Fragile Cord (30 page)

She’d shaken her head as though wishing
it weren’t that simple.

Tracey’s death, and Kyle’s, for that
matter, may have occurred by Tracey’s own hand, but the blame
rippled out to a series of incidents that made a young mother’s
life that much harder to bear.

Was it reasonable to
expect these stupid girls to be aware of such drastic consequences
to their actions?
Alex asked. Coupland
muttered into his chest, managed to avoid giving her a direct
answer.

He preferred an altogether different
version. The one that said if the twat of a journalist hadn’t taken
Tracey’s picture nothing that followed would have happened. If the
tosser hadn’t been so desperate for a story that he’d circled round
a retail park interviewing young women until he had enough quotes
he could spin a few bloody lines, enough to pay his mortgage, or
his bar tab for another month.

Coupland felt his anger return, rising
in the pit of his stomach, spiralling outwards, but he felt
helpless.

He didn’t want to upset Lynn; or do
anything to jeopardise his pension. If Lynn’s health declined at
least it gave him the wherewithal to take care of her.

He was too old to go
charging round smashing in the faces of everyone who bugged him.
The Police
Service
was more accountable
now, couldn’t
afford to turn the same blind eye. There was an old Chinese saying.
If you stood over the bridge long enough, the bodies of your
enemies would float by underneath.

Shit floats to the top eventually.

All he had to do was wait.

Last month it was
drink. A month before that it was drugs. Now it was the turn of
Britain’s growing
Knife Culture
to indulge the public’s need for a perpetual
state of moral panic. Coupland should have been expecting it, the
media frenzy over Ricky Wilson’s murder. It had been two years
since the last crisis over the supposed increase in the number of
fatal stabbings, and now the Wilson case had been used to pick open
old wounds just to boost flagging circulation.

Virtually every
front-page headline dredged up the photos of victims whose lives
had been cut down by the blade, making readers feel they were in
the grip of an unprecedented wave of violence. In the less
salubrious areas of the north west of England the use of knives had
been endemic since the sixties, in fact so commonplace it barely
merited a mention in most papers, remaining the weapon of choice
for many ever since.

None of the headlines
ever stated the less newsworthy facts: that across the rest of the
country knife related crime had remained stable for almost a
decade, accounting for around seven per cent of violent offences.
Coupland curled his lip in displeasure, even though the problem was
being over-stated a solution was certainly required, he just didn’t
think much of the proposed solution.

He’d returned to his
desk half an hour earlier to catch up on paperwork and answer
emails that he’d avoided during the day – basically anything that
had been sent with High Importance. Sure enough there’d been the
usual rain forest’s worth of reports to be printed out and skimmed
through before he could call it a night with a clear enough
conscience.

DCI Curtis had sent a
report detailing the Government’s latest response to the ‘upsurge’
in knife carrying and related crimes that read like the
policy-makers had finally lost the plot. A new awareness campaign
was going to be launched throughout the city in the hope of
encouraging young people to jettison their blades. Coupland
grimaced at the words ‘Initiative’ and ‘Intervention’, phrases he’d
been full of when he’d joined the force, before he had any
experience of what it was like being on the front line.

The Government was
pledging a headline grabbing amount – a dozen officers could have
been recruited at a fraction of the cost, placed in problem areas
where carrying a knife brought status. But this was politics and it
was less about tackling the problem as it was about being
seen
to tackle the
problem.

Benson, who’d seen more than
his fair share of knife victims on his mortuary slab had commented
that many of his peers in the medical profession thought kitchen
knives should be redesigned without sharp points, that the end of a
knife wasn’t used during food preparation anyway. Coupland frowned,
could it really have been that simple to prevent Ricky Wilson’s
death?

