The Sound Of Crying

by Nigel Cooper

  ‘Anyway, the rest, as they say, is history,’ she said.

  ‘Well, here’s to your father,’ said Rhodes, holding up his glass.

  ‘So, this Kramer case is really bothering you isn’t it?’ said Sakki.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ she said.

  ‘You can?’

  ‘Well, yeah, you’re right, there are a few things that don’t add up. Also, why did he decide to walk into Parkside nick and give himself up like that? Exactly one year after taking them? From what I can gather, I don’t think anybody asked him that.’

  ‘Well, they probably just thought he had mental issues. The police psychologist figured he was on the psychopathic spectrum somewhere, amongst other things,’ said Rhodes.

  ‘Other things?’

  ‘Well, who knows how the mind of a psychopath works.’

  ‘Not to mention all that sexual repression with being a priest. If you ask me, I can’t imagine that would do anybody any good. So, you gonna take it any further?’ said Sakki.

  ‘I’m still throwing a few thoughts and ideas around in my head, if any of them come to fruition, then maybe I will.’

  ‘Well, if you need my help, I’m here.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate that.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you something personal?’ said Sakki.

  ‘You can ask, but does your asking obligate me to answer?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, studying her face, but he suspected her intuition was a finely tuned instrument and he was pretty sure he knew what she meant.

  ‘What happened with Mrs Rhodes, or your girlfriend? When Andrew asked if there was a Mrs Damon Rhodes your expression and demeanour changed, subtly of course, but enough for me to pick up on.’

  ‘Ah, you spotted that, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, not much gets past me,’ she smiled.

  Damon didn’t answer; instead he took another sip of his drink while he contemplated, his expression taking on a hint of melancholy again.

  ‘Damon, I’m sorry, it’s not my place to ask. Sometimes I just can’t help myself, I’m kind of sensitive and pick up on such things; forgive me.’

  ‘That’s ok, forget about it.’

  ‘I propose another toast,’ she said, holding up her glass, ‘to the future, and whatever it holds.’ They clinked glasses.

  Chapter 20

  Helen

  ‘As you can see, it’s a decent size room,’ said the landlord.

  I looked around, he’d used the term ‘decent size’ loosely, the words ‘cat’ and ‘swing’ came to mind, and not necessarily in that order. It was fully furnished: a bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, and a small table. There was even a tiny fridge, a small microwave and a kettle so I wouldn’t have to use the shared kitchen for the basics. Unusually there was a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, not huge, probably 32” at the most, not that I’d be watching it.

  ‘How many other people live here?’ I said.

  ‘Just two, a young girl, a student, and a Filipino man. So you’ll be sharing the kitchen and bathroom with them, and the living room if you feel sociable. So, is there anything else you’d like to know?’

  ‘Oh, yes, what about parking?’

  ‘You can park right outside, on the street; there’s usually spaces.

  ‘Is there Wi-Fi here?’

  ‘Yes, just regular broadband, none of that fancy high-speed stuff I’m afraid.’

  ‘Ok, in that case, how soon can I move in?’

  ‘It’s vacant now, so whenever you like.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  I’d looked for a room to rent online as I didn’t want to stay in the Travelodge indefinitely as what I had planned, or at least was going to plan, was going to take some time and people generally didn’t stay in a Travelodge for more than a week. If I stuck around for a month or longer it could raise suspicions, which I didn’t want. I could have sworn that the Asian woman in the room opposite mine was a prostitute, judging by the amount of middle-aged men I’ve seen come and go at all hours of the day, evening and night. I certainly didn’t want the hotel staff thinking I was on the game.

