective but here’s your chance and you’re failing to investigate a crime scene properly.’ Ruby knew her words were harsh, and could tell by his hurt expression how deeply they had bitten, but she needed him to see reason.

  ‘In the short time you’ve been with us, how many attacks of a similar nature can you recall?’ Perhaps believing he was unlikely to receive the straight response the question required, he continued. ‘I’ve worked here for years and I can tell you that this sort of thing is very rare. That in itself makes it too much to be a coincidence, even if we didn’t consider all the ways this has the hallmarks of the same people we’re after. There are lots of reasons why there are some differences this time.’

  ‘Go on…’ Ruby said, regarding him coldly.

  ‘Okay then. How about they clocked us at the main station and so decided to split up. The majority went to meet the Abbey Flyer whilst one stayed here scoping out the passengers returning late after the problems on the line. Once the others got back from King Harry they then went to visit the target that had been identified by the person who remained.’

  ‘Sounds a bit convoluted to me…’

  ‘Fine. So, what about this then? Maybe they didn’t scope him last night at all. He was a potential target on one of the other days when they had found someone they thought was better. You said yourself that they must have known that they only had one more night in them in St. Albans. It would also help to explain why they went a step further with that robbery.’

  ‘So, what, after they did King Harry they thought they would stop off here on their way back? One quick, final score before they’d have to lay low?’ Ruby was unable to hide the scepticism in her voice.

  ‘It works doesn’t it? Like I said, there are lots of ways it could have ended up like this.’

  ‘I just don’t buy it,’ Ruby replied, her tone now moderate in the hope it might better get Cooper to reconsider his position.

  ‘Well it’s a good thing you don’t have to, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ All thoughts of reconciling the situation vanished from Ruby’s mind.

  ‘It’s not your call, is it?’ he responded, stomping out of the flat. Ruby considered remaining where she was but if she had any hope of Nelson providing them some more time on this, she needed to be there when Cooper reported in to Nelson.

  There followed a tense five-minute drive back to the station where Cooper seemed entirely happy not to engage in any further conversation. That suited Ruby just fine as her words were best left for when they were in front of their commanding officer.

  ‘Jesus Christ, I was about to call you!’ Nelson shouted across the CID floor the moment they pushed through the door. ‘This had better be good because I’ve got less than five minutes until Robson’s back,’ he added, ushering them into his office.

  Ruby had intended to start speaking as soon as the door was closed but Cooper beat her to the punch as soon as they stepped inside. ‘I think it was them,’ he stated simply.

  ‘Think?’ Whether Nelson had picked up on the tension between his two detectives Ruby didn’t know but she appreciated the opportunity this gave to voice her opinion.

  ‘I am not so sure,’ she responded. ‘At least not until we get a better handle on what’s there.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’ Nelson cried, beginning to pace the office floor. ‘I sent you two there with one simple task and that was to tell me if this was them. I didn’t ask you to fucking catch them, even though that’s what you’ve been meant to do for the past week, just to report back if we’re dealing with the same people.’

  ‘I know, guv, but it’s not as simple as that, you see—’

  ‘It bears all the hallmarks,’ Cooper interrupted, causing Nelson’s eyes to flit between the two of them as though he were watching a tennis match.

  ‘I haven’t got time for this!’ Nelson shouted. ‘I don’t want to know what you think, just what you saw. You can do that for me, can’t you?’

  Ruby glanced at her partner and took the shrug she received as a response that she should be the one to answer the DCI’s request. ‘Businessman killed in his flat from serious blunt trauma. Evidence of looting but with no sign of break-in.’

  ‘So, what’s the fucking problem?’ he said, glaring at her.

  ‘He wasn’t dressed, guv?’

  ‘What? Are you saying he was sexually assaulted?’

  Despite the tense situation Ruby couldn’t prevent a short laugh escaping her. ‘No, guv, it just means that it couldn’t have happened in the same way.’ Nelson’s look of irritation at her outburst had turned into one of confusion. ‘You know, how all the other attacks happened the moment the victim arrived home…’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Eh?’ Ruby was taken aback by the simplicity of the question. ‘Well, not exactly,’ she responded, thinking of the wallet but deciding that he was going to find it a weak line of argument.

  ‘I’ve already explained to DC Knight that there are any number of possible explanations for why they didn’t strike with the immediacy of before.’ The formality of Cooper’s tone was underlined by referring to Ruby officially, and further deepened the contempt with which she regarded her partner.

  ‘He’s right,’ Nelson said, the relief in his voice sounding like cowardice to Ruby. ‘Unless you’ve got something better for me then I see no reason to try and conceal this.’

  Ruby stared at Nelson, the bitterness of her defeat a tangible taste on her lips. If he was unwilling to accept that her main reservation was enough to delay things, she didn’t think there was anything she could add to convince him otherwise.

  ‘Look,’ he continued, his expression softening. ‘Your comments are noted and if it’s any consolation I’ll make sure I talk about it in sufficiently couched terms it’s made clear that, although we believe it’s the same people, the discovery of the crime scene is too recent for us to be certain.’ And with a nod in her partner’s direction he marched out of the office, straightening his tie for the impending cameras.

