Fragile Cord (32 page)

She’d just finished writing up her
report for Sergeant Coupland when he popped his head into the CID
room, asking if she wanted another coffee. She wrinkled her nose.
She hadn’t finished the one she’d got, she told him, it had a
metallic taste to it.

‘I’ll try a tea.’ She informed him,
before staring at the dregs in her cup.

Plonking the fresh drink onto her desk
and spilling some of the contents, Coupland dabbed at the mess with
his sleeve. He was animated, as though there was something he
couldn’t wait to tell her. He pulled a chair over to her desk. ‘The
lab’s confirmed that prints belonging to Brooks and Horrocks have
been found on the kitchen knife used to murder Ricky Wilson.’
Tonight the two killers were enjoying the hospitality of the
holding suite pending their appearance at the Magistrate’s Court in
the morning, along with several mates – including local ladette
crime wave Dawson and Healey - who had given them a false alibi and
were now charged with perverting the course of justice as well as
the theft of Melanie Wilson’s bag. He smiled as he told her, though
it was a sad, tired smile.

‘The toe-rags had had a successful
little set-up, using both girls to steal from punters in the bar.
They’d split the proceeds from selling on the stolen credit and
debit cards; house keys and home addresses were passed onto local
contacts for a fee. When Wilson kicked off after his wife’s bag had
been stolen he’d been pissing in the wind - the doormen weren’t
interested in his complaint for obvious reasons, didn’t like it
when he accused them of covering for the girls.’

‘They couldn’t risk him calling the
police,’ Alex concluded, ‘drawing attention to their neat little
enterprise.’

‘It was the little runt, Brooks, who
stabbed Wilson.’ Coupland added.

Horrocks had spilled his guts in record
time. So much for the band of brotherhood.

‘When Wilson left the bar with his
family both men slipped into the staffroom to change out of their
suits and follow him. Horrocks claims he only wanted to scare
Wilson, hadn’t intended to finish him off. He reckons Brooks had
been wound up all night, was just looking for an excuse…….’ He
paused, took a large slurp of something that closely resembled hot
water and milk, gestured for Alex to do the same. ‘Horrocks
masterminded everything that followed though……from hiding the knife
to persuading the others to cover for them, conjuring up an alibi
that placed him and Brooks in sight of the bar when the incident
took place.’

Coupland pictured the pair calmly
walking to their lockers to change before following Wilson. This
wasn’t the impulsive action of a nutter as Horrocks was trying to
paint – this was cold-blooded murder.

‘I’ve done my bit.’ Coupland shrugged
as he patted his trouser pockets for his cigarettes. ‘CPS pick up
the baton from here.’

Alex nodded, took a sip from her tea,
which tasted surprisingly good. She studied Coupland’s wide, craggy
face. ‘Penny for them?’

Coupland had been thinking about Amy,
who all things considered, wasn’t turning out too badly. An image
of the track-suited Dawson and Healey flitted into his head. They
were the same age as his daughter, though thankfully that’s where
the similarity ended. He gave an involuntary shudder.

‘What is it with some young girls?’ he
asked, bewildered, ‘years ago their aspirations were getting
pregnant underage and applying for a council flat, now they want to
be as deviant as their gangster boyfriends. Is the prospect of
doing time such a small price to pay?’

Alex shook her head, saddling up to
climb onto her trusty high horse:

‘Forget about the prospect of prison,’
she reasoned, ‘that’s only a deterrent if it disrupts your
lifestyle. Many of the kids we deal with are second-generation
offenders, used to the people around them disappearing for long
periods of time.’ Alex shrugged, ‘Having a conscience is an
optional extra these days…..C’mon Kevin, look at their role models,
female celebrities out of their faces on drugs and booze yet they
still end up on the front page of all the magazines, even if it’s
for the wrong reasons. It’s like their trip switch, which tells
them right from wrong is faulty.’

‘Maybe so,’ Coupland conceded, baring
his teeth in an attempt at a grin, ‘but it’s all bollocks.’

Trust Alex and her psychologist’s view
of everything.

