by Matthew Ross
‘It’s Karen. I didn’t know who else to call, Mark.’
‘You’ve done the right thing. Tell me, what’s wrong?’
‘She’s being hassled. She took the kids out to the playground. Said this man was following her. Said he’s been watching them. She’s worried he’s going to do something to her. Or one of the kids.’
‘Where is she Jen? I’ll go and sort it out, leave it to me,’ I said pulling into traffic. I was already on my way.
The Strand leisure park in lower Gillingham down beside the river, popular with everyone. The kids love it because of the huge playground, outdoor pool and miniature railway. And the doggers love it for its badly lit car parks hidden away from the main road. Fun for all the family.
I’d already promised Jen and Karen that I would stop Charlie Quentin bothering them, obviously he wasn’t taking no for an answer. This time I would need to get the message across loud and clear, but I’d need back-up if I was too do it properly. I called Disco only to find he was out all day on a job for Boris The Plastic. Nothing else for it, I’d have to cash in my favour earlier than I’d ever expected. ‘It’s me,’ I said, ‘I need your help.’
The Black Mercedes rolled into the Strand car park and came to a halt next to me about ten minutes later. I’d explained to Brazil over the phone that a friend of mine, a young single woman, was getting harassed by a man who wouldn’t leave her alone. Maybe he’s a gentleman, or maybe it chimed a chord with his own recent behaviour, but Brazil agreed to help without question or complaint.
It had turned into quite a nice bright morning, so a lot of parents and carers had brought their kids down for a run-around in the fresh air.
‘So, who is this bloke?’ asked Brazil.
‘He’s just a posh wally,’ I said scanning the view for Karen. ‘He shouldn’t be any problem, just flex your muscles and look butch.’
‘Do you want me to hit him?’
‘No,’ I said, appalled at the idea. ‘There’s kids around. No, he just needs a short sharp shock, let him know he can’t go around frightening ladies.’ I’d spotted Karen. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Karen was sat on a bench, a pile of coats, toys and snacks beside her as she watched the children clambering up a frame to reach the curly slide, only to whizz down it and then scramble back up again. They looked as though they were having a wonderful time and were oblivious to anything else, but concern lingered behind Karen’s smiles of encouragement to the children.
She saw us approaching and raised a hand in greeting which I mirrored back to her.
‘Hi Karen, all okay?’ I asked.
She slowly shook her head and then looked off into the distance, tilting her head to the left, meaningfully. I followed her prompt and looked out across the vast playground, towards the outer perimeter. It was a busy jumble of colours and movement. My eyes swept back and forth slowly, methodically, and then I saw him leaning against the fence, his white shirt and denim jeans camouflaged neatly from this distance against the boats in the marina behind.
I gestured towards him for Brazil’s benefit. He looked across, then said, ‘I thought you said he was a posh wally. That’s Cookie.’
Cookie. He’d been the one following Karen today, scaring her, watching her. Why?
Realising there was only one way to find out, we went across to meet him. The playground was full of families and movement, so he didn’t see me until we passed through it and were almost upon him. We were still about thirty feet away from him when he saw us. His body tensed and he looked ready to run or to pounce, and I didn’t know which would be worse. Still I approached.
His eyes were on me, he hadn’t noticed Brazil who was trailing slightly behind. Cookie’s lip began to curl into a snarl, his massive hands folded in to fists. Pounce. He was definitely going to pounce. I stopped, about eight feet from him, Brazil caught up and stood beside me, now Cookie saw him properly for the first time, confusion flickered across his face and the snarl shrivelled away. Why was I with Hamlet’s man, was I there on Hamlet’s behalf, was I under Hamlet’s protection? I knew all of these questions were ticking over inside his tiny hateful mind. Cookie’s stance loosened up, he had figured out neither running nor attacking were good ideas.
He spat a thick gob of white mucus on the ground in front of me.
‘What’re you doing here Poynter? Here to rob me again?’
