“Odds and ends. I’d hate to live on that road—taking Campbell for walks on a winter’s evening you’d be taking your life in your hands. And it’s a dangerous place to live if you’re a deer.”
“Like the road we lived on when I was younger. Mum said it was an absolute death trap, although my dad always swore that being in houses is more dangerous than being in cars, given the number of people who fall down stairs or off ladders. Or go and electrocute themselves while messing about with dodgy wiring.”
“He could well have been right. As I’ve said until I’m blue in the face, you’re likelier to be murdered or assaulted in your home and by someone you know than in a strange place by a total stranger.” Robin snorted.
“Could be. Trouble is we can’t really teach Parent Danger to the kids rather than Stranger Danger. Can you imagine the reaction?”
“In the case of a few of your families, it would be accurate, though.”
“Too true.” The situations some of his pupils were in, the sheer fecklessness and selfishness of their parents, and the potentially lifelong impact it would have on their offspring, beggared belief. “Anyway, Mum reckoned my old man only harped on about danger in the home because I used to hare down the stairs at a hundred miles an hour. Maybe he was more concerned about wear and tear to the carpet than injury to his only son.”
Robin’s voice softened. “I doubt that. Not from what your mum tells me about him. Apple of his eye, you were.”
“I’m going to have to stop you two meeting up. You make me blush.” Nice to be reminded of the affection they had for each other, though. “So, should Martin be worried about Sam not being in touch?”
“How do I know? I’m too busy being a policeman to be an agony aunt on the side. Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so waspish. I’ll be delighted for him if he can sort out his love life—might stop him making calf eyes at me. Only if he can hold fire on the romance side until we know how deep the Woakes brothers are involved, that might make everyone’s lives easier.” Robin yawned. “I need my sleep. Wish you were here, but as you’re not, don’t forget how much I love you.”
“Miss you and love you too.” Adam cleared his throat. “And that’s enough of that, or I’ll be a blubbering mess and Campbell will insist on comforting me. I’ll end up slobbered to death.”
“I’ll slobber you senseless when I get back.”
“Promises, promises. Good night. Sleep well.”
“I’ll try my best.”
As he finished the call, the dog—who’d probably guessed that his other master was on the phone or sensed people were in need of comfort—stuck his nose in Adam’s hand.
“Hello, you.” Adam stroked Campbell behind the ears. “No, I’ve no idea when he’ll be home. Yes, I do miss him. Yes, he misses us both too, and no, you’re not taking his place in the bed.”
Campbell tried his most appealing expression but it fell on blind eyes, so he sauntered off to the kitchen and his own bed, leaving Adam to wonder how he’d managed to be content for so long with sleeping alone.
Colin Cooper wasn’t quite what Robin was expecting. For some reason he’d got it into his head the guy would be built like a brick outhouse but he was small and wiry, like a typical scrum half from the amateur rugby era. You should have grown out of making assumptions about what people would look like from their names alone.
Robin, hoping his face hadn’t shown any surprise, launched into the questions.
“As Sergeant Davis told you, we’re here about the death of Nick Osment. You knew him when he played for Tuckton?”
“Yes. Not the most talented player, but wholehearted. Put his body on the line. Are you sure I can’t get you a coffee?” It was the second time he’d made the offer. Enthusiastic host or nerves manifesting themselves?
Robin glanced around the room. A typical lounge in a 1980s house and seeming much the same as it might have been back then: slightly cramped, although light and airy, with furniture and ornaments that were well kept if starting to show their age. Was there any conclusion to be drawn from the house needing some money spent on it? Or did Cooper simply like keeping hold of old things for as long as possible? It was sometimes a matter of choice rather than funds.
Of interest was a pot full of pens that stood on the windowsill and which Robin had made a mental note of as soon as they came in. Among the eclectic collection of biros was what appeared to be a fountain pen, although they couldn’t jump to conclusions from that. Plenty of households still possessed one of those knocking about, even if they rarely used them.