  I figured if I rented a room in a house, student style digs, the landlord wouldn’t want too much information about me, and this guy seemed more interested in my legs and what was at the top of them anyway. The room was in a three-bedroom semi on Elmfield Road, Chesterton, hardly the most picturesque part of Cambridge, but that wasn’t the purpose. After the landlord – of questionable character – had shown me around the house downstairs he made a point of saying, ‘After you,’ when we got to the foot of the stairs. I could practically feel his eyes burning into my arse as I made my way up the stairs. But, what the hell, he didn’t live here so I wouldn’t have to tolerate the ugly little pervert on a day-to-day basis anyway. I figured I’d use my sexuality to get past the paperwork, and it worked. After swaggering up the stairs in a sexy feline sort of way, he was putty in my hands, he didn’t even want to know my surname; Natalie was all he needed. He was even happy with my request to pay cash, monthly in advance. I guess the sight of £1,200 cash (£600 for first month in advance and another £600 deposit) and my legs and arse as I walked up the stairs was more than enough for him and he’d get to check me out once a month when he came to collect the rent.

  I got my stuff moved in, everything that I’d crammed into my suitcase that is. Now it was time for my second task of the day, a used car, a really used car. I’d picked out three £500-ish bangers from the Auto Trader website: a maroon 2001 Nissan Almera, a 2002 aubergine Mondeo and a silver 1999 Honda Civic; all with over 100k on the clock. But, they were all inconspicuous and cheap enough to be discarded when I’d completed my mission. I don’t have any intention of registering whatever car I buy, certainly not in my name anyway. This is just the beginning of my grand master plan, being totally careful, which means no landlord can have my personal details and I certainly don’t want anybody knowing my movements. My gathered knowledge on these things – via many a contemporary crime novel from the likes of: Peter James and Mark Billingham – was going to come in handy. I knew all about ANPR camera systems that recorded car number plates along with the street, date and time, which were then kept on record for two years, that wasn’t going to happen to me.

  The first car I looked at, the Nissan Almera – being sold by a scruffy looking man in Great Shelford – was a bucket of rust, and when the owner started the engine a cloud of thick black smoke plumed into the air from behind the car, mushrooming up into the sky like a nuclear explosion. I didn’t want to attract that sort of attention, the police could pull you up for polluting the environment; I passed.

  Next up, the Mondeo – being sold by a rather ‘questionable’ character who lived in what looked to be the most run down house in King’s Hedges – the car wasn’t much of an improvement over the Almera, not quite as much smoke, but it drove like a dog, rough as hell and it had a distinct lack of acceleration and it felt like it was going to give up the ghost at any moment. It didn’t inspire much confidence – nor did the unsavoury owner – so I passed on this one too. John used to be addicted to car programmes, especially Wheeler Dealers. I often sat and watched them with him and I’d picked up a lot from Mike Brewer as he bought used cars from here, there and everywhere.

  So, all was hanging on the Civic, fingers crossed, third time lucky…

  The owner – a young Chinese man who lived in a nice property in Trumpington – had bought the car two years previously while he was studying. He started the engine. No smoke, no rattles, in fact the engine ticked over nicely with a gentle purr.

  ‘You want to drive?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You take car, I wait in house.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, as he handed me the key.

  It was
an automatic, which was new for me, but after a few miles I kind of liked it and I was surprised at how nice and smooth the little old car was to drive. One of the previous owners had even left an old Frankie Goes To Hollywood tape in the cassette player, even more nostalgic than the car. There was no Satnav, but that wasn’t a problem, I’d just have to spend a hundred pounds on one, no big deal. After a four-mile test drive all seemed fine: the temperature gauge sat in the middle, where it should, according to Mr Brewer, and there were no untoward rattles or squeaks and the engine and gearbox were perfectly smooth.

  ‘You like?’ said the young man, coming out of his house upon seeing me pull up outside.

  ‘Yes, it’s perfect, thank you.’

  He took me inside to do the paperwork. At least this young gentleman seemed nice enough, and trustworthy and, unlike the King’s Hedges area, every other car around here wasn’t an ancient Ford with stolen alloy wheels, or a bright orange Vauxhall Astra SRI with £500 worth of tacky Halfords accessories peppering both the interior and exterior, or a rusting white van.

