Bleed Like Me (9 page)

‘Not finding many,’ Mitch said. ‘Seems to have kept himself to himself, family man.’

‘Acting alone?’ Gill said, and Leonard nodded. ‘Not likely to have any allies.’

‘He wouldn’t trust anyone else to help, would he,’ Lee said. ‘He believes he’s on his own. Any emotional investment he has is with his immediate family. Not beyond that.’

‘That’s right,’ Leonard Petty said. ‘So although we know he might be looking for places to regroup we’re not expecting him to contact friends or wider family.’

‘What places will be of interest?’ Gill said.

‘Possibly remote, isolated, where he won’t be at risk of identification,’ Leonard Petty said.

‘What if he’s clever, though? You’ve two kids, you want to go unnoticed, why not go where there’s loads of kids. A theme park or summat,’ Rachel said.

‘In plain sight.’ Gill considered it.

‘More risky, I’d have thought,’ said Janet.

‘I agree,’ the forensic psychologist said. ‘He wants to be somewhere where he believes he can control the scenario. Somewhere to take stock and redesign his plan.’

‘He didn’t take the knife, so we don’t know how he might be trying to kill them,’ Pete said.

‘He could buy another knife,’ said Kevin.

‘He’s got a car,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘If he’s got a bit of hosepipe he could have already done it. That’s what I’d do, or jump off a cliff with them.’ Rachel blunt as ever.

Gill tipped her head to Leonard Petty, inviting him to respond.

‘Hard to second guess, but it’s an eventuality we should prepare for if we do find the vehicle,’ he said.

Gill imagined it. The Mondeo in some lay-by. Unremarkable until someone sees the line of tubing snaking in the top of the window. Catches a glimpse of the driver’s face, or the kiddies’ – red as toffee apples: the side effect of cyanotic poisoning. ‘Let’s hope the bastard didn’t have time to take anything with him. That he’s still trolling up and down the M6 trying to work out where to go, what to do. You’ll all be entitled to overtime thanks to the powers that be.’ A cheer went up. She knew most of them would have put the time in regardless. Not interested in their social lives or feet up in front of the box in the midst of a case like this.

‘So, Rachel, take the father and the brother. As well as general background we specifically want a list of locations. We want to know where Cottam might be headed.’

Rachel had only just lit up, sucked a lungful of smoke in and closed her eyes when she heard someone approach, footsteps fast on the ground, setting her nerves jangling as she swung round prepared to bolt.

‘Found you!’ Her sister Alison, for fuck’s sake.

‘I wasn’t lost.’ Rachel took another drag, willed her hand to stop shaking.

‘Well, I’ve been ringing you for the last fortnight,’ Alison said, bossy big sister act, hands on her hips. ‘Thought you’d given up.’ She nodded her head at Rachel’s fag. ‘Those things’ll kill you.’

Who cares, thought Rachel? Something’s got to. ‘What’re you here for, Alison? Only I’m working. Busy. Very busy.’

Alison was about to hurl something back. Rachel could see it:
Busy? You have no idea. I’ve three kids and a job as well.
But then something clearly dawned on Alison, bringing light to her eyes and making her mouth drop open. ‘God, it’s not the Journeys Inn thing, is it?’

‘Yes.’ Rachel sucked more smoke, another couple of tokes, getting ready to head back inside.

‘That’s awful, that,’ Alison said, ‘awful.’ Then quieter, more confidential, a greedy look on her face, ‘Do they know where he is? Why he—’

‘Can’t discuss it.’ Rachel dropped her fag, ground it out. ‘So . . .’

Alison crossed her arms. ‘Another couple of months and Dom’ll be released.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Rachel breathed, ‘not that again.’

‘What d’you mean,
that again
? He’s family, Rachel. We’re all he’s got.’

‘Count me out.’ Rachel had been over this time and again. Dom had messed up, silly pillock, made his bed, he could lie in it. She didn’t need a convicted criminal for a brother, convicted of armed robbery. Imagining how well Godzilla would take that little nugget of information.

‘What’s prison for?’ Alison said.

‘Low-lifes? Scumbags?’

‘Rehabilitation,’ Alison said.

‘Spare me the philosophical debate.’ Rachel began to move away.

‘He needs us, Rachel. He’s done his time, he’s paid for his mistake. No support and he is way more likely to get into bother again. Is that what you want?’

