Cut the deck, p.16
Cut The Deck, page 16
part #1 of DCI Cooper Series
Leroy turned his back to the window and pushed his thumbs into the belt loops on his jeans. “They were sweet kids. Rebellious, yes, sometimes, but they weren’t bad kids.”
“Rebellious in what way?”
“Hmm.” He mulled over his words. “Well, Jasmine acted like the rules didn’t apply to her. She was put in isolation more times than I can count for uniform violations. Make-up, skirt too short, heels too high.”
“Lots of girls like to dress older than their age.”
“Oh, I know. I’m not trying to shame her, or whatever they call it. I’m just saying she didn’t like following the rules. Reuben was the same. He liked to wear trainers, wouldn’t tuck his shirt in or tie his tie correctly. What I’m saying is they liked to test their boundaries, see what they could and could not get away with. Then they were suspended for two weeks each last term.”
“What for?”
Leroy sat back at his desk and began to run a biro between his thumb and forefinger. “Smoking marijuana on school premises.”
Cooper’s brow lifted. “Weed? In school?” Never in her metal-head youth of underage drinking and fooling around with boys would she have ever taken drugs during the school day.
“Yes. Caused rather a stir.”
“Leroy. Can I call you Leroy? Shelly Smith’s mother mentioned Shelly had been to a party recently where coke was available.” Her mind also turned to Will Harper, who had reeked of weed whilst he was being questioned. “Is there a drug problem at this school?”
Leroy considered the question. “Yes and no,” he said. “Yes. Some of the student body definitely use drugs. But, no, I wouldn’t say the school has a problem. We’re doing well in the league tables. It’s incredibly rare something like that happens on school grounds. With Jasmine and Reuben it was a one off, and as awful as it sounds, I think Jasmine was the instigator. I always got the impression that Reuben just went along with anything Jasmine suggested.”
Cooper leant back in Pete Parke’s chair. “It does make me wonder, who’s dealing to these kids? Are drugs, or drug money part of this?”
Leroy closed his eyes for a moment and pressed the heels of his hairy hands into his sockets. When he opened his eyes again he said, “If I find anyone trying to sell anything like that to my kids…”
“It’s probably best you don’t finish that sentence,” said Cooper, though she felt the same way. “Can you recall if Jasmine or Reuben seemed worried about anything, or anyone, lately?”
“Not at all.” Leroy shook his head. “They appeared to not have a care in the world. Very que sera sera kids.”
“And their attitude didn’t change in the last few days?”
“Not that I noticed. Not even with everything that’s been going on. But to be honest, I’m only their form tutor. I only saw Jasmine at registration or if there was a problem. I saw Reuben a little more as I taught him for biology three hours a week.”
“Okay,” said Cooper. “I won’t keep you much longer. You said Jasmine and Reuben weren’t bad kids. Tell me about their positive attributes.”
“Well, by all accounts, Reuben could be a very sweet, young man. Despite his rule breaking, he’d often help teachers carry things, or he would hold the door open for others, that sort of thing. He was raised to have good manners. I could tell. He had decent grades in most subjects. He actually had a bit of a gift for biology. He told me he wanted to go into marine biology when he finished school.”
Cooper had wondered where the lives of the four victims would have taken them. The world was now down a marine biologist. Perhaps he would have rid the oceans of plastic or brought a species back from the verge of extinction. She’d never know because Reuben Jones never got to follow the path he’d chosen.
“Jasmine wasn’t academic, despite pressure from her parents. Mrs Lee was a bit of a tiger mum. Tried to push Jasmine into piano and violin. She had private tutors for maths and science but it didn’t help, her heart was never in it. She loved sport though. Pete thought the world of her.”
“Pete Parke?”
“Yes. He said she was a born runner. Said she was like a gazelle on the track.”
