Allegation

by R. G. Adams

  She sipped her coffee and watched the joggers and the determined holidaymakers on their hired bikes. Her body was as tense as a board and her mind felt thick and slow, just a jumble of images, flashes of what had seemed like great insights at the time but had been replaced by an opposite thought the very next minute. She thought back to Annie. How controlled she had been; haughty, almost sneering at times. An utter cow, in fact. But there had been other notes, and it was these that Kit knew she had to understand. Annie’s inability to talk about Lucy’s early years was one; it had been genuine, Kit was sure of that. She remembered the small smile that Annie had given her when she’d realised Kit wasn’t going to insist. It had been a thank you, an expression of relief, not a smirk, and the only moment when Annie had climbed down and allowed something to pass between the two of them as equals. The pain of what had happened with Lucy was still present, Kit realised. Even Annie’s supreme organisational skills had not been able to manage that away. Kit knew she had found the first bit of firm ground in the case – Annie loved her children deeply. She would not allow them to be harmed.

  Kit thought, too, about Matt’s mother. She doubted very much Jackie would be in a fit state to manage the demanding physical care she now understood from Annie to be what Lucy needed – the hoisting and changing and feeding. Jackie Cooper’s skin had told Kit all she needed to know about that. She recalled Christine, dead drunk most nights and barely capable of making it up the stairs. Surely Jackie didn’t look after Lucy overnight? So was it Len who did so? Kit tried to check herself; maybe she was just looking for something to justify her instinctive dislike of Len Cooper. She sipped her coffee and dug her free hand into the pocket of her hoody, where it made contact with a piece of paper. She pulled it out. The outside showed Chloe’s drawing of her cat, sitting inside the picture of the house Kit had given her to work on. Kit’s name was written across the cat. Kit remembered that she had drawn Lucy’s bedroom on the other side of the paper. Chloe had added to the picture and then she had given it to Kit. It had been in her pocket ever since.

  A splash fell on her face and she sat up straight with a shock. The rain started to fall heavily and within a couple of minutes her clothes and shoes were getting soaked. She shoved the picture back into her pocket, dropped her cup in the bin and ran to the car park. Slipping into her seat, she heard her phone and saw that it was Vernon. She let it ring out while she wriggled out of her hoody and threw it onto the back seat, searched for a band to tie back her wet hair, and then let it ring out a second time so she could light a fag. Only then did she pick up her phone to call him back.

  ‘Ah, good, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.’

  ‘Vern, you’ve rung me twice. I was on a visit. What’s up?’

  ‘The bloody Coopers, what else? Dai’s been on the phone with the CPS most of the day. It seems they’re not proceeding with the case against Matt Cooper.’

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘This is what Dai has been trying to get to the bottom of. He’s none too happy, I can tell you. Anyway, it seems one of the women has pulled out before they’ve even got started. Hang on, I’m trying to find it, I’ve got her name here somewhere.’ Kit waited patiently, knowing it might take some time for Vernon to locate the scrap of paper he needed.

  ‘Stephanie Harman, that’s her. Not only has she withdrawn the allegation, she’s undermined the whole case. She says now it never happened and swears the two of them made it up.’

  ‘Made it up? What the hell would they do that for?’

  ‘She reckons this other one, what’s her name, hang on . . .’

  ‘Nicolette.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s her. Stephanie Harman reckons Nicolette Baxter wanted to go after him and persuaded Stephanie to back her up, told her they might get some money out of it, so she agreed, but now she’s regretting it.’

  ‘What? Are you serious? What about Nicolette?’

  ‘She says it was actually Stephanie Harman who kicked the whole thing off. Nicolette still insists the allegations are true. The pair of them are contradicting each other left, right and centre already. The CPS don’t reckon they’ve got much chance of a conviction. In fact, as we all know, they haven’t got a snowball’s with all that hanging over them.’

  ‘Surely Steph will get done for perverting the course of justice?’

  ’Wasting police time probably.’

  ‘But what about Nicolette’s statement? She hasn’t withdrawn it yet, has she?’

