Joe waved the question away with a flick of his wrist. “We were advised to stop speculating. I was advised to stop speculating. Part of learning to manage my anger was trying to get over Jamie’s death.” He paused to take a deep breath. “None of this is helping me to keep my cool right now.”
A sudden ping from Pru’s phone, signifying an incoming message, clearly didn’t help his situation, especially when she ignored it, leaving the thing to ping again midway through her next remark. “If that was a member of my family, I wouldn’t be able to dismiss the matter so easily. I’d want to know.”
“Maybe you would, but you’re not me.”
Robin, aware that the angrier Joe got the more he clammed up, said, “You’ve spoken for yourself but not for the rest of them. Is there not a single family member who wants to know who the driver was?”
“There used to be. Not that any of us would speculate on it in front of Tom, though. That would be digging in the knife. Anyway, most of us stopped wondering when you banged up those two hooligans who nicked cars.”
“The family thought they were responsible?”
Joe shrugged. “Either that or they persuaded themselves it was the right outcome. Better to have someone to blame rather than not knowing. That awful feeling that you might be walking down the street and the culprit passes you by. Or you could get involved with them romantically and never know.” He blanched. “Sorry, I don’t want to talk about this. It’s too painful.”
Evidently closure still hadn’t been found. Robin changed tack slightly. “I understand that, but we’ve got a job to do. Tell me about Jamie’s dad. He seems to be coping pretty well. Is he in the right outcome camp?”
“Yeah. He’s a legend. If I’d been him and had to cope with two deaths, I’d have gone off my rocker. But he’s always been strong—go-to man in the family when there’s a crisis. He held everyone together when there was the inquest on Jamie, and then again when the trial of those two carjackers happened. Sam went to pieces and—” Joe halted abruptly, tight-lipped.
“Yes?” Robin pressed him. “What about Sam?”
Joe gave a small, embarrassed grin. “Me and my big mouth. Don’t tell him that I said this, because he’ll ki— he’ll go ballistic, but he got really upset when those yobs were being tried.”
Fits of temper clearly ran in the family, although if the twins were identical maybe that was no surprise. “Want to explain what you mean by ‘got really upset’?”
“He was sure their lawyer would get them off on a technicality or something. He kept saying what he’d do to them if they were found innocent and released. Both Jamie’s dad and I had to talk the idiot out of it. Tom’s always had the gift of the gab. Probably comes from being in sales, once. Luckily he doesn’t have our side of the family’s temper.”
“So, when they do come up for release,” Pru cut in, “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes if Sam gets hold of them?”
“I didn’t say that.” Joe cast her a malicious glance. “Why must you twist my words?”
Pru was evidently getting under the witness’s skin, but to no avail. The days of “good cop, bad cop” might have been in the past, but it wouldn’t hurt for Robin to emphasise how sympathetic he was being. They only wanted the truth, after all. “You said yourself that Sam made threats. We’re clarifying whether those threats are still tangible.”
“Of course they’re not. Sam’s a good bloke. Way better than me on lots of counts. He wouldn’t harm a fly. All bluster.” Joe flicked his hand again. “Anyway, this is irrelevant. Nobody’s actually hurt the blokes who stole the car, have they?”
“No, but they hurt Osment.” Robin leaned forwards. “Sergeant Davis, would you please take another official statement from Mr. Woakes to cover everything we’ve discussed here. And the answer to this. Did you and Sam swop places when you went to the loo?”
“Eh?”
“Did he take your place on the field and give you an alibi?”
“No, he did not. He was at home. I know because I rang him there when I got home from the hospital.” Joe shook his head. “I guess you won’t believe me, and I can’t prove it.”
Robin suddenly felt sorry for the bloke. “Is there nothing you can tell us that would help Sam? If we know he was at home, it probably puts you in the clear.”
“No, I—” Joe studied his hands. “Wednesday night, he was watching the football, because he was slagging the Arsenal off when I spoke to him a couple of days later. I bet he was on Twitter moaning about them too. Always is on a match day.”
