The Nightmare Place (23 page)
The man and woman next door are arguing when they arrive home.
Karen and Derek – Margaret can hear their raised voices from the front room. It is none of her business, of course, and anyway, it is hardly surprising. They do seem like the type of couple that fight. Over the years, she has heard people say that everyone does, and that it’s the sign of a healthy relationship, but she can’t remember ever raising her voice to Harold, or him to her, and she can hardly imagine that anything would have made them.
Despite herself, she moves over to the window and peers cautiously through the gap in the curtains, keeping out of sight to one side.
Derek is halfway up their front path, just standing there, looking back down the garden in the direction of the road. Karen is hovering at the gate. She is without her sunglasses right now, and appears to be crying. Her hands are pressed to her eyes, and black streaks of make-up have run down to her jawline. Her shoulders are trembling, and she is half leaning against the gatepost, as though she is about to faint.
Her husband is red-faced and talking angrily to her. He’s no longer shouting, and Margaret can’t hear what he’s saying, but he’s speaking so deliberately quietly that it’s somehow even more threatening. There is a violence to his posture. Even from across the path, from behind the safety of her locked door, Margaret feels intimidated. She can’t imagine what Karen must be feeling, standing so close to him. The rage beating off him must be almost as scorching as the afternoon sun.
You horrible man
, she thinks.
You hideous little man.
Although she can’t make out the words, his intentions certainly become clear a moment later, when he strides back down the path towards his wife and takes her by the arm. It doesn’t look like a particularly painful grip, but she cries out anyway, and he doesn’t wait for her to respond – just turns and walks towards the house with her trailing behind him. Clearly he has no expectation that she might resist, and she does not. From his manner, it is as if he’s gone back to collect something he’s dropped, rather than a human being. Rather than his wife.
They go inside, and he slams the door behind them.
Margaret’s heart is beating faster than it should, and she feels chilly despite the afternoon heat.
She replays in her head what she has just seen, and, really, it is minor. But for some reason, it does not feel that way. Something about the encounter has shocked her.
It takes her a few moments to realise that it reminds her of a holiday she took with Harold, many years ago, in a static caravan on a sprawling campsite in the south of France. The temperature was much the same as it is today, and she remembers the hot, powdery sand pushing between her toes whenever they walked on the nearby beach.
They were sitting outside one evening when an argument broke out between a German couple two lots along. The woman was short and overweight, with hair that needed washing, while the man was tall, with long hair and a blonde goatee. It seemed to come out of nowhere. She heard sudden shouting, and looked up in time to see the man throwing the woman over one of the plastic chairs, sending her sprawling to the ground. Margaret was still trying to comprehend what was happening as the man dragged the woman into the caravan by her hair, then slammed the door shut behind them both.
For a few moments, nobody on the campsite responded. Beside her, Harold put his newspaper down, folding it once, and stared across the path. A number of other people stopped what they were doing and gazed at the closed caravan. The sudden violence had shocked everyone into stillness and silence.
Then Harold stood up and went over. He was the first person to do so, but others joined him immediately, hammering on the door to the caravan until the man opened it. Someone – not Harold, thank God – then pushed their way in to make sure the woman was all right. Afterwards, although she was proud of him, Margaret remonstrated with her husband for putting himself in danger like that. Harold nodded, then told her:
But anything could have been happening behind that closed door, Maggie. Anything.
And that is how she feels now, looking across at the closed door opposite. Despite not seeing anything comparable to the violence she witnessed that day, there is a similar feel to it. The sensation that anything could be happening in there.
Should she go over?
Perhaps even call the police?
Margaret considers both options – but then, all she’s seen is an argument. The violence, if it can even be called that, was relatively insignificant. It would be an overreaction, she thinks, based more on her dislike for the man than any genuine need for help. Despite how she feels about him, she has never seen him be explicitly violent. Aside from her bumblebees, of course.
Eventually, she moves away from the window. It is none of her business. Perhaps the two of them even deserve each other – although that thought is uncharitable and unkind, and she immediately regrets it. But regardless, it is not her concern.
She heads into the kitchen. Kieran will be finishing work soon, and calling round. She should tidy up.
The police arrive shortly after Kieran does.
