Nothing but Trouble

by Roberta Kray

  ‘DS Swann.’ He listened for a moment and then put the receiver against his chest. ‘It’s DC Lambert, guv. Higgs and Fielding have just met up with Kirsten Cope at Connolly’s. Cope’s handed over a jiffy bag. Looks like it may have money in it. Do you want them picked up?’

  Valerie’s expression instantly changed. ‘You bet I do.’ Perhaps, finally, they were going to get the break they needed in the Becky Hibbert case. She shot up from her chair, the adrenalin starting to pump through her body. ‘You and DC Franks take Higgs and I’ll interview Paige Fielding with Lister. We’ll leave Kirsten Cope until the end. It won’t do any harm to let her sweat for a while.’

  57

  Paige Fielding had told her story and she was sticking to it. The five thousand pounds found in the jiffy bag was a loan from Kirsten.

  ‘It’s a lot of money,’ Valerie said.

  Paige shrugged. ‘So? We’re old mates, ain’t we?’

  ‘And you need the money for what exactly?’

  ‘The van’s packed in. I need a new one to get me gear to the market.’

  ‘Why cash, though? What’s wrong with a cheque?’

  Paige folded her arms across her cheat and smiled slyly back at her. ‘Got an overdraft, luv. No point putting it in the bank. And Micky, well, he just come along to make sure I got home safe. Lots of scumbag muggers on the Mansfield. You may have noticed.’

  ‘So does Kirsten Cope often lend you money?’ DC Lister asked.

  ‘No,’ Paige said. ‘Course not. It’s an emergency, ain’t it?’

  Valerie inclined her head and gazed at her. ‘Must be good to have such generous friends.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s just a loan. She ain’t givin’ it to me.’

  ‘Take a while to pay all that back.’

  Paige gave another of her lazy shrugs. ‘So I borrowed a few quid. Weren’t a crime last time I checked.’

  ‘There was money found in Becky’s flat,’ Valerie said. ‘Did Kirsten give her a loan too?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Kirsten wouldn’t lend nothin’ to Becky. You know where that came from. She was … y’know … making a bit on the side.’

  ‘Really?’ Valerie said. ‘Only it does seem rather a coincidence that first we find cash at Becky’s place and now you’ve suddenly come into a considerable sum too.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s all it is – coincidence.’ Paige leaned across the table towards Valerie. ‘Now, are you gonna charge me with summat or can I go?’

  Valerie knew that she wasn’t going to get anything more out of her. The girl was too savvy to be intimidated by the law or to make any stupid mistakes. Paige was lying, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. ‘You can go.’

  Paige rose to her feet, smiling smugly. ‘About time too.’

  Valerie and Swann met outside Room 3 and quietly exchanged notes on their respective interviews. Micky Higgs, unsurprisingly, had backed up Paige’s story about the loan from Kirsten.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Swann said. ‘You think the two of them could be blackmailing her?’

  Valerie peered through the small window in the door. Kirsten Cope was nervously tapping the tabletop with her fingertips. Her face was tight, her mouth set in a thin straight line. Fear was written all over her. ‘I wouldn’t put it past them. Question is: what’s the terrible secret? It has to be pretty damning to merit five big ones.’

  ‘Maybe Harry was right. Maybe this does all go back to the Minnie Bright case.’

  Valerie felt a tightening in her stomach. ‘Christ,’ she murmured. ‘If that’s true, we could be about to open a whole can of worms.’

  Swann took a sheet of paper out of the file he was carrying and passed it over to her.

  ‘This just came through.’

  ‘Not that surprising,’ she said, reading through it.

  ‘Not surprising at all.’ Swann looked towards the door again. ‘So how are we going to play this? You want to be good cop or bad cop?’

  Valerie rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV again.’ But as he opened the door and they stepped inside she murmured, ‘Bad.’

  Kirsten visibly jumped as they entered the room. She was one of those Barbie doll girls, all fake tan, long blonde hair, cleavage and lip gloss. If wearing too much pink had been a criminal offence, she could have been arrested. She was dressed in skinny pink jeans, a skimpy white vest and a long pink cardigan.

  Valerie made the introductions and she and Swann sat down.

  ‘Shouldn’t I have a solicitor?’ Kirsten asked anxiously.

  Valerie frowned as if she didn’t quite understand. ‘We’re not charging you with anything, Ms Cope. You’re just here to help us with our enquiries.’

  ‘What enquiries?’

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of Becky Hibbert.’ Valerie pursed her lips, assuming a stern expression. ‘Unless of course you feel that you need a solicitor. If that’s the case, we can stop right now.’

  Kirsten thought about this before shaking her head. ‘No, but I don’t know anything. How could I? What’s Becky’s murder got to do with me?’

