by John R McKay
‘I never should have gone into this arrangement with you.’
‘That was your decision wasn’t it? Not mine. I had no choice in it, did I? That makes you the fuck up, not me.’
‘Lange. Do you realise what you’ve done? If you’d just left Cooke alone when I told you so we would have been alright. You were only supposed to take the package.’
‘You may have been alright,’ replied Lange. ‘But the police were on to me. It was just a matter of time before they got me and you know it. After it went tits up up north it all went pear shaped. The whole thing went from bad to worse. This is my way of sorting this shit out.’
‘You call this sorting it out! I can’t understand you. Why on earth did you kill your mother?’ The man sounded exasperated.
‘To free myself of you. To stop me worrying about her. I knew I had to leave and couldn’t leave her alone without me. It was the only humane thing I could do.’
The man paused. Then he said quietly: ‘You do realise that I’m finished don’t you? It’s a matter of time now before someone puts two and two together then comes knocking on my door. I’ve abused the resources I’ve been accessible to. The shame of it will finish my family.’
‘That’s really not my concern right now,’ said Lange. ‘I’ve got my own arse to worry about. It won’t be long before my picture is all over the front pages of all the nationals. I need to get away but I need to finish off Cooke before I go. It’s something I have to do.’
‘OK,’ came the resigned response after a few moments. ‘If we are going down for this then I want you to finish off the little prick for good. I can tell you that he isn’t in England anymore. He caught the Eurostar to Paris last night. He’s either somewhere there or he’s moved on to somewhere else. Paris is where you need to start looking.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Lange under his breath. This was going to be more difficult than he’d envisaged.
‘Have you means to get there?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Lange. ‘Pleasure doing business with you, you stuck up wanker.’
Lange hung. He stepped out of the car and placed the phone on the tarmac before smashing it repeatedly with the heel of his shoe. He then got back into the car, started the engine and drove towards the slip road to the motorway.
This did not really change anything, he thought after a while. He would still carry out the plan he had for the day. He would still go to Cooke’s house, but instead of being able to do for him there, he would search for any clues that may lead him to where he may have gone. If he could find nothing then he would make his way to Paris and see what he could find there. If that turned out to be fruitless then he would continue to Amsterdam and lie low for a while. Then at some stage later on, he would return to England and finish off Cooke once and for all, no matter how long it took before he felt safe enough to return. It wasn’t much of a plan, he thought, but a plan it was all the same. He felt confident now that he knew what he was going to do.
He pulled out onto the motorway and headed north, towards Manchester. For the first time in a long while he felt free. Free from the burden of looking after his mother and free from being controlled by the mysterious ‘Roger Moore’. He vowed to enjoy this new found freedom because he had absolutely no idea just how long it would last.
#
Lange parked the Vauxhall Astra outside Cooke’s semi-detached house and looked at the property from the front seat of the car. It was on a quiet street in a nice neighbourhood and Lange felt a little jealous of the life Cooke had been living. Simple and peaceful. Well it had been up until very recently anyway. This was the kind of house he would have liked for himself and his mother but that was now not to be. Money had been no issue but it had never occurred to him to ask her to make the move from the house she had lived in for most of her life. She would probably have never made the move anyway, the ungrateful cow.
His plan to change cars in the car park of the Arndale Centre had gone without a hitch. He had also stopped off at a hardware store to purchase a crowbar and a few other items for the objective that he was now to engage in. He could not see a burglar alarm box on the wall at the front of the house which was a welcome bonus. He looked about the houses that were adjacent and facing Cooke’s, for signs of anyone observing him but could see no-one. Most people would probably be at work in their mundane little jobs, clock watching to the time they could leave to get home to their mundane little lives in suburbia. No matter the mess he was now in, Lange thought that his was still a better way to spend his time, particularly now that he was his own man again, once more in control of his own destiny. Well, he thought, to a degree at least.
He got out of the car and walked up the path to the front door. He knocked on the door to make sure that the house was empty and when he got no reply he walked to the rear of the house where he stopped for a moment to observe the back gardens of the properties on either side. Luckily the house backed onto fields and so there were no houses from where he could be observed as he took the crowbar from under his jacket and forced the back door open. He quickly entered the kitchen and closed the door behind him.
Now that he was inside the house he could relax a little. He knew Cooke would not be coming home and his girlfriend would never be coming home ever again. However, there was a possibility of an unsuspecting visitor and so he tried to remain quiet and discrete. He did not know how sound carried to the attached property and as he was not totally sure that that property was also empty, he took his shoes off and left them in the kitchen.
He walked through the hall to the living room, observing the many photographs that adorned the walls, some of Cooke with his girlfriend in different locations. There were many of the two of them in Paris, smiling and laughing and generally enjoying themselves. He felt a small pang of guilt at the unnecessary killing of the girl. No matter what anyone would say about him, Lange always tried to keep innocents out of it. But then it was that idiot Pearson who had done for her, not him, and so he was able to quickly forget about it and focused again on his task.
