Pinkman nodded and headed towards one of the engines. Across the road, a smallish woman with a slight frame and hair shorter than his was speaking to Gibson. She held up some form of ID and was allowed through the cordon.
“Watch Manager Coles? I’m—”
“DCI Cooper. Yes, I was expecting you. I’m afraid the situation has worsened.”
“Really? I heard the fire had been extinguished.”
“It has.” Coles looked around and conducted a silent headcount of his men and women. He always wanted to know how many were in and out of a building at any one time. “But it was hard going, and it was definitely started deliberately. I have no doubt about that. Two fatalities and a casualty.”
Coles watched Cooper’s face. She had the same look he did when confronted with death. She was saddened. She didn’t know the two people who had perished in the blaze, but it affected her all the same.
“No identification for the DBs yet, but I can tell you they were descending from the upstairs offices. The surviving casualty is the owner of the bar. He suffered burns and minor smoke inhalation. He’s been taken to hospital as a precaution.”
“Did he see the arsonist?”
Coles shook his head. “Not really. Saw the back of his head as he legged it out the back door into the alley. Male. Medium height. Medium build. Brown hair.”
“That narrows it down,” Cooper said with dry sarcasm. She folded her arms over her chest. “I’ll find out if there are any cameras covering the back lane, but I imagine it’s just a waiting game until the investigation team can tell us more.”
Coles smiled.
“What?” She asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Follow me.” Coles strode away at a quick pace, forcing the shorter woman to practically break into a jog to keep up with him. He turned when he reached the end of the street where tents for collecting evidence were already erected. Coles stuck his head into the first tent and emerged seconds later with a clear plastic evidence bag. “Thought this might come in useful.”
* * *
Cooper could have hugged him. “Where was it found?”
“In the back alley. It was dropped by our medium-height, medium-build male.”
Cooper clasped her hands together as if thanking a deity. Sometimes the CID gods threw her a bone, and today’s bone was shaped like a Google Pixel XL mobile phone. With Atkinson busy in the lab and Keaton traversing between rural libraries, Cooper finally had something tangible, something she could grasp with two hands and present as evidence.
“You’re a star.”
Coles shrugged sheepishly. “It’s likely a burner. Pardon the pun.”
“Its a pretty swanky phone for a burner. I’ll get it straight to our tech team. If there’s a trail, they’ll find it.”
Cooper high-tailed it the short journey to Byker Police Station where the digital forensics lab was located and handed the clear evidence bag to Rebecca Hogg. Rebecca Hogg was affectionately known as Becky the Techie and whilst she might look innocent enough in her beanie hat, large, wire-framed glasses and over-sized jumper, rumour had it she also had two side hustles on the go. She was both a qualified skydiving instructor and was selling her urine over the internet. Some people might want clean urine to pass mandatory work-place drug tests, but others just liked buying pee from young women. It took all sorts.
Within ten minutes, Becky had already confirmed that the phone was registered as stolen and that our genius arsonist hadn’t been too careful.
“He signs his texts as JR,” Becky told her. She kept scrolling. “Has a girlfriend by the looks of it… Oh, here we go, she calls him Johnny.”
“Surname?”
She pushed her glasses up until they rested on top of her grey beanie. “Not that I can see. Leave it with me. I’ll run some programmes and see what I can come up with. Pop back in an hour?”
Cooper thanked Becky and decided to use her hour to tidy up a bit of home admin. She walked the short distance to Morrisons and picked up a few staples as her cupboards were looking worryingly bare. She got pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, tinned fish and other basics that most people always had in, as well as sunscreen, insect repellant and some new razors. When queuing for the checkout, she called her mother. No answer.
Once her shopping had been deposited in the BMW’s boot, Cooper used her remaining time to check the flight schedule between Newcastle International and Lanzarote. The next flight wasn’t until Sunday, meaning she had no choice but to swim in Saturday’s triathlon.