Robin nodded. “We’ll check.”
He sat quietly, mulling over Joe’s words, while Pru took the revised statement. “Nobody’s actually hurt the blokes who stole the car, have they?” That effectively summed up Robin’s thoughts at this point. They had potential motives but not for the right victim and were still no closer to knowing why someone wanted Nick Osment dead.
Once outside the block of flats, Pru checked her phone, then broke into a triumphant grin. “The team has found Cooper’s car on a traffic camera feed again, farther away from the ground but close enough to suggest the other sighting was also him. Much clearer image this time so there’s no doubt.”
“Excellent news.” At last, somebody without an alibi and in the right area at the right time.
“Fancy getting round there now and hoping he’s at home?” Pru eyed the car. “I know there’s the chance that he’ll be out, but if we ring beforehand that risks him getting the wind up.”
Robin gave the notion a moment’s thought. “No. Let’s make it tomorrow. If he’s going to do a runner or destroy evidence, the chances are he’ll have already done it. If we need to bring him to the station for questioning or get in a forensic search team, then tomorrow morning is a better time. Cold, clear light of Sunday when I’ve had the chance to sleep on what Saturday’s turned up.”
That included the revelations about Sam Woakes’s temper. Should he be ringing Adam to issue yet another warning or was that being too mother hen–ish?
“We could go and see Sam Woakes, as well,” Pru said. “He’s only been spoken to on the phone so far, and I’d like to see his face when he answers the questions.”
“Me too. He’s about the only other person without an alibi.”
The fact that interviewing Sam would take them so close to Lindenshaw that a night at home could be justified had nothing to do with it. Not at all. But Robin would pack an overnight bag on Sunday morning to stick in the car boot, just in case.
Sunday morning, Cooper was at home. Or, to be accurate, there was a light on inside and the car was on the drive so Cooper was likely at home. No hot date for him like there’d been for Joe the previous evening, unless he was still entertaining someone: Robin hoped they wouldn’t find him and some woman—or bloke—in an embarrassing state of dishevelment. Fortunately, when Cooper answered the door at the second ring, he simply appeared a bit bleary-eyed.
“Oh. It’s you. I was having a kip. I wasn’t expecting to see you back so quickly.” He rubbed his left eye.
“Really? Did you think we wouldn’t find out that you left Banbury not long after five o’clock when your meeting finished on the Wednesday or that we wouldn’t want to come and find out why you lied?”
Cooper’s mouth flapped up and down like a fish’s before he snapped it shut. He opened the door wider, stepping back to let them in. “You know where the lounge is.”
“Thank you.” Once all three of them were in there and seated, Robin pressed on, “Maybe you thought we wouldn’t find a traffic camera image of your car in Hartwood, a quarter of a mile from the training ground at a few minutes past seven that same evening. But we did. We found another one, as well, to confirm matters.”
Cooper slumped into a chair. “I’ve been an idiot. I should have owned up to being in Hartwood. This is going to sound awful, but it’s not what you think, I swear.”
Robin had heard that line before. Sometimes it turned out to be true. Peo
ple did cover up what they’d done, sometimes for the most bizarre reasons, leaving the lie to escalate into something out of all proportion. He put on a soothing voice. “Why don’t you tell us what happened? Make it nothing but the truth, this time.”
“The truth?” Cooper shrugged. “Nick got in touch a few weeks back and said he wanted to meet up. I assumed he was bored and was thinking of knocking back a few beers for old time’s sake, so when he suggested we get together that Wednesday, it fitted in perfectly. I could call into Hartwood on my way home from Banbury. It’s not that far off the route.”
And he’d have been able to claim part of the journey as legitimate business mileage, which would have been a real bonus to somebody so reputedly tight-fisted. No wonder the date had appealed. Robin nodded for him to continue.
