by Nigel Cooper
THE SOUND OF CRYING
Nigel Cooper
Copyright © Nigel Cooper, 2017
All rights reserved
Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Generic Pool Publishing
www.genericpool.co.uk
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanical, including photocopy and recording, without permission in writing of the author.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Cover design by Nigel Cooper
Cover photos: Nigel Cooper & Getty Images
This novel is also available in paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9573307-7-1
For more details about the author and his other works visit:
www.nigelcooperauthor.co.uk
Feature length novels by the same author:
EMAIL FROM A VAMPIRE
SOPHIA
BOY
S.U.N.D.S
THE SOUND OF CRYING
by Nigel Cooper
Prologue
‘I’m here to give myself up.’
The police enquiry desk officer looked up to see a Roman Catholic priest standing before him in full clergy dress, his blood-soaked hands held up in mock surrender. He was soaked in blood from head to toe – literally. He looked like he’d been in the middle of some sort of bloody carnage. It was in his hair, all over his face. His white plastic clerical collar was splattered with crimson and although his long cassock was black, it too was obviously soaked in fresh blood.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said the enquiry officer, shocked by what stood before him. Although the man covering the enquiry office wore a standard issue white police shirt complete with blue epaulettes, he was simply a civilian, hired to staff the enquiry office out front, nothing more.
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t quite have that status, I only wish I did. However, I am a priest. My name is Derek Stanton, Father Derek Stanton. I believe you’ve been looking for me,’ he said in a calm matter-of-fact gentlemanly, if slightly creepy, tone.
‘I’m sorry?’ said the enquiry officer.
‘Over the past twelve months?’
‘Ok, you’re going to have to give me a little more information, Father,’ he said, not quite having the experience nor the expertise to deal with the blood-soaked clergyman.
‘Jamie and Edward Kramer – the four-year-old twins – ring any bells?’ he said, raising an eyebrow.
The penny dropped. ‘Dear god,’ said the civvy, seriously shocked.
‘I’ve been saying that a lot recently, but somehow it doesn’t seem to have worked. I don’t think he’s really listening to me anymore; come to think of it, I’m not sure he ever did,’ said Father Stanton.
‘You mentioned the Kramer twins, what do you know about them?’ said the enquiry officer, looking him up and down, blood and all, desperately trying to assess the situation and getting ideas above his station that he could actually handle it.
‘Well now, let me see, ah yes, I took them exactly one year ago today and approximately, hmmm,’ he said, pausing to look at his wristwatch, ‘40 minutes ago … I killed them both in cold blood … just over a mile from here, actually,’ he said, looking up at the enquiry officer. ‘You know what the amazing thing is? I’ve just walked across the city, past all the tourists, students and happy shoppers looking like this,’ he said, gesturing to his blood splattered face and blood soaked clergy attire, ‘and all I got were a few questioning glances, but basically nobody really gave a shit.’
The enquiry officer was too shocked to speak and the magnitude of the situation suddenly sank in. He took a moment to compose himself. Father Stanton could practically hear the cogs turning in the enquiry officer’s head so he decided to throw another spanner into the workings of his mind. ‘You really don’t want to know what happened between my kidnapping them a year ago and their brutal slaying 40 minutes ago. But, if your morbid fascination does get the better of you, you could always watch the countless hours of the home video footage – I recorded everything you see.’
‘Ok, stay right there, don’t move,’ said the enquiry officer, as he decided, about bloody time, that he could not handle this horror alone and needed help. He dashed out of the office and along the corridor to the custody suite to find a custody sergeant or two who could come and help him deal with the situation out front.
Chapter 1
One Year Earlier – Saturday afternoon
Helen
Jamie and Edward – our four-year-old twins – were content kicking their football back-and-forth to each other while my husband, John, and I chatted with our friends, Emma and Daniel, by the swings.
‘Boys, keep the ball over this way where Mummy can see you,’ I shouted. I’m not one of those paranoid mothers who’s constantly worrying about her children, but Jamie and Edward were venturing a little too close to the dense wooded area along the east side of the park. This part of Cambridgeshire – St Neots – was voted one of the safest places to live in the Telegraph in 2016 with one of the lowest crime rates in England, and the area where we lived – Abbotsley, just a few miles from here along the B1046 – is a particularly tranquil and safe place to bring up children.
Priory Park is quite large with big open spaces, including football pitches, a zip wire, various climbing frames, swings and plenty of other things for children to do. However, I did worry about the boys venturing off and getting lost, or worse still, wandering off through the wooded area that runs around the perimeter of the park, beyond which are busy roads with intermittent traffic, often driving over the speed limit.