He did not know what he was looking for but thought that something may appear to him, to give him some kind of clue as to where Cooke may have gone. He had first thought that it was going to be a total waste of time and Cooke was probably now in Italy, or the South of France or absolutely anywhere, but after seeing the pictures on the walls he felt that he had most likely stayed in Paris, a place that he was obviously comfortable and familiar with.
The living room was well decorated with tasteful furniture. In the corner a large flat screen television stood on a stand, with cable boxes underneath. A light coloured leather sofa and single chair with occasional tables made up the rest of the room. There was an archway leading to a dining area, where two sizeable sideboards stood side to side, a pine table and four chairs in the middle. Lange quickly moved to the sideboards and began to go through the drawers. They contained the usual accoutrements of life, bits and pieces of what he considered useless crap, things collected over the years and kept when they really should have been thrown away. Receipts, used batteries, chargers for mobile phones long since thrown out. He found nothing of any interest and opened one of the cupboard doors at the side.
Again he worked quickly, his mind now focused on finding anything that could give a clue as to where Danny Cooke may have gone to. Inside the cupboard he found four photograph albums which he took out and placed on the dining table and sat on one of the chairs to view them. The first he opened was of a trip to New York that appeared to be quite recent. He flicked quickly through pictures of the couple in Central Park, outside Penn Station and on top of the Empire State Building but got quickly bored and placed it to the side.
The next he opened was one of them holidaying in Paris. This one took his interest immediately and he shifted in his seat as he realised that he may just have found what he was looking for. Lucy Taylor was a typical woman, thought Lange. Keeping hold of all kinds of useless rubbish as though i
t actually meant something, finding sentimentality in the most redundant of objects. On opening the front cover Lange saw that Lucy had decided to create a book of memories regarding this particular trip to the French capital. He read the words ‘Our Trip To Paris – April 2008’. It contained photographs of the couple in all the usual spots, but what was most interesting were the receipts and tickets she had kept. Receipts for various restaurants and tickets for the Eiffel Tower and the Batobus. Total crap that should have been thrown away but kept for nostalgia and romanticism.
However, the most interesting thing was the receipt she had kept, pasted to the next page. It was a receipt for the hotel they had stayed in, the Hotel de la Sorbonne, on Rue Victor Cousin. Lange did not know it but surmised it was probably some cheap bed and breakfast. ‘Thank you, Lucy Taylor,’ he said out loud and then shut the album. He placed them all back into the sideboard and returned to the kitchen to retrieve his shoes.
Five minutes later he was en route to the airport in the Astra. He would take the next available flight to Charles de Gaulle airport using the false passport. He had absolutely no idea if this was where Cooke would have headed, but it was a starting point if nothing else. If nothing turned up then he would take a train to Amsterdam and hold up there for a time, while he made contact with Ivan and his Dutch colleagues and got himself back on track.
For the first time in a long while he finally felt that things were going his way. That he was a professional again. So God help Danny Cooke and anyone else who stood in his way.
#
Danny had returned to the Grand Hotel Saint Michel after eating lunch at a small café around the corner on the Place de la Sorbonne. He had consumed a mushroom omelette with French bread. He was pleased that his appetite was now returning as, apart from the small breakfast that morning, he had not eaten anything substantial since the meal with Clive Brown the previous afternoon and he had thrown most of that up over Sean Lange. Danny knew that he had been lucky. The guy had been carrying a silenced automatic pistol in his hand and was no doubt intending on ending his life. He had tried to put it to the back of his mind. Lange had no way of finding him now, none at all, and all he had to do was wait for the call from the police in England to let him know that he could come back. That it was now safe and Lange had been caught.
He looked out of the window. His room was directly over the entrance to the hotel, on the corner, giving him a view down the narrow road that was the Rue Victor Cousin, the Sorbonne University to the right. The entrance to the Hotel de la Sorbonne, where he had stayed the previous night, was visible from the window.
He turned and went to the bed and lay on his side with his back to the window. The brown package was on the bed beside him. He picked it up and felt the weight of it. He knew he needed to open it and read the contents, but for some strange reason he kept hesitating. He had no idea why he was so apprehensive on finding out what it contained. Maybe because he thought it would change his life more considerably than the inheritance he had just gained. He was not sure but something was holding him back. However, now it was time, he told himself, he could put it off no longer.
Taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly he untied the string that held the whole thing together and unwrapped the items from the brown paper. He turned and placed the paper on the floor beside the bed and turned back to see what it contained.
