Rock, Paper, Scissors

by B Baskerville

  Cooper frowned. Should she? Then she saw it. A double seven, a double three and another double seven. “Matt Walker. The landlord. Now, why oh why did our missing girl call her landlord at three a.m.? And why didn’t he mention it when I spoke to him?”

  - Chapter 9 -

  “So this is Great Park?” asked Tennessee. He wound the window down on Cooper’s Mazda and stuck his head out to get a better view as she idled along a suburban street. Given his blonde curls, he was a panting tongue away from resembling a labradoodle. “Bit soulless, isn’t it? What’s with all the balconies and roof terraces? And is that a palm tree? They know this is Newcastle, right?”

  It was a clever move on the part of the developers. Selling the dream of al fresco dining and barbecues in an area with an average temperature of eight degrees. Then there was the promise of a town centre, village stores and community spirit. Eighteen years after the houses went up there still wasn’t a supermarket or restaurant in sight.

  Cooper knocked on the door to number eighty-four. Through the front window, she could see a man of average height with shaggy hair watching horse-racing on a curved, wide-screen television. He turned to look and reluctantly got to his feet to answer the door.

  “Yeah?” he asked looking at Tennessee and barely glancing at Cooper. He had bright green eyes, a tan and a physique he was obviously proud of, given how tightly fitted his t-shirt was.

  “Mathew Walker?” Tennessee introduced himself and held up his warrant card. Cooper did the same.

  “You the one I spoke to on the phone?” he said, addressing Cooper with wandering eyes. “You don’t look like a detective.”

  Cooper should have known better but she took the bait nonetheless, “Then what do I look like?”

  “I divint nah. Hair that short and a leather jacket? A neo-nazi? A tattoo artist? Both?”

  Cooper’s lips pulled inwards and she cocked her head. “I can assure you, I am neither of those things. Now, can we come in Mr Walker? We have some questions.”

  Walker shrugged and moved aside. After leading Cooper and Tennessee into his kitchen he opened his fridge and got himself a beer.

  Tennessee caught Cooper’s eye as Walker’s back was turned. “This place is immaculate,” he whispered.

  “Smells it too,” she replied, noting the distinctive aroma of bleach.

  As Walker opened his can it made a whooshing noise and foam bubbled from the top. He slurped it off the aluminium and grinned at Cooper. “I’d offer you one but yee lot aren’t meant to drink on duty, are ya? That’s the good thing about being self-employed. You set your own hours and I think I’ll clock off right about now.” He popped his hips to the side and leant against a faux marble worktop.

  Cooper tried not to scowl. “How long have you known Macey Gallagher, Mr Walker?”

  “Since August. All my student lettings run from August to August.”

  “And are you regularly in contact with her?”

  “Nah. Not really. I carried out an inspection in December to make sure they weren’t trashing the place but they keep the flat in good nick. If anything needs doing it’s usually the other one who gets in touch.”

  “Pearl Baxter?”

  “Aye, that’s her. Hair like she’s stuck her finger in a socket.”

  Cooper’s dislike for Matt Walker was growing by the second. She pinched the bridge of her nose and counted silently to three. “When did you last see Macey?”

  “Ages ago. Would’ve been February time. I went round to install a new washing machine.”

  “And that was the last time you spoke to her?”

  Walker took a long drink of beer, burped with his mouth closed and released the gas slowly through pursed lips. “Aye.”

  “So, then why, Mr Walker did Macey phone you at three a.m. on the night she went missing?”

  There was a palpable change in the atmosphere as Walker stayed motionless for a good ten seconds. “Did she?”

  Cooper snorted. “Yes, she did. You know she did. Why did she call?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t pick up. I put my phone on silent overnight.” His voice was quickening and he took brief sips of his drink between each sentence. “Was probably just a pocket dial. I didn’t see it until the next morning.”

  “You didn’t return her call?”

  “No. It was from three in the effin’ morning. I told you, I thought it was a pocket dial.”

  Tennessee folded his arms and lifted his chin. “Mr Walker. I’m only going to ask this once, so be honest, were you and Macey in a relationship?”