‘Stop worrying, honey, they’re fine,’ said John, putting his arm around my shoulder while giving Emma a friendly ‘she-worries-too-much’ wink. I’ve known Emma for about 20 years. We hit it off straight away and struck up a great friendship when we first met in secondary school back in the nineties, and we’ve been best friends ever since. I often drive over to St Neots to meet Emma and her two children – a boy and a girl aged three and four – and, if the weather was good, more often than not we met up in Priory Park. Sometimes we’d have a picnic, but not today. However, I was armed with the usual bag of drinks and snacks. Typically it would be just Emma and me with our children, but it was the weekend and my husband, John, loved being a dad and enjoyed spending time with the boys. It was quite rare for Emma’s husband, Daniel, to be here though, as his job was quite demanding and he often worked at the weekends. John and Daniel got on pretty well, and for that I was thankful, considering Emma and I were best friends.
‘So, John, how did the—’
Daniel’s question was cut off by the piercing high-pitched scream that reached the far corners of the park. It was a child’s scream, but not a child screaming during play, this was a chilling blood-curdling scream that had every parent within earshot spinning around to see where the scream was coming from, and if it was one of theirs.
‘Emily!’ shouted one mother as she ran from the swings across the grass towards her daughter. My head whipped to the right and about forty meters away I saw a little girl sprawled face down in the grass screaming at the top of her lungs and crying at the same time. The mother got to her pretty fast and stooped down to assess the situation.
‘HELP, SOMEBODY HELP ME!’ she screamed. John and I, along with Emma and Daniel, ran over to offer our help, a few other parents also made their way acros
s the park to the scene. The little girl, who can’t have being more than three years old, had blood quite literarily pumping out of her hand and wrist. The mother was hysterical. On the grass was half a broken beer bottle with its neck stuck in the mud, jagged side up, probably smashed and discarded by a local chav the previous night. Unfortunately, the benches near the swings and slide also acted as a late night gathering area for irresponsible teenagers to drink and get high. It looked like the little girl had fallen over and landed on the broken bottle hand first.
‘Please, do something, she’s my only daughter,’ said the woman.
‘Helen, give me your scarf,’ said John, as he evaluated the girl’s deep cut. I handed John my silk scarf. He took the girl’s arm and proceeded to tie my scarf tight around it, just above her elbow to act as a makeshift tourniquet. ‘She’s severed an artery in her wrist, this will help stem the bleeding,’ he said, trying to reassure the hysterical mother. ‘Somebody call an ambulance,’ he said.
Before I could reach into my handbag, Emma was already speaking into her mobile, being ahead of the situation.
‘Hello, ambulance, we need an ambulance right away,’ she said.
John had done a great job stemming the girl’s bleeding wrist and the situation in hand. John was like that; he could stay calm and keep his head when all around him was in panic and disarray. It was painful to watch the poor little girl, whose screams had now turned into guttural gasping sobs.
‘She’s gonna be ok, an ambulance will be here soon,’ John told the mother.
‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ she said, slightly less hysterical.
I turned around to check on Jamie and Edward, but they were not where they were a moment earlier, although their football was there, on the grass a few meters from the wooded area. I did a quick 360-degree scan of the park, but they were nowhere to be seen.
‘Jamie, Edward,’ I shouted, ‘John, I can’t see the boys,’ I said. From his kneeling position, he scanned the park, and then stood up. ‘Edward, Jamie,’ he shouted. There was no answer and no sign of them.
‘They might have run into the woods,’ I said, pointing to their discarded football. There was no other direction they could have run off to otherwise we’d have seen them come past us. Leaving the poor girl in her mother’s arms, John ran across to the edge of the park to the woodland area and continued to shout their names, I ran after him, struggling to keep up.
John noted the boys’ football at the foot of a large oak as he passed it and headed right into the wooded area.
‘Edward, Jamie,’ he shouted. I ventured further into the woods hot on John’s heels, shouting for the boys while searching through the trees. John came to a stop and scanned the area; he looked behind and through the various trees in his immediate vicinity. I caught up with him and just as I was catching my breath I saw something, ‘John, that’s Edward’s hat,’ I said, running across to pick it up off the ground.
‘Jamie, Edward,’ shouted John. Our search became more frantic and urgent. We ran deeper into the wooded area following it up the length of the park before eventually coming out onto Rowley Road, a quiet residential area on the north side. We looked up and down the main road but there was no sign of them. John ran across the road to look down the cul-de-sac on the other side, no sign of them there either.
Then I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes – I didn’t want to believe my eyes.
‘Oh my god, John, look,’ I shouted. I put my hand up to my mouth in disbelief as I looked around, hoping, praying. Panic grabbed me around the chest and almost squeezed the life out of me, as I stood there, frozen to the spot, looking at one of Jamie’s training shoes in the gutter.
Chapter 2
‘Oh no,’ said John, having the same stark realisation as his wife. He took out his mobile to phone the emergency services, for the second time in fifteen minutes. If it hadn’t been for Jamie’s discarded shoe, he and Helen would have carried on searching, perhaps widening the area to cover more local streets, especially those beyond the wooded area over towards the railway tracks. However, Jamie’s discarded shoe was something of a game-changer. There was no way on earth that Jamie (with his OCD tendencies) would continue to run around with only his left training shoe on – Helen knew it, John knew it, and Emma and Daniel – who’d joined in the search – knew it.
