Northern Roulette (DCI Cooper Book 4)

by B Baskerville

  Cooper chuckled into his chest. “I would very much like to talk about ice cream,” she said. “But failing that, I’d like to talk about current events. I haven’t exactly been following the news today, but I heard something about a murder on Holy Island.”

  Atkinson’s chest expanded and fell as he took a deep breath. She could feel the heat of his body through his t-shirt against her cheek.

  “Same MO,” he confirmed. “I didn’t go to the scene; I was stuck at airport security. But I heard from Hong a couple of hours ago. It’s appalling. What sort of person buries a fellow human alive?”

  Though Cooper couldn’t see him as her face was nestled in his t-shirt, she could feel him shaking his head. She pulled back and looked up at him. “Buried alive? You’re joking?”

  The idea filled her with absolute horror. It was the stuff nightmares were made of.

  “I think I’ve spoken out of turn there. That hasn’t been released to the public.”

  Cooper puffed up her cheeks before slowly exhaling. “I’m not surprised. And I’m not the public.” She placed her hand on her heart. “But that’s not the sort of thing people should read in the papers. They don’t need to know monsters are real.”

  “Come on,” said Atkinson, taking her hand in his. He walked further down the calle. “I know what you need.”

  “I can’t face any more wine unless it’s an exceptional sauvignon. I’m going to have a cracking migraine tomorrow.”

  Atkinson’s stopped and a lent over a wooden counter built into a white building that looked out over the marina. “Quiero dos Mr Whippy con sherbet rojo y un flake de chocolate, por favor.”

  A teenager with multi-coloured hair looked at him with disdain but quickly fulfilled the order. As they stepped away, Cooper gratefully took the cone of childhood memories. “That was some quality Spanglish mi amigo guapo.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Never you mind.”

  They sat on the edge of the pier, their feet dangling over the side, and watched the sun’s rapid descent towards the horizon. As darkness fell, she rested her head against Atkinson’s shoulder, unable to break the contact between their bodies for even a moment. Her head was heavy with loss and guilt, but her heart was pleased to have quiet company. The water in the marina began to sparkle as restaurants and bars turned on fairy lights, and street lights buzzed back into life after resting all day.

  “Are you sure I can’t tempt you with some vino? According to Tripadvisor, the bar at my hotel has an excellent selection.”

  “You booked a hotel?”

  “Of course. I didn’t want to presume anything, and my sleeping on the beach days are well and truly over.”

  She slapped his chest playfully. “Double?”

  “King. Sea view.”

  Her lips touched his. Two months – eight long weeks – of not being together erased in a second. “Then why,” she mumbled into his lips, “are we sat here waiting for the mozzies to strike when we could be entwined in white sheets with a bottle chilling in the cooler?”

  His hand found her waist as they kissed.

  “How do you do it?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Make me feel young again.”

  She got to her feet and dusted her dress and the long-sleeve t-shirt she’d borrowed. “One of my many talents. Come on. We only have eleven hours before my teenager notices I’m missing.”

  It felt like hours had passed. The pub was warm, the barkeep friendly, and the grub satisfying. The three detectives managed to finish every last morsel of food on their plates. Still, the extra food in their bellies did nothing to alleviate their low moods; the task they were facing was monumental. Keaton and Martin ordered a couple more pints. And then a couple more. Tennessee didn’t mind; they deserved a bit of relaxation time. Besides, if he needed a drink with a percentage mark, he could have it when he got home.

  Keaton stood and stretched both her legs. Then she pulled her scapulars back, opening up her chest and letting out a rather impressive yawn. “April will be wondering where I am. We should probably hit the road.”

  The others agreed and got to their feet.

  Keaton called shotgun and jumped in the front passenger seat. They fastened their seatbelts and drove back towards the causeway, chatting about Tennessee’s choice of radio station and Martin’s obvious infatuation with Saffron Boyd – which he vehemently denied.

  It was late but still technically twilight. To their right, long grass jetted into a darkening blue sky; to their left, shorter marshy bits of grass poked out of the boggy land.