  I was now the proud owner of a silver 1999 Honda Civic automatic. As far as the automatic number plate recognition systems in and around Cambridge were concerned the owner of this little car was a woman called Heather Paige; a spoilt little teacher's pet that I went to school with, a total brat who nobody ever said no to.

  I forged a fake Heather Paige signature and made up a London address and postcode (to keep things as far away from me as possible) for the benefit of the V5 document and handed the young man £540 cash.

  I drove away in the Civic, with the intention of getting a cab back to collect my own car a little later, which I’d left parked a few streets away from the Chinese man’s house, out of paranoia, also, I figured that if I bought the car, I didn’t want the Chinese man being able to give the police a description of my actual car, or the registration number, if it ever came to that, which I doubted.

  I’d have to park my own car somewhere safe, out of the city, until this was over.

  Ok, so I had my pay-as-you-go mobile, an unregistered iPad and a used Honda Civic that was registered to the queen bitch, Heather Paige. I’d drawn out a goodly amount of cash from my savings account so I wouldn’t leave an electronic footprint every time I stopped for petrol or made any other card purchase, it was going to be cash all the way. Everything was coming together, now all I had to do was figure out how and when I was going to kill Father Derek Stanton.

  * * *

  My new room felt a little claustrophobic at first, but I soon started to get used to it. I’d bought some essentials: tea, coffee, milk, snacks, drinks and the like. I was over losing the £5,000, if anything, I was glad of the experience, as it had taught me a valuable lesson, and sharpened up my thought process. From here on in I was going to be nothing less than vigilant in the extreme, nothing, or nobody, was going to catch me out again, from now on I was going to be invisible.

  John had called my mobile several times, I hadn’t responded and now I’d switched my iPhone off and taken the sim card out and put them in the glove compartment of my own car, a Nissan Qashqai – or Kumquat, as my husband (borrowing the term from James May) used to call it – which I had now parked off the beaten track, tucked safely away on The Rowens in Milton just north of the city. I wasn’t going to be using my own car for a while, and I certainly wasn’t going to be using my personal phone either.

  The evening had arrived and it was starting to get dark outside. I’d been sitting on my bed, pillows propping me up, while I ate one of Tesco’s so-called ‘Finest’ range of microwavable ready meals: Chicken & King Prawn Paella. I wasn’t going to be using the shared kitchen much, if at all, as I didn’t really want to bump into any of my fellow house-mates; I’d either eat ready meals or I’d eat out. In all honesty I wasn’t really paying too much to the taste or texture of the contents of the hot plastic container that sat on a small towel on my lap, I had more important things on my mind, like how I was going to kill Derek Stanton.

  One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to get anybody else involved as that just didn’t work, I was going to do this myself, all the way, in such a way that there would be absolutely no way that the police, or anybody else, could connect his assassination to me. Again, drawing on my knowledge from a ton of crime novels I know that the more people you get involved in a crime, the higher the chance of getting caught. If it’s just me involved, I know that it will be done right, no slip-ups, nobody to answer to, and nobody to grass me up if they get caught and offered a deal by the police…

  So far I’d set everything up and covered my steps, the only remaining question was how am I going to do it? I’d been through various scenarios, but none were foolproof. I knew where Stanton lived, but I was not about to knock on his front door and stab him in the chest with a kitchen knife when he opened it, that was too risky, besides, he could overpower me, he was a man after all. No, I wasn’t going to go anywhere near Stanton’s house, and certainly not in it. If I were to enter Stanton’s house there would be a chance that I’d leave some sort of trace evidence: a fingerprint, a hair from my head, a hangnail, a drop of sweat, dandruff, dead flakes of skin, all of which carry my DNA and would be enough to place me in Stanton’s house. And then of course if I killed him at close range there would always be the chance of some of his blood transferring onto me and my clothes, especially if I had to stab him several times or if I clouted him over the head with a heavy object. I really don’t want this to be messy and I certainly didn’t want any trace evidence on my person.