Of course solutions like that
can’t be unveiled at a conference, the approach just isn’t sexy
enough to grab media attention on its own, but until the whole
knife culture was treated as a chronic condition rather than an
emerging epidemic, it seemed to Coupland unlikely that any real
progress would be made. He closed Curtis’s report carefully before
placing it in a desk drawer beside an out of date Kit-Kat and a
banana that’d seen better days.

It was 11am in the
morning and Angus was already pissed. Whether from the night before
or a brand new binge Coupland couldn’t tell but he recognised the
clues: the place stank of vomit and a worrying dark stain had
spread across the crotch of Angus’s trousers. He’d slept – and
urinated – in his clothes.

He’d staggered to the door barefoot,
emaciated and unshaven, the living embodiment of the word
desperation.

‘C’mon Angus, let’s
get you cleaned up.’ Alex trilled.

She’d asked if she
could accompany Coupland when she heard he was going to speak to
him again and if he was honest he was grateful for the backup. He
was unsure how he was going to broach the topic that weighed
heavily on his mind. Kyle had meant the world to Angus – what right
did he have to rob the doting father of his perception of his
family? He was thankful when Alex took control, didn’t even wince
when she started using the sing-song voice she saved for small
children and the elderly, cajoling Angus into taking a shower
whilst she made them all a cup of tea.

By the time Angus
reappeared twenty minutes later he was clean, though little else
could be said in his favour. He’d towel-dried his hair but not
bothered to comb it and it stood up from his scalp in tufts. He
hadn’t bothered to shave; the stubble was more vagrant than
designer and his previously troubled eyes were now drinkers’ pink.
Once more Coupland felt sorry for what he was about to do, wondered
if it was really necessary. Adding insult to injury, Lynn would
say.

They were seated in
the room he’d questioned Angus in after making his grim discovery
and his eyes homed in on the wedding photo taken in the back of the
limousine, the one where both newlyweds were admiring the wedding
band on Tracey’s finger. Only this time Coupland saw where her
other hand lay – across her slightly swollen stomach.

‘Did you know Tracey was pregnant when
you married her?’ He waded in.

Angus blew out air from his cheeks and
perched onto the arm of the chair nearest to him.

‘You don’t pull any
punches, do you?’ He exclaimed.

Coupland was
conscious of Alex studying him, a practice that always unnerved him
a little in case he didn’t measure up to her expectations. Too
tough or a soft touch, he wasn’t sure how he least wanted to
appear.

‘Look,’ he replied, sharper than he’d
intended, ‘I have to submit a report to the coroner to confirm
whether or not there’s been foul play.’

He saw the stricken
look on Angus’s face, held out his hand, palm outwards as though
warding him off. ‘Now I don’t think there has been,’ he placated,
‘but several days into the investigation and I discover something
that could be a material fact. I haven’t got time to “pull any
punches”, as you say.’

Coupland got to his
feet and walked over to the photograph standing proudly on the
mantelpiece. He picked it up. Black and white in an expensive
looking frame, it weighed heavily in his hands.
T
here was something about the way Angus
looked at his new wife. Oblivious to the camera, he seemed to
project a desperate love onto Tracey that may have blinded him to
some of her shortcomings.
Now was the time
to test how blind his love really had been. Coupland shoved his
hands deep into his pockets and rocked back on the balls of his
feet.

‘Nice picture.’ He
commented, returning it to its pole position. ‘The dress concealed
her pregnancy well. Was that for you or your parents’
benefit?’

Angus reddened.

‘Look Sergeant,’ his
voice was pained, drawn out, as though speaking to an awkward
client. ‘I work with numbers all bloody day, I’m not an
idiot.’

Alex’s attention had moved from Coupland
back to Angus.

‘What do you mean?’ She asked.

‘I knew Kyle wasn’t
mine.’ He said quietly. ‘Tracey came clean with me early on. Told
me she was pregnant.’

‘Go on.’

This’ll be interesting, Coupland
thought, deliberately not looking in Alex’s direction.