Margaret is still finishing the washing-up, while Kieran is in the front room, where he has drawn the curtains and is looking intermittently out of the window. Strange behaviour, even for him, but her mind has been elsewhere, and she hasn’t thought to ask him what he’s watching out for. Now, with her hands deep in the tepid water, she sees the police car swing up at the end of the cul-de-sac. Her initial thought is that something serious has happened next door after all – that the argument must have escalated. But then she sees Kieran smiling to himself by the front room window, and she understands that this has something to do with him.
‘Kieran?’
‘They’re here.’
He is beaming as he walks into the kitchen.
‘Don’t worry, Maggie. I’ll take care of it all.’
‘Take care of what?’
‘The bumblebees. I called them about it. I’m sorry, but he can’t get away with doing that. Uh-uh. No way.’
‘Oh, Kieran …’
Finally, she understands. They had this discussion yesterday, when Kieran called round: after she’d told him what the neighbour had done, he was livid on her behalf. Raging, actually. And although she was still angry herself, his intensity frightened her. He insisted that he wanted to go next door and talk to the man; she had no idea how much of that was bluster, but she still worked hard to persuade him not to. Then he mentioned going to the police. She hadn’t even considered it, and the idea made her crawl inside. Trespass, Kieran insisted. Criminal damage. Harassment, even. And maybe all that was true, but she still resisted. As hurt as she was, it was better not to cause a fuss. What could it achieve?
And yet he went against her wishes anyway. She shakes her head now, drying her hands with a dishcloth. Two policewomen are heading up the path.
‘I’m sorry, Maggie,’ Kieran says again. ‘But he can’t be allowed to bully you like that. It’s totally unacceptable. I’m doing it to look after you.’
He sounds like he means it, but she wonders whether it’s really true. He does care about her, of course, but she’s well aware that the argument about the garden began an unspoken conflict between him and the neighbour.
‘All right,’ she says wearily. ‘All right.’
There is a knock at the door. As Kieran goes to answer it, Margaret heads back into the front room. Perhaps it is a good thing he’s done this, irrespective of his reasons: Derek is clearly in the wrong, and really he shouldn’t get away with what he’s done. Even so, she doesn’t want to be involved. She sits down on the settee, not listening to whatever Kieran is saying to the officers in the kitchen.
She feels very tired.
‘They’re going to have a word with him,’ Kieran tells her a minute later, walking back into the front room.
‘Are they?’
‘Yes, they are.’ She can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s still beaming. ‘Do you know what? I think I might go outside for a cigarette or two. Enjoy the view.’
‘Kieran,
don’t
.’
‘Oh come on, Maggie. I’m not going to miss this. I want to see the look on the … on his face. He’s got it coming. You have to admit.’
She wants to stop him, but he’s already heading back into the kitchen, so she just sighs to herself. She hopes he enjoys it, for what it’s worth, because it’s her that will have to live with the effects. She’s the one who has to stay here and see the neighbours every day. As she contemplates that, she puts her head in her hands. Why can’t anything be easy?
Why won’t people just leave me alone?
she thinks.
Then:
I miss you, Harold. So much.
I wish you were here to look after me.
For a while, she’s lost in those thoughts – and loses track of time. So it might be five minutes later, or as little as one, when she hears the commotion out front. Shouting. Thudding. She turns to the window just as Kieran’s broad back slams into the glass, and then she is on her feet as he disappears from view, and all she can see is the neighbour, Derek, his face contorted with rage and hate, staring down at the ground.
For a moment, she simply stands there.
They’re actually fighting
.
She has no idea what has happened. How can it have escalated to this point? Regardless, she has to intervene – make them see sense. And where are the police? She hurries through to the kitchen, where the door is slightly ajar.
As she pulls it open, she hears the man next door. He is grunting and shouting.
‘Fucker.
Die
, you fucker.
Die
, you fucker.’
She can’t really see Kieran. He is lying on his back in the garden, his upper body obscured by the tangle of undergrowth, his legs on the path. The neighbour has his back to her, and is stamping repeatedly down at where Kieran’s head should be.
‘Stop it!’ Margaret screams.