What did she want? For it never to have happened. For
Dom to have stayed on the straight and narrow. Got a job, found someone to spend his wages on. For Dom to have grown up and got his act together, instead of throwing it all away. ‘What’s done is done.’

‘He’ll listen to you,’ Alison said. ‘He always was closest to you. He always asks after you, you know. You washed your hands of him.’ She was getting aerated now. ‘Four years – not one visit, not even a birthday card. How do you think that’s helped his self-esteem? Fresh start, Rachel, doesn’t he deserve that?’

Rachel didn’t want to think about it. About Dom who she’d tried to raise right after her mum had sodded off and left them to it. Her dad a waste of space, living his life in a triangle: bookies, pub, home, with occasional appearances at the dole office. Alison tried to keep everything going. Rachel had finally escaped, left it all behind. Now Alison was wanting to drag her back into it. ‘He
didn’t
listen to me, did he? Or he wouldn’t be there. Look, now is not the time—’

‘When the hell is, then?’ Alison shouted. ‘You’re never in if I come round. You ignore my calls.’ A couple of bobbies going round to the entrance halted, sussing out if help was required. Rachel raised a hand, showing them she was okay.

‘You’d rather he went back inside?’ Alison said. ‘All I’m asking is you see him, buy him a meal now and then. Be his sister. Please, Rachel?’

Rachel ground her teeth. She didn’t need this. Not on top of everything else.

‘What is it?’ Alison rattled on. ‘He cramp your style, would he? Now you’ve got the brilliant job and the fancy luxury conversion and you’re hanging round with big-shot barristers. Looking down on the rest of us.’ Alison didn’t know about Nick Savage. Rachel had told her he was off the scene but left
out the bit about him trying to get her killed. ‘Joined the Masons, have you? Funny handshakes?’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘You’re just writing him off, me and all? Is that it? You’re too good for us now?’

‘It’s not about you. You didn’t commit armed robbery with a sawn-off shotgun.’

‘He was a teenager, Rachel. He was young and daft.’

‘He had a choice,’ Rachel said. That’s what made her so mad, that the stupid little scally could have taken another road. Turned down the offer of a rock solid way to make easy money and stayed honest.

‘We all make mistakes,’ Alison said. ‘You could get a bloody medal for it.’

‘You know fuck all about me.’ Rachel suddenly hot with rage.

‘I’m your sister, your daft mare, course I know about you. And he is your brother.’

‘I’ve got to get back,’ Rachel said.

Alison swung her head, chewing the side of her cheek. Obviously furious with her. Disappointed. She didn’t move as Rachel walked back in, already craving another smoke and imagining the bottle of wine waiting for her at the end of the day.

Dennis Cottam had the weather-beaten, whittled look of someone whose life had been one of manual labour. Skin leathery and brown. Outdoors all hours, running his car repair workshop. Grease monkey, thought Rachel, something ape-like about him, not in his manner – not crude or uncivilized – but in his physicality: bald with a deeply wrinkled brow, bristles dark around his mouth, arms with muscles and tendons like ropes and hands larger than his frame warranted, out of proportion to the rest of him somehow. He’d got startling blue eyes, like Janet’s, curly hairs thick on his forearms.

‘Mr Cottam? DC Rachel Bailey. Someone said I’d be coming?’

‘That’s right.’

Local officers had already made the initial visit, broken the news to Cottam senior, established whether he’d had any contact with his eldest son (not for a couple of months) and advised him on what he should do if he did hear anything. Ferried through any facts they collected to the inquiry.

Dennis Cottam lived in an end terrace next door to his workshop and garage. The house looked clean and tidy from the outside, like its neighbours.

‘Barry’s not here yet,’ he said, his knuckles pressing at his chest, the only sign that anything was wrong.

‘That’s fine,’ Rachel said. ‘We can make a start.’

He took her through. The rooms had been knocked through to create an open-plan living area. The furnishings were plain, modern: a small chocolate-coloured sofa and chair, pale grey paint on the walls. Rachel wondered if Dennis had picked it. Or if there was a woman involved.

She sat in an upright chair beside a small table, presumably where he ate his meals. He sat in the armchair, then started, ‘Would you like a drink, tea or coffee?’ Worried about forgetting his manners.

‘No, thank you,’ Rachel said. He was dazed, she could see that: the way his eyes wandered, drifting, the halting nature of his interaction with her. ‘Can I just go over what you told the officers earlier? You’ve not heard from Owen since August when you all went for a pub lunch.’

