Deadly Dance

by Hilary Bonner

  However, Cooke seemed to accept the matey approach for what it wasn’t.

  ‘OK, Mel comes to me every other Sunday, you see.’ He paused. ‘Or she used to.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Willis, striving to continue to sound casual. This was beginning to back up what Cooke’s wife had said, that there had been some sort of rift between father and daughter.

  ‘Oh, you know, she’s growing up …’ Cooke appeared only to realise what he’d said after he’d said it. ‘I mean she was growing up,’ he amended grimly. ‘She had her own friends. She didn’t seem to want to hang around with her old dad so much any more.’

  ‘So, when did you actually last see her?’

  ‘Nearly three weeks ago. She missed last Sunday.’

  ‘And do you know why?’

  ‘Yep. She spun me a yarn, but I found out that actually she’d been off with her mates. She preferred to be out and about with them, any chance she had. Well, why wouldn’t she? At her age.’ Cooke sighed. His shoulders slumped even lower than before. He seemed to be a man resigned to life serving him one cruel blow after another, thought Willis; the most recent being the death of his daughter.

  The policeman might have been moved to feel a certain sympathy for Terry Cooke, were it not for the bruises on Susan Cooke’s face and her nervous response when asked what had caused them. Cooke came across as a weak and ineffectual sort of man, both mentally and physically, Willis suspected. But he would be a heck of a lot more physically powerful than his wife – and his daughter – and Willis reckoned it was the weak ones who were the worst. After all, he knew that only too well from personal experience.

  He would have liked to have challenged Cooke about his wife’s bruises and given him a hard time. However, he knew that would only be counterproductive at this stage. They had nothing on Cooke. They needed information. Retribution would come later though, Willis was quite determined about that.

  ‘What about her stepdad?’ he asked, his voice still without expression.

  ‘What about him?’ countered Cooke, just a tad aggressively.

  ‘Well, was Melanie close to him?’

  Cooke shrugged. ‘Always told me she didn’t like him. That I was the only dad in her life, but they seemed to get on all right. Sometimes I thought she probably used the same approach with him. Knew how to get round you, did our Mel.’

  ‘It can’t be easy having your daughter brought up by another man,’ Willis continued.

  ‘No it bloody well isn’t,’ Cooke responded tetchily. Then he paused. ‘What are you getting at, Mr Willis?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Willis. ‘Nothing at all. Just trying to solve a crime, mate. And I’m very grateful for your help, really I am. I know how hard this is for you, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind going over your whereabouts on the night Melanie died? Just so I have it straight.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Like I told Mr Vogel, I was in bed asleep with my missus, when Sarah called my mobile. I woke up and checked who was phoning in the middle of the night. By the time I realised it was Sarah, she’d ended the call. I phoned back straight away. I knew it had to be something important for her to call me at that hour.’

  ‘What time did Sarah call you?’

  ‘I know exactly. I checked. It was quarter to four.’

  ‘And you’d been in bed for how long?’

  ‘Since about ten. We went to bed early. I was knackered. I’d left for work at five in the morning yesterday.’

  ‘So you guessed at once that something serious had happened?’

  Cooke nodded. ‘Yes, but I was shocked rigid when she told me that Melanie hadn’t come home. She’d never stayed out til that hour before. She is only fourteen for God’s sake.’ He paused, perhaps realising that he had used the present tense again. He didn’t bother to correct himself this time. ‘I just got out of bed, into my car and drove right round there.’

  Then he paused again.

  ‘But you know, I didn’t expect wh-what happened, n-not even then. Perhaps I just didn’t let myself think it.’ Cooke stumbled over his words and his voice trembled. He wiped one hand over a sweaty forehead. ‘She was a teenager, right at that tricky age. She’d always been a good kid, but lately, well, she’d started to play up. I expect her mother told you that?’

  Willis didn’t respond.