But the man ignores her. It’s like she’s not there. He just keeps shouting –
die, you fucker
– as he lifts his powerful leg and drives it down. Desperately, Margaret looks around. The door opposite hangs open, but there is no sign of the police. She looks back at the fight. Kieran is not moving at all.
He’s killing him.
The man has become a single muscle dedicated to the task at hand. She can feel the solid strength and power of him from the doorway, and every instinct makes her want to flinch back and close the door. Instead, she looks to one side, sees the washing-up, soap suds still sliding off metal, and reaches out on instinct, picking up the heavy saucepan.
She has never hit anybody in her life; she doesn’t really know how. But she hefts the pan as best she can. It spins round in her hand as she swings it, and she almost loses her grip, but the man is too distracted to realise that the blow is coming. The pan hits the top of his head with a heavy
thonk
that knocks it out of her hand. He stumbles sideways, half falling, as the pan clatters on the path.
Margaret is trembling as he looks up at her. The expression on his face is barely even human.
‘I’ve called the police,’ she says – even though it’s pointless; even though the police are already here, or should be. ‘Leave him alone now. I’m warning you.’
The man stares at her for a few more blank seconds, then his face contorts into a derisive sneer, although it goes nowhere near his eyes. A moment later, he stands up straight, turns and simply walks away down the path. He doesn’t even look back. On the concrete, Margaret can see the bloody footprints he leaves as he goes.
‘Am I under arrest?’ Karen Cooper asked.
‘No,’ I said.
Not yet, anyway
. But the situation was so fluid, and moving so quickly, that I had no idea how long that would be the case. In truth, I was struggling just to keep up with events, never mind get on top of them. Chris and I were sitting in an interview suite with the one woman who should have been able to help in that regard, and she was giving us nothing. Every now and then, there’d be a polite knock at the door, and an officer would deliver a swiftly jotted update. It wasn’t exactly interrupting the flow of conversation.
‘Then I want to go.’
Karen half stood, but then didn’t seem to have the willpower to complete the move. I just stared at her until she settled back down again.
‘If I’m not under arrest, then I don’t have to stay here.’
‘No. But I think it’s in everyone’s best interests if you talk to us. Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Anyway, where would you go? I’m sure you understand that your home is out of bounds for the time being. That it’s currently a major crime scene.’
‘I want a lawyer, then.’
She was staring down at the table, so I risked a curious glance at Chris, and he returned my expression.
Am I under arrest? I want to go. I want a lawyer.
They were all phrases that would normally have set alarm bells ringing. And yet, as far as we knew, Karen Cooper wasn’t in any trouble. She was as much a victim of her husband as everyone else he’d hurt, the exact details of which we were still trying to work out.
We could be sure of at least three others. It was nearly two hours since the incident at Petrie Crescent. A young man named Kieran Yates was presently in a critical condition and unlikely to survive, while two WPCs were both in hospital. Sergeant Melanie Connor remained critical but stable, while Sergeant April Graves, who had been less seriously injured in the attack, was awake now and able to talk about what had happened.
The facts on the ground were these. A woman named Margaret Smith had placed an emergency call just after three o’clock this afternoon. She was obviously in extreme distress, and told Dispatch that a relative of hers had been badly assaulted and needed an ambulance immediately. The attacker had already fled the scene, but she’d given a basic description of his vehicle over the phone – a black Range Rover of some kind. The man lived next door, and his name was Derek, but she didn’t know his surname.
Officers and an ambulance crew had been in attendance at the scene within minutes, where they found Margaret Smith in the front garden, sobbing quietly, her clothes soaked with blood, cradling what appeared at first glance to be a body in the undergrowth. The young man, subsequently identified as Kieran Yates, had been severely injured. His face was a mask of blood and his breathing was weak. As paramedics cleared his airway, he suffered a heart attack, and they’d worked hard at the scene to save his life.
Margaret Smith explained that she’d managed to fight the attacker off, causing him to flee the scene. The police were already next door, she told officers: she’d shouted for them, but they hadn’t come out, and she’d been reluctant to leave Kieran alone in the garden.
When officers entered the neighbouring property, they found the two WPCs on the kitchen floor. Graves was semi-conscious, and had managed to prop herself up against the cabinets, while Connor was unconscious. Both were bleeding heavily. Karen Cooper herself had been found huddled in the front room, in the corner between the radiator and the door. She had her hands pressed to her eyes and was rocking gently. After an initial examination by paramedics, she had been brought to the department. The assailant had been quickly identified as her husband, Derek Edward Cooper, whose whereabouts were currently unknown.