  “God no. Nee chance. I’m single, me.” Walker finished his beer, rinsed the can under the tap, squashed it down to a disk using his bare hands and tossed it into a bin marked for recycling. “Would be unprofessional, wouldn’t it? Improper. You don’t have me picked as the sort of landlord who reduces the rent for sexual favours, do ya?”

  “Of course not,” lied Cooper. She didn’t know what to make of Matt Walker but a squeaky-clean landlord he was not. She’d bet her right leg on it. “Could I use your bathroom?”

  Walker’s nose wrinkled but before he could refuse, Cooper added, “Lady problems.”

  “Ah, alreet. Top of the stairs.” He nodded his head back towards the hallway.

  Cooper excused herself and as she climbed the stairs she could hear Tennessee asking Walker if he had a cleaner. Walker’s bathroom was like the rest of his house; sparkling clean with a whiff of peroxide in the air. Cooper didn’t need the toilet, nor did she have lady problems; she did, however, want to snoop around. She opened a mirrored medicine cabinet and scanned the shelves. A single toothbrush; a Wilkinson Sword five-blade razor; a box of paracetamols; shaving gel; caffeine shampoo; and a Nivea Men roll-on deodorant. If Macey had been in a relationship with Walker she hadn’t left any trace in the bathroom. No spare insulin kit, tampons or toothbrush. To Cooper, this looked one hundred per cent like a bachelor bathroom. That was until she spotted a Kirby grip on the floor behind the toilet.

  Cooper crouched down and took a photo of the hairpin with her phone before pulling a clear evidence bag from her pocket and bagging the grip. It still had a hair attached to it. Dark blonde or light brown, it was hard to tell, but if the lab matched it to the hair sample they’d taken from Macey’s hairbrush it would be proof Macey had been here and that Walker was a lying piece of shit.

  “Whose hair grip is this?”

  Walker’s head whipped around to the doorframe where Cooper was stood. “What?”

  “This hair grip.” She held the bag up in front of her and jangled it like a child does with a bagged goldfish from the fair. “If you’re single, who does it belong to?”

  “I divint nah. My sister’s, maybe.” Walker pushed his weight off the worktop and began walking back to his front door, trying to shepherd the detectives from his home.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” started Cooper. “Do you have voicemail?”

  Walker’s jaw clenched. “Yeah. Why? I told you, it was a pocket dial. Just muffled night out noises.”

  Cooper stood firm despite Walker’s attempts to manoeuvre her to the door. “Play it for me.”

  Walker groaned and looked to the ceiling. “Fine. Don’t even know if I still have it.” He pushed his phone to his ear and cycled through a couple of messages before thrusting the phone at Cooper. “Here.”

  Cooper switched speakerphone on and listened to what did indeed sound like a pocket dial. The message lasted three minutes and Cooper played it four times before giving up. She couldn’t make out anything other than the noises of traffic and music. Tech, on the other hand, might be able to salvage something from it.

  Cooper walked out of Walker’s house and approached her car.

  “Hey,” he called after her. “My phone.”

  “You can have it back in a second, Mr Walker.” Cooper opened her boot and pulled out a black canvas bag. She unzipped the bag and produced a black device that looked like an old Gameboy from the nineties. She selec
ted an iPhone attachment and plugged the two devices together.

  “Hey!” Walker had moved within a foot of Cooper and Tennessee had moved within a foot of Walker. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m extracting your data,” explained Cooper.

  A furious look coloured Walker’s face. “You can’t do that. Not without my permission.”

  “Actually,” started Cooper with half a smile. “I can.”

  - Chapter 10 -

  Mobile phone extraction - more commonly referred to as a digital strip search - required neither a warrant nor a suspect’s consent. The devices were a quick and easy way to download a person’s call history and messages, as well as their communications using social media and apps. Digital strip searches had hit the headlines in recent times after forces began to use them on victims of crime, particularly in cases of rape, to establish the nature of any prior relationship between the accuser and the accused. Rights groups were campaigning to have this process more tightly regulated, but for now, Cooper had a great tool at her disposal. If Walker had so much as sent a Snapchat to Macey Gallagher, she would know about it.

