Fragile Cord (29 page)

‘However, such was the
animosity towards the family as a whole, that his gift became a
curse. When drawings of the victims fell into the hands of local
hacks they became front-page news, fuelling the public’s belief
that the brother and sister were somehow implicit in their parents’
crime. Outraged families of the victims refused to believe that the
couple’s children had been completely unaware of the murders. They
simply did not understand enough about fear, and the survival
instinct, to accept that they’d merely been trying to make the best
of a terrible situation.

For the teenagers’ safety they
were put onto the Witness Protection Scheme. Social Work reports
stated that the brother and sister remained unhealthily close,
recommending that as their parents’ sexual deviances were their
only example, the siblings should be separated. David was
transferred to Scotland but after dropping out of Glasgow School of
Art with depression he moved to Aberdeen, began work for an oil
company.

The girl, born Tania Sweetman,
became known as Tracey Harding. She set up home in a one bedroomed
flat in Salford, working in the refectory at the local university
where she met a third year accountancy student from Edinburgh and
set about building the family life she thought she deserved. When
she discovered she was pregnant a hastily arranged marriage was
arranged much to the disapproval of her fiancé’s parents. I doubt
they even knew the half of it.’ Coupland muttered sadly.

Alex was still trying to make
sense of what Coupland was saying. She vaguely remembered the case.
It had been front-page news for several weeks during the summer the
bodies were discovered, and again, throughout the trial. Reporters
had camped outside the court to be assured a ring-side seat. But
several years had elapsed and like most tragedies that involve
other people she’d relegated it to the back of her mind.

Coupland got up out of his chair and
walked around to the front of the desk, perched a buttock onto a
corner and folded his arms. There was an aspect of the job that
challenged him the most, the constant second guessing of other
people’s reactions in order to explain why they took one particular
course of action over another. He’d tried to put himself in
Tracey’s mind-set, tried to understand which of the secrets that
were beginning to emerge about her life would have put the most
pressure on her marriage. It had been the drawing Alex had brought
back from her visit to St. Margaret’s that had done it. The
startling charcoal sketch Kyle had drawn of his mother that
normally resided on the classroom wall. Coupland had placed it
beside a copy of a front-page newspaper article from the time of
Sweetman’s trial which he’d slipped into his pocket while Curtis
blew smoke up the senior officers’ backsides, thanking them
profusely for their willingness to share. The article displayed one
of David’s most striking pieces of work: an ink drawing of a young
Tracey, found at Langley Drive.

They were almost identical.

Despite the obvious time lapse
between when the sketches had been drawn, it was clear that they
were of the same person; even more striking was the similarity in
styles. All Coupland had needed to do was ask Benson to make a
couple of calls to the maternity unit where Margaret Sweetmore had
given birth and within an hour he’d had his worst fears
confirmed.

‘You said something about
Angus’s parent’s not knowing the half of it,’ Alex prompted him,
trying to read the time upside down on his watch, wondering what
Ben was doing right now.

Coupland seemed to sink into
himself, as though he felt saddened even saying the words out loud:
‘The baby Tracey was carrying when she walked up the aisle wasn’t
her husband’s,’ he informed her, ‘but her brother’s.’

‘You mean they kept on seeing
each other?’ Alex asked, ‘even after the Witness Protection mob had
gone to such lengths to separate them?’

Coupland nodded. ‘It seems it
was the brother who was reluctant to let go. Kept turning up at the
university like nothing had changed.’

‘Tracey must have encouraged
him,’ Alex challenged, ‘or are you saying he forced himself on
her?’ Coupland gritted his teeth in order to bite back a rebuke.
Alex seemed Hell bent on seeing the worst side of Tracey’s
character, no matter what.

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he
said evenly, ‘Psychiatric reports confirm she consented to their
relationship, but then she met Angus.’

‘So, having suffered rejection,
David hightailed it back up to Scotland?’

‘Pretty much,’ Coupland
acknowledged, ‘and in theory, that should have been the end of
it.’