‘That’s right. Busman’s holiday for them but it saves them the cooking . . .’ he cleared his throat, ‘Pam and Bev, Barry’s wife.’ He pressed his fist against his chest again. You can cry, mate, Rachel thought, I’ll not bother. But he fought against it and picked up his story. ‘There’s a place near the reservoir, Hollingworth way. Big playground. We got into the habit of going there, two or three times a year. Handy for everybody, the driving like.’

‘How was Owen, then?’

‘Same as ever,’ he said, shaking his head steadily, ‘same as ever.’

‘Have you ever known Owen to be violent?’

‘No,’ he said, then shrugged. ‘He could hold his own, if things got out of hand, any trouble at the pub. But no, no.’

Some people knew, Rachel thought, saw it coming, their sons or brothers or fathers always quick to anger or picking
fights. Bullies or hard men. Heads full of jealousy and envy and
fuck you, mate
. Not necessarily psychos but a fist or a bottle the weapon of first resort. And when such men killed, the relatives would berate themselves for not having done something, not having said something. Unless they were cut from the same cloth, when it’d be more a case of
so-and-so had it coming. Only so much a bloke can take
.

Dennis Cottam though, Rachel could see, had never imagined this, not in his darkest dreams. And was still trying to absorb the new reality he had been plunged into.

‘Did Owen say anything about the business?’ she asked.

‘No. Ticking over, that’s the impression I had. Why? Was there a problem?’

‘We’ve heard the brewery had plans to close the pub in January. And Owen was carrying a lot of debt.’

He stared at her, then frowned and rubbed his chin with one hand. ‘He never said a word. Is this why?’ His voice rose. He stood quickly. ‘He needed money?’ A look of disgust pulled his lips back; his teeth were yellow, uneven. ‘I could have lent him money. If it was about money.’ He was appalled. ‘Why didn’t he ask me? I could have sold the garage, for pity’s sake.’

‘Dad!’ The man who interrupted looked more like Owen than his father, stocky rather than wiry, with a paunch and a florid complexion. ‘Dad?’

‘He was in debt,’ Dennis Cottam, his voice still loud, still agitated, said to him. ‘She said they were due to close the pub down.’

‘Good God.’ Barry sighed heavily. ‘Just sit down,’ he said to his father. ‘Sit down now.’

Rachel nodded her thanks and introduced herself formally. ‘You’d not heard about that either?’

‘No,’ Barry said.

‘And you last saw Owen at the get-together in August?’

‘Yeah. We were expecting to see them in a few weeks’ time, as well,’ he said. ‘Christening.’ Instead of which they had funerals to attend. Rachel knew from her briefing notes that Barry and Bev had two children, the younger a baby.

‘He was a good bloke,’ Barry said. ‘It doesn’t add up, you know.’ He jiggled his car keys in one hand.

‘I understand it’s a terrible shock,’ Rachel said. Important to acknowledge the impact of the crime, though for something this massive it was hard to find big enough words. Rachel could practically smell the grief. About to destroy them. All she could do was get them to focus on the practical.

‘We’d like your help in trying to think of places where Owen might go. It might be somewhere he spent time as a child or more recently, it could be related to an interest or a hobby or work. I’d like to go through every place you can think of starting from when he was little. Was he born here?’

It took nearly an hour, with a pause for a cup of tea, to list a lifetime’s locations. Everywhere from the hall where the Boys’ Brigade band met, where Owen briefly played bass drum, through a campsite in Morecambe Bay where the Cottam lads went as teenagers and the further education college in Preston where he did a day release course to get his car mechanic’s qualification, to the holiday apartment in Malaga that Barry had rented for both families just before Theo was born. In between there were diversions to the TT races in the Isle of Man and a trip to New York.

‘Where was he happiest?’ Rachel asked. Which sounded like a fluffy touchy-feely question but might help.

There was silence for a moment, then Dennis said, ‘Meeting Pamela.’

‘And recently, we thought, with the boys coming along,’ said Barry. He always wanted boys.’ He spoke softly, the
unspoken questions suffocating in the room:
Where are the boys? What has he done to them?

Rachel cleared her throat. ‘What about your wife, his mother?’

‘She’s in Australia,’ Dennis said. ‘Melbourne.’

‘Was Owen in touch with her?’

‘No,’ they said together.

‘It wasn’t easy, her going like that, not for any of us,’ Barry said.

‘Was he resentful?’

‘We both were. What kid wouldn’t be?’