Cooper spun on her chair and faced Pete Parke’s desk. Neither of the framed photographs were of his family. The first was a picture of the school’s athletics team. Jasmine Lee was front and centre in a fitted running vest and tiny shorts, she was gripping a trophy and smiling from sticky-out-ear to sticky-out-ear. The second framed photograph featured the netball team. The seven first-team players were sat on a bench with the seven reserves stood behind. The girls wore short netball dresses in the same shade of green as their school blazers. Cooper recognised two faces: Michelle Smith, wearing a captain’s armband and cradling a netball under her arm; and fresh-faced, bare-legged Tina Cooper.
- CHAPTER 26 -
An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Cooper’s stomach. What sort of teacher had photos of his teenage students, rather than his family - or at least a pet - on his office desk? She put her concerns to one side so she could make a quick phone call to Tennessee.
“DS Daniel.”
“It’s Cooper. How are things at your end?”
There was unusual silence from Tennessee.
“Talk to me, Jack.”
He sighed. “I’m not sure how to say this, ma’am. Shit. Sorry. I’m not sure how to say this, Cooper, but the Chief Constable’s shown up. Looks a right flashy git in a designer suit and Rolex. He’s been holed up in Nixon’s office for an hour.”
Cooper had to steady herself against a wall in a corridor of Tynemouth Comprehensive; she felt as if she was falling. She knew Nixon was under pressure he just hoped he wasn’t throwing her under the bus. She felt small and feeble and vulnerable. She had to move quickly and solve this bloody case before it was taken off her.
“Coop?”
“Just processing everything. Do you have any good news?”
“Justin’s been on the blower. He’s finished with some of the cars.”
“And?”
“And Dunn can collect his car later today. There’re five sets of prints in the car but none of them match Jasmine or Reuben. No blood or sign of a struggle. There’s also no sign of the car being cleaned recently to rid it of evidence. No bleach or anything like that. There were green fibres. The same green as the school blazers but we know his daughter attends Tynemouth Comp so they probably came from her.”
Cooper walked along the school corridor, occasionally glancing through a classroom door and seeing a number of empty chairs. The school had an eerie silence to it.
“What about Pickett?”
“Only one set of recent prints. There’s plenty of mud and soil in the driver footwell, which ties in with him leasing an allotment. There’s a muddy print as well, a size twelve.”
“Too big. Unless he squashed his feet into a smaller shoe before dumping the bodies.”
“Is that likely?”
Cooper puffed her cheeks. “Anything goes with this case.”
“Have forensics started on Webb’s car? Or Parke’s?”
“Parke’s car was immaculate. Must have had a full valet within a few hours of us picking it up.”
“Hmm,” said Cooper.
“Hmm, indeed. Anyway, Justin says they need to run more thorough tests to get to the microscopic level. It will take a little longer but if there’s evidence they’ll find it.”
“Webb?” asked Cooper. She paused outside the girls’ toilets.
“Well…”
“Spit it out, Tennessee.”
“Linda Webb hasn’t surrendered her car yet.”
Cooper rested her back on the wall. “So go seize it.”
“I wish we could. She wasn’t home so we called her to find out her whereabouts. She said she’d gone out for the day and didn’t tell us where.”
Cooper was astounded. Linda Webb was the most unhelpful, selfish, self-obsessed…
“Tech are tracing her phone signal and we have ANPR requests for her plates. We’ll have the car by the end of today, Coop. I promise.”
She believed him. Her team could be like a dog with a bone at times. They did not take kindly to being messed about.
Cooper pushed open the door to the girls’ toilets. There was a smell of bleach and cheap perfume. “Does Paula have any news?”
“Err, yeah. She mentioned some news from a couple of fancy-dress retailers. Want me to get her to call you? She’s at the allotments with Hong.”
“No, that’s all right, Tennessee. I’ll call her in five. I’ll see you at HQ.”
“Roger.”
Cooper hung up and stared around the girls’ toilets. She had a hunch the secrets of Tynemouth Comp could be found in here, and she wasn’t disappointed. The walls of each cubicle were a maze of graffiti. Every ounce of gossip, every accusation, and every rumour was scrawled in marker pen. Cooper walked the length of the toilets, letting her eyes wander up and down the walls before dialling Keaton’s number.