  Tennessee slowed the car to a halt. Keaton rubbed her eyes and looked up from a game of Candy Crush. “What’s the hold-up?”

  Tennessee pointed ahead just as the last bit of suitable road was engulfed by the North Sea. Time and tide waited for no man, and nowhere was that more apparent than a tidal island. Every month the RNLI had to rescue at least one daft fool who’d tried to race the torrent and lost. Tennessee liked a good race but not one where losing could result in death. He wasn’t going to be one of those fools.

  “Balls,” he said.

  Martin put his hand to his forehead and took a deep breath. Keaton was more forceful, slapping herself with a facepalm movement.

  “Balls,” they echoed.

  They were stuck for the night.

  - Chapter 22 -

  “Busted.”

  The pep in Cooper’s step faltered as she and Atkinson emerged from the resort hotel the following day. Sat on a sun lounger, with a face like thunder, was Tina.

  Cooper had cherished every second of last night. She and Atkinson stayed up until the early hours, their limbs tangled beneath white sheets. Aside from the obvious, they’d spent time talking and catching up, hashing out the problems that had arisen towards the end of their relationship. Cooper didn’t want to feel like she was anyone’s property or a child that needed protecting. But the main issue in their relationship had come in the form of a big, burly man. Thanks to an iron-clad restraining order, he was no longer a problem.

  It was a little after half seven and Cooper couldn’t believe Tina was already awake and dressed. Unless it was a school day, she wouldn’t emerge from her room until gone ten.

  Cooper had used the power shower in Atkinson’s room. However, she was still wearing her black dress from yesterday’s funeral, and it had a funky aroma to it now. Atkinson had his running gear on and was ready to jog from Puerto Del Carmen to Puerto Calero via the cliff walk. There and back would take him about an hour at a gentle pace. He removed his arm from Cooper’s shoulders and started jogging on the spot.

  “As much as I’d love to watch your fifteen year old give you ‘the talk’ because you stayed out all night, I’m going running. I’ll see you at lunch.” He kissed her, gave Tina an awkward wave and headed out into the Canarian sunshine.

  “Morning, now before you say anything, I’m sorry. Wait—” Something suddenly occurred to Cooper. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I logged into your Google account and used the find my device feature.

  “Okay. One, how do you know what my password is? And two, isn’t that a gross invasion of privacy?”

  “Your password is Metallicarocks87. You don’t need to be a genius to work it out – though I am. And no, you were kidnapped a few months ago. I think I have a right to be worried if you disappear.”

  Cooper exhaled and let her anger fizzle away. Tina might look like she was ready to throttle Cooper, with her arms folded and her forehead crumpled, but she was right. “I’m sorry I caused you to worry, T. Justin arrived after you’d gone to bed, and frankly, I needed a bit of a shoulder to cry on. I know you always approved of Justin, so be mad at me, don’t give him a hard time, okay? I know I should have woken you before disappearing—”

  Tina shoved her phone in Cooper’s face. “Never mind that. This is more important.”

  Cooper blinked at the bright screen. She expected to see an
other murder scene, another attention-grabbing headline about an elderly person buried in sand. Instead, she was looking at an Instagram post by Lana.Bellos365. A heavily filtered photo showed a girl with sharp cheekbones and fake lashes next to a pale boy with light brown hair and braces over his teeth. She recognised the boy as Josh, Tina’s boyfriend. She and Josh had been together for what seemed like forever now. She read the caption: Studying with my new bestie at the Glass Tea House. Plenty of grey matter and blue skies.

  The glass tea house was a cafe in Northumberland Park, a landscaped area of greenery between North Shields and Tynemouth.

  “What am I looking at, Tina?”

  “Besties?” Tina practically screeched the word. “How can they be besties? They’ve known each other like five minutes.”

  “This is Lana from netball, right? Goal attack?”

  “Yes, how did you know that?”

  “You told me.”

  “And you remembered?”

  “Of course I remembered.” Cooper put her hands on her hips, insulted that her daughter thought she never listened to her. There was a deep rumbling from her belly and for the first time in days, she was actually hungry. “Do you fancy a full English?”

  “No, mum.” Tina’s voice was sulky.