  ‘I think that’s fair enough,’ Cooper said evenly as they watched him leave.

  Ruby turned to face him; feeling the overwhelming temptation to tell him to go fuck himself. But deep down she knew he was right; whilst she was far from certain it was them who had conducted this other murder, there was no evidence to suggest it wasn’t. If at some point that did come through, she could allow herself to take great pleasure in rubbing his nose in it, but in the meantime, she would have to accept the situation as it currently stood.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Cooper called after her as she began heading to the exit herself.

  ‘To do some proper detective work,’ she muttered.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Kate hadn’t needed to wait too long until she found she was looking for. A quick search of the local news sites revealed information about an attack in St. Albans the previous night. Certain it was referring to David, her eyes had failed to pick up on the location as she skimmed the article and it was only when it mentioned a second victim, the wife, that she forced herself to revisit the beginning.

  ‘The King Harry Estate?’ she muttered to herself, finding that she kept needing to re-read the same passage to make sense of it. She might not have grown up in St. Albans but she had lived there long enough to know that David’s flat was completely the other side of town from where the attack she was reading about had taken place.

  Drawing little solace from realising her mistake, she went back to refreshing the series of tabs she had opened in her browser. The repetitiveness of it did nothing to quieten her over-active mind and she was considering starting on that tender that seemed so damned important to Mark when the BBC South East news posted a simple headline saying that a news conference was imminent on the recent violent attacks in St. Albans. Although promising to provide a transcript of the main events, she was keen to
hear it first-hand and scrabbled through her desk drawers to find an old set of headphones she had discarded in there long ago.

  With a tickertape running at the bottom of the screen stating what had been in the original headline, she was provided with a shot of a desk and two chairs, backed by a screen with a large Hertfordshire Constabulary logo on it. Moments later in walked two men, one looking official in one of those dress uniforms that reminded her of movies involving the American military, and the other in a plain dark grey suit.

  What followed was as Kate would have expected, with the smart man introducing himself as Detective Superintendent Robson, and his colleague Detective Chief Inspector Nelson. Her musing about how typical it was that the top positions seemed to be reserved for men was only brief because they quickly got down to business. Kate had never been one for local news, preferring issues of national importance to the usual stories about the community. As a consequence, learning that the attack in King Harry last night was just the latest in a recent string plaguing the quiet cathedral city of St. Albans, came as such a surprise to Kate that she forgot her purpose for tuning into the broadcast.

  But only temporarily.

  ‘And the body of another victim was discovered in his flat earlier this morning,’ continued DCI Nelson. ‘Forensics are currently at the scene, but it is highly probable that this is the work of the same gang.’

  Kate stared slack-jawed at the screen. Did he just say…? But this time there was no opportunity to go back to the start, as she had with the article, and her attempts to rewind the recording by dragging the bottom bar back along the screen only conspired to bring up the infuriating buffering symbol.

  Having spent most of last night, and all of the morning convinced that she had blown her one chance of escaping punishment for David’s death, she could finally see a glimmer of hope. A few moments ago she had been appalled to hear that St. Albans was in the throes of a vicious gang but if she could meet them now, she would surely seek to kiss them all. A small voice in Kate’s head tried to remind her that highly probable didn’t mean definitely, but when the transcript eventually came up on the screen, she allowed herself to relax. From the little she had absorbed about the previous attacks it seemed what had happened to David closely resembled them and she thought back to her panicked actions in the flat, where she had tried to remove all traces of her being there. Even then she had seen it as an effort in futility but if the police already believed they had their culprits then perhaps they wouldn’t search hard enough.

  ‘Fuck me!’ she exclaimed loudly, reaching into her handbag. Switched off at the bottom was David’s phone. Not only would it seem that her frantic rummaging around his flat hadn’t been the work of a mad woman, but it could well be seen as burglars hunting for valuables to steal.

  Finding more reasons to think she was in the clear didn’t cause relief to wash over Kate; her over-riding sensation was one of vindication. Just as her instincts as to what Scott had been up to had been right, the same was true here. She was sure that in the same situation ninety-nine women out of one hundred would have called the police, and that her actions would have been deemed irrational, perhaps even an indication of her culpability in what had happened. But that was only because so many women accepted the subjugation they were placed under. Having fended off a crazed attacker who had lured her to his flat under false pretences, it was so typical of the male-dominated society Kate lived in that she was expected to plead her innocence. Innocent until proven guilty? Utter bullshit!

  Yes, it was vindication she felt, mixed in with not a small amount of glee. David had got what he deserved, and his death was going to be passed off as just one in a line of random attacks. She smiled at the delicious irony of how he had tried to act so flash when he had been wooing her, and now it was believed that he had been killed for his money.

  ‘I’m going for an early lunch,’ Kate declared to no-one in particular, triumphantly pushing back her office chair and heading for the lift.

