The Coop

  He made his way over to the comely receptionist and asked for Colin Gould. She gave his bruised face and crumpled uniform a cursory once over and told him to take a seat whilst she called Colin. Everton sat on the banquette opposite her desk, nursing the foolscap envelope Teddy had given him, and waited, ignoring the quizzical glances of the students as they passed. Barely five minutes later, Colin appeared at the end of the corridor and beckoned him impatiently towards him. Everton got to his feet and ambled down. By the time he arrived Colin was quietly seething.

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “PC Bowe, Wimbledon Police. I need to talk to you in private.”

  “Not now. I can’t. I’m working…”

  “I can arrest you and take you down the nick if that helps?”

  “You can’t arrest me. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Really?” said Everton, indicating the envelope in his hand. “These photographs we found on your laptop say different. You want me to show you–?”

  “No! No, not here.”

  They made an incongruous couple: a muscular black copper and an anxious middle-aged white man sitting on a bench overlooking the bowling green in Radnor Gardens.

  Everton watched Colin leafing through the damning evidence, making no attempt to hide his revulsion. “I like the ones with the naked girl. Very artistic.”

  “I’m saying nothing without speaking to my lawyer,” Colin spat in reply, and pulled out his mobile.

  Everton grabbed his wrist, bent it backwards and prised the mobile from his hand. “That is not going to happen.”

  “Let go of me! I have rights–”

  “So do these people, mate, and you abused every one of them.”

  “I didn’t abuse anyone. I’m not a pervert–”

  “You’re worse. You don’t like people, do you, Colin? People who you think have hurt or offended you? You like to get your own back, don’t you? To punish them.”

  “I was trying to protect Gina!”

  “By killing Megan Howell’s dog and then killing her?”

  “What? No! For Christ’s sake, I’d never do something like that.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know! Look, okay, I admit I killed the dog. But I was only trying to teach her a lesson. To hurt her like she’d hurt me.”

  He broke down and began to cry like a baby. Everton took out his clean handkerchief and then thought, screw him, and shoved it back in his pocket.

  “You don’t understand. She was a hypocrite. She ridiculed me for being jealous of Don Hart, said I should know better at my age, and yet she was having affairs with schoolgirls.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s true. She was thrown out of a school in Wales for abusing a girl. That’s why she moved to London, to hide it. But I wouldn’t let her. I phoned her – she didn’t know it was me – and let her know that her dirty little secret hadn’t been forgotten.”

  “Wow. You, mate, are seriously screwed up.” Everton took the photographs from Colin’s hand and shuffled the one’s containing Don Hart to the top. “Okay. Forget Megan Howell. Where was this one taken?”

  “I don’t know… I don’t remember–”

  “Do not bullshit me, or I swear to God, I’ll pick you up by your scrawny fucking neck and drown you in the river!”

  “Okay! Okay…”

  “This was taken on the night of Gina Lewis’ suicide. The same night a woman called Tessa Hayes was attacked. Where were you?”

  “In Walthamstow.”

  “Walthamstow? What the fuck were you doing in Walthamstow?”

  “Following Hart.”

  “You were stalking him too?”

  “I was trying to protect Gina. Hart is a crook. The police are investigating him. He was involved in a betting scam. The man wearing the hat, with the gun thing, is a bookmaker–”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Harry Bellows.”

  “What was he doing with a taser?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the truth! I got scared when I saw it and left.”

  Everton was already dialling his mobile as he left, dodging through the traffic, and hurried back into the university car park. “Teddy. The guy with the taser is a bookie called Harry Bellows. Run a PNC check on him and ring me straight back.”

  The car park attendant circling Everton’s Corsa, looking for a disabled sticker, was confused seeing a copper in uniform approaching the battered hatchback, and even more so when Everton homed in on him, demanding to know if it was his car.

  “Mine?... No.”

  “Lucky for you, mate. It’s illegally parked. I’m seizing it.”