“Tell me you have a name,” Cooper pleaded when she returned to Becky the Techie’s desk.
Beckie took a long slurp from a KFC drink and kept drinking until the gurgling noise indicated the cup was empty. “You want the good news, the really good news, or the really really good news?”
“The good news first.”
“I have a name: Johnathon R. Kane. Here’s his email.”
“And the really good news?” Cooper asked.
“I know what he looks like. Here’s a selfie he took just last week.”
Cooper drew back in horror. “A trigger warning would have been nice.”
Beckie laughed. “Sorry. Here’s one where he’s wearing clothes.”
Cooper concluded that like detectives, digital forensic technicians probably had a sick sense of humour. When half their job entailed finding evidence of child abuse, if the techies didn’t know how to make a joke every now and again, they’d go crazy.
“This is better,” Cooper said, holding the printout Beckie had given her. “And dare I ask, what’s the really really good news?”
“Genius Johnny didn’t fully disable location services.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’ve looked for patterns and clusters in his location history and I can tell you exactly where he’ll be tonight.”
- Chapter 25 -
Two o’clock had been and gone before Cooper had her first meal of the day. There was a canteen and a host of vending machines to choose from at HQ, but craving some peace and quiet, the team took a short drive to the Shiremoor House Farm, a pub less than three minutes away by car. Almost seventy-two hours had passed since the shooting of Fletcher Blackburn and Ibrahim Moradi, and CID was a rat’s nest of pandemonium. After the escalation in violence between those loyal to Blackburn and Hanson, Nixon had put out an appeal to the public and calls were coming into the hotline faster than they could be answered. Officers were busy sifting through the bullshit in the hope of finding something useful. Sadly, the public didn’t grasp that the police only wanted information concerning the shootings at Morshaw Manor and the arson attacks in the city centre; they had little interest in the he-deserves-its and the I-knew-he-was-troubles. Alibis had to be checked and double-checked. Everyone in the inner circle, apart from Dylan and Theo, had a reasonable to good alibi for the time of the murder. Dylan had, by his own admission, been tucked up in bed since lunchtime. It seemed ridiculous to Cooper, but if he were guilty, wouldn’t he have thought of a better lie to spin than that? Theo was annoyingly allusive, only giving up that he was in both Newcastle and Sunderland that day. They’d yet to find CCTV footage of him on the Metro, and he’d given them no indication as to what he’d been up to or who he’d met when he’d got there. There was a chance he’d gone behind his uncle’s back to meet with the Roker Boys, but in doing so, he’d also have gone against his father’s wishes. No wonder he didn’t want Cooper to speak to Eddie.
Tennessee went to the bar and ordered her a half pint of IPA and a bowl of cheesy chips. Cooper found a seat and took a moment to zone out and calm her mind. She breathed slowly and pictured a circle expanding and contracting in time with each breath, just as the mindfulness app had taught her during chemo. By the time Tennessee joined her, she’d managed to stave off the headache that had been threatening her since she saw the news that morning.
Full of fats and carbs, Cooper felt better as she walked back into Northumbria Police HQ. Tennessee had scoffed not
only a plate of fish and chips but also a chicken parmo under the guise of carb-loading for the relay triathlon. Back in CID, Cooper cleared the incident room; she and Tennessee had calls to make, and they wanted some space to work without the current volume levels.
“I’ll start with Rose Watson. Can you call the beauticians?”
Tennessee affirmed and opened a file to find the number he was after.
“Rose? Hello. This is DCI Erica Cooper from Northumbria Police. Sorry to disturb you but I wanted to ask you a few questions about a date you had with George Blackburn on the seventeenth of June?”
Rose was silent.
“Have you spoken to George since Monday?”
“No. What’s this about? Did something happen to George?” Rose had a soft, child-like tone to her voice.
“George’s father was shot that day.”
There was a gasp. “Oh. Wow. I don’t know what to say. I mean, I hardly knew George. We met online. But still, that’s terrible.”