‘Hello, police, I need the police urgently,’ he shouted into his phone. ‘Our twin boys, they’ve gone missing.’
Approximately six minutes later a lone police patrol car arrived on Rowley Road alongside the north edge of the park close to where the children were last seen, and right where Jamie’s discarded right training shoe had been found. The two male uniformed police officers were quick to get out of their car and assess the situation as swiftly and efficiently as possible.
‘I need you to tell me exactly where they were last seen?’ said one of the officers to Helen. But she was hysterical and crying and couldn’t think straight, she just held Jamie’s shoe tightly in both hands while still looking around, hoping.
‘Right there,’ said John, pointing down the park with one hand while wrapping his other around his distressed wife’s shoulder, ‘They were kicking their ball to each other down there on the left.’
‘Next to the woods?’ said the officer.
‘Yes, look, you need to find them, they might have been taken,’ said John.
‘What makes you think that, sir?’ said the officer, paying serious attention now.
‘Jamie’s training shoe, we found it right there,’ he said, pointing,’ in the gutter.
‘Show me exactly where it was,’ said the officer, stepping over towards the roadside. John left his wife for a moment and stepped over to join the officer.
‘Here, right here,’ he said, tapping the gutter with the toe of his shoe.
The officer looked up and down the road, and then looked at his colleague.
‘Where have you looked for them?’ said the other officer.
‘Everywhere, the park, in the woods, we were shouting their names all the time we were looking. It was when we came out of the woods just here that we saw Jamie’s shoe in the road,’ said John.
The other officer called it in to report the urgency of the situation. While he was talking into his radio the other officer took down a detailed description of the boys and what they were wearing. Just then a second patrol car arrived, carrying another two officers, one male and one female this time. They were quickly briefed by the first officer on the scene and then they started to question some of the other parents who’d helped look for the boys, gathering up as much information as possible. The discarded shoe in the gutter had the same effect on the four police officers as it had on Helen and John – they knew that it wasn’t a good sign.
Now that there were two police cars – complete with the familiar yellow and blue Battenberg pattern on the back and sides and elongated blue lights on top – and four uniformed officers on the scene, the reality hit home for the Kramers and Helen became even more hysterical as full-on panic took hold and her legs turned to jelly. The officers were now seeing the missing twins as a ‘crime in action’ and their fast-on-their-feet actions and swift and efficient radio conversations rammed the seriousness of the situation well and truly home for the Kramers.
Two missing four-year-old boys, or any missing child, is always a top priority situation for the police, so, as the saying goes within the force, the balloon went up, right up. Once the officer at the scene had relayed all the information back to the police control room every single resource was utilised, anything and everything the police could get their hands on to aid in finding the Kramer twins. More and more police officers arrived, of varying ranks: uniformed constables and sergeants, plain clothed CID detective constables, detective sergeants, detective inspectors and a detective chief inspector. Before long there was a full-scale search taking place. Police dog handlers arrived and even a police helicopter had been called in and was hovering above th
e park, flying around the perimeter and surrounding streets. Members of the public also helped out with the search on the ground. Everyone pulled together, as people do at times like this.
There was just as much going on behind the scenes as there was on the scene in the park. The CID staff in the Major Crime Unit at Hinchingbrooke Force HQ was already sitting in front of computer screens pulling up details of local known sex offenders and paedophiles, while others checked out local background Intel as the probability of the boys being snatched was starting to look like a distinct possibility.
The whole operation was fast-paced and very well organised as the police pulled in every possible resource available to them to find Jamie and Edward Kramer. Every inch of the park was searched again, so too was every street within a mile radius of the park, the police helicopter was now searching even further afield, but the Kramer boys were nowhere to be seen, they had vanished. However, the large bunch of balloons that had recently been pinned to a large tree had raised suspicions. Helen and John thought nothing of it when they spotted them during their initial frantic search of the woods, but one detective suggested that the balloons could have been pinned there to lure the twins away from the open park and into the cover of the woodland area. His DI agreed with him as the drawing pin holding them to the tree was shiny and new and un-weathered, as too were the balloons, which were fully inflated and spotlessly clean, suggesting they had been pinned up quite recently, almost certainly that morning. A Crime Scene Manager from the MCU at Hinchingbrooke FHQ was put on the case and, in turn, he pulled in a forensic team of Scene Of Crime Officers from Thorpe Wood Police Station in Peterborough. Their first job was to cordon off the tree with the attached balloons and declare it a crime scene, as they would need to be closely inspected and examined for trace evidence such as fibres of clothing, fingerprints and footwear marks on the ground. DNA swabs would also need to be taken from around the mouthpieces of the balloons. The SOCOs also searched the immediate vicinity of the balloons for discarded cigarette butts, discarded drink cans or anything else they could pull DNA from. If the boys were kidnapped, this initial ‘golden hour’ period was critical.