  He unlocked the car, climbed in and fired up the engine. As he did so, his mobile started up. He answered it as he reversed out into Waldegrave Road, past the bemused attendant. “That was quick. What have you got?”

  He listened in stunned silence. Then, slewing the car into a tight U-turn, warned Teddy to expect an imminent call from DC Lake. To give her the information but play dumb about absolutely everything else.

  Helen and Clarke were crawling back up the M3 towards London and she wasn’t enjoying the heavy traffic or his company. Clarke clearly thought the trip had been a total waste of time, which was a red flag to Helen since it had been his idea in the first place. Worse, he had his arm draped around the back of her shoulder, idly playing with her hair as she drove.

  “You can’t deny that there are similarities in the attacks,” she said, swapping lanes for the umpteenth time.

  “A couple, but most of it is way off. I mean, she said we’re looking for a white-collar worker, so where do the chicken feathers and the factory farming fit in?”

  “Maybe he owns a farm?”

  “We’ve got two prime suspects and neither are farmers, Helen. No, my money is on Gould. He doesn’t have an alibi and he actually fits the white-collar part of the profile.”

  Everton’s phone call could not have come at a less inopportune time. Helen checked the Caller ID and debated whether to take it, having not spoken to him since their row at the nick, but felt she had to front it out, knowing Clarke would start asking questions if she ignored it.

  “Hello. Look, I can’t speak now… You did what?”

  Clarke’s antenna was immediately up. “What’s going on?”

  “How do you know this? Hello? Hello? Shit!”

  The line cut dead in her hand. She tossed it into the centre console, turned to Clarke and said, “Phone the nick. Gould’s hard drive – see if forensics have sent over anything.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if what I’ve just been told is true neither he nor Don Hart can be the killer.”

  Harry Bellows and Don Hart were arrested for armed robbery in simultaneous dawn raids the following morning. Colin Gould was charged with stalking involving fear and violence, in front of his students – they rated it the best class he’d taught all term.

  It was, however, a pyrrhic victory for Helen. Because although both arrests were ostensibly down to her, they were also a tacit admission that neither man could have been responsible for Tessa Hayes’ abduction. Even so, Clarke was content to play devil’s advocate and offer his support, confident that DCI Teal was never going to buy it.

  He was right. Teal slumped in his office chair, tapping Gould’s photos on his desk with a rolled-up newspaper, his temper ticking in time with the beat.

  “Helen could be right, guv. If Gould left Walthamstow immediately after taking the photographs, it’s feasible he could have got over to Kew.”

  “That’s bullshit, Jack, and you know it.”

  “It is theoretically possible, guv,” said Helen, more in hope than judgement.

  “But hardly bloody probable! Gould stalks Hart, then rushes over to Kew to keep a date with Tessa Hayes so he can drug and abduct her, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I know it’s a long shot. We’re checking the CCTV around The Bot
anist to see if he’s on it.”

  “He better be,” growled Teal, tossing the newspaper onto the desk to reveal the headline:

  MERTON POLICE employ PROFILER

  “Because this is the last straw! I want to know who leaked this.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Helen. “I wish I did.”

  “You’re supposed to be leading this investigation. Find out! This is a shambles! You have no suspects, no motive, you haven’t been able to connect Tessa Hayes to any of the missing women or Gina Lewis, and now the whole debacle has been leaked to the sodding press!”

  “Guv, be fair. Busting Hart for the bookie robbery was down to me.”

  “No, it wasn’t, it was down to luck! Luck and some scrote informant who grassed them up - and whose identity you refuse to divulge.”

  There it was. The way out. All Helen had to do was to inform Teal that Everton was the informant. Rightly or wrongly, Teal would assume he’d leaked it to the press and she’d be off the hook. But for some reason she couldn’t do it. Everton was way out of line, yes. He’d ignored her repeated calls and texts, yes. But the bottom line was that he’d tried to help. She couldn’t betray him again, even for the sake of her career.