  ‘Maybe not. Rose-coloured spectacles with our Melanie. She let her do exactly what she wanted, half the time.’

  Willis smiled to himself. That was more or less what Cooke’s wife had said about him. That he put Melanie on a pedestal and could see no wrong in her. That she wrapped him around her little finger.

  ‘Anyway, I was shocked rigid at first, right enough,’ Cooke continued. ‘But as I was driving over to Sarah’s and I started to think a bit more clearly, I told myself Mel was probably just off with friends doing what kids do, the things they never tell their mums and dads about …’

  ‘Until four o’clock in the morning?’ queried Willis.

  ‘Well, there’s always a first time for something like that, with teenagers. That’s what I wanted to believe. Then you lot turned up with the news that she was d-dead, and … and …’

  Cooke paused again and looked as if he might break down. He pulled himself together enough to continue speaking.

  ‘I’ve lost my princess, Mr Willis,’ he said. ‘And I’ll never get over it. Never.’

  SAUL

  There could never be another Sonia. That was one thing I had to make sure of.

  She’d got too close to me. I nearly met her and almost let her see me in a public place. She was a quintessential, old-fashioned Englishwoman, who lived in Cheltenham and thought I was the quintessential, old-fashioned, English schoolteacher. I came so near to letting her into my life and that would never have done.

  Yet, deep inside, it was what I wanted. A normal, ordinary life with a normal, ordinary woman at my side.

  If only I wasn’t what I was and hadn’t done all that I had. If only I could roll back the years, reinvent not just my present but also my past.

  My experience with Sonia had really upset and surprised me, because I’d half convinced myself that I would be brave enough to meet up with her and take my chance, but I couldn’t. Despite this failure, however, I still wanted the same things: the wife and the children …

  I had to find a different way.

  It was a story in The Sun – about a 69-year-old, British man married to a 23-year-old, Thai girl – that got me thinking. The man had used a specialised, online dating agency called Thaibrides-introductions.com.

  This turned out to be a bit more than a dating agency. They provide you with a video featuring around 400 girls. You compile a shortlist of about a dozen and then fly out to Bangkok to make your choice.

  The agency sends over about eight men a month and boasts one hundred per cent success, claiming that most men proposed within ten days of meeting and choosing one of the girls on their shortlist. Presumably that was what they meant by success, I thought, not necessarily what might or might not come afterwards.

  You were allowed limited browsing without signing on. The women had many different looks, from the clearly flirtatious to the demure, and sold themselves on the site in different ways. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was a desire to find a partner they could settle down with for the rest of their lives. That was what I wanted. It was just unfortunate that there was so much about me which made that difficult. However, I felt cautiously optimistic that, with a woman from a different culture, it might be possible after all. I felt I wouldn’t have the same pressure to reveal myself fully. Everything I read and heard indicated that these women, with their dreams of a western-style marriage, would be more accepting, more pliable.

  I set up a new email address, Saul1949@mailme.co.uk, and began to fill in the profile. I was asked to say something about myself and also to describe the type of woman and relationship I was looking for.

  ‘Divorced s
olvent man looking for life partner,’ I wrote. ‘I am a 33-year-old sales executive, divorced without children. I have a nice home in a pleasantly suburban UK location. I am looking for a woman to spend my life with. Someone who wants the same things as me – children and a traditional home life. My interests revolve around the home and I have the financial means to give a partner a good and easy life.’

  I thought I made myself sound pretty plausible and presented myself in a way that would make what I was offering sound attractive. Particularly the financial side of things and the stable family life. I’d done some googling. The common consensus was that most Thai women were looking for those things.

  I wrote that I wanted: ‘a family-minded, traditional woman, who wants to be a traditional wife to a traditional husband. She does not have to be beautiful, but she must be of childbearing age and want to have children.’

