Rock, Paper, Scissors

by B Baskerville

  “You could have gone to your colleagues.”

  “I was scared.”

  “I saw the security system you had installed. Your fear bought a lot of nice things. You weren’t too scared to take their money.”

  Sutherland rested his weight against the wall and supported his head in his hands.

  Cooper jumped as Keaton and Tennessee entered the observation room. She put a finger to her lips and motioned for them to sit with her.

  “CPS are going to love you,” Thompson said, his tone was dry and oozing irony. “Cop turned human-trafficker? Juries are famously nice to bent coppers. I bet you get off scot-free.”

  “You need to give us something,” Wan added. “You know you’re facing jail time. The best you can do now is be as cooperative as possible. Give us the ring leaders and we might be able to broker a deal.”

  “I don’t know their names. I don’t know anything about them.”

  Tennessee filled his cheeks with air and exhaled slowly. “Some detective,” he glowered. Cooper agreed.

  “I only met them once. After that, I got my instructions from the keeper.”

  Wan picked up her pen. “And who’s the keeper?”

  “I don’t know. He’s local though. Borough accent.”

  “And the lure?”

  “I don’t know. Fucking hell. I don’t know anything. They knew my name. Insurance I guess. I didn’t get to know theirs. She was a thin girl, curly hair, big eyes and some scars on her arm. An ex-cutter I’d say. She got the girls to trust her, then led them to the van. She replaced a bloke they had. I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “You really don’t know much do you?” Thompson said scathingly.

  Sutherland’s chest fell in defeat. He had nothing to offer them. Nothing to save his skin.

  “How long have you worked for these mysterious Eastern Europeans? You said they told you they’d leave you alone after three years.”

  “Two years and nine months.”

  “Ooh.” Thompson pouted, mocking Sutherland. “So close. You nearly made it. Bet you thought you were home and dry.”

  Sutherland returned to his seat as if he didn’t even have the energy to stand anymore.

  “Who else is involved in this little operation? There’s you - the driver - the keeper, the lure, the unnamed bosses.”

  “There’s a guy who works at the docks. He’s the keeper’s contact. He makes sure the containers are loaded up and if any crew ask too many questions they get a backhander to keep quiet.”

  Wan pulled her braid over her shoulder and ran her hand down the length of it. “Do the boats always go to Cyprus?”

  Sutherland shook his head. “Depends who won the auctions. Sometimes it’s Cyprus and on to the Middle East and Persia. Sometimes it’s Morocco and into northern Africa.”

  “How many?” Thompson leant forward, propping his elbows on the table.

  “How many what?”

  “Bent coppers does it take to screw in a lightbulb. Girls, you idiot. How many girls did you ship off as sex slaves or wives to order, or whatever you want to call it?”

  Shrinking back, Sutherland lowered his gaze. Cooper wondered if he was counting them up in his head. Wondered if he was seeing each of their faces in his mind’s eye.

  “Since I started… Maybe twenty.”

  “Fuck me.” Wan wrapped her braid around her fist as if it was a silky knuckle duster. “You coward. You could have asked for help but instead, you did as you were told like a good little soldier.”

  “It might have started as cowardice,” said Thompson, “but it finished as greed. Twenty young women’s lives ruined so you could cash your cheques.” He got to his feet. “Sam Sutherland you will be taken downstairs and charged. You will either be remanded or released on bail.”

  Thompson continued to explain to Sutherland the procedures he was already familiar with, but his words faded in Cooper’s head. She watched Sutherland rise to his feet and be escorted from the room and from her life.

  Twenty young women. She wiped her eyes and drew her shoulders back. She had phone calls to make. The National Crime Agency would no doubt want a word. Interpol too. Then there was the press; she had to do some damage control. This was going to be a long afternoon.

  - Chapter 34 -

  The water was warm and comforting. Cooper slid her back down the edge of the bathtub until she was fully submerged. A bath bomb had turned the water a purply pink and the room smelled of passionfruit. Beneath the water, she held her breath as the events of the last few days played back in her mind like a video stuck on a loop. She saw Pearl Baxter’s worry and Omar Ali’s bruised face. She saw Sutherland flashing his new Rolex and Elin Karlsson - the Swedish girl’s - swollen body. She saw Bryce Morton’s maniacal demeanour and the pair of scissors twirling between his fingers. She saw the man slamming his brakes as Cooper fled from Morton’s bunker. She saw the look on Tennessee’s face when Inga altered the sketches, the look on Morton’s face as he was rag-dolled by the Belgian shepherds, Sutherland’s face when he realised she knew his secrets and the poor girls’ faces, stained with confusion, when she helped escort them out of the dark and into the sunlight.

  She exhaled one bubble at a time until her lungs were empty. Her body twitched and fought against her mind, willing her to sit up. She held on. Heat filled her chest, and orange spots flashed in front of her closed eyelids. Only when she couldn’t hold on a second longer did she erupt from the water and gasp for air.

  She was alive. Cancer hadn’t got her and nor had Morton. She was alive and thankful for it. It didn’t mean she was happy.

