Overkill

by Maureen Carter

  Clare’s mother, Mrs Eve Cooper, did not attend today’s reconstruction and has been too distressed to talk to the media. Further coverage on page 3.

  Better pics, hopefully, thought Bev; the girl dressed in black in the wide shot could’ve been anybody. Bev scrolled through, hoping for at least one close-up. There were two. Bev narrowed her eyes. Holy shit. Clare Cooper wasn’t the only girl to whom Katie Granger bore a striking resemblance. ’Cause from where Bev sat, she’d swear Katie Granger had a twin. Either that or she’d changed her name to Kelly. Kelly Hunt. And if Bev was on the money, how the hell had Clare’s school mate ended up at SWAT HQ alongside Sonia Abbot?

  Monday

  52

  Come morning, Bev still hadn’t worked out the answer and had a shed-load more questions to pose.

  By the time she’d logged off it had been too late to call anybody – besides, she needed to try and think it through. She’d spent a good part of the night and most of her shower doing precisely that: trying. Had come up with a few thoughts, but daren’t risk running to Powell with what might be more half-baked theories. Her chips certainly hadn’t been half-baked. Talk about burnt offerings. She’d only remembered they were in the oven when she went up to bed. She snorted as she glanced at the bin where they’d ended up.

  The toast and Marmite this morning had turned out okay, though. Licking crumbs from her lips, she wrapped the last piece in foil and tucked it in her bag for later. Already in there were print-outs of the key articles she’d read last night. She needed to garner a few more opinions before deciding how best to proceed.

  She’d already spoken to a cop in Wolverhampton. Pete Naylor still worked there; still a DI, apparently. More to the point he was due in around 0800, which suited Bev just fine.

  ‘Of course I remember the murder, sergeant.’

  Fine and double dandy. Pete Naylor had not only returned Bev’s call, he was fifteen minutes ahead of himself, and right now a Wolverhampton accent had never sounded lovelier – and that said a lot.

  Punching the air with a half-eaten slice of toast, Bev scooched her chair back to the desk. ‘Why’s that, sir?’ As if she didn’t know: a cop never forgets an un-cracked case.

  ‘Apart from the fact that the case is still open?’

  ‘Technically speaking?’ She’d bet the files hadn’t seen action in a while.

  ‘Point taken.’ She heard him take a sip of something. ‘I wish I’d put the bastard behind bars, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’ Hadn’t even had anyone in the frame, apparently.

  ‘You said “Apart from”. Anything else made it stick in the mind, sir?’ she asked, laying the toast to one side.

  ‘Why all the interest now?’ Without solid grounds, she kept her reasoning vague: mentioned an ongoing inquiry that just might have a link. ‘Fair enough,’ he said, ‘how much do you know about the case?’

  She rolled her eyes, wanting straight answers, not more questions. ‘Only what I’ve read online, sir.’ Why else would she be trying to pick his brain? Cops invariably held back info from the media, partly to prevent copycat prats, primarily to keep perps guessing as to what and how much evidence an inquiry had gathered. It also helped to catch out the nut-jobs who confessed to crimes they’d not committed.

  ‘Yeah, well some stuff never appeared anywhere. Wouldn’t want to put Joe Public off his breakfast, would we?’

  She recalled Naylor’s oft-repeated quote in the Echo. ‘I know from what you said at the time the attack was pretty vicious.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  She glanced up when the door opened, glad for once Mac hadn’t knocked, didn’t want anything to stop the flow. Motioning him to a chair, she continued the call. ‘And another way, sir?’

  ‘I’ve been a cop for nigh on thirty years, sergeant.’ Sounded like he was scratching a beard. ‘Suffice to say I’ve never seen anything like the level of violence that was perpetrated on that girl.’

  Bev turned her mouth down. ‘The Echo used the word “bludgeoned”.’

  ‘I’d call it overkill.’ Overkill? She tapped the pen on her desk. A while since she’d heard the expression. ‘If you think your stomach’ll take it, sergeant, I’ll email the crime pics over.’

  Pete the patronizer. ‘I’d appreciate that greatly. Thanks, sir.’ Butt-licking didn’t come easy to Bev, but she’d not finished with the guy yet. She caught Mac mouthing something at her and swivelled the chair to face the window – didn’t need distractions.