Cooper quickly glanced over the report Keaton had given her. She could see Wagamama’s had CCTV footage of George and Rose entering the restaurant at quarter past three, and Cineworld had confirmed they attended the half four showing of the latest Tarantino flick. “George told me he met you at two o’clock on Monday afternoon—” She was about to ask where the pair had been between two and quarter past three when Rose cut her off.
“No. That’s not right.”
“It’s not?”
“No. We were supposed to meet at two, but George was late. I waited for ten minutes and decided to go shopping. I popped into Waterstones and got a couple of books then went to French Connection. He eventually showed up at three.”
Cooper was taken aback. “He was an hour late?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “It was a nice date in the end, but I wasn’t sure if I’d want a second one. I was pretty miffed at being kept waiting so long, and to be honest, I don’t think he was that into me.”
“Just one more thing, Rose. What was George like that afternoon? Can you tell me anything about his behaviour?”
“He was fine. A little quiet, I suppose, but he had perfect manners, other than being late. Wait. Why would you ask that? You want to know if he seemed shifty, don’t you?”
Cooper had a feeling Rose was going to want a second date after all. In Rose’s mind, George had gone from being a quiet gentleman, to a damaged boy who’d lost his father, to a potential murderer in the space of a brief conversation. Some girls couldn’t resist a project; other girls couldn’t resist a bad boy—someone who would change if only you could love them enough. Cooper wanted to tell her to run for the hills and stay as far from the Blackburns as she could, but alas, it was none of her business. She thanked Rose, hung up and turned to Tennessee. He was sat with his arms folded over his chest.
“George was an hour late,” she told him. “So, he has no alibi until three o’clock. Not two o’clock like he told us.”
“And get this. Martin spoke to a temp when he called in at the beauticians. She told him Lily had been scheduled to work that day, she was on the rota…”
“But?”
“But, I just spoke to the boss, and she told me Lily only popped in to get her legs and bikini line waxed. She’d actually swapped shifts with another girl. Said she’d told them she had somewhere else she needed to be.”
Cooper was incensed. “This entire family is made up of liars and people who don’t care if they look guilty. I should lock up every last one of them.”
“Please do,” Tennessee said. He raked his fingers through his curls and gave himself a brief head massage, his eyes closed as he processed things.
What Cooper wouldn’t give for a massage right now.
“Right, let me get this straight,” he continued. “We have two bodies at Morshaw and two bodies in Frankland. That’s four murders and one attempted murder if you count Fletcher’s poisoning.”
“Which we do,” Cooper added. “Plus we have three arson attacks and two people who died in the fire at Vixen.”
“Charlene is too short to carry out the shooting, but she knows her way around a garden and would have known foxgloves were poisonous. Then there’s George, who wasn’t where he said he was, and Lily, who wasn’t where she said she was. There’s Dylan, who lied about knowing about the gun and has no alibi. And Theo, who won’t give us a bloody alibi. Not a good one anyway.”
“And Hanson who has way too much of an alibi,” Cooper chimed in. “That’s six suspects with six motives. They all stood to gain from killing Fletcher. Charlene gets money, yes she already had money, but not like this. Hanson would get power. With Fletcher and Eddie out of the way, I’m not sure the youngsters have enough clout with the soldiers to keep them onside. They’ll desert a sinking ship and go work for Hanson or the Daytons or the blooming Roker Boys.”
“Dylan’s motive is revenge,” said Tennessee. “What his parents put him through… I’d be surprised if he didn’t off the mother as well. Lily gets the freedom to see who she wants, even if it is that arsehole cousin of hers.”
“And that leaves George, who gets justice for the people he cares about, and Theo, who gets the keys to the Blackburn empire. But like I said, if he can hang on to it remains to be seen.”