  In the distance, Atkinson was picking up the pace, his long legs striding out in front of him as he rounded the marina.

  “So, Josh is studying with someone else. That’s not a problem, is it?”

  “He’s not just studying with someone else. He’s studying with another girl.”

  “And you’re jealous of Miss Long Lashes here? Come on, Tina. Josh adores you, and you know it.”

  “So why didn’t he tell me? Why was it a secret? I asked him last night what he’d been up to all day. He told me he played football after school. He didn’t say anything about going to the park to study with Lana.”

  The way Tina said study made it sound sordid. Jealousy never looked good on anyone. It didn’t look good on Atkinson when he’d been insecure about Kenny. It didn’t look good on Cooper when she’d been sick with envy about Veronica Rogers, and it didn’t look good on Tina now.

  “You can’t stop each other from having friends. You said yourself you should have a wider social circle—”

  “She’s doing this on purpose. I’m out of the country for two seconds and… Urgh.” She squirmed, her mouth pinching this way and that. “She knows how I feel about Josh. She knows that he and I are….” She picked up her biology textbook and slammed it on the floor. The hardback cover made a thudding noise as two hundred pages of GCSE science information met concrete.

  Cooper adjusted her posture. She wanted a slice of toast, a change of clothes, and to check on her mother. Julie would be waking up to her fifth morning without Ben. The shock and denial would be wearing off soon, and she would be faced with pain and fear as well as the reality of now running a struggling business single-handedly. She’d also be facing a rather chronic hangover.

  “Do you think you’re overreacting ?” Cooper asked. “I mean, it’s not like they’re on a date. They’re just studying.”

  Tina grunted and hurriedly started packing her things back into her satchel. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  Cooper wanted to understand, of course she did, but she also felt like there were more important issues at hand than puppy love. “So help me understand.”

  Tina scrunched her mouth into a terrible grimace. She looked like she wanted to scream, and for a moment, Cooper was worried she would. Shoving her hands in her pockets, Tina turned her back on Cooper, grumbling, “Forget it.” She trudged off towards the sea, casting a final insult back at her mother. “And only old people listen to Metallica.”

  - Chapter 23 -

  Tennessee shivered as he knocked on the door to the morgue. He didn’t know if it was the air-conditioning, the dead, or the woman who cared for them that made his skin ripple into goosebumps. It was probably a combination of all three.

  Hayley had not been impressed that he hadn’t come home last night. Although he called the second he knew he wasn’t going to make it, he could tell by the tone of her voice that his apology was not getting him anywhere. When he returned home this morning for a shower and a change of clothes, his mother-in-law was especially unhappy about him being away with another woman. The fact Paula Keaton was not his type and that he was most definitely not Keaton’s type was lost on her. He’d pick up a bottle of wine and one of those Indian meal deals with the veggie samosas that Hayley loved when he was finished today. That ought to get him back in the win column. If it didn’t, he’d give Alfie his bath and read him a bedtime story. That was a guaranteed way of winning around the two ladies of the house.

  “Ah, there you are, Jack.” The top two buttons of Margot Swanson’s lab coat were undone, and Tennessee was sure she’d had it altered to create a tighter fit around her waist. She held out her hand for Tennessee to shake, then she lifted her fingers in front of his face to display perfectly polished nails. “New shade. It’s called Exotic Cranberry. You like?”

  Tennessee didn’t know what colour cranberries were, but Margot’s nails were red with a hint of purple. They seemed a bit vampy, but he was pleased she kept them short for work. He imagined long talons would go straight through sterile gloves, then God knows what would end up stuck behind your nails. The thought of it made him queasy.

  “Erm… Very nice,” he said dryly, carefully manoeuvring his way around her.

  Margot rested her hands on the side of a gurney. “Just terrible, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. Think we’re looking at a serial killer who’s not afraid to—”

  “Not that, sweetheart.” Margot began to lay out her instruments. “I’m not talking about poor old Mr Pennington here. Didn’t you see the news this morning?”

  “Missed it. I was in a rush.”

  “Didn’t listen during the commute?”