  As she stepped through the revolving door and took her first gulp of the chill London air, she laughed at herself for having become so convinced that her next taste of outside would have been when she was being escorted off to prison. Her walk from the Tube to the office had felt like she was marching down death row, but now she had to stop herself from running, such was the sense of release.

  Kate had burst through the entrance to the coffee shop before she had even appreciated where she was going. ‘Hi Alex!’ she called cheerfully towards the counter. ‘Did you miss me this morning?’

  ‘Er, yeah, sure,’ he replied, glancing anxiously around him before lowering his voice. ‘Look, I told you yesterday, I have a girlfriend and…’

  Kate stopped, stunned. In all that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, she had forgotten that her first effort to conduct an affair had been to crack on to Alex. ‘You… you misunderstand. I just came in for a coffee… you see, I missed mine this morning…’

  ‘Well that’s fine then,’ he replied cheerily but with his smile not quite reaching his eyes.

  Kate would have liked to have told him that when she had spoken about a misunderstanding, she didn’t mean just now but the whole thing. She wanted to tell him that, in his arrogance, a common affliction of boys his age, he had assumed she had been cracking on to him when really, she had been trying to do no such thing. But there seemed little point in doing so and her protestations would only make the situation more awkward. As soon as she had collected her coffee she could leave here and ensure she stopped somewhere else for her caffeine hit in future. ‘My usual,’ she said simply, unable to keep all the bitterness she felt out of her tone.

  In what seemed like an age for him to punch her order into the till and then prepare the coffee, she could feel her mood continue to deflate. Sure, she may have just swerved one hell of a problem but being back in such familiar surroundings was a reminder that she was still no better off than she was this time yesterday. Scott would be at work right now discussing with Donna what new position they were going to try in their latest fuck-fest and she remained in the unacceptable position of neither being able to confront him about his infidelity, driving him once and for all into that whore’s arms, nor being able to live with the current state of her sham of a marriage.

  With absolutely no intention of going down the same route as yesterday, irrespective of whether it might lead to the same outcome, Kate didn’t leave the coffee shop immediately upon being handed her order.

  Instead she sat down to think.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Lexie wasn’t the first to arrive back at the house following their morning work. ‘Oh, did I forget not to dead-bolt the door,’ she said with mock innocence.

  ‘Hmmm,’ grumbled Jordan. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that no-one was able to get in and lift the rest of the stuff whilst I was out.’

  ‘Is that why you’re back here early?’

  ‘I thought we had a deal,’ Jordan replied without an ounce of hurt in his voice.

  ‘You, me, and a tropical beach somewhere?’ Lexie said, replaying in her mind the various scenarios she had constructed overnight.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ he responded, moving out of the way so she could get to the lock. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘Shifted all of it, except for a couple of items. One I just couldn’t get anywhere near the price I think it’s worth and the other…’ Lexie paused, wondering whether carrying on was a good idea. ‘Well, let’s just say there was one necklace I quite fancied keeping for myself.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘You got a problem with that?’

  Jordan held his hands up. ‘I’m sure we’ll have enough between the two of us that one necklace won’t make much difference.’

  ‘Good,’ she replied with less enthusiasm than she felt. It was hardly a cast-iron guarantee that he wasn’t planning on ripping her off too, and there was always the chance he may be trying to lull her into a false sense o
f security, but the response was as positive as she might have hoped. ‘Shall we have a look at those flights then?’ she added, deciding that she would stick to Plan A for now.

  * * *

  ‘I’m not booking anything until at least one of them gets back here,’ Lexie said after an hour had passed and she and Jordan were still sat at the kitchen table. ‘It’s bad enough they might have fucked us over without making it worse by paying out for flights they’re never going to use.’

  ‘At least book ours.’

  ‘How come you’re so calm about it?’ she responded, shooting him a fierce look. ‘I’m going to call them…’

  ‘Hold on!’ Jordan said, gently putting his hand on her arm. ‘If you go shooting off your mouth then it’s only going to put ideas in their head.’

  Lexie nodded slowly, conceding the point. Although she liked to think she had enough about her to handle the situation better than Jordan was implying, she didn’t want to turn her fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It had been risky enough suggesting they arrive back in pairs last night without adding to it by showing any anxiety other than a desperation to get away from the house as quickly as possible. ‘Perhaps they’ve already done a runner.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘How so? Do you know something I don’t?’

  ‘Even if I didn’t think they’d be shitting themselves at the thought of me tracking them down, then there’s you…’

  Lexie couldn’t help but smile at the compliment. ‘I’m not that bad, am I?’ she responded demurely and enjoying the rare laugh it provoked. ‘But seriously, we’re putting quite a lot of trust in Taylor. I bet those watches are worth more than the rest of our stuff put together.’

  ‘He’ll be back,’ Jordan replied confidently, as though merely saying the words made them true. ‘I bet that’s him now,’ he added smugly a few moments later when they heard a key being inserted into the lock.

  ‘Taylor!’ Lexie cried out, dashing into the hallway.

  ‘I fucking knew there was something going on between you two,’ Cole mocked acerbically as he stepped inside. ‘I guess I’m not the last one back then. Glad to see you’ve decided to stick around.’