  Although I knew for a fact that I wasn’t on the police DNA database – because I’ve never been arrested or had a swab taken from my mouth – if the police found any such trace DNA evidence at the crime scene, or rather murder scene, of Derek Stanton, and they suspected me, they would be allowed to take my DNA, then I’d be caught.

  So, whatever method I ended up using to carry out Stanton’s execution, it would have to be carried out from a distance. I’d thought about blowing him up, I would not have to be near him for this, a carefully planted bomb could be detonated from a distance via some sort of electronic triggering device, hell, there was probably an app for it. Or perhaps some kind of motion detector that Stanton would trip when he walked into the same room as the bomb, or a timer perhaps. But, I’d still have to enter his house to set it all up and I’d have to research bombs on the Internet and figure out how to actually make one…

  Poisoning him was also fraught with problems, the key issue being that I’d have to enter his house to set it up, which would mean possibly leaving trace evidence again.

  My brain was aching now, I needed to switch off from this, clear my mind and come back to it tomorrow. I grabbed the television remote and clicked it on, having said I wouldn’t be watching it, but I needed to chill out with some mind-numbingly boring television. I checked the electronic programme guide. I was limited to terrestrial channels, no such luxury as Sky Movies or Netflix. How I wished for my Apple TV. Still, as luck would have it there was a Mark Wahlberg movie about to start called Shooter. I’d never seen the film, but I like Mark Wahlberg so I got into my night clothes turned the main light off and switched the bedside lamp on and settled down to watch it.

  During the opening scene Mr Wahlberg – playing the part of a military sniper – was seen killing a gunner on the back of a military-style Jeep, as well as the driver, from his position about 900 meters away up on a hillside. He then, with the help of his spotter – both practically invisible, blending into the hillside with the help of their ghillie suits – proceeded to take out five more hostile threats. That’s it! Maybe that’s how I should kill Stanton, a long-range rifle shot. It was perfect, I wouldn’t have to enter Stanton’s house, or go anywhere near him so there would be zero trace evidence, no DNA, no fibres from my clothing left behind; nothing. It wouldn’t be messy and it seemed – from all the things I’d thought of so far – to be by far the least risky.

  I knew that this was
only a movie, but movies, like novels, are typically very well researched and usually pretty accurate with a certain amount of the content. Of course, like novels, there was always artistic license, but I was convinced that snipers like Mr Wahlberg’s character in this movie, and the long-range shots like the ones he was pulling off, also happened in real life. If it was possible to kill a man, a moving man, in a vehicle from 900 meters away then it would definitely be possible to kill a man from a lesser range than that, especially if he was stationary. The question was, could I pull off such a shot and how would I go about getting training and, more to the point, how could I get my hands on such a rifle?

  I watched the movie right to the end, taking notes, writing down key pieces of information that were relevant to long-range sniper shots. I learned a lot about snipers and long-range shots such as bullet ballistics and the things that come into play that affect a bullet's trajectory while carrying out a long range shot: wind, temperature, humidity, elevation and even something called the Coriolis effect, which basically means taking into account the earth’s rotation, especially if the bullet is going to be in the air for four seconds over a one-mile shot, not that I would be taking a shot from that kind of distance. I picked up lots of tips and learned a lot from the movie and it all seemed feasible. Tomorrow I would get online and do some research to see just how much of what I’d seen while watching Shooter was fact and how much was fiction.

  Chapter 21

  Rhodes made his way to DI Carver’s office – his immediate boss – with the hope of convincing him to let him do some overtime on the Kramer twins’ case.

  ‘Come in,’ shouted the voice inside.

  Rhodes opened the door and entered Carver’s office. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Ah, Damon, you settling in, ok?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Good, what can I do for you this morning?’