  Cooper pulled herself from the bath. Her skin was red with heat but the cool air from the open window caused goosebumps to form over her entire body and the tiny hairs on her head prickled as they stood on end. She checked the time on her phone. Kenny and Tina would arrive any second now and her solitude would be over. She wrapped a towel around herself and shuffled to her bedroom where she examined her scars in front of the mirror once more. Fuck Justin Atkinson. She didn’t know where they stood with each other but she knew that if she wanted tattoos she should bloody well get tattoos. She imagined a floral design she’d seen, then she applied body lotion before getting dressed. She’d just about buttoned up her jeans when the noise of Tina, Josh and Kenny floated up the stairs. Kenny had taken the digital natives to play mini-golf after school and had promised to pick up some fish and chips on the way home. Judging by the smell of vinegar, he’d made good on his promise.

  “Mum! I got a hole in one! Didn’t I, Dad?”

  Kenny grinned while dishing up his quarry. “She sure did. I’d say it was a fluke, but knowing Tina, she probably applied some advanced trigonometry and factored in the wind speed and direction, and accounted for the camber of the grass, and—”

  “It was a fluke, Dad.” Tina winked at her mother to show that it most certainly wasn’t a fluke before squirting a huge dollop of ketchup over her chips.

  “Loads of mushy peas and extra vinegar,” Kenny said. “Just the way you like it.”

  She was impressed. She took her plate and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Beer?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “Can I have one?” asked Tina.

  “Yeah, can I have one?” Josh added. He was growing in confidence. Once upon a time, he’d barely look at Cooper, let alone Kenny.

  “On a school night? Nice try.” Cooper clinked her bottle against Kenny’s and felt her body relax as the three others recalled the game, telling her who flunked on the ninth and who aced the third. It was nice to focus on something outside of CID. Once the food was finished and the dishes had been loaded into the dishwasher, Tina and Josh went upstairs to watch some show everyone at their school had apparently been talking about. Kenny got her another beer.

  “Just us millennials,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “So you finally accept it?”

  He looked awkward. Usually, his big frame ma
de him look formidable. Awkward just looked plain weird on him. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  “Erica. I’ve known you for a long time. I know I was away for a huge chunk of it… but anyway, it’s been a long time. I know when you’re not quite right. Is it work?”

  She picked at the label on her bottle. “I had to arrest a colleague. It hit me like a truck.”

  “Shit. Sorry, Erica. That’s got to suck. Want to talk about it?”

  Cooper shook her head. She did want to talk, sort of, but there were too many thoughts in her head right now to make sense of it all.

  “Well, when you’re ready you know where I am.” He reached over and placed his hand on hers. The pads of his palms were calloused from his manual job and they rubbed against the moisturised skin of her knuckles. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was nice, protective even. Her eyes met his and an invisible spark ignited, one that she’d thought she’d buried many moons ago. “I mean it. You know you can talk to me, right?”

  “I know.”

  He hesitated, then leant in to kiss her cheek, only Cooper turned her head and their lips touched. Muscle memory controlled her. She wet her lips and went back for more. It was the briefest of kisses. Soft, with trembling lips and over fifteen years of build-up. She bit her lip and pulled back.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  They sat there, quite still, for a good minute, just holding hands and contemplating in the silence where they should go from there.

  Kenny spoke first. “I know it’s not the most romantic thing to say, but I need the loo.”

  Cooper laughed. “Not romantic at all. But better than wetting yourself.”

  He squeezed her hand before letting go of it and heading for the stairs. A few seconds after he’d left, a phone began to vibrate somewhere in the kitchen. Cooper scavenged the room and found Kenny’s phone just as the caller rang off. She unlocked the phone - his code hadn’t changed since they were teenagers - and what she saw made her heart stop.

  She blinked, unsure if what she was seeing was really real. It was a colour feed of her bedroom. It was definitely her bedroom. Her bed, her books, her towel on the floor from the bath she’d just taken. Her breathing came quicker, in shallow bursts of disbelief. Kenny was in her room. He looked directly into the camera before pulling four circular batteries from his pocket. The screen went black for a moment and then burst back to life. The angle was facing the dresser and Cooper’s bed. It could only be coming from the mantlepiece and the framed Metallica poster. One of the buttons on the frame had to be a camera lens.

  Nausea swept over her and she raced to the sink, vomiting her fish supper onto the stainless steel. She gagged again before more came up. She knew she hadn’t mentioned the nightmares to anyone. He’d watched her. Watched her sleep. She ran the tap but her sick clogged the plug and the water began backing up. Chunks of fish and potato swam around in the cloudy water. She turned the tap off, wiped her hand over her mouth and turned her eyes back to the camera, though her brain willed her not to. Kenny opened a drawer in Cooper’s dresser, removed a pair of French Connection briefs and slid them into his pocket.

  As she raced back to the sink to finish emptying her stomach, all she could think was, He was right. Justin was right.