Officers down
.
‘I really don’t think a lawyer will be necessary,’ I told Karen now. ‘For the moment, we’re just trying to get a handle on what happened this afternoon. It’s important that we do that quickly, so we can locate your husband. A lawyer is only going to complicate things and get in the way. That’s not in anybody’s interests, is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said again.
‘Trust me, then.’ I leaned forward. ‘Let’s start with this afternoon. You left work early, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Because I was upset. Derek came to pick me up.’
‘What were you upset about?’
‘I can’t remember
.’
Despite all the make-up, Karen Cooper didn’t strike me as much of an actress, and I didn’t think that was true. But I filed it away for later.
‘All right. So Derek picked you up. Is that normal? Does he usually come to get you?’
‘Not always. Sometimes.’ She shrugged. Her manner was frustrating. At first, it had been as though she didn’t understand the severity of the situation – as if what had happened this afternoon was just some minor inconvenience that really ought to have been sorted out by now. And then, as reality had settled in, she’d become more sullen.
What the hell is wrong with you, Karen?
But then, I reminded myself, it was likely she’d suffered a great deal of trauma. There was bruising beginning to appear around her left eye, and tears had spread her make-up in streaks down her face. It was obvious that she’d been assaulted by her husband this afternoon, and it was difficult to believe it had been the first occasion. In an earlier interview with Margaret Smith, the elderly woman had alluded to this. Perhaps Derek Cooper’s violence was now such a natural setting for Karen that she was having trouble comprehending why the outside world would care. Perhaps she was even in shock.
I said, ‘Your neighbour told us she’d spoken to you last week. In a café?’
‘Yes, I remember that.’
‘She told us you mentioned that Derek had a temper. That he could lash out.’ I left a pause for her to reply, but she didn’t. ‘Is that what happened when you got home today?’
‘Derek was … yes. Derek was very angry.’
‘Does Derek get angry a lot?’
‘Yes.’
‘More and more angry recently, right?’
She looked awkward. ‘There’s a lot of pressure on him.’
‘Why?’
‘He was made redundant. He’s always been a proud man. It’s been hard.’
Chris took out a pen. ‘When was this?’
Things had been moving so quickly that we were playing catch-up for the moment. I hadn’t even known what Derek Cooper did for a living. Karen told us now that he’d been a manager in a construction firm until last year, when the company had downsized and he’d been let go. He’d been unable to find work since. Before then, the money had been good, and they still had savings, but now they were beginning to struggle.
‘So he was under pressure. I don’t think that excuses him getting angry, does it?’ I gestured at her eye. ‘Not this kind of angry, anyway. So he’s
lashed out
at you before, Karen?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you report it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, looking small. ‘Like I said, he’s under a lot of pressure. And … well, you don’t cross Derek when he’s like that. Nobody does.’
King in his own little domain
, I thought. Well, it was one thing ruling over a downtrodden woman behind closed doors, another altogether facing down an entire police department.
Officers down
, I thought
. You don’t cross Derek.
He was going to find out.
I pulled a sheet of paper from the file in front of me: a hastily printed transcript of the testimony April Graves had given from her hospital bed.
‘Your husband attacked two police officers immediately after they entered the property,’ I said. ‘They were there to address an issue regarding your next-door neighbour, but the front door was ajar, and they heard shouting and crying coming from inside, so they moved into the kitchen.’
‘I didn’t see them.’
‘No, but your husband confronted them. Sergeant Graves was closest to the living room, and he struck her on the side of the head with a rolling pin. There was no preamble. She wasn’t anticipating it, and didn’t have time to see it coming. The blow knocked her unconscious.’
It looked as though the other officer had had a chance to fumble with her Taser, but not enough time to use it. Derek Cooper had struck her several times, the last few most likely when she was already incapacitated on the floor. He’d then gone outside, walked casually down his path and up his neighbour’s, and attacked Kieran Yates with his bare hands, beating the young man almost to death.