Now it was Alex’s turn to fill
in the blanks. ‘Seems daddy had a guilty conscience,’ she began.
‘Wanted to make amends for what he’d done to Tracey,

Tania, or whatever her name was
back then. He contacted the offenders’ agency Charlotte Preston
works for in a bid to help him rebuild bridges with his children.
She’d already been in touch with David,-’

‘Jesus.’

Alex nodded. ‘Can you imagine
what that little family reunion would have looked like?’ They both
sat grim-faced while they contemplated the devastation this meeting
could have wreaked on Tracey’s happy family.

‘Did David know..?’

‘About Kyle?’

Alex shook her head. The agency
Charlotte Preston worked for did not disclose personal details
about victims to their clients without the victim’s express
permission, but the lines were so blurred in this case it would be
impossible to be sure protocol had been followed with any degree of
certainty.

‘Kyle was the one good thing
she’d salvaged out of her life before Angus, a secret she was
willing to carry to the grave. How could she see her father without
Angus finding out about her past and the infamous family she’d been
born into? And if her father discovered she had a son – a son whose
artistic heritage was now undeniable, where would that lead? He was
bound to pass this information onto her brother and what then?
Would David want to claim a part of his son’s life?’

Alex summed it up: ‘A ticking
time bomb.’

Coupland nodded.

‘But how in God’s name did this
woman...Charlie...track David and Tracey down?’ Coupland asked,
perplexed.

‘It seems
David has written to his father in prison on and off over the years
via a post office box number set up by the protection squad, so
getting him to agree to a meeting was easy.’ This seemed plausible.
‘And Tracey?’ Coupland persisted, ‘How did this woman locate Tracey
so effortlessly when I’ve had to put my crown jewels on the line
with the powers that be just to
look
at the Witness Protection
file?’ And then it dawned on him.

Before Coupland could articulate his
suspicions to Alex the call came through he’d been waiting for: The
knife thought to have been used to murder Ricky Wilson had been
found. Coupland let out a long slow breath of relief. He sucked it
back in again when he discovered it had been located in one of the
large industrial bins belonging to the Italian restaurant wedged
between the wine bar and a bank.

The butcher-style knife – identical to
the one used in the wine bar’s kitchen had been wiped, although
specks of blood could still be seen around the base of the handle.
It would be a couple more days before they’d know for sure if it
had been the knife used in the attack, and whether the assailant’s
prints could be lifted. Reluctantly Coupland had had to let Brooks
and Horrocks go, though he couldn’t help staring Horrocks’ lawyer
down when she smiled just a little too smugly.

‘Feel you’ve achieved
something, do you love?’ Coupland rounded on her when they crossed
paths at the station’s front desk. She shook her head as
though
he
was the
crazy person before sweeping through reception to meet her next
client.

Hard-faced
bitch,
he found himself thinking in an
uncharitable moment.

‘Don’t take it
personally.’ A voice behind him sympathised. He swung round to give
whoever it was a mouthful, to remind them it was easy being
objective when it wasn’t your fucking case,
your
knackers on the line. He found
himself looking into Alex’s concerned face and he swallowed his
reproach.

‘Their prints’ll be
all over it.’ She reassured him, ‘You just need to chill out, play
the long game. You didn’t expect the knife to be hidden under
Brooks’ pillow marked
here I am
alongside a note to the Tooth Fairy did you? Even
so, you’re hardly dealing with Einstein here. They’re banged to
rights, we just need to make sure that due process is followed so
the bastards are put away for a long time.’

She leaned towards him, placing her hand
reassuringly on his arm, ‘You’ve got ‘em, you’re just waiting for
the red tape to catch up.’

Coupland nodded. All it had taken was a
few well-chosen words and he felt his insides stop twisting. At
least for the moment.

Alex hesitated.

‘Is everything OK, Kevin?’ she asked,
tentatively, ‘only, you seem-’

‘What?’

‘uptight.’ She stepped into his orbit
so their voices wouldn’t carry along the corridor. ‘Things any
better with Lynn?’