‘Cookie, look—’ I stopped myself, why was I about to apologise to him – if he hadn’t been a violent racist scumbag he’d have probably been paid by now. As it was, Hamlet stepped in and punished him; you reap what you sow.
Brazil had moved in front of me, he leaned in close to Cookie and demanded to know, ‘Why are you scaring that lady over there?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Cookie flapped his hand in dissent, for some reason it made me think of a third division footballer’s reaction to receiving a yellow card.
‘Mr Hamlet’s already warned you once. He won’t do it twice, so, why are you scaring that lady over there?’ Brazil’s voice carried just the right amount of attitude, he’d obviously done this kind of thing before, I’m glad I brought him now as I couldn’t imagine me and Disco coping with Cookie on our own.
Cookie sighed and scratched the back of his neck, ‘I was trying to find out if she knew anything about the girl who was killed, Hamlet’s girl.’
It made sense now, when Hamlet was telling Cookie ‘You owe me’, it wasn’t loose lipped secrets, it was for my benefit. Hamlet was letting me know Cookie was one of his hunters.
‘She’s the child minder, so I figured she or the daughter might know something, someone. When I tried talking to her outside her house this morning, she blanked me, I thought following her, letting her know I was there might change her mind.’
‘Intimidation,’ I said. ‘You’ve resorted to intimidating helpless single women, you’re pathetic.’
‘Fuck you Poynter,’ Cookie retaliated, people had turned to look at us, we didn’t need Cookie making a scene but he hadn’t finished. ‘You think you’re so fucking protected, Hamlet’s little pet, everyone knows it’s only because he feels guilty about your dipshit brother.’
What? What did he just say? Guilty about what? What did he know? Was Hamlet involved in Adam’s disappearance all along, just like I’d always suspected?
‘You wait Poynter. There’ll come a time when he feels like he’s done enough to make amends, he’ll cut you loose, then you’re on your own and we’ll be coming for you.’
I was struggling: make amends, for what? Did he know why Adam disappeared, where he went? I tried to compose what I wanted to say, but Brazil got in and filled the silence.
‘How’d you know she’s the childminder?’
This abrupt diversion seemed to throw both Cookie and myself.
‘How’d you know she was the childminder, who told you?’
‘No-one told me, I found out,’ said Cookie, he tapped the side of his head with his fingertip. ‘I used my initiative.’
‘You went to her flat,’ I said, ‘You did, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, so what, initiative that’s what that is. Want something done, do it yourself.’
‘Well she doesn’t know anything, we’ve already spoken with her, quite a lot. So, leave her alone, you’re scaring the kids,’ I said. My voice carried threat, but inside I hoped Brazil had my back if Cookie reacted badly to it.
Cookie looked around, spat on the ground near me again, and decided he’d be better off leaving than staying. ‘I will get you one day Poynter, you’ll see.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Brazil, getting between us; again, he delivered it well – whatever he does for Hamlet he’s pretty good at it.
Without speaking to each other, we watched Cookie walk back to his car; he turned back to flick us a V-sign, and then he drove up the steep climb to rejoin the main road.
‘Thanks Steve,’ I said to Brazil, who shrugged his shoulders in response, and a thought occurre
d to me. ‘You heard him, so can you let Hamlet know it was Cookie who went in Sally’s flat yesterday, he’ll know what I’m talking about.’
Brazil assured me he would. Good. That means I won’t need to worry about Cookie for a long time to come.
Brazil left, and I made my way back to Karen. I let her know her tormentor had gone and wouldn’t be coming back. She blew out a sharp breath, and thanked me, then looked back up at me.
‘Sorry, you’ve just missed him,’ she said. ‘Bobby, he was here a minute ago.’ Who the hell’s Bobby? But then she reminded me, ‘Sally’s boyfriend, Bobby. He just picked up Joe to take him home for lunch. You might just catch him… oh, no, there he goes,’ she said pointing off towards a small blue car pulling into the flow of traffic on the main road.
46
‘What the bloody hell is all this? You’d better have a good explanation or I will be calling the police, for real this time!’