“Tell us about your friendship with Osment,” Robin said.
“I wouldn’t say it was a friendship, per se. My giving him a lift was simply a case of helping out Ashley—Ashley Howarth—when he couldn’t oblige.”
“It all seems a lot of trouble to go to for one player. Especially one you described as not the most talented,” Pru added.
“We’d have done it for any of the lads, talented or not. We were encouraged to car share, anyway, it being good for the environment and all that. Our coach at the time was heavily into the green agenda. Sometimes Ashley ran both of us home if the timings worked. He’s no great drinker so it didn’t bother him.”
The environmental concern certainly made sense of why Osment had routinely been given a lift. “Why did Osment give up rugby?”
“One too many blows to the head, I’d say. He’d been knocked out twice in the previous twelve months. It’s a dangerous game.”
“Nothing to do with him being red-carded in what turned out to be his final match?”
Cooper shrugged. “That might have come into it. I really don’t know.”
Robin asked, “Did he say anything which you now think may have had a connection to his death?”
“Apart from his occasionally pouring his soul out about whether his wife was having an affair? Nothing.” Cooper ran his finger round the ridges of his ear. “I did see the news about his being killed, so if I’d had information, I would have done my good citizen bit.”
“And what about being a good citizen as far as the hit-and-run was concerned?”
Cooper appeared to flinch. “What hit-and-run, Mr. Bright?”
“Jamie Weatherell. The lad riding his bike home from the match Tuckton had against Hartwood. The match you played in.”
“Oh. That was years ago. I thought there must have been another one. The roads are so dangerous nowadays.” Cooper couldn’t have been much older than Robin, but he gave off an air of being fussy and middle-aged, as though he were from a different generation. “That was a terrible thing to happen to such a young lad. Everyone was cut up about it.”
“You must have driven along that road that evening, on the way home. Didn’t you notice anything?” Robin couldn’t press further as they still didn’t have a clear timeline of who had left the club when and were unable to prove that there would have been a juxtaposition of Jamie’s journey and Cooper’s.
“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Bright.” Cooper turned to Pru. “And Miss . . . Davis, was it?”
Pru nodded curtly. This was exactly the kind of witness with whom his sergeant had little patience, although normally they were thirty years older.
“I didn’t see anything, cyclist or other vehicle, apart from once when a vehicle came in the other direction, with its headlights on full beam and almost blinded me. I had to pull into the side of the road until my vision cleared.”
“You remember it well for something that happened years ago,” Pru observed.
“I do. Because Nick kept nagging me to get going again. Said he needed to get home.”
“Why the urgency?”
“He wouldn’t say. Probably thought his wife was up to something. We’d left the club earlier than the rest of the players, anyway, so I told him to be patient.” Cooper fiddled with a loose thread on the arm of his chair. “We’d get there when we got there.”
That didn’t strike Robin as something you’d have to make a big
fuss about confessing. There had to be more to Cooper’s being honest. “Is that all you have to say?”
Cooper sighed. “No. I’ve been clinging on to this for too long. I need to come clean.”
Robin caught Pru’s eye—was it too much to hope for that they were about to hear the big confession?
“About a hundred yards down the road from where I’d stopped, I hit a deer.” Yes, far too much to hope for. “I know it’s only a wild animal, but I felt terrible about it. I still do.”
“Why?” Pru asked. “I mean why such a burden of guilt?”
“Because I should have taken extra care. I’d seen a deer earlier, running by the side of the road—I doubt it was the same one, but that should have been a warning to me.”
“How do you know it was a deer you hit and not Jamie Weatherell?”
The bluntness of Robin’s question made Cooper flinch again. “Because Nick told me. I stopped the car and he got out to have a look. He said he’d seen a deer staggering off into one of the driveways, so he guessed it was only bruised and winded. I think I suffered as much—I was really shaken.”