Held together by elastic bands were a series of letters and photographs. They were clearly some years old and had faded and stained in various places due to the age of them. He could see from the edges of the package, where the photographs were larger than the envelopes, that they were probably pre-war, possibly even pre-First World War. At the very top of the first batch of letters was a white envelope that was clearly more modern than the rest. Written upon the front were the words ‘Read First’. Pulling the envelope free from the batch, he opened it and took out the letter contained inside. He read:
‘My dear Daniel,
I hope this letter finds you well and I know that what has happened to you must have come as a complete shock. The reasons for me passing on to you the wealth and properties will hopefully become clear when you read the documents enclosed in this package, particularly the journal which belonged to my grandmother. My conscience is clear and what I have done should hopefully, in some way, put right a terrible wrong of the past.
Until very recently I was completely unaware of a part of my family history. The Baronetcy of Ardleigh dates back over four hundred years and with my passing will maybe now come to an end. I have no male heirs as my wife was unable to provide me with the children we both desired due to an unfortunate accident when she was young. This was something that troubled us our whole lives but something that we learned to live with.
When I learned of my illness I set to put my affairs in order. This led me one Sunday afternoon to the attic in the house in Kensington. It had not been visited for some considerable years and in it were items that dated back a very long time. If you can picture the room, it was full of dust, old clothes and toys and trunks full of photographs and old documents. Going through all these things did not reveal anything that was not already known to me. However, on moving an old hobby horse that must have belonged to one of my ancestors I noticed a tear to the fabric underneath. I pulled at the stitching and it revealed a number of documents, letters, photographs and a short journal that had been placed inside, somewhat hastily by the look of it.
They must have remained there for over seventy years. These items are now in front of you. My advice to you is to make of them what you will. Do with the information contained within them what you feel is necessary. And after you have pieced together, and hopefully come to the same conclusion as I have, you will come to an understanding as to why I have done what I have done.
Some of the letters and photographs have been put inside the journal in chronological order and should hopefully be able to provide you with a cohesive history of what took place all those years ago. The remainder of the letters do not add to the history of what happened and can be read separately. It took me a while and a lot of detective work to sort them all out.
Good luck,
Peter’
Intrigued, his mind now totally focused on the task ahead of him, Danny placed the letter to one side, picked up the first bundle and took off the elastic band. This was the journal of a Victoria Holbrook, a hard-covered black diary style book. He opened the front cover to reveal a number of photographs held together with a paper clip along with a letter and an old telegram from the First World War, dated May 1917, informing the recipient of the death in battle of a John Cooke. Danny realised that this must be an ancestor of his and with seeing the name, also realised that this whole thing was not a big mistake, but very real after all. Danny separated the photographs from the paper clip and looked at them individually.
The first showed a soldier, sitting alone on a chair in First World War uniform. Danny had seen hundreds like it and they were typical of the time. Pictures taken in studios and given to family and sweethearts by men about to embark on their perilous journey abroad, unknowing of the horror that was to befall them. On the back was written ‘For Georgina, with love.’
The next was of the same soldier, standing up this time, with his hand on the shoulder of a young woman who was sitting in the same chair as the previous photograph. She was very pretty but the pair of them looked very serious, as though the photographer had told them on no account to smile. Again this was typical of the age. The date on the back showed it as being taken in August 1916. Danny put it down and then picked up the third picture.
This was of the woman again, but this time with a very young baby on her knee. On the back was written ‘To J, love G and G. Come back safe’. He placed this with the others and picked up the final photograph.
This one looked like an official photograph of around thirty soldiers, in three rows facing the camera. Danny was drawn to one of the two officers who sitting in the middle
of the front row. He was wearing a patch over his left eye and looked senior to the officer on his right. Danny knew nothing about the army or the First World War and had no idea what rank the man would have been. Scanning over the picture he was able to find the soldier who he assumed to be John Cooke, standing to the right on the back row. He flipped it over and written on the back was ‘Number 3 platoon, D Company, 12th Fusiliers, February 1917’. As he placed the picture down with the others his eye caught another soldier that suddenly took his interest and a cold shiver suddenly went down his spine. He shook himself to rid himself of the sudden cold feeling. This was another familiar face. Or was it? Danny could not be totally certain, but one of the soldiers in the middle row had a resemblance to someone he knew. Or someone he thought he knew. He squinted at the picture but for the life of him he could not be sure if and where he had seen that face before, but there was something oddly familiar about the man.
He placed the picture down with the other three and picked up the letter. Taking out the two sheets of paper it contained, he began to read.
PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
8th April 1917
My darling Georgina,
I hope this letter reaches you safely and that both you and our darling boy are keeping well. I hope the money I send is reaching you fine. Life here is not as bad as what you may be hearing. We are well looked after and the locals are taking good care of us. We have very capable officers who will no doubt make the correct decisions when we go into battle tomorrow. I have every faith in them all.
I know that what I have put you through over the last few years has not been easy, but once all this is over, we will be able to be together again and away from all those who have caused us so much heartache and stress.