Tennessee got to his feet and bent over to stretch his back. “Sex and money,” he mused. “It always comes down to sex and money. Six suspects, six motives. We may as well roll a dice and choose one.” He straightened up and began stretching sideways.
Cooper laughed. “You think I need to roll a dice to solve this one?”
He met her gaze. “You said you were going to have to lock them all up.”
“No. I said I should lock them all up. I have my favourites. I just need to hear from Keaton.” Cooper’s phone began vibrating. “Speak of the devil.”
“You won’t be calling me the devil when I tell you what I’ve got,” Keaton answered.
“Hang on, I’ll stick you on speaker phone. Okay, go.”
“I’m in the bustling metropolis of Wooler,” she said sarcastically.
Wooler was a small town in Northumberland with pretty stone buildings and the beautiful backdrop of the Cheviot hills.
“Two books were checked out of Wooler library on June the sixth and returned on June eleventh: Death In The Garden and Plants That Kill.”
“Who checked them out?” Cooper asked.
“That would be our good friend Theo Blackburn.”
“Theo?” Interesting.
Tennessee pointed at her and mouthed, Told you so. Sex and money.
“Confirm with CCTV, Paula, and see what else is on his reading list of late. Get ahold of the books as well. I want them in the lab tonight. If someone else has checked them out, find them.”
Cooper hung up and called Atkinson.
“Hey beautiful,” he whispered.
“Hey you.” She could hardly say Hey handsome with Tennessee sat next to her. Not that it mattered, he was making kissy faces anyway. Cooper covered the receiver and hissed at her DS, “Remember what I said about transferring you to Sunderland?”
Tennessee held his hands up in defeat.
“Make yourself useful and go and check the start times for that stupid triathlon thing… Okay, Justin, give me some good news.”
“I tested the item you were interested in. Trace evidence of digoxin.”
Cooper punched the air. “Yes! Paula will be bringing some books your way. Death In The Garden and Plants That Kill. I need to know whose prints are on what pages.”
“That sounds time consuming.”
“But you’ll do it for me, right?”
“Well, as it’s you… Anything else I can do for the great DCI Erica Cooper?”
“Yes.” Cooper had checked the flight schedule between Newcastle International and Lanzarote and knew she wouldn’t be able to see her father until Sunday afternoon at the earliest. She planned on using her time between then and now as best she could by not only solv
ing the Blackburn case, but by winning back Atkinson. With the spirit of who dares, wins, she asked the burning question.
“Will you have dinner with me on Saturday night?” Cooper held her breath while she waited for the answer. It may be too soon and asking him the second Ronnie left the region was probably a touch desperate, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. He hadn’t answered yet. Why hadn’t he answered yet? The pause went on and on, and when he finally responded, his voice was trembly.
“I’d love to.”
Thank god.
“But on one condition. I cook. No offence but—”
Cooper’s insides were dancing. “I know, I know… I can burn water.”
* * *
Keaton struggled to get comfortable on a swivel chair as she watched and rewatched a segment of CCTV footage. The armrests of the chair dug into her thighs and pinched her glutes. It must have been made for a child or one of those eight-stone, size six women she wanted to force-feed. That, or Keaton had been overdoing the squats of late. Nonsense. There was no such thing as too many squats. She scooted her weight to the left and almost toppled the chair. Once her heart calmed down, she rewound the footage and watched it again.
She was watching Theo Blackburn walk into the library, browse the science aisles, select a number of books, flick through them, choose two and check them out. She rubbed her eyes and moved her face closer to the screen. He was the right height and build, but the baseball cap he wore was doing her head in; she didn’t have a single second of footage with a clear view of his face. It was probably Theo, but she could just as easily be looking at Dylan or George. Heck, it could have been Fletcher himself. No, she thought to herself, Fletcher wouldn’t wear camo print shorts… But Dylan would.
Dylan’s wardrobe had been filled with camouflage print when she’d seen it as part of the search. Had he taken Theo’s library card? He could have done.
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