  Tennessee shook his head, gulping when he saw the Enterotomes – special scissors used to cut through intestines. “Not today.”

  “A wee girl’s been snatched. Poor angel. Her parents must be distraught. Can you imagine?”

  Tennessee couldn’t imagine. He wasn’t a violent man by nature, but one thing guaranteed to get a reaction from him was a threat to his family or closest friends. If someone tried to take his little boy, it would be the last thing they ever did.

  “Anyway, I just hope she turns up unharmed. Pretty thing she is as well.” She stopped as if contemplating something, and Tennessee wondered if she was having the same dark thoughts he was. Margot didn’t have children; that didn’t mean she didn’t have youngsters she cared about.

  “Best crack on,” she said, dragging herself back to the task at hand.

  Margot donned her PPE, and something about the way she pulled on her nitrile gloves made Tennessee feel like he was about to have a cavity search. He swallowed and moved his back to the wall. Suitably attired, Margot unzipped a bodybag and picked up her dictaphone.

  “Charles Pennington. DOB twenty-seven May 1941. Aged seventy-eight. Identification confirmed by next of kin. Height is five feet and nine inches. Weight is sixty-eight kilograms.”

  Margot carefully removed the deceased’s clothing. She bagged individual items to be sent to the lab for examination. They would try to find DNA or other evidence that could identify the murderer.

  “Commencing external examination. Extensive bruising to head. Blood in his hair. Jagged cut to left temple suggesting impact from a hard, sharp-edged object. The nose has been broken, as has the right cheekbone. Multiple pairs of oval bruises of approximately two centimetres in length and one and a half centimetres in width suggest beating by a closed fist. Estimate perpetrator’s hands to be twelve centimetres across the full width of the knuckles.”

  “Was he beaten to death?” Tennessee was doing his best to watch the examination but knew he’d start turning his head away once the bone cutters came out.

 
; “He was beaten, then he died,” Margot said in a patronising tone. “But, my dear, if you want me to be more specific, you’ll need to be patient. The manner of death was almost certainly homicide, but the cause and mechanism are yet to be determined. The blunt force trauma to the temple may well be the culprit, and at this gentleman’s age, the shock and distress could have triggered heart failure. I won’t know if he was still conscious when he was buried until I can examine the lungs.”

  “Any chance of a cup of tea?”

  “In my sterile environment?” She raised an accusatory eyebrow. “Not likely. Besides, do I look like a tea lady to you?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never met a tea lady remotely like you.”

  “Well, if you want to take me to Costa afterwards, you need only ask.”

  Redirecting his attention to a poster warning of cross-contamination, Tennessee allowed Margot to continue.

  “Distinguishing marks include a mole on the right cheek, an appendectomy scar, and a scar on the back of the right hand.” She proceeded with the rest of the external examination, working her way from the head down to the toes. She took Charles Pennington’s fingerprints and checked under his eyelids and inside his mouth. When she was finished, she picked up a scalpel. “If you’re feeling fragile, now’s the time to avert your eyes. Commencing internal examination— Hold up. What do we have here?”

  Tennessee looked up. He’d been studying his shoes.

  Margot placed her scalpel back on the bench and returned to Charles Pennington’s hair. She parted his white hair with gloved fingers and removed a single strand of yellow. It wasn’t until she bagged it and handed it to him that Tennessee realised what had caught her attention.

  “Look familiar?” she asked.

  “It looks like a fibre of the same fabric we found on Eve Lynch.”

  Cooper held four tickets in her hand. She’d booked a sunset cruise for Tina, Julie, Atkinson and herself. The tickets were over thirty euros per person, but she thought her mother and daughter could use the distraction. Plus, she loved the idea of spending time on the water with Atkinson. She’d checked the reviews and it sounded like a lovely evening. There would be Champagne, canapés and a saxophonist. From what she’d read, they were almost guaranteed to see dolphins. That would cheer Tina up, she thought. Dolphins made everyone smile. Perhaps they could turn the trip into a private, family-only wake. No dodgy music or freeloaders dancing to We No Speak Americano. True, Atkinson wasn’t family, but at least he’d be there for the right reasons.