Perry stood before me with a face that only the seriously pissed off can get away with. In front of her on her kitchen table were the gruesome photos of Sally, Brennan’s folder, and the Peppa Pig bag full of cash. ‘Do not say work stuff!’
I had hoped that she wouldn’t have opened the box. Was it too much to ask that secretly hiding a box in someone’s house without their knowledge wouldn’t pique their curiosity? But when I tried deflecting the anger and asking her what she thought she was doing going through my things, Perry pointed out the flaws in that tactic by skilfully eviscerating me when amongst other things she pointed out it had appeared in her house, ‘As if by magic!’
‘That, as you can probably tell from the rest of the folder, was Sally’, I said gesturing towards the photos. The look on her face told me to stop being a smart arse. I leant against the kitchen counter top and sucked my bottom lip whilst I considered my response. The kitchen counter top was chipped along the roll and was delaminating at the edge, the sunlight traced knife marks across its surface.
‘This kitchen’s knackered. I know where a brand-new one is being ripped out, never been used, still got the wraps on most of it, I can get Disco in to fit here if you like, do it next week if you want.’
Her face hadn’t changed, it still called me a smart arse.
‘Won’t cost you a thing, and I can have a word with your agent, a new kitchen must be worth three months rent free.’
That got a twitch, just briefly, the resolve was slipping. It had given me long enough to think things through and I’d come to the conclusion that I had to trust her and tell her everything, start to finish, so I did. Everything.
‘And so, you think this Cookie moron knows something about Adam?’
I nodded to let her know that was my impression. Cookie would never have told me anything normally, but now it was even more unlikely he’d tell me anything once Hamlet had caught up with him for trashing Sally’s flat.
‘And are you any closer to finding who may have killed her?’ She closed the folder and pushed it out across the table as she asked.
‘No. I did have Brazil high on my list.’ My list of one. ‘But I’m confident now it wasn’t him. It’s the boyfriend I want to find, I think I know who he might be, but–’ I didn’t finish because a thought flashed across my mind, ‘You were convinced Chapman was the cause of all your problems too, and look where that got you’, maybe it’s better if I left things unsaid for now.
My phone rang, I moved to answer it, Perry used it as an excuse to head towards the fridge and began preparing lunch for us both as I made my greetings to the caller.
‘I only phoned to say thanks for today,’ said Karen, for it was she. I told her thanks weren’t necessary. ‘Okay, but it’s a relief, the kids are in enough turmoil as it is without me getting all in a panic.’
There was a crashing noise in the background and a squeal.
‘Stop that please Ella, say sorry to Sophia,’ said Karen to the miscreants at her end. She apologised to me.
‘I thought you said they were best friends,’ I joked, but then something from our conversation after the funeral chimed with me.
‘They are usually. Just a bit boisterous today’
‘Karen, didn’t you say they shared the same birthday?’
‘That’s right, fifteenth of October, Libra, the sign of communicators, which is about right, two proper little chatterboxes.’
I made a little bit more polite chit-chat, and then said goodbye a few minutes later. I reached for Sally’s phone. Perry had been slicing up some tomatoes but stopped to watch me. The prompt for the passcode demanded feeding. One-five-one-zero I tapped, the screen flickered and – bingo – I was in.
Perry and I sat side by side, the phone before us on the table. I looked at her, she nodded as if to say, ‘Let’s do this’, I re-entered the code, and the screen opened in vibrant colours, lots of app boxes arranged in a neat grid pattern.
I went straight to the photo album and the screen lit up with dozens of tiny images. I clicked open the most recent picture and it filled the screen. It was me, looking like a kitten thanks to that daft app she’d been playing with. Perry giggled. I scrolled backwards, saw Hamlet as a lion.
‘That’s him is it,’ asked Perry, trying to see the man behind the mane. As we scrolled through, we found other photos that gave a clearer image of Hamlet, but one in particular was of special interest to me.