  ‘Tell me, sir, is it right the mother discovered the body?’ If the savagery was as bad as Naylor made out, God knows what impact it would have had seeing her daughter in a state like that. The emotional and psychological fall-out probably explained Eve Cooper’s no-show at both the news conference and the reconstruction.

  ‘On her own bloody doorstep. Can you imagine? I wanted her to make an appeal. More or less begged her, but she wouldn’t budge an inch.’

  ‘Can you blame her? She’d be devastated.’

  ‘Sure, at first. Who wouldn’t be?’

  Had she heard a but? Yes. Naylor went on to say he reckoned most parents in her place would’ve have sold their soul to help the cops bring their kid’s killer to justice. He claimed a public appeal might have made all the difference. Bev very much doubted that, but they’d never know now.

  ‘You said “at first”. How did she seem later?’

  He pondered for a while, then, ‘I suppose you’d call it numb. I could barely get a word out of her. Kind of went in on herself, if you get my drift.’

  If Bev’s e-searches were anything to go by, Clare’s mother had been equally uncommunicative with the media. ‘Too distraught to comment’ had been the stock phrase. Which would also partly explain why the coverage had dried up. ‘I tried tracking her down online,’ Bev said, ‘but she seems to have dropped off the radar. Has she stayed in touch at all?’ A lot of relatives badgered cops for updates, especially in a murder inquiry. Not Mrs Cooper, apparently. Naylor said initially he’d made regular visits and calls, but she’d told him he was dragging it up unnecessarily. She could only bear to hear from him when they’d made an arrest.

  ‘Takes all sorts, I guess.’

  ‘Bloody weird, if you ask me,’ he said.

  ‘D’you remember Katie Granger?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl who stood in for Clare in the recon—’

  ‘Oh, her, yeah, another weirdo.’ Bev heard another phone ring. ‘Look, love, I need to take a call, so if it’s all the same to you …?’

  Damn. ‘Sure. Thanks for your time, sir. Reckon you might be able to sort out those pics? I’d be—’ Dead grateful. She pulled a face at the phone. ‘I hope he bloody heard that,’ she muttered, swivelling the chair round again.

  ‘Heard what, boss?’ Mac smiled. ‘And who he?’

  She gave a potted version, then glanced at a space on the desk. ‘Hey, you, where’s my toast?’

  ‘I did ask.’ How come Mac looked like the injured party?

  ‘You’re asking for something, mate.’ She sniffed. ‘What you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘Talk nice, boss,’ he said, delving his hand into a breast pocket. ‘I came to give you this.’ Waggling his eyebrows, he held a cream envelope just out of her reach.

  Two can play at silly buggers. ‘No can do.’ She shook a solemn head. ‘I’ll not accept it, mate. The Force needs people like you. Go away and think about it, eh?’ She already knew what gift she’d get the happy couple.

  He narrowed his eyes, realized she’d worked out it was a wedding invite. ‘You cheeky sod.’

  Winking, she plucked the invite from his fingers. ‘Talk nicely, DC Tyler, or I’ll not come.’ He’d have to buy his own bloody toaster then, wouldn’t he?

  53

  The early brief had been and gone, the case anything but done and dusted. The squad was still mostly on recycling duties: regurgitating tasks, treading over old ground. Bev wasn’t convinced. It was 0915 now an
d she sat opposite Powell in his office, having just told him she felt a complete re-think was needed.

  ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said, adopting his customary fingers-steepled-under-chin pose.

  She plucked a hair from her skirt. Her hesitancy wasn’t down to The Blond’s bemused-stroke-dubious expression. Although that certainly didn’t help in voicing what seemed even to Bev herself like off-the-wall ideas. More than that, they were still fledgling notions: even a scrap of evidence would help her argument. ‘Look, it might sound a bit … weird.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time, Morriss. Come on, get on with it.’

  ‘Okay.’ She took a deep mental breath. ‘Everything centres on pimps,’ she said, laying crime-scene pics on the desk in front of him. Hobbs, Khalid, Cox, Ward.

  ‘Same old, same old.’ He flapped a hand.