“I asked which pub he fancied meeting at, but he said it wasn’t a social thing and he didn’t want to risk the conversation being overheard. He said he had important business he needed to discuss.” Cooper, unnervingly, kept his gaze pointed anywhere but directly at Robin.
“Did he say what that business was?”
“Not directly. It was all rather cloak-and-dagger. But then he always had a touch of the overdramatic.” At last Cooper faced them. “He said we couldn’t use his flat because his wife was having a do with her pals but that if we met at the sports ground, we’d be able to talk without anyone listening in. Somehow, he’d got his hands on some of the keys. God knows how or why.”
By now, Robin new how—Laurence had discovered that Osment had walked into a DIY shop on the edge of town, with a handful of keys to copy and a story about his dad starting to lose his memory and a spare set of everything being needed. He’d been utterly believable. The why he’d done it still eluded Robin, unless Osment had simply fancied keeping a copied bunch for the sake of the sense of power they brought. Perhaps that turned him on better than sex did. Or it could have been about nostalgia for those happy days when he’d been at the athletics club—access to a safe bolt-hole.
“Maybe he needed the keys because he wanted to cause more damage,” Pru said. “We know he’d done some vandalism at the club.”
“Had he? That sounds right up his street. He was a tearaway when he was younger, always in trouble at school. One of the other Tuckton players knew him from then and told us about it. Nick reckoned he’d grown up since then, but maybe a leopard doesn’t change his spots.”
“What reason did he give for wanting to meet there rather than finding a quiet car park or wherever? There are plenty of places along the road you used to take from Tuckton where you could pull in and chat without drawing attention to yourselves,” Robin said. “Wouldn’t you be seen at the ground?”
Cooper flicked away the point with a wave. “That’s what I said to him, but he had his reasoning off pat. Training night for the rugby team. Plenty of cars there so mine wouldn’t be noticed. Some rule about players not being allowed to go into the changing room once the session had started. So long as we didn’t turn all the lights on or make a din, he said we’d be safe. Bloody stupid, if you ask me, although he always did have daft notions. Like he was living in a soap opera or something. Anyway, he’d got it into his head that was what was going to happen, and once he got an idea, he couldn’t be talked out of it.” He paused. “Here, you spoke about vandalism. Do you think he might have been trying to set me up? He goes and causes trouble but I’m the one found on site and get the blame?”
“Maybe.” That was certainly a possibility, if a highly unlikely one, but not being able to read the dead man’s mind, how could they tell? Best to focus on what they knew. “How did Osment know about the coach’s rule that once players were on the field training, they had to stay there?”
“Through his wife. It was a story he told me years back, when I gave him one of those lifts home. Her best friend goes out with one of the Hartwood players. He’s known the bloke who coaches them since schoolboy training days and he’d always had the same stupid rule.” Cooper rolled his eyes.
“Who reckoned it was stupid?” Pru asked.
“This friend of hers, for a start.”
“Dawn?”
“If that’s her name, Sergeant, then yes. You wouldn’t have got anyone at the Tuckton Rugby Club agreeing to act like they were a bunch of schoolboys in a PE lesson, afraid they’d be put in detention. Osment’s wife was obviously going to make fun of it if her friend did.”
Another—albeit small—niggle between Dawn and Preese. Would it turn out to be relevant or simply another one of life’s dramas that had no bearing on the case? Cooper had remarked that Osment went around like he was living in a soap opera, but he wasn’t the only one. Some of the behaviour Robin encountered or heard about in his job would make the average soap-opera storyline appear tame.
“Okay, so you decided to go along with Osment’s plan. What next?” Robin asked.