  ‘The problem is Nicolette was the weak link from the start. She’s fragile, mental health not great, bit incoherent. The CPS were already worried about putting her on the stand. So, with Steph withdrawing her statement and undermining Nicolette’s at the same time, they reckon they’re screwed. It’s all about how this might play out in court. Matt Cooper is a big fish and the CPS aren’t going to risk it unless they are pretty sure they can reel him in.

  ‘What about the sister – Katie, isn’t it? Can she be a witness?’

  ‘There’s no suggestion she knew anything about it. Steph and Nicolette were always at the Coopers’ house. But we know that already, so it tells us nothing whatsoever. They didn’t make any allegations at the time or tell anyone that anything had happened. The only evidence is what they said in their interviews seventeen years after the event, and this Stephanie’s blown that right out of the water now.’

  ‘What next then?’

  ‘Might be the end of it. But get back to the office. We’d better make sure we’ve covered all the bases. Bring supplies, will you?’

  As Kit wandered around Aldi, picking up cakes and biscuits for Vernon and a ready meal for her tea, she felt her fury rising. She’d pushed her way into the Coopers’ lives, invaded their privacy and insisted Matt should move out of the house, all based on what Steph and Nicolette had said. And now it looked like it might be just a pack of lies. She thought about Matt: his tears as he described Lucy’s birth and early years, his devotion to his family, his warmth and openness. She felt terrible and hoped Vernon wasn’t going to send her out to apologise to the Coopers. She didn’t think she could face them. What the hell was this Stephanie Harman playing at?

  When she arrived in his office thirty minutes later, Kit found Vernon busy on the phone. She gathered he was speaking to someone in Legal. Kit threw him the biscuits and settled down to wait. His tone was flirtatious rather than belligerent, so Kit knew it must be Sue Sullivan on the other end, rather than one of her flunkies. To confirm her suspicions, she leant forward to see what he was doodling on his notepad. Even from upside down, the drawing looked suspiciously like Sue. Vernon was paying a lot of attention to getting the curves of her figure just right. Kit hastily averted her eyes.

  ‘Right, OK then, we’ll do that. Let me know and Kit’ll have a look at it. Thanks for that, I knew it was best to go straight to the top.’ He put the phone down and looked at Kit.

  ‘That was Sue Sullivan.’ He started unwrapping the custard creams.

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Never mind. What did she say then?’

  ‘She said you’d better go and look at what’s in the interview transcripts. It’s not likely to take us anywhere, it’s purely procedural, but see what you can find out. After that, come back to me and we’ll meet with Sue and have a look at your assessments.’

  ‘What for?’ Kit stopped with a custard cream halfway to her mouth. ‘He’s been cleared. Surely now we just leave them alone?’ Kit put her biscuit down on the edge of Vernon’s desk, her appetite lost.

  ‘The criminal case didn’t proceed. But there’s still Nicolette’s statement to think about, and Stephanie could be made to come to court and explain why she withdrew hers. You know all about the two different standards of proof, I assume?’

  ‘Maisie was telling me about it the other day.’

>   Vernon guffawed, spitting biscuit crumbs everywhere. ‘That will have been a fat lot of help.’

  Kit thought back to Maisie’s lecture in the bar, and how it had made her fret about why Steph and Nicolette would make up lies about Matt Cooper, all these years later. ‘You’d better run through it for me then.’ She chucked her biscuit in the bin, giving up any hope of being able to force it down now she knew her contact with the Coopers wasn’t necessarily over with after all.

  Vernon cleared his mouth, in readiness for a display of his own intellect. ‘Long one short, the criminal case operates on a basis of beyond reasonable doubt. The CPS knew they didn’t have that, what with this girl playing silly buggers.’

  ‘Woman.’ Kit rubbed her forehead out of pure frustration.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, woman. But the family courts operate to the lower standard – civil law only needs to establish the balance of probabilities. Our Mr Cooper is not quite out of the woods yet. We need to know a bit more about what the two women said. In theory, we could get it into court for a fact-finding. If we think the kids may be at risk, that is.’