  DS Clarke finally excused himself, explaining he had a meeting with a snout of his own, leaving Helen to take the heat. He made his way out of the nick and over to his car feeling as good as he had in weeks. It was now only a matter of time before the missing women enquiry was eased onto the Met’s back burner, which would be seen as a vindication of his prior investigation. He rated the success of his strategy a seven out of ten. It would have been higher but for the fact that Helen would no longer be fucking him after their Basingstoke row. Still, he thought, she was a seriously good lay – a nine – whilst it lasted.

  The Hurricane was a snooker hall close to Tooting Bec. Recently refurbished in the style of a gentlemen’s club, its clientele was an eclectic mixture of lowlifes and city boys. Brian Hoffman felt an immediate affinity with its shady light and even shadier characters. He used it as his unofficial office, and a refuge from his humdrum home life. Which with three teenage daughters was loud and emotional, something he’d never fully appreciated until his early retirement from the Met. A fact his wife delighted in reminding him, ad infinitum. So, The Hurricane, a four-minute walk from his front door, was ideal. It had a late-night license, sixteen good tables and a pneumatic redhead behind the bar who remembered his name and brand of Irish, Bushmills.

  The place was almost empty, pre-the lunchtime rush. A quartet of taxi drivers were playing a fiver a frame at one end of the room and an ample blonde in a LA baseball cap was bent over a card table playing Whist as she sipped diet coke through a straw.

  Hoffman was idling the time away waiting for Clarke, watching an Indian guy who was dressed from head to toe in black practising on a nearby table. The guy’s play was as smooth as his dress; even his matt-black cue and case matched his cashmere roll-neck. But these were not Hoffman’s primary interest. The guy was wearing silk gloves, hiding the fact that his bridge hand was false, a detail that only became clear when he unscrewed it and positioned it back in its case, replacing it with his “day” hand, which was similarly gloved.

  “Set them up. Smartarse DC Lake’s on her way out,” called Clarke as he breezed in through the double doors.

  Hoffman grinned and ordered a couple of pints of Stella and Irish chasers from the redhead and followed him over to a table in the corner. The blonde in the cap, Pauline Bowe, put down her cards, switched her HTC mobile to video-recording mode and zoomed in on them and their conversation.

  Ninety minutes later, Everton followed Hoffman from The Hurricane back to his semi-detached Edwardian house in Manville Gardens, a stone’s throw from Tooting Common. The area, once a hunting ground for prostitutes and their punters, was now only patrolled by young mums and nannies driving Chelsea tractors. Hoffman paused to fold back the wing mirror of his Range Rover Discovery, a precautionary measure he took whenever the school run was imminent. He made his way through the gate up to the black lacquered front door and let himself in.

  Everton counted to ten and crossed the road and strolled up to the car. It was immaculate inside and out, its lustrous shine matching that of the front door. He checked the road was clear, walked around to the driver’s side, grabbed the folded wing mirror in both hands and wrenched it backwards until it snapped from its mounting. Leaving it dangling from its power lead, Everton made his way over to the front door and pressed the bell. He checked his reflection in its mirror finish – unshaven, jeans, T-shirt and Nikes – as he waited for it to be answered.

  An overweight woman with defiantly short cropped hair yanked it open and looked him up and down like he was a Big Issue seller. “Read the sign,” she said, as if he’d committed some sort of criminal offence. She pointed towards a metal plate that was screwed above the bell:

  NO HAWKERS

  “I’m not a hawker. I’m a police officer. Is your husband in, Mrs Hoffman?”

  He couldn’t make out if she were simply ill-tempered or racist or both, because his explanation cut absolutely no ice. “Warrant card.”

  He ignored the demand and said, “Someone’s just ripped the wing mirror off your Range Rover.”

  “What? Brian!” she bellowed without pausing for breath. “Brian!”