  ‘Hear me out, gaffer. I’m coming at it from a different angle. We – make that, I – reckoned the perp was a pimp and his heavies eliminating the competition.’ She nodded at the visuals. ‘With that lot taken out, the killer has pretty much succeeded.’ Inquiries suggested that the only players still operating in the city were two-bit small-timers.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So let’s say the killer isn’t a pimp. Who else would have a vested interest in offing the vice trade’s money men?’

  Keeping his gaze on her, he took a sip of coffee, wiped his mouth. ‘The low-paid workers?’

  Never heard street girls called that before, but, yes. She nodded. ‘It’s possible, gaffer. Money doesn’t have to be the motive – it could just as easily be personal payback.’ Revenge on men who force girls into prostituting themselves.

  ‘Dunno, Morriss. The attacks were pretty violent.’

  You only had to look at the images on the desk to see that. She knew what he was getting at, though: women who kill generally don’t go in for close combat. Tend to adopt softer methods they can use at a distance – guns, drugs, poisons. There were always rule-breaking exceptions, of course.

  When her phone pinged, she glanced at Powell. ‘Mind if I take a look, gaffer? I’m expecting something.’ Excellent. Pete Naylor must’ve heard her request, he’d emailed pics. She opened the first attachment, turned her mouth down. The exterior wide-ish shot of the house didn’t show much more than a body in a porch. A scene-setter, she supposed. The layout reminded her of somewhere. The Darwin Avenue locus: body, porch, hedge.

  Flicking through more shots, she winced when she hit a close-up, slowly ran her gaze over the remains of Clare’s face. The gory sight looked familiar. So familiar that it set off a faint tingling in her palms. Frowning, she murmured. ‘That can’t be right, surely?’

  ‘What can’t, Morriss?’

  ‘Hold on a min, guv.’ She glanced at the images on the desk, then looked at her screen: the damage to Clare’s face was virtually identical to that on Hobbs’s and Khalid’s. Coincidence? Or had the pattern of violence been deliberately copied? If aped, the perp had to be someone who’d viewed Clare’s body. Or had heard it described. The only person Bev knew who’d been close to Clare was Kelly Hunt. Kelly, who now worked at SWAT alongside Sonia Abbot. The woman who’d happily fed Bev what turned out to be duff info.

  ‘In your own time, Morriss.’

  ‘Let me just check something out, gaffer.’ She tapped a question to Naylor, attached the picture of what she thought of as Sonia’s team on a girls’ night out and finished up with a polite plea: ‘Please respond as a matter of urgency, sir.’ In other words, get back quick as you like, matey.

  ‘I’m still waiting,’ Powell drawled.

  ‘It’s like this, gaffer.’ She’d just about outlined her thinking when Naylor replied: ‘Eve Cooper’s in the middle. She hasn’t changed a bit.’

  Oh, but she has. Bev gave a tight smile. At the very least, Eve Cooper – just like Katie Granger – had changed her name.

  54

  ‘Sonia Abbot’s replicating the frenzied attack that killed her daughter, gaffer.’ Shuffling forward in the seat, Bev’s eyes shone. ‘It’s beginning to make sense now.’ Not all of it, but enough to get a team down to Digbeth pretty damn quickly.

  ‘Not to me it isn’t, Morriss. A woman? Responsible for all that?’ he said, nodding at the pics. ‘No way.’

  ‘She’s not acting alone, gaffer. Abbot runs SWAT.’ Bev snorted, maybe should’ve seen it coming. ‘Strong Women Acting Together.’ Stonking performances all round.

  ‘How many’s she got with her, d’you think?’

  Bev shrugged. ‘Apart from Kelly Hunt and Val Masters, I’ve genuinely no idea.’ Abbot hadn’t let Bev anywhere near other members of the set-up. Bev felt she’d been set up, all right. She’d caught a glimpse, once, of a small group of women lolling on settees. That was it.

  ‘Say you’re right, Morriss – why are they taking out pimps?’

  ‘I can make a guess, gaffer. But I reckon it’s about time we asked.’

  It took forty minutes to re-brief key members of the squad. Half an hour after that, Mac, Powell, Darren New and a further half-dozen cops in unmarked cars had taken up positions around the SWAT building in Digbeth. Two can play at overkill – to coin a phrase – but with four men already dead, there was also a phrase that included the words ‘safe, better, sorry’. As for who’d go in, Powell had acceded to her request that he deploy the squad’s strong women. Fight like with like, and all that. Bev and Carol Pemberton had joined forces. Kitted out with stab vests and carrying bags containing Tasers as well as tear gas, both were forearmed and forewarned. Powell’s ‘Don’t do anything stupid’ rang in Bev’s ears – Pemberton’s too, no doubt.