  ‘And how am I meant to know that?’

  ‘That’s the six-million-dollar question, isn’t it? I doubt there’s a social worker in the country who knows the answer to how you do it, once the criminal case is kaput. Let’s start with what you do know. What’s your thinking on this case? What are the kids saying?’

  Kit thought back to the visit she’d made to Annie and the children. ‘Nothing unusual. Cam and Chloe are great. She could be a bit of a madam, I reckon. I spent a bit of time with them, did some colouring – I used the house, the fairy, all that. Cameron’s the quieter one; he’s a little bit jealous of Lucy, I think.’

  ‘That’s no surprise. Sometimes the sibs can feel like the disabled child is the special one, everyone focusses on them. We all do it, social workers included.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Chloe’s different, she seems to want to be around Lucy, they even share a room at the moment. They’re bright, happy kids from what I can see.’

  ‘You’ve got to hand it to the Coopers really. I mean, it can’t be easy. If they’re doing well with Lucy and the other two are stable, they’re doing a pretty good job.’

  Kit nodded. ‘I know. And Annie was so young when she had Lucy. I talked to Matt about that. He described what it was like, having her and coming to terms with it all. He got really upset. He said stuff I’d never thought of. I actually felt like I learnt quite a lot from him.’

  ‘What’s your feeling about him now then? Punch or shag?’

  She found herself blushing, remembering Matt Cooper’s tanned neck, his striking dark brown eyes glistening with tears, and his articulate, emotionally intelligent description of what it felt like to have a severely disabled child. ‘There’s a side to him I hadn’t seen before, that’s all. I’m still figuring it out.’ She tucked her thoughts about Len Cooper away. She needed more to go on before she could tell Vernon. But at least she wasn’t going to have to close the case just yet. Maybe she’d find something to back up her suspicions that something about him didn’t feel right.

  ‘We’ll wait to hear from Sue then, get a look at the interview transcripts, see what you think. In the meantime, we’re going to have to ask Matt Cooper not to move back into the home.’

  ‘They are not going to like that one bit.’

  ‘I know. But it’s necessary. Hopefully Mandy Bruce will already have explained to them that the criminal case isn’t necessarily the end of the whole thing, so it won’t be too much of a surprise. OK?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’ She got up and moved towards the door, where she leant against the frame. Vernon was watching her face.

  ‘Have you read any serious-case reviews?’ He had got to the bottom of the custard creams now, and, after dropping the packet on the floor near the bin, he started unwrapping the bourbons.

  ‘A few in college, but not since.’

  ‘Then you need to. Get on the NSPCC website, they’re all listed. Read them over the weekend. You need to go into this with an open mind. Right now, you can’t believe that he did it. It’s your default position, it’s mine too, it’s everyone’s. The first thought is “no”. Then you see everything through that lens.’

  ‘Yeah. I keep wondering whether an abuser would still go home and notice that the decking needed cleaning.’

  ‘Yes, he would. And Jimmy Savile probably really did love his mother.’

  She smiled. ‘OK. But there’s another thing.’

  ‘Good thing I haven’t got any other staff to supervise, isn’t it? Go on then, what?’

  ‘It’s Annie,’ Kit admitted. ‘She drives me up the wall, but she would not tolerate anything that would harm the children. And I just feel that she’d know. How could she not?’

  Vernon shrugged. ‘The single most pervasive bias in human reasoning is that people like to hold on to their beliefs.’

  ‘What does that mean, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Google it. It means we don’t accept new information if it goes against what we already believe. That’s been the basis of a fair few serious-case reviews, I can tell you that much. Annie is massively invested in denying it. I don’t mean she’s doing it deliberately, risking her kids to keep the nice house and the handsome husband. She’d have to be a monster. But what I mean is, if she’s got an inkling, she’s fighting against it so hard, she genuinely can’t see it.’