  Hoffman came running out of the kitchen and did an emergency stop on seeing Everton in the doorway. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “He’s a police officer. He said someone’s just smashed up our car.”

  Hoffman pushed past them both and out. Everton stepped aside to allow Mrs Hoffman to barrel after him.

  “It’s on the driver’s side,” he called helpfully as he ambled out to join them.

  They stood in a tight semi-circle, staring down at the broken mirror.

  “Shit!” said Hoffman. “Did you see who did it?”

  “Yeah. A black guy, about my height, my age, my build…”

  Hoffman fixed him with a baleful stare. Everton carried on regardless. “I think I took a video on my mobile,” he said, handing it to him and adjusting the volume. “There’s sound too.”

  Hoffman stared down at the screen and was stunned. He was watching a recording of his meeting with DS Clarke in The Hurricane club an hour previously. “Go inside, Ruth. I won’t be long.”

  “No. Not without some sort of an explanation–”

  “Just do it! Christ, why is everything a bloody debate with you?”

  Ruth took a small step towards Everton, attempting to cower him with a look, but he was way past caring. “Nice to meet you too, Mrs Hoffman.”

  She shouldered past him, trampled back up the path and into the house, slamming the door behind her for good measure.

  “Is she a bit short on the social graces, Bri, or is it just me?”

  “What the fuck do you want? And it better be good or I’m going to wipe the floor with you and what’s left of your poxy career.”

  Everton’s ankle-tap was delivered with the toe of his size-eleven Dr. Martens, a trick he’d learnt in his semi-pro football days.

  “Jesus! What did you do that for?” groaned Hoffman as he staggered back and slumped against the Range Rover.

  “To make a point. You can’t scare me, personally or professionally, because my poxy career that you and DS Clarke so kindly helped me fuck up is over. But you attempt to hurt DC Lake and this wing mirror is not the only thing that’s going to get broken.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes. And you better start giving me some straight answers or this recording is going straight to the press and you can say goodbye to your precious security job.”

  They decamped to the Tooting Bec Lido and sat on a couple of deckchairs, watching some hardy member of the South London Swimming Club plough length after length of the icy waters. Everton was surprised to discover that Hoffman was a member and even more so by the scale of the magnificent open-air pool
.

  “How big is it?”

  “One hundred metres long, thirty-three wide,” grunted Hoffman.

  “Thirty-three. My lucky number.”

  “Really? Did you ever win anything with that number? No…”

  “You want to cut the snide and get to the point?”

  “You just think it’s lucky. You’ve got no proof. Just like you think you’ve been stitched up by me. You’ve got no evidence, no hard facts, just an out-of-focus video that you illegally recorded in a snooker club.”

  “I didn’t record anything. It was a journalist.”

  The word hit Hoffman like a slap and momentarily rocked his composure. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “DS Clark does. He’s been leaking sensitive information to you about the Lewis case and this,” Everton said, holding up his mobile, “confirms it.”

  Hoffman opened his mouth to riposte, thought better of it, affected a shrug and said, “I’m not a grass.”

  “Okay. How about this? You don’t have to speak, I'll just assume I’m right until you tell me I’m wrong. How’s that?”

  Hoffman said nothing.

  “Okay. Mrs Lewis paid you to undermine, through DS Clarke, our investigation – which included her daughter’s suicide – because she was desperate to hide something.”

  Hoffman said nothing.

  “Mrs Lewis contracted a sexually transmitted disease and consequently become infertile, which would have become public if the press started asking questions about Gina’s subsequent adoption.”

  “There were other reasons.”

  “I know about the drink-driving cover-up. What I want to know is who was in Gina Lewis’ house on the night of her suicide and why they stole her laptop and phone.”

  “Not me. I was at an all-female version of The Merchant of Venice at my daughter’s school. An extremely long evening, as 150 other bored shitless parents can testify.”

  “Does Celia Lewis have them?”

  “Not to my knowledge. It’s possible Kieron Allen could have.”