  “Play it again,” asked Tennessee as he and Cooper strolled back into Northumbria Police HQ.

  Cooper played the recording from the voicemail message again, shutting her eyes to try and focus her senses on the sound.

  “You hear that? Like a swoosh and thud?”

  Cooper opened her eyes and looked to Tennessee. He was pointing into thin air and swiping his finger in time with the noise. She heard it too, a swoosh and a thud, followed by a swoosh and another thud. “What is that?”

  “I’ll tell you what that is,” said Tennessee. “That’s a sliding door on a van or a people carrier.”

  “You’re right.” Cooper played it again just to be sure. “So what does this mean? Did Macey take a taxi? We’ve already sent her picture to all the major firms.”

  “They haven’t all got back to us though. I’ll chase them up. Now that we have a specific time of three a.m. they should be able to narrow down which drivers were in the city centre then.”

  “What if it wasn’t a taxi? She could have accepted a lift from someone else?”

  “And either that someone, or a taxi, took her to Jarrow and dropped her off at a bus station in the arse end of nowhere? To take a bus to South Shields, for no reason that we can work out.”

  Cooper took a deep breath and thought things through for a moment. Macey Gallagher couldn’t just vanish off the face of the planet. She was either hiding somewhere, being held somewhere or - and Cooper didn’t like this option - she was lying dead somewhere. “Right,” she said, “You follow up with the taxi firms and make some enquiries about the thirty-seven bus that runs from Jarrow Road to South Shields. If you have time, book a translator for us. Madame Petite is pretending she doesn’t speak English. I’ll drop the hair grip with evidence and take the extraction device to Tech, see if there’s anything to link Walker to this, and then I’ll start work on a press release. We need Macey’s face in every newspaper. Someone must have seen her after she got separated from Pearl and the others.”

  Tennessee stifled a yawn. “I’m on it,” he said before walking towards the lift. “I’ll come and find you when I’m done.”

  * * *

  Cooper had completed all but one of the errands and was hurrying through HQ on her way to the press office when she spotted a familiar face; Kenny Roberts was chatting to the desk sergeant.

  “Kenny,” she gasped, a wave of panic threatening to take over her. There was only one reason for him to be here. “What’s happened? Is Tina okay?”

  Kenny, despite his lack of social intelligence, registered the alarm in her voice. “Nothing’s happened, Erica. Tina’s fine. Last I heard she was at the library.”

  Cooper almost collapsed into his arms. Ever since the Tarot Card killer had taken Tina, Cooper had been on edge. It was exhausting, just when she thought she was getting over the trauma something would set her off and she’d assume the worst. She closed her eyes for a moment and placed a hand over her heart. It was beating at over a hundred beats per minute. “Then why…” she opened her eyes and slapped Kenny on the arm, “…are you here? You gave me a heart attack.”

  Kenny chuckled and held up a paper bag. “I brought lunch. You still love Thai, right? Tina said she was worried you were losing weight with the Science Man being away.”

  Cooper flashed him a suspicious look.

  “And I was in the area,” he added.

  She kept staring.

  “And I thought we could discuss Tina’s birthday. It’s coming up and I don’t have a blooming clue what to get her.”

  Cooper hadn’t realised she was holding her breath until she finally exhaled. Of course he didn’t know what to buy Tina. He’d only been around for two birthdays and Christmases. At least he was trying to make up for lost time, she thought, and by God, the Thai food smelled irresistible.

  “Follow me,” she said, letting her heart rate lower and a smile to return to her face. “We can eat in the break room.”

  - Chapter 11 -

  He pulled the girl to her feet. It was Friday morning and she was a mess. A whimpering, shivering, snot-dribbling, pathetic mess of a girl. “This way,” he growled, and she shuffled her bound feet, struggling to keep up with him. Struggling because she was blindfolded and he was not. The high pitched snivelling was driving him mad. She sounded like a whippet begging his master for a scrap of lamb fat. It was enough to make him want to slap her.