It was one of the more recent photos. A gang of partygoers. I recognised the location as Hamlet’s club, eight friends squashed up close for a team photo, all draping their arms across each other making a wall of drunk celebration. In the middle was Hamlet grinning, his big arms outstretched around two buxom women I didn’t recognise. Dunlop stood far left, one arm around a man I didn’t know, his free arm raising a bottle of beer in salute. And to the right on the picture was Brazil and Sally and then someone I vaguely remembered.
All the people on the outer edges were looking towards the centre, towards Hamlet, always the life and soul of his own parties. I recognised it, and it explained why the photo in Brazil’s car looked out of proportion, he’d cropped everyone else out of it to create his own fantasy sweetheart photo: an old romantic or crazy sicko? Maybe I should have taken this to Hamlet, but I’d made a promise. He’d upheld his end by helping me out with Cookie, so I needed to uphold mine.
I tried to rationalise it in my mind. He had a crush on her to the verges of stalker, but I knew he didn’t hurt her. Firstly, as the upstairs neighbour was adamant the car she saw wasn’t black, but also because he’d been at the club with Hamlet and Dunlop the whole time she was killed. It occurred to me that Nick Witham had said the telephone records were being rushed through, and I realised if anything came from that I’d have to reconsider, but for now, I’d keep my promise.
We flicked back through more of the photos, stopping at exactly what I was looking for. We examined the photo before us, capturing a moment on a sunny day out in the country as rolling hills rose up to meet the bright blue sky. Signs of a picnic, a tartan blanket was laid on the grass behind the open boot of a hatchback that looked loaded with the provisions for a fun day out; paper plates with remnants were pushed to one side to make room for them all to get in the photo, Sally, Sophia and a boy and a man squeezed up close for a selfie, sunglasses and broad smiles worn by all. They looked good together, her ready-made happy family.
‘You recognise him?’ asked Perry.
‘That’s Bobby,’ I said. ‘But everyone else knows him as Rob, Rob Beach.’
‘So that’s the boyfriend?’ Perry squealed with delight. ‘You’ve found him. Although, not wishing to piss on your chips, that’s not a Mercedes, that looks like a shitty old Golf.’
She was right, you could clearly see the rear hindquarters of a dark Golf in the photo and it was an old one, a couple of generations ago model. We scrolled back through the photos in case there was anything else. And there he was, Rob Beach, in picture after picture, and their postures and actions left no doubt, these were people in a close r
elationship, more than just good friends. There were selfie photos of them snuggled up on the sofa, there were photos of them with their children, there were photos wearing silly hats and smiling at the seaside. They looked happy.
‘Go to the messages, see if there’s anything there,’ Perry said. She seemed to be enjoying this whereas I was uncomfortable, as though intruding on Sally’s confidences.
I tapped the envelope icon looking for messages between Sally and Rob Beach, and the screen filled with comic-strip style speech bubbles, the blue ones coming in from the right of the screen were from Sally and the grey ones from the left, Beach.
I scrolled upwards to reach the first message, about six months ago. I whizzed past the earliest ones, flirty chit-chat making me feel like a pervy voyeur and I didn’t like Perry’s rubbernecking on their intimacy. But it quickly turned more personal and functional the further we went, ‘Today was so great. I wish we could be together all the time’ to which he’d replied, ‘One day soon, you know me and Joe want that too’ but that prompted further intense messages like ‘Leave her. You don’t love her’ countered by ‘I would if I could and I will once we can afford it’, and they continued in this vein. ‘I make you happy, she doesn’t, that’s all we need’ with the glib response ‘Relax, it’ll all come together when the time is right, just be brave a bit longer. Should get the £££ soon.’ The messages seemed to tie in with what she’d told me, about her hopes for being together in a ready-made family, although I didn’t trust my own interpretation so I sought Perry’s view.
‘It’s hard to tell as its written rather than spoken but, if I was a cynic, I might say it looked as though maybe he was less keen than her,’ said Perry, echoing my own thoughts.
The messages took on a more serious tone as we got towards the most recent ones, ‘I’m worried, I’ve never been this late before’ and ‘I’ve bought a test kit’ and ‘I’ve an appointment booked after work’.