“Was there any mark on your car? A dent? Blood? Deer hair?”
“Only a scuff and a small dent on the bumper. To match the one I’d put there the week before, hitting a gatepost.” The grin Cooper had broken into disappeared as though switched off at the mains. He’d clearly realised, if a touch late, that this was no laughing matter.
“Why didn’t you report this at the time? You must have seen the police appeals for information.”
“I did, Miss Davis, but I couldn’t see how my hitting a deer could have anything to do with things.” Cooper went through what appeared to be a bad pantomime of light dawning. “Oh, do you think the deer I saw had something to do with the accident? A car swerving round it and losing control, for example?”
Robin sighed. Why was this such hard work? “I was thinking along the lines of you not reporting it because you were worried it was Jamie you’d hit, not a deer.”
“No, Mr. Bright. Never.” Cooper’s expression contradicted his words.
“You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Cooper,” Pru said, switching into the soothing voice that had worked wonders with witnesses in the past. “Surely you’re not expecting us to believe that you never considered that possibility?”
“You’re extremely perceptive.” His face hardened and the silly-ass veneer began to slide away. “Yes, I did consider that at the time. I’m ashamed now, in retrospect, that I didn’t contact you, but I spoke to Nick, and he reassured me that I hadn’t hit anybody. Are you saying I might have collided with that poor lad and Nick lied to me about it?”
“We have to consider that possibility.” Robin also had to consider the possibility that Cooper had constructed and kept this story ready to wheel out at any point it was needed. Very convenient for him that the time had long past that forensic checks of the car could have yielded any fruit. And the witness to the supposed deer collision was dead. Except that there had been a deer killed on the road that night. Coincidence or more than that? He and Pru could discuss it on the way to Stratford. “Did you go back to the scene?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Where Weatherell was killed. People went to leave flowers.”
“Ah, I see. No, I didn’t know the lad, so that would have felt inappropriate. False grief and an intrusion on the real thing.” That last piece sounded like a true reflection of what Cooper felt, much truer than much of what had gone before.
“You didn’t leave a note among the flowers?” Pru asked.
“No. Why should I?”
“Guilt,” she said.
“But I felt no guilt. I believed I’d hit a deer. I still believe that. You can ask—” He halted, flustered. “Sorry, that’s stupid. You can’t ask Nick to confirm it, can you?”
“Clearly not. But we do have to ask you about what you were doing the night he was killed.” Robin raised a hand to stave off any protest. “It’s purely routine.”
“Glad to hear that. I wouldn’t have wanted him dead, especially given what’s turned up in this conversation. He’d have been the only person who could verify what I said.”
Or disprove it entirely. Robin persisted, “Just answer the question, please.”
“I’ll need to consult my diary.” Cooper crossed the room, opened the draw of a wall unit, and produced a slimline diary, bought from the Oxfam shop according to the logo, which was where Robin’s mum always got hers. Would it contain the same messy scrawls and cramped writing that Mrs. Bright employed to cram in all the many commitments she had? He managed to catch a glimpse of the contents, which seemed remarkably sparse, but noted that several of them appeared to be written in ink. What he wouldn’t give for a time machine, to be able to go back and get that original note for fingerprinting and forensic comparison.
“What date was it?” Cooper held his diary in one hand while he did the ear poking thing again with the other.
“Three Wednesdays ago,” Pru said. “Between the hours of six o’clock and ten o’clock in the evening.”
“I was away on business. I work in marketing for the Hepius Pharmaceutical Company, and we had a meeting in the Mercure Hotel at Banbury.” Cooper tapped the diary, as though that concluded the matter.
“Somebody can vouch for that, can they?”
“Yes, Sergeant, my work colleagues would be able to. Let me get the contact details of one of the people at the meeting.”
“Thank you.” That conversation would be happening as soon as they left, before Cooper had the chance to influence what might be said. Assuming he hadn’t already done so, getting all his story lined up.