  “No funny business,” he said as he cut her cable ties, “or I swear to God, I’ll knock you out before you can blink. And you don’t want to know what the lads’ll do to you once you’re unconscious.” Her entire body shook like the last leaf of autumn. “Do I make myself clear?”

  The girl nodded and squeaked a yes through her gag.

  “The bucket’s behind you, be quick about it.”

  Women and their bloody bladder shyness. The last thing he wanted to do was hang about here for ten minutes while she worked up the courage to piss. If the little bitch didn’t go now she’d have to hold it until lunch, and lunch was five hours away. She could piss herself; the other one had. Stunk the whole damn room out. Dirty cow. He’d had to clean her up because he was the only one the boss trusted not to get carried away. It was hard not to do anything that would get him a kicking, given how fucking fit she was. He’d sprayed her with a hosepipe and taken great pleasure in watching her flinch from the cold water. Not as much pleasure as he’d taken in drying her. He’d used a thin towel and could feel everything. He savoured the memory.

  “Finally,” he grunted when the tinkling came and the girl relieved herself in the plastic bucket. He handed her a few sheets of bog roll and waited while she wiped and dropped the paper into the bucket. Within seconds he’d bound her hands and was roughly pushing her along the corridor and back to the rat-infested so-called bedroom.

  He’d managed to get a syringe yesterday. He was going to prick her himself but he didn’t want to fuck it up and kill her by injecting an air bubble into her veins. He’d have got a right hiding for that. Instead, he let her do it herself. He stood behind, so she couldn’t see his face when he removed the hood and blindfold, and held a knife to her throat in case she tried anything stupid with the needle. She didn’t. Of course, she didn’t. He could tell she wanted to fight, wanted to try, but she was in self-preservation mode and she wanted to live. To live meant following his orders.

  He watched her settle into her corner of the room and try in vain to get comfortable. Impossible on a concrete floor. Maybe he’d bring them some blankets, a reward for not screaming all day. Or maybe he shouldn’t. Can’t be going soft now. The lads would rip him to shreds. She pulled her knees to her chest and looped her bound arms around them. Then her head tipped forward and she let out a barely audible sob.

  He slid the heavy door closed and secured the padlock. The insulin he’d stolen would do for now. It
was enough to keep her alive long enough until she wasn’t his responsibility anymore. He hoped.

  * * *

  “Come on, one more.” DS Paula Keaton stood behind the weights bench in the gym at HQ. “Push. You can do it.” Her dark hair was scraped back into her usual short, tight ponytail. She was rosy-cheeked from her workout and from where Cooper lay on the bench, she could see straight up her upturned nose.

  Cooper pushed with all her might as she finished the last repetition in a set of bench presses and was relieved when Keaton took the bar and secured it safely in the rack.

  “My arms are shaking,” she said, watching the tricep muscles on the back of her upper arm twitch rhythmically.

  Keaton loaded the bar with an additional twenty-five kilograms and rattled out her set without so much as a gurn. Cooper would ask if she wanted her to spot her but she knew it would be pointless. If Pitbull Paula Keaton couldn’t lift it, there was no way Cooper could.

  Keaton caught the impressed look on Cooper’s face. “I’ve been lifting weights since I was in primary school.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to lift what you lift,” Cooper said.

  “And you shouldn’t.” Keaton wiped her forehead with a sweat rag and took a swig from a metal water bottle. “We train for different reasons. I want to maintain my rugby body and have quads that could kill a man. You though, we’re just undoing the shit that cancer did to you. Get you some strength back, a little bit of toning, a little bit of fast-twitch. Baby steps.” She held up a palm for Cooper to high-five. “Good workout, boss. I’m going to hit the showers. I’ll see you back upstairs.”

  Cooper was exhausted but it was a good feeling. A satisfied feeling. Whatever she ate for lunch today, she’d feel like she’d earned it. Cooper had been working out with Keaton for a few months now and she was already seeing some changes. She was still a scrawny wee matchstick but the first hint of curves were beginning to return to her thighs and her shoulders. The squats and presses were paying off. She could bound up the stairs without huffing and puffing and she didn’t have to ask Justin or Kenny to carry things for her anymore. She was beginning to feel like she had pre-the-big-C.