“I drove over to Hartwood as arranged, but I got there early. Not the usual amount of traffic on the road. As a result I went past the ground and parked up.” Cooper twisted his fingers together. “At that point, I nearly pulled out of meeting up. Having time to think made me start to wonder if I was being an idiot and getting myself into something I wouldn’t want.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Realising that if we didn’t meet up then, it would be some other time.” The fingers clasped each other again, almost fit to break. “See, I checked my phone and found he’d emailed me earlier, although it had only come through a couple of minutes ago, because the 4G cuts in and out on the local roads. He was telling me not to stand him up. If he was so determined to see me, putting it off wasn’t a viable option—I’d just have to put on my big boys’ pants and face him. Anyway, sod’s law meant that I got held up returning to the ground. There’d been a prang between two cars at a junction and the traffic got backed up, so by the time I reached the ground, I was running late.”
Robin suddenly remembered the damage to the photograph frame. Was it possible that Osment had got angry at thinking he’d been stood up and had taken it out on the nearest object? Or was Cooper right, that he was being set up for something and only Osment’s death had prevented that plan coming to fruition—possibly death at Cooper’s own hand, if he had realised what was going on and reacted violently.
“What then?” Pru asked.
“I turned my lights off and swung in, parking where I couldn’t be seen from the pitch, then headed for the clubhouse door. As instructed. Nick told me there was hard standing near the bar entrance, which was used for deliveries. I used that.”
“So, this was all in the dark?” Although Robin’s instincts suggested that Cooper was telling the truth, this still sounded like the worst sort of bull.
“There was enough illumination from the floodlights to be able to pick my way.”
“I didn’t mean that. Given that there were to be no lights on in the bar, didn’t you ever wonder whether you’d be in danger?”
“Ah.” Cooper stared at his hands, which had at last disentangled themselves. “I’ll come clean. It crossed my mind, so I took along my pitching wedge. I always carry a small set of clubs in my car boot, in case I get the chance to practice a few shots.”
“Did you practice your short game on Osment’s head?”
“No!” Cooper sprang forward in his chair, then flopped back down again. “No, I did not. And I’m happy to give you a formal statement making that plain. I never even saw him. When I got there, the door to the bar was unlocked, like he said it would be, so I went in. There was no sign of him. I used the light on my phone to take a look around, but the place was empty. I spoke his name but there was no reply.”
“Did you try the door through to the changing rooms?”
“No. It would never have occurred to me to do that. I wouldn’t have known where the door was, for a start, without putting the lights on and maybe not even then. Is it labelled?”
“Yes.” Not a lot of point in pursuing that, given
they had nothing to contradict what Cooper was saying. “What you’re telling us Osment is that wasn’t anywhere to be found. What did you do then?”
“I decided he was playing silly buggers with me, so I left and came home. I kept expecting him to get in touch, slagging me off for not turning up, but he didn’t. Then I saw the story in the news and realised how lucky I’d been.”
“Lucky?” Pru said.
“Think about it. There must have been a killer loose in the building. Maybe he was still there when I was and could have heard me shout or seen the light from my phone. What if he thought I’d seen something or could identify him? I spent that next week scared stiff to answer the front door in case it was him and he’d tracked me down.” The frightened expression on Cooper’s face gave credence to his words.
“Mr. Cooper.” Robin shook his head. “I’m struggling here. Why the hell would anyone agree to meet a bloke he’s not seen in years, in the dark and at a strange location, keeping it all hush-hush if he didn’t know what they were going to discuss?” He waited for a response but none came. “I’m not leaving until I have the answer.”
At last, Cooper said, “He reckoned he needed money. He didn’t actually write that bit down. That first time he got in touch, he rang from work. Never gave me his mobile number because he did all the arranging by email.”
“Have you kept those emails?”
“No, I deleted them. All they concerned were the ins and outs of meeting up. He didn’t commit any of the money stuff to writing and neither did I.” Cooper started wringing his fingers again, much to Robin’s irritation. “I couldn’t have paid him much, anyway. My ex-wife is fleecing me. Are you married, Mr. Bright?”
“Yes.” How ironic that this was the first time Robin had shared the fact with a stranger.
Cooper snorted. “I hope you’re luckier than I was. Self-centred, two-timing cow. Glad I’m shot of her, even if my bank account isn’t.”
A Carriage of Misjustice Page 20