  As she raised a fist to hammer the door, Bev cut Carol a glance. ‘Ready for this, partner?’

  ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’

  Sonia was prepared, too. Must’ve been spying through the peephole. The door swung open the second Bev knocked and the woman stood there, actually smiling. She’d ditched the dungarees and Docs for a classy black skirt suit and matching court shoes. Her round face and plain features were contoured and enhanced by expertly applied make-up.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you back. Do come in,’ she said.

  Bev and Carol exchanged ‘What is she on?’ glances before entering in single file and tailing Abbot through the building to her office. Bev’s senses were on full alert, but the place had both an empty look and a vacant feel about it. She hoped to God the birds hadn’t flown.

  ‘Do take a seat.’ Sonia already had.

  ‘Kelly not in today?’ Bev asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Seems pretty dead all round to me,’ Bev said, placing the bag on the floor at her feet. ‘On your own, are you?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m winding things down.’ With hindsight, Bev reckoned there’d not been a lot to wind. She’d seen no so-called clients on any of her visits, and only had Sonia’s welcome address at that first meeting to say anything pukka actually happened on the premises.

  ‘How come?’ Bev asked, mirroring the woman’s casual crossed-legs, fingers plaited-in-lap pose, wondering if it masked a soaring heart rate and clammy palms – as it did for her. ‘Your mission here finished, is it?’

  ‘Yes, I think I can say I achieved what I set out to do.’

  The woman’s bubble cried out for bursting. Bev reckoned she’d best sharpen a vocal needle or two. ‘Bully for you.’ She sniffed. ‘And what exactly did you set out to do?’

  ‘Help make the world a safer place, for one thing.’

  ‘Safe? Who for? There’s plenty wouldn’t see it that way.’ Bev could name four men for starters.

  A withering glance suggested that Cooper’s conscience remained intact. ‘Vulnerable young women would. And someone has to look out for them.’

  ‘So how’d you go about it? Oh, and Eve, drop the bullshit now, eh?’

  ‘If you stop your silly pretence, I will.’ She snatched open a drawer, reached in a hand. Bev tensed until she saw what Cooper was holding. ‘I know you’
ve been snooping,’ she said, chucking the cuttings across the desk. ‘So you must have a pretty good idea by now what I’ve been doing.’

  ‘From where I sit there’s nothing pretty about it,’ Bev said. ‘DC Pemberton, would you mind?’

  ‘Sure thing, sarge.’ She reached into her bag, slid out an envelope. Bev studied Eve Cooper’s expression as Carol laid out colour close-ups of the victims post mortem. Not so much as a flicker, let alone a flinch, passed across Cooper’s face.

  ‘Just in case you’re wondering,’ Bev said, tapping a finger against the first print, ‘that was Dean Hobbs.’ Pointing to each in turn, she name-checked Khalid, Cox and Ward. ‘All dead, if not quite buried.’

  ‘I’m fully aware who they are. But why on earth would you think I care?’

  ‘Prison too good for them, is it? Like your mate Kelly, Katie, whatever her name is said. The girl who told cops in Wolverhampton she’d do anything to—.’

  ‘Leave her out of this. Besides, the men would have to be banged-up first, and you lot couldn’t catch a cold.’

  Bev nodded. Not in agreement, but as she saw another piece of the puzzle slot into place.

  ‘What you mean is we couldn’t catch Clare’s killer.’

  ‘Enough.’ Cooper snapped, then lowered her voice. ‘Don’t use my daughter’s name again.’

  Try and stop me, love. ‘Hits home, does it?’ Bev narrowed her eyes, toyed with what was either an inspired thought or a shot in the dark. ‘Clare on the game, was she?’

  Cooper glared daggers at Bev. ‘“Game” is not how I’d describe it.’

  ‘Put me straight, then.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will,’ she said, getting to her feet, walking to the sink. Bev and Carol exchanged puzzled glances, watched as Cooper poured water into a glass and downed the lot. She refilled the glass, brought it back to the desk, and resumed the relaxed pose.