“Hey, boss.” Keaton’s voice was muffled.
“Are you eating?”
“One of the gardeners down here at the allotments, he grows the best apples I’ve ever tasted. The last of the season. Gave me a bunch to make a pie with. A bag full of quince too. He’s helping us with our enquiries. Says the hole in the fence was definitely not there at the start of the week.”
Cooper listened whilst she read the graffiti in the first cubicle. It didn't take long to spot the first musings that concerned the murdered girls: Shelly deserved it. Cooper put Keaton on hold and used her phone to take a photograph.
“Tennessee mentioned you had news from a fancy-dress store.”
Will Harper is the hottest, was written in red pen. Baby killer. Jasmin Lee had an abortion was written in black.
“Yes, boss.” There were more chewing noises before Keaton swallowed. “A decent lead. An online retailer called the hotline. They received an order for three pope outfits to be delivered to a locker at Morrisons in Tynemouth. The buyer used PayPal.”
“Do we have a name?”
Xander is gay, was written in blue biro. Webb is a bitch, was scratched into the tiled floor.
Cooper smiled at the last one. Then she saw Hands off Dunk the Hunk. He’s mine, and worryingly, another line of graffiti that she couldn't turn her eyes away from.
“Just an email address,” answered Keaton. “Tech have it, they’ll see if they can get anything from it. Oliver’s working with the Royal Mail to coordinate when the costumes will be delivered. We’ll get the locker number, then we can post someone to keep watch. Intercept when he collects the parcel.”
“Good work, Paula.”
Cooper felt sick when she hung up the phone. She knew fine well that teenage girls were prone to gossip and spreading lies, she’d been one herself, but there was also a nagging doubt. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. On the back of a toilet door, written in Tip-Ex was: Rachel lifts her skirt for Paedo Pete.
- CHAPTER 27 -
Cooper practically ran along the corridor. When she reached the school lobby she urgently banged her fist on the door to the school office. Behind the glass panel, the school administrator looked up from her keyboard. She had the office phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder and her fingertips moved at lightning speed over the keys. Cooper banged her fist again. The administrator looked around; she was red-nosed and angry-browed. She held up a finger in Cooper’s direction, a signal for her to wait. Cooper was in no mood for whatever first-come-first-served system the administrator was operating, she marched into the office and pressed the phone’s hold button.
“Brian Hutchins. I want to speak to him now.”
A look of pure indignation formed on the woman’s face. “He’s in with the OFSTED inspectors, you’ll have to wait,” she said with a prim and put out voice.
Cooper took a step closer to the woman and invaded her personal space. She stared down at her, fury coursing through her. Around the woman’s neck, hung a security pass bearing the name Norma Medford.
“Norma, I don’t give a shit about the inspectors. He could be having tea with the queen for all I care. Go and fetch him.”
Norma Medford huffed through her nose and got to her feet. “Well I never,” she mumbled as she left the room. “Manners cost nothing, you know?”
It didn’t take long for Brian Hutchins to appear. He was flustered, glancing back over his shoulder at the men in suits who had followed him out of his office.
“Norma,” he whispered as he approached the administrator. “Could you take our guests to the staff room, please? see if they’d like a coffee and perhaps a tour of the science wing.”
The school administrator bowed her head. “Yes, Mr Hutchins.”
“Detective?” he turned to Cooper, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “What’s going on? Has someone else gone missing? Please tell me no one else has been hurt. I don’t think I could bear it, I don’t think any of the staff could, and as for the students—”
“Calm down, Brian.” Cooper patted him on the arm and offered him Norma’s seat but he shook his head. “What’s going on?” he repeated.
“As acting head, you’re now the senior child protection officer for the school, correct?”
He nodded.
“Have any complaints ever been made about Pete Parke?”
“Pete? Oh, I wouldn’t have thought so. I’ve known him since I joined the school. Ten years ago now.”
Cooper’s mouth thinned. “That’s not what I asked. I don’t want to know if you think anyone has raised concerns about Pete Parke. I want to know for definite. Where do you store the school’s welfare concern reports?”