  I thought that said it all and I started to move on to the rest of the registration process. It was when I reached the section, where I was supposed to post a photograph of myself, that I began to have second thoughts. I realised I had the same old problem. If I intended to follow this through and travel to Thailand in search of a bride, I would have to use my passport and expose my real face. I certainly didn’t want that plastered all over the internet.

  I backed off at once, leaving the site without completing the registration process or entering any more details. I tried to concentrate on my everyday life. I told myself I should stop fantasising. I tried to kid myself that my life was OK the way it was.

  After a few days, idly playing with my computer one evening, I went into my new email address. To my surprise, even though I hadn’t registered properly, I’d had an email from Thaibrides-introductions.com telling me my profile had been accepted. I logged in. My spot on their website contained photographs and profiles of dozens of young, Thai women. There was a section where you could express interest and send a message.

  I did so, choosing a dozen women at random and writing the same message to all of them.

  ‘Hiya, I hope you will contact me. As you know I am a 33-year-old Englishman looking for someone to share my life with. I like your profile. I hope you like mine and I hope you get in touch with me soon.’

  I pushed send and waited to see what would happen next.

  The next thing to pop up was a payment page. The platinum option allegedly gave me unlimited online access to hundreds of Thai women. It cost seventy-five pounds for six months. I paid with a debit card for a bank account that was linked to an accommodation address. I had set it up with a cash deposit some years previously, when these things were much easier and called for little or no identity checking or proof of address. It had come in useful more than once before. Now I hoped it would assist me in transforming my sad and lonely life.

  Within seconds I was in and my message would now be passed on to the young women I had already selected.

  ELEVEN

  The CCTV footage was waiting for Vogel, when he returned to Kenneth Steele House. He and Hemmings pored over it together. An unidentified man and a young girl had been captured the previous evening by a West Street CCTV camera. They could be seen weaving slightly as they walked along the pavement. The time was 10.17 p.m. Stone Lane was just ahead of them, to the left.

  The footage lasted only a few seconds. The man appeared to be more or less holding the girl upright. He had an arm around her and her head was against his shoulder. At one point she looked up at him. There was a clear shot of her face. The girl was Melanie Cooke.

  The man, however, who was wearing a hooded jacket, kept his head down and his face so deliberately turned away from the angle of the camera, that it seemed likely he knew it was there. There was not a single shot of him which offered any chance of identification. It was difficult even to tell his size or height. The jacket might have been padded, or else just large and shapeless. He was bending over the girl. All his clothes were dark and anonymous, although, of course, every effort would be made to further examine them for any detail which might be of use.

  Hemmings and Vogel played the footage several times.

  Vogel found it harrowing to watch. Minutes later, Melanie Cooke would be dead.

  ‘This is almost certainly the poor kid with her killer,’ he said aloud. ‘But it does bugger all to identify the bastard.’

  ‘Well, we’ll get the tech boys onto it.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Vogel. ‘I don’t hold out much hope though, do you? It could be her father, her stepfather or a complete stranger, from this.’

  The footage was thoroughly disheartening.

  Vogel was about to finally give up for the day and leave for home, when Saslow came into his office clutching a wad of computer printouts.

  She slapped them on his desk.

  ‘I’ve been checking out weirdo behaviour, like you told me to, boss. Particularly any incidents of paedophilia that might fit,’ she said. ‘Seems there’ve been a number of reports of some pervert parking up outside schools, getting his rocks off more than likely.’

  ‘Is there a reason for believing it’s the same man every time? We’ve got more than one perverted bastard in Bristol, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Yes, boss, but it’s the same MO. He’s always in a nicked motor, for a start. Carefully chosen, of an age not to have a modern security system, usually a Ford Transit or some other kind of common van and, more often than not, it’s white, also very common, of course. He always parks carefully, somewhere he can get a good view of the school gates and playgrounds, but not too close and in such a way that if he’s spotted, he can make a quick get away. The vehicles are usually recovered later not far from the schools. He’s been caught on CCTV several times, though it’s never been much help.’