‘We found the rolling pin in the kitchen bin,’ I told Karen Cooper. ‘He’d stuffed it there like it was a regular piece of rubbish that he was done with. Nice of him to tidy up after himself, I guess. Weird, but nice.’
She looked at me, trembling slightly, but didn’t reply.
‘Where is he now, Karen?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Let’s go back, then. You left Eyecatchers at what time?’
‘I’ve already told you all this.’
‘We’ll do it as many times as we need to.’
‘About half one. Oh God.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘Maybe a bit after.’
‘Because you were upset.’
‘Yes.’
‘You still haven’t said why.’
‘We had an argument, all right? Derek had done something I didn’t like.’ There was a sudden pleading tone to her voice. ‘Can’t we leave it at that?’
I stared at her for a few more seconds.
Derek had done something I didn’t like
.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We really can’t leave it at that. What was it that he’d done, Karen?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I’m sorry, but we have to. Do the names Sharon Hendricks and Amanda Jarman mean anything to you? They’ve both worked for you.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘They were both assaulted and badly beaten. You know about Sharon, of course. She survived. But Amanda was attacked last night. She died as a result of her injuries.’
‘Oh God.’ She went pale. ‘Oh God, no.’
‘Was Derek out last night?’
‘No.’
‘Was that what you were arguing about?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t believe you. He didn’t come home last night, and that was what you were angry about.’
‘He
didn’t
go out.’
‘You’re lying, Karen. Why bother protecting him now?’
She didn’t answer, but it was clear to me that that was what she was doing. It was frustrating, as I could see straight through it, but many victims experience a kind of Stockholm syndrome, and I forced myself to remember the kind of pressure she must be under here. Not that it made the situation any less urgent.
‘Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Friends? Other family? Somewhere else?’
‘
I don’t know
.’
Finally I lost patience with her.
‘Listen to me, Karen.’ I leaned forward. ‘I get that you’ve been through a lot, and that this is hard for you to deal with. But if your husband hurts anyone else, and you could have stopped it,
you’ll
be partly responsible for that. Do you understand me? Do you not—’
‘
I know that
,’ she screamed. ‘
Don’t you think I know that?
’
And then before Chris or I could respond, Karen Cooper began clawing desperately at her own face, as though she might not know the answers to our questions, but a woman hidden deep beneath her skin might, if only she could find her again.
So
,
Derek Edward Cooper
.
Are you our man?
Back in the operations room, I was sitting at my desk and looking at the only photograph we had of Cooper. At the end of the interview, Karen had needed to be restrained and sedated, and she wouldn’t be talking to us again for the time being. But her husband – the man on my computer screen – remained at large. So far there had been no sightings of either him or his vehicle.
There would be other photographs soon, taken from his home, but for now this was all we had: the passport-sized photograph from his driving licence. It was a few years old. Cooper had lost the licence for a while, following repeated points for speeding, which seemed to fit the growing picture I was building up of him in my head. A man who felt that the rules applied to other people, not him. A man who didn’t like it when things didn’t go his way.
In the photograph, his hair was receding and close-cropped, and his face was strong and broad in a way that suggested his body would be too. He looked
hard
, and nowhere more so than in the eyes: the glare he was giving the camera was the kind designed to back another man down in a bar. Even in a still image, he seemed full of barely suppressed rage.
I thought about how the victims had described their attacker. The words they’d used.
A monster. A concentration of hatred
. The photograph was silent, of course, as it had to be. But it reminded me that our attacker always had been too. That he seemed to hate his victims too much for words.
Are you our man?
We could link him to Sharon Hendricks and Amanda Jarman through his wife’s employment, but to an extent they remained satellite investigations to the main one. He had lost his job not long before the attack on Sharon Hendricks, and had been unemployed since, which would have given him the opportunity to access the victims’ homes in the daytime. But obviously that was all circumstantial.
What else?
The Coopers had two children, both nearly in their teens, which made me think again about the playground by Adam Johnson’s house.
Who goes to a playground?
Children and their parents. It was local to the Coopers, and Johnson had lived in that strange cottage there since childhood. It seemed possible that Derek Cooper had seen Johnson near the playground, and then recognised him in Sharon Hendricks’ back garden on the night of the attack. And that, upon visiting him, he’d found someone he could dominate and use.