He felt as though he was choking, his
throat constricted so that he was incapable of making any sound or
even drawing a breath. He remained still, fearful any action might
give him away. He counted to three.

‘Just leave it, eh?’ Was all he could
muster. Alex shrugged her shoulders as she backed away; there were
some people you just couldn’t help.

Crestfallen, Coupland tried desperately
to think of something to say that would make amends.

‘Any news yet?’ he blurted, referring
to the result of the sergeant’s exam. Alex was touched he’d
remembered, none of the others had bothered to ask.

‘Nope.’ She said, dejectedly.

‘No news is good news.’ he said,
smiling sheepishly. She looked at him as though he’d left his fly
open, responding in a way that told him she’d spent far too long in
his company.

‘What kind of bullshit is that? How can
anyone say not knowing something is good?’

‘Christ Almighty I don’t know,’
Coupland grumbled, ‘I was trying to be nice. Wish I hadn’t bloody
bothered.’

Alex adjusted the strap of her shoulder
bag and laughed, although it came out like a witch’s cackle. She
shook her car keys at him. ‘I’ll be off then, before you come out
with any other pearls of wisdom.’

She’d almost reached the station’s exit
when Coupland remembered the newspaper clip about Tracey Kavanagh,
he’d been about to tell her about it when the call came through
telling him Ricky Wilson’s murder weapon had been located.

‘Hang on a minute Alex.’ He called
after her, springing to life. ‘I meant to tell you this
earlier….’

Coupland dug out the article he
printed out from the Evening News archive. The article the
journalist who’d contacted him had written about the rise in crimes
committed by teenage girl gangs. As well as the photograph of
Dawson and Healey there’d been another photo. A picture of a woman
who had fallen victim to their scam. Her bag had been stolen from
under her seat at the local cinema; she’d lost car keys, bank
cards, the lot. Her face blinked out warily at the camera’s lens,
as though she’d been caught in the act of stealing something
herself, but there was no mistaking who she was, her face had
stared out at him from the incident room wall each morning and
night.

Tracey Kavanagh had once been a
victim of this gang.

When Dawson and Healy, the two girls
charged with stealing Melanie Wilson’s bag had been brought in and
shown the newspaper article that had given them fifteen minutes of
fame six months before, they’d nudged each other, sniggering like
the schoolgirls they were, proud, rather than ashamed of their
notoriety.

Coupland had pointed Tracey’s
photograph out to them. Asked if either of them remembered
knobbling her bag several months ago. The older, wider girl had
sneered as though he’d made an ill-advised pass.

‘We don’t bother
lookin’ at their faces,’ she’d informed him as though he was some
kind of moron, ‘but I
kind
of remember her. She kicked up a fuss when her
bag went missing and I remember thinking she looked like she could
handle herself, that she probably wasn’t as stuck up as she looked.
I think the only reason she didn’t kick off big time was because
she ‘ad ‘her kid with ‘er.’ She shrugged. ‘It was a designer bag –
we don’t pinch crap,’ she informed him proudly, ‘but I remember
thinking that underneath her fancy clothes, she was no better than
me.’

Coupland’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t
react. What was the point? The girls were robbing people on their
own doorstep. Ordinary people going about their daily business or
enjoying what little leisure time they had.

A mother spending time with her
son.

A builder taking time out to be with
his family.

Yeah, maybe they did have a few extra
bob in their pocket but it had come from hard bloody graft. They
were Salford people, not the Sheriff of fucking Nottingham.
Hardworking, honest, entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labour
without hassle from stupid little girls with a habit to feed.

When he handed the article to Alex she
went quiet, just for a moment, as though gathering her
thoughts.

‘So this was the catalyst?’ she asked
him.

‘If it hadn’t been for those girls
Tracey’s picture wouldn’t have been in the paper. And if her
picture hadn’t gone in paper her father wouldn’t have been alerted
to her whereabouts and asked Charlie Preston to get in touch.’