Coupland, like his father before him,
subscribed to the belief that it was having rules in place that
stopped the inmates taking over the asylum. He didn’t give a toss
if people didn’t agree with the law or whether they sodding
understood it, all they just had to was bloody well follow it.

They’d just finished putting the world
to rights when a civilian member of staff knocked on the glass
partition before entering the CID Room. She handed Alex an
envelope. Alex sighed as she opened it, she wanted to go home,
start making inroads with Carl. She unfolded the A4 typed page and
gasped.

She’d passed her sergeant’s exam.

Lewisham sat on his daughter’s bed, his
fingers trailing over the yellowing quilt. It was creased now,
flattened in parts where he’d burrowed into it, searching for
comfort in the scent of her, tear-stains long since dried into
patches of sorrow. Her make up sat dormant on her dressing table,
the liquid eye-liner he hated her wearing had dried, cracks visible
on the surface like the soil in a drought. Jewellery he’d bought
her over the years lay scattered across its top.

In the second drawer of her dressing
table, placed with care, a velvet box contained Sheila’s engagement
ring. It had been his wife’s dying wish that Siobhan should have
it, but in the melee that was the aftermath of their daughter’s
murder he’d forgotten, laying her to rest in the dress he’d bought
her for her last school dance, her hands, placed carefully by her
side, were unadorned.

He often wondered if Sheila knew that
he’d failed her when it mattered most. First, failing to keep their
daughter safe, then unable to keep his promise about the ring. He
was supposed to give it to her on her twenty-first birthday or the
eve of her wedding, whichever came first. Neither he nor Sheila had
considered the possibility that neither of these events would take
place, that the only time he’d accompany his daughter down the
aisle was following her coffin.

It was the night of the funeral that
he’d remembered. He’d been tidying away the cufflinks he’d worn
when he opened the wrong box and found himself staring at the one
piece of jewellery Sheila had specifically asked to be given to
their daughter. He’d felt as though air was rushing passed him and
he seemed to lose his balance and all he could remember before his
legs went from beneath him was stumbling into Siobhan’s bedroom and
placing it in the drawer, never wanting to set eyes on it
again.

He pulled the drawer open just enough
so he could see the offending ring-box. He had a niece getting
married soon, he wondered if he should pass the ring onto her. He
allowed the thought to stay in his mind, willing Sheila to send him
some sort of signal, to let him know it was OK. He opened the
drawer wide enough to lift the small box out, ran his thumb over
the velvet cover.

The doorbell rang breaking into his
thoughts and he allowed himself to turn the clock back and pretend
– just for one exquisite moment – that Siobhan was outside waiting
to be let in; red faced because she’d forgotten her key.

She’d have been sixteen.

The sight of Coupland standing on his
doorstep clutching a black plastic bin liner jolted him, and he
didn’t bother to conceal his surprise:

‘Kevin?’ he asked, unsure whether or
not to invite him in. ‘To what do I owe this honour?’ His eyes fell
back towards the plastic bag, already working out the answer.

‘It’s time, Roddy.’ Coupland said
simply.

During the journey across town Coupland
had agonised how to do this, how to start a conversation that was
essentially telling his friend it was time to move on. There were
so many concentric scenarios going on in his mind, from Wilson’s
family ripped at the seams, to a frightened young woman trying to
protect the men she loved most in the world – both incidents bound
by a tenuous link.

He’d called into the supermarket to
grab refuse sacks and a handful of cleaning products and set off to
Lewisham’s home before his courage deserted him. He hadn’t got a
clue how he was going to broach it, and before he’d had a chance to
rehearse his words Roddy had flung open the door and he’d found
himself spouting out something about it being time, and as yet his
friend hadn’t shut the door in his face.

Roddy stared at him.

Slowly, he shook his head.

Coupland waited. Did he imagine it, or
had there been a moment’s hesitation?

‘I can’t do it.’ Roddy said simply, with
a shrug.

‘You can.’ Coupland persisted. ‘I’ll
give you a hand...’ His words trailed away as he saw Lewisham’s
shoulders droop. He tried to read the conflicting emotions jostling
for room on Roddy’s normally impassive face.