  Kit nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she agreed. Picking up a pen from Vernon’s desk, she used it to write a note on the back of her hand about the NSPCC website, then picked up her bag and headed for the door, with an unpleasant weekend of reading ahead of her. As she reached it, Vernon called after her.

  ‘You gotta remember, girl – Annie Cooper’s got a lot to lose. And having a lot to lose can make you blind.’

  Chapter 9

  The following Monday, Sue Sullivan told the police and the CPS in no uncertain terms that her clients’ department needed information about Steph and Nicolette’s statements to determine their next move with the Cooper children. Once she’d got her own way, Sue had swept into the team room in person to tell Vernon all about the fight. He’d listened with admiration and then instructed Kit to get over to the police station at once, before anyone could change their mind.

  The weather was still damp and drizzly. She decided to walk over to the police station anyway, feeling a sudden desperation to be outside. The route took her past the housing office, some charities and the Community Mental Health Team. A few street drinkers hung around, waiting for the alcohol project to open. A man was lying in the doorway of the tattoo place; Kit got near enough to check he was asleep and not dead. Once she could see he was breathing, she went on her way. This was definitely the less desirable area of town. But it was good to be in the fresh air nonetheless. Kit remembered the promise she’d made to herself a while ago: to get out more, maybe get back to some swimming. She felt cross with herself, because it hadn’t happened, of course. All she did was go to work, come home and worry about the Cooper case, or about Tyler. She could have got out to the beach at weekends. But her anxiety was like a prickly kernel deep inside her stomach; she had to wrap herself around it, keep watching it, otherwise she might lose control, miss something, make a mistake, get the whole thing wrong. It made enjoying anything impossible, so it felt pointless to try. She knew she should – she couldn’t get this disillusioned and bitter so early on in her career. She couldn’t burn out on her first difficult case.

  But after spending most of the weekend reading serious-case reviews, her mind was still full of nightmare images. The deaths, the injuries and the abuse. The families in those reports were almost all well known to social services, of course. Drugs and alcohol, poverty, domestic abuse, mental illness. Not vaguely akin to the Coopers. She’d read some of the Savile reports, too. They had made her feel sick and hadn’
t helped her in the slightest. So many people had suspected, even known about him, but done nothing. He was hiding in plain sight, one report said. He thought about his sex-offending every waking minute of every day. Some people even said he looked like a paedophile. She knew better than to think like that, but she got the point.

  When Kit arrived at the police station she asked for Dai Davies at the desk and rummaged around in her rucksack trying to find her ID. She finally located it and was admitted through the security door to the stairwell, where Dai was waiting for her. They started up the stairs together.

  ‘Morning, lovely. You ready for this then?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

  Dai led the way into his tiny office. His desk was full of stuff, she noticed. Photos, mostly of his beloved nieces, a couple of elaborate paperweights, a few tiny sculptures of cats, some nice pens. Kit barely had room to open the transcripts when he banged them down on the desk. She understood the reason behind the clutter, though. It was the stuff of familiarity: cherished objects and loved faces to ground him and comfort him when he had to face something horrible.

  ‘Give me a shout when you’re done.’ He gave her one of his kind smiles. ‘I’ll be next door if you need me.’

  When Dai left, she sat at the desk and stared at the documents, dreading what was inside and suddenly regretting how well informed she now was about other cases. She steeled herself, picked one up and started reading. As soon as it was done, she turned to the other one.

  She got the idea pretty quickly. Nicolette Baxter and Stephanie Harman both described how they’d met Katie Cooper at the town’s one and only private school, where they’d been drawn together at the age of thirteen by their mutual tendency towards trouble. After a while, the three of them had progressed to truanting, leaving in the afternoons after the register had been taken. Steph lived a distance away from school on the Coed estate; she’d got in with a scholarship for bright but underprivileged kids. Nicolette had a big house but it was a bus ride away. Katie’s house was the nearest, and the other plus was that her parents worked all day, as did her brother, who was twenty-three and training to be an accountant. The girls could have the Coopers’ huge house to themselves every day.