‘She’d had a
fling with another student at the uni.
It
hadn’t meant anything but then she’d found out she was pregnant
round about the time we first started going out. I told her it
didn’t matter to me…I was already smitten by then…asked her to
marry me there and then to show how committed I was. And yes, we
hid it from my family because they would have disapproved. We told
them Kyle came early though you can’t really kid your folks when
they’re both in the medical profession. We figured that even if
they worked out Tracey was pregnant when we married, it would never
occur to them that the baby wasn’t mine.’

‘Anyway,’ he added defensively,
‘It’s none of their damn business.’

And so Tracey had managed to
successfully blot out her old life. Angus was so besotted he hadn’t
pushed her when she became reticent about her past. She’d told him
her parents were dead – which was partly true - there was no reason
for him to disbelieve her.

‘I wasn’t interested in her old
life,’ he persisted, ‘she assured me there was no place in it for
Kyle’s father, and to be truthful, the thought of an instant family
didn’t worry me. My parents had a happy marriage. My sister and I
grew up in a loving home, why couldn’t I provide the same for
Kyle?’

Angus was willing to bring the
child up as his own, and the fact that there was no biological
father on the scene to share the limelight must have seemed like a
blessing. No one, not even his family, needed to know. And so like
all lies, after a while it became the truth; the subject of Kyle’s
paternity was forgotten.

Coupland decided to change
tack.

‘I understand Tracey had her
handbag stolen a while ago but didn’t report it. Can you tell me
anything about that?’

The tension visibly eased from
Angus’s shoulders at the change of topic. ‘She’d taken Kyle to the
cinema. Put her bag down on the floor by her feet while they
watched the film. When it was over she reached down to retrieve it
but it had gone. She had to use a public phone box to call me to
bring the spare car keys over.’

‘Why didn’t she report it?’

‘You lot would’ve pulled out all
the stops, then?’ Angus challenged.

Coupland didn’t respond.

‘Look. She
–
we
– didn’t see
the point. She wouldn’t see her bag again, we cancelled all her
credit cards, why add to the form filling by involving the
police?’

‘So how come the
journalist found her?’ Coupland showed him the Evening News
article.

‘Oh Christ, him? He’d been
roaming round the multiplex looking for quotes. Doing some sort of
report on local crime. His timing couldn’t have been better. Tracey
was waiting for me to arrive and was mightily pissed off by the
time he approached her. He was looking for comments from shoppers
who’d been victims of theft at the retail park and she’d vented her
spleen, told him what had happened and before she knew it the guy
was taking her photo. I remember that by the time I arrived she
seemed more upset about the photo than the actual theft. I wasn’t
happy either, didn’t like the idea of these thugs knowing what she
looked like, now they had our home address. I did look around for
the journalist but by then he’d gone.’

His face paled, ‘Jesus, you
don’t th-’

‘No, Angus.’ Coupland
interrupted, quickly. ‘Not for one minute. These kids are low level
thieves, nothing more.’ He pushed thoughts of Ricky Wilson from his
mind.

Tracey’s father had seen her photograph
beside the article and decided to get in touch. A chance to make
amends, clear his conscience, help him sleep better in his prison
bed. Coupland could only imagine Tracey’s shock at answering the
phone one day and hearing Charlie Preston introduce herself, the
terror she’d felt at being found. How would Angus react to finding
out the boy he’d brought up as his own was the product of an
incestuous relationship? Tracey’s father had ruined her life once;
now he knew where she lived he had the opportunity to ruin it a
second time. She couldn’t risk the world finding out who her
parents were, and she certainly couldn’t leave Kyle alone to cope
with the legacy of his mother’s family. What if David started
abusing Kyle?

Coupland wondered
which event had had the most impact on the trajectory of the little
boy’s life. Being fathered by his mother’s brother? Or being
brought up by a kind man, unwittingly living a lie. He looked over
at Angus standing defiantly beside his wedding photo. Even in his
dulled state, his love for his wife was plain to see.