He took a tentative step forward,
paused.

‘We’re not going
to
clear
it Roddy
– you need to know Siobhan existed, but we can tidy it. Fold up her
things and put them away, it’ll help you understand that she won’t
be coming back.’

A breath, let out long, like a
sigh.

Roddy moved to one side to let him
pass.

Hope is definitely not the same thing
as optimism, it is not the conviction that something will turn out
well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of
how it turns out.

-Vaclar Havel, Disturbing the
Peace.

It was normal for Coupland to attend
the victim’s funeral. It gave him the opportunity to pay his
respects, to reflect on the relationship he’d built up with the
deceased during the investigation, albeit a one-sided one. It
signified closure too, their face relegated to the deepest recesses
of his mind. Coupland knew that he would never look at a small boy
again without thinking of Kyle Kavanagh.

Angus had chosen to hold a joint
service for his wife and children, which meant that whatever way
Coupland looked at it he was also attending the funeral of a
killer. There was a first time for everything, he supposed.

He sat in silence on a pew at the back
of the church, between Alex and Joe. Alex had been horrified when
they’d arrived together, he could sense her wrestling with a desire
to stare, for Joe’s face was a mass of jagged scars, of which only
a few would fade in time.

‘You should have seen him before he
borrowed my suit.’ Coupland quipped, referring to the
double-breasted charcoal jacket and trousers he’d encouraged Joe
change into, a suit that only ever came out for weddings and
funerals, prising him away from his normal over-worn clothes. Lynn
had had to get busy with a needle and thread, taking in the
waistband, moving buttons across the jacket, she’d attacked the job
with gusto, said it kept her mind off things, said she’d always
liked a challenge.

‘Reason I fell for you.’ She’d
joked.

In two days’ time she’d be facing the
biggest challenge of her life.

‘But what happened to his face?’ Alex
had persisted when they were out of earshot, filing into the
church. The truth was Joe’s face was going to attract a lot of
curiosity, even hostility, from now on.

‘His face reflects the way he feels,
Alex. It’s not his looks we need to worry about,’ Coupland reminded
her, ‘but the content of his mind.’

The psychiatrist working with Joe had
explained that it was a common misconception that people were most
likely to harm themselves during their darkest hours. The reality
was that it was during the recovery from depression that they
become most at risk. At rock bottom it was impossible to sink any
lower, but as their condition began to improve they became fearful
of the future and what would happen if they suffered a relapse –
for this time around they knew how bleak life could be.

Joe had simply wanted to blot out one
form of pain with another.

Christ stared
down from the stained glass above the altar. The indicator on the
pulpit informed mourners of the hymn numbers to be sung during the
service:
Abide With Me
, and
Morning Has
Broken
. Coupland scanned the bowed heads
of Angus’s family. Mother, father, sister. Angus sat between his
parents, his head nodding to the reverend’s words like a metronome.
He wondered if Tracey and Kyle were watching, wondered what
difference it made even if they were.

Alex couldn’t tear her eyes
from Tracey’s coffin. Draped in a velvet cloth, photographs of her
and Kyle had been placed on top of it. Inside the coffin lay a
woman, a wife, a mother. She and Tracey were the same age but only
one of them was going to get any older.

As the mourners filed out of
the church the wind rustled the cellophane around a flower
arrangement and Coupland was drawn to the intensity of their
colours: the red, white and black of Kyle’s favourite football team
vividly alive unlike the little boy they’d been bought for. A tag
fluttered and he bent to read it:

To Kyle,

All my love,

Daddy.

It was the way it had happened,
Angus explained earlier to Coupland, that kept people away. Friends
kept their distance, told him they didn’t want to encroach on his
grief. The truth was, nobody knew what to say to him. He’d thought
about holding the funerals apart, so mourners could pay their
respects to Kyle and the infant without feeling they were being
forced into paying respects to their mother. But it didn’t feel
right. Tracey had always been there for her son, and besides, he
hated the thought of his kids being on their own.