Pru, leaping up, took the piece of paper on which Cooper had jotted the number down, keeping it in her hand. “We’ll be back in touch should we need to be.”
“I guess you will.” Cooper ushered them towards the door. He made a point of shaking hands with them on the doorstep before saying, “God, I don’t believe in karma, but if Nick lied to me about what I’d hit and that lad could have been saved if we’d rung for help, maybe fate caught up with him.”
Robin didn’t believe in karma, either, although he did believe in human wickedness. Wasn’t it likelier that was what had eventually settled Osment’s fate?
Ellie Harrison, the marketing executive who was supposed to be confirming Cooper’s alibi, wasn’t answering her calls, so Robin left a message for her to get back to him as soon as possible. Aware of Cooper watching him from his front window, he deliberately turned his back while on the phone. Let the man mull over what might be being said. Meanwhile, Pru had worked out that it was only thirty minutes’ drive from the Mercure to the Hartwood ground—perhaps forty when the traffic was sticky—so it wouldn’t have been outside the bounds of possibility for Cooper to have driven there and back, provided he wasn’t conspicuously among colleagues at the relevant times.
“Do you believe that deer story, sir?” she asked as soon as the car doors were shut and the engine started. “It would seem rather a far-fetched coincidence to me except that Mrs. Sanderson told you that there was a deer killed on that road at about the crucial moment.”
“Agreed, although either Cooper or Osment could have gone back to the scene—they’d not have stood out among the other visitors coming and going. If they spotted the dead animal, they might have decided that would be their backup story. Especially if they’d genuinely seen it or a similar one haring down the road either before or after they hit Jamie Weatherell. Bugger.” Robin drummed on the steering wheel. “At last I’ve remembered what Cooper said about being able to have saved him if they’d stopped. How did he know that?”
“He’ll have read about it in the stories covering the inquest, surely?”
“Maybe, but why take such an interest?”
“Think of how people like to be outraged, sir. You can imagine the furore that medical evidence stirred up. People would have been talking about it at the rugby club.”
<
br /> “Okay, I’ll buy that. I’m getting suspicious of everything.” Robin concentrated on a tricky junction that didn’t seem to align with the directions his satnav was giving him. “Let’s say Cooper was duped by Osment. He wanted to get home in a hurry so he pretended it was a deer that was hit. Stretching my Christian charity to its limit, let’s even say he thought Jamie was dead so they couldn’t have helped him anyway. All that would make him complicit in covering up an offence at the very least. And to continue covering it up if Cooper really did get back to him for reassurance it was a deer. Why bring attention to himself by making a fuss over the fundraising?”
“Double bluff? Sheer stupidity? Victim blaming?” Pru drummed her fingers together. “People do that all the time: try to shift things off the shoulders of the guilty. If Osment was carrying around a load of guilt about what had happened that evening, he might have persuaded himself that it was actually Jamie’s fault for not making sure he was visible to motorists.”
“Okay, we’ll assume that’s true for the moment. What about Osment blackmailing Cooper? He didn’t strike me as being rolling in money, given the state of his furniture, although I guess he might just be the type who hoards his dosh rather than spend it.”
“Maybe he’s not rolling in it because Osment’s been taking his share for years. In small amounts so it’s not left an audit trail in bank accounts. Did you notice Cooper had a fountain pen in that pot?”
“I did. And some of his diary entries used ink.” Robin negotiated another tricky junction, inwardly cursing the local road designers. “Don’t forget there was a fountain pen at Osment’s flat too.”
“I’d forgotten that.” Pru chuckled. “Should I write out fifty times ‘Must do better’?”
“Only if it stops you from being bored.”
“I might have to resort to it if we’re cooped up in that hotel much longer. Okay, the note. If Cooper wrote it because he felt guilty after the inquest, then he might have told Osment he was coming to us.”
A Carriage of Misjustice Page 18