  - Chapter 35 -

  Friday morning at eleven a.m. on the dot, Cooper, bleary-eyed and sulky-mouthed, walked to the Gibraltar Rock, a pub overlooking King Edward’s Bay, and dragged herself to the upstairs bar. Superintendent Nixon had ordered she take a mental health day. Actually, he’d ordered she take a mental health week but she didn’t know if she could handle that. Last night, a squad car had been sent to find Kenny after she’d thrown half the contents of her kitchen at him and chased him out of her house. He’d been arrested on stalking charges and Cooper was beside herself with mortification and isolation. His phone and the photo frame had been seized as evidence and officers would be, at this moment, looking at footage of her in various stages of undress, crying after returning from her abduction, drunk dancing to Hush In Hell, and making love to Atkinson. Her cheeks burned. The files would be handled with sensitivity and stored securely, but the fact remained that her colleagues were going to see her in her worst moments of vulnerability.

  There was a table in the bay window that overlooked the North Sea. A couple enjoyed a morning stroll on the sand, a Yorkshire terrier fruitlessly chased a whippet, a surfer briefly caught a wave before falling into the numbing sea. She ordered a double vodka. Straight. No ice. She wanted desensitising. She wanted to forget. She craved a day of complete numbness.

  Her finger circled the rim of the glass. It emitted a low hum that groaned through her bones as she dwelled on her situation. Cutting Kenny from her life meant cutting him from Tina’s life. Her daughter deserved a father, but she deserved better than Kenneth Roberts. She’d alienated Atkinson and left herself exposed at work. She was alone, and the person she’d usually turn to for wisdom was locked up on human-trafficking charges. She watched the surfer paddle out beyond the break, turn and pop to his feet. She willed him to fall again. An elderly man on the adjacent table rose and finished his pint, leaving a copy of the Evening Chronicle. Cooper reached across and took the paper. The headline caught her eye: Tarot Card Killer’s Legs Broken. Brian Hutchins brutally attacked in own cell.

  A glass collector looked over her shoulder. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.”

  Cooper snorted and sipped her vodka.

  “My little sister was in one of his classes. Hope his arms are next.”

  Cooper didn’t reply. She downed the rest of the drink. She’d wanted to be alone with her thoughts. To stew in peace. Not make small talk with an adolescent.

  “They reckon it was that gangster, Blackburn, who did it. But my cousin’s ex-boyfriend’s mate is in Frankland, and he said Blackburn didn’t get his hands dirty. He just gave the order.”

  Cooper had to get out of there. She felt as if the walls were closing in on her. She stood. “Blackburn didn’t give the order,” she said, handing him her glass and turning away.

  “Oh yeah? How’d you know?”

  Because I did, she thought. When it came down to it, was she any better than Sutherland? She hadn’t kidnapped anyone and sent them overseas to live a life of torture and slavery. She wasn’t the reason Elin Karlsson was dead or the reason Macey Gallagher was showing signs of brain damage. But she had broken the rules. She was crooked.

  She descended the stairs and emerged onto the street. She turned her face up to a cloudless blue sky and let the sun warm her skin. She checked her watch; the tattoo parlour would be open.

  - - -

  DCI Erica Cooper will return in Roll The Dice.

  - Message from the author -

  I hope you enjoyed reading Rock, Paper, Scissors and would wholeheartedly appreciate it if you could take the time to nip over to Amazon and leave a review.

  Stay up to date with future releases by joining my mailing list: betsybaskerville.com

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  During the writing of Cut The Deck and Rock, Paper, Scissors, I felt a little guilty for using Newcastle and North Tyneside as the setting for some awful crimes, but I’m a crime writer and that’s what we do! In real life, Newcastle upon Tyne is an amazing city, filled with warm, caring, friendly people. Geordies have long claimed Newcastle to be the best place in the world and we were proved right last year, when Newcastle topped Rough Guides’ list of must see places for 2018.

  I am always seeking inspiration from the world around me, and although Rock, Paper, Scissors is a work of fiction I’d like to point out two events that gave rise to sections of the book. Firstly, Cooper being annoyed at having to take the stairs from the rooftop
carpark at the Freeman Hospital, is a nod to my mother who faced the same thing when undergoing radiotherapy. Second, Steven Seagull was a hatchling who fell off our roof and landed on our neighbour’s extension along with his brother who we named Terrance. The entire seagull family relocated to the roof of the extension and we were enthralled by their daily coming and goings. We even set up seagull cam! Sadly, there was a terrible storm one night and Steven didn’t make it. Terrance went on to fledge in early August. I still kind of miss him.

  I’d like give a special mention to those people who have offered feedback and provided encouragement. Rob and Mum, Shaun, Ian, Julie and Christie, thank you for the support, suggestions and the spotting of many a typo. You’ve all been wonderful.

  - About the author -

  Betsy was born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne. She describes herself as a crime fiction addict and UFC geek of epic proportions.

  When not writing, Betsy loves hiking with her boyfriend and their very naughty Welsh terrier.

  If you like Erica Cooper, meet Athena Fox…

  The Only Weapon In The Room

  “Hooked from the first page.”

  “A gripping original thriller.”

  “Couldn’t put it down. Engrossed from start to finish.”