“They’re locked in a filing cabinet in my office, detective, but they’re confidential. I can’t just let you go through them. I think you’d need a warrant or—”
“Brian!” Cooper’s voice was tense. She was doing all she could to hold herself together. She didn’t have time to go back to Nixon and request a warrant. It would waste time she just didn’t have. Who knew when the killer would strike again and if Parke was involved she had to find grounds to arrest him and get him out of the school and away from these kids as soon as possible. Every second counted. Letting out the tiniest of grunts, Cooper grabbed Hutchins by the elbow and frog-marched him along the corridor and into the girls’ toilets.
“Staff aren’t supposed to enter the student toilets,” said Hutchins. “It’s a safeguarding issue.”
Safeguarding issue, thought Cooper, staff entering the student toilets is the least of these girls’ concerns when it came to safeguarding. Cooper grabbed the door to the first cubicle and swung the door open with enough force that it bounced back on its hinges. She didn’t need to say anything, she simply pointed at the accusation scrawled on the back of the door in Tip-Ex.
“Think we can take a look at that filing cabinet now, Brian?”
* * *
Hutchins pulled a key from his desk drawer and unlocked the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.
“Here. This is where we store any reports.” He pulled out a plain brown box file. “This file is for the current school year, and this one is for last year.” He handed Cooper the two files.
“How far do your records go back? she asked.
“Five years. Then we move them to storage.” Hutchins added three more files to the pile Cooper held in her arms and she watched his face crease.
“I seriously doubt there’s anything about Pete in there. Most of the pink slips concern children with unexplained bruises, kids turning up to school hungry or in dirty clothing, that sort of thing.”
Cooper dumped the box files on Hutchins’s desk and took a seat in his chair. She opened the uppermost file and began to sift through the pieces of paper. Cooper was careful to keep the files in order, laying each pink slip face down on top of its predecessor so she could return them to the box in the exact order as they had been. Hutchins had been right about the contents of the slips; most were completed by teachers who were concerned about their pupils’ home lives and it didn’t take Cooper long to find a slip concerning Rachel Pearson. Catherine Grainger had completed a form after asking Rachel about the number of bruises on her arms one day. According to the slip, Rachel had told her the bruises were from playing with her neighbour’s dog. Cooper handed the sheet of paper to Hutchins. “Was this ever followed up?”
The new headteacher adjusted his glasses and held the sheet at arm’s length. He frowned and shook his head. “I’m not sure. It was reported to Linda Webb. If it was a one-off, she’d be inclined to believe Rachel, if not, it may have been reported to Child Protection Services.”
Cooper made a note of the slip’s number and placed it on the pile to her left and continued making her way through the pile on her right. A number of slips expressed concern over William Harper and comments that were overheard by teachers about his mother. And a student named Lola Greens confided in Todd Carpenter about Jasmine Lee and the pressure she was under from home to achieve good grades in her GCSEs. Greens had suggested Lee had developed anorexia from the stress. Again, Cooper noted the slip number and continued. Eventually, she stopped, stared at one of the pink slips for a long while and slid it across the desk to Hutchins.
“Were you aware of this?”
Hutchins propped his elbows on the table and Cooper watched his eyes shift left and right as he read.
“It says,” started Cooper, “that on the eighth of September, two students complained about Pete Parke entering the boys’ changing rooms after football practice and that he was carrying his smartphone. I’m guessing that if staff aren’t supposed to enter the student toilets, they’re also not supposed to enter the changing rooms?”
Hutchins nodded. “That’s right, not unless we think bullying is occurring or a student is in need of first aid.”
“And is it normal practice for staff members to have their mobiles on them?”
“Definitely not. We leave our phones in the school office during lessons and can check them at lunchtime and at breaks. Also,” he rubbed his brow, “the changing rooms are classified as no phone zones. All the students know they can’t take their phones out of their bags in the changing rooms. It’s an instant detention. Not that we can really enforce it.”