  Vogel grunted. For the second time that day, and for the umpteenth time in his police career, he wondered if CCTV was ever much use, except for catching otherwise law-abiding, tax-paying motorists, who happened to be speeding.

  ‘So, not even a halfway decent shot of him?’ Vogel enquired.

  ‘No boss. Not so far anyway. There’s a lot to go through. I’ve got the team on it, but he’s clearly streetwise and I don’t hold out a lot of hope. Bastard hunkers down in his seat and always wears a hoody, with the hood up and pulled down as far as possible over his face. Has sunglasses on too.’

  ‘A hoody eh? Same as the character we have footage of with Melanie Cooke.’

  ‘Yeah, that narrows it down to a few thousand then, boss.’

  Vogel responded with a wry smile.

  ‘OK, well, carry on trying to ID the bastard, Saslow, but he could just be a voyeur, of course. Plenty of those about.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s more, boss. Teacher at Moorcroft Primary school saw him trying to get an eight-year-old girl into his van.’

  ‘Ah. What happened?’

  ‘The teacher called out. The girl backed off and the weirdo gunned his stolen motor, a white Transit, and beat a quick retreat.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Just under a month ago.’ Saslow checked her notebook. ‘Tuesday, April 18th, during the school’s dinner break. It was reported and looked into at the time, but there was bugger all to go on. No CCTV footage at all that day. The van was found not far away, where there aren’t any cameras. He’d probably checked that out in advance and had a camera-free, escape route. Seems probable he always does that, so whenever he’s been picked up, the camera has never been near enough or the angle good enough for there to be any chance of identifying him.’

  ‘Right, then leave the camera footage to the specialists, Saslow, and go yourself for a chat tomorrow with that kid and the teacher. Being a Saturday you’ll have to go to their homes, but that might be better, for the kid anyway, it’s less formal. Take a woman PC with you. All plain clothes. Maybe the kid remembers something that might give us some sort of lead without realising it. I presume she’ll have been talked to before, but let’s try again.’

  ‘Will do boss. Shal
l I also get the usual suspects rounded up?’

  ‘Check with Hemmings and DI Hartley. They’ll already be onto that I expect, but it might be worth probing more deeply. If we can put all this together, plus anything you might glean from the child, or anyone else up at Moorcroft, we might just get somewhere.’

  Saslow left the office. Vogel was thoughtful for a moment. Like all police forces throughout the UK, the Avon and Somerset had a list of known sex offenders on their patch, but Vogel was well aware that there were probably just as many again out there, who’d never been caught. Plus many more who merely watched children whenever they got the chance and surfed the net for child porn, but didn’t take things any further.

  Yet Vogel never totally accepted that. He always thought that, for almost all of those sort of men, it would only be a matter of time until they did take things further. Until they suddenly couldn’t contain themselves any longer. Until they made an approach to a child. It could be years, but the day would come. Then maybe that approach would go wrong. The child might cry for it’s mummy, might scream and wriggle and weep. Then they had to be quietened didn’t they? Nobody was supposed to get hurt, that wasn’t intentional.

  How often had Vogel heard that apology of an excuse for crimes of shocking violence? How often would he hear it again? Would he, in the next few days, or weeks, or months, hear that about poor Melanie Cooke?

  I didn’t mean to hurt her, guvnor, honest I didn’t. I was just trying to shut her up.

  That was bad enough but, worst of all, were the toerags who protested that the children welcomed their intentions and enjoyed their groping and probing.

  It only went wrong because she changed her mind, got scared, it wasn’t my fault.

  Vogel had heard it all. Vogel was a calm, mild-mannered man, but sometimes, listening to the whining of such men, he was aware of coming scarily close to violence himself.

  LEO

  My visit to Adonis Anonymous worked up to a point. I found it highly erotic and it did stop me thinking about sex for a while. Sex for its own sake, that is. But, unfortunately, it seemed to make me think about Tim all the more.