  ‘You were a friend of hers, weren’t you?’

  ‘Not really. I mean, not recently. I haven’t seen her for a long time.’

  ‘It must have been a shock, though, her being killed like that?’

  Kirsten’s eyes darted between the two of them. She raised a hand to her mouth and gnawed on a fingernail. ‘Well, yeah, I suppose.’

  ‘Were you aware that five hundred and twenty pounds was found at her flat?’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘That’s a lot of money, don’t you think, for someone like Becky to have. Do you have any idea where it might have come from?’

  There was a distinct hesitation before Kirsten shook her head again. ‘Why should I? Like I said, I haven’t seen her in years.’

  ‘So it didn’t come from you?’

  ‘No,’ Kirsten said too quickly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. Nothing. Why would I give her money?’

  ‘You gave money to Paige Fielding. Five thousand pounds, in fact. Quite a considerable sum.’

  Kirsten squirmed in her seat and glanced away. ‘She called me up, said she needed it.’ She looked back at Valerie, but only for a second, before her gaze dropped down to the table. ‘It’s only a loan. She’ll pay me back.’

  ‘That’ll take a while.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And she didn’t tell you what it was for?’

  Kirsten chewed on her lip while she tried to come up with an answer. ‘Bills and stuff,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Bills and stuff?’

  ‘Yeah, I think that was it. I’m not sure. I don’t remember exactly.’

  Valerie could see the lie imprinted on her face. Paige and Micky Higgs might have got their story straight, but they hadn’t bothered, or maybe hadn’t had the time, to share the details with Kirsten. ‘You don’t remember why you lent someone five thousand pounds?’

  Kirsten Cope didn’t answer.

  ‘So what’s with the jiffy bag full of notes?’ Valerie persisted. ‘It seems a funny way to go about things. Why didn’t you just give her a cheque?’

  Kirsten, who wasn’t anything like as glib as Paige, was still struggling to come up with answers. ‘Er …’

  Swann, sliding into his good cop routine, rode smartly to her rescue. ‘Maybe she needed it in a hurry, huh? Couldn’t wait for a cheque to clear. Was that it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kirsten said, nodding. She gazed gratefully at Swann, batting her lashes in a way that was probably supposed to turn his legs to jelly. ‘That’s it. That’s why.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, glancing at Valerie. ‘That’s cleared that up.’

  Kirsten looked relieved. ‘So is that it? Are we done now?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Valerie said. ‘There is something else I’d like to talk to you about.’ She left a deliberate pause, and then said, ‘Minnie Bright?’

  Kirsten’s
whole body stiffened, her eyes growing large at this unexpected turn of events. ‘Minnie? What? I-I don’t understand,’ she stammered.

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ Valerie said. ‘We’re not stupid. There’s no point in lying any more. It’s time to tell the truth.’ She was winging it, following her instincts and watching Kirsten’s responses carefully. One wrong word and she could blow it completely. ‘Paige has given us her version, so why you tell us yours?’

  ‘Paige? What? I don’t … I haven’t …’

  Valerie smiled coldly back at her. It was the oldest trick in the book, playing one suspect off against another. Paige would have laughed in her face – she wasn’t so naïve – but Kirsten had little experience in dealing with the law. She might have grown up on the Mansfield Estate, but the last time she’d been in any trouble was when she was ten years old. ‘She’s told us why you really gave her the money. And why you gave money to Becky too.’

  ‘She’s lying!’ Kirsten spat out, a red flush spreading across her cheeks. ‘You can’t believe anything she says!’

  Valerie felt that familiar tingling sensation, the feeling she always got when she was on the brink of a breakthrough. She only had to look at Kirsten to see how close to the edge she was. One more push was all it would take. ‘I’m afraid she’s told us everything. It’s over, Kirsten. There’s no use denying it. The secret’s out.’

  For a moment Kirsten looked like she might be prepared to put up a fight. Her eyes blazed and her hands clenched into fists on the table. She glared back at Valerie, baring her teeth. Then her face suddenly crumpled, and tears slipped from her eyes and slid down her cheeks. ‘It was him,’ she wailed, giving in to her fear. ‘He made me do it! It wasn’t my fault.’

  Valerie and Swann exchanged a quick glance.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Swann said, leaning across to pat Kirsten paternally on the arm. ‘It’s over now. It’s out in the open. We know what he did. You don’t need to worry any more.’

  But Kirsten could barely speak for weeping. She had her head in her hands and was racked with sobs. ‘It … it wasn’t my fault,’ she repeated. ‘He said he’d take care of me. He … he said that if I did as I was told, you wouldn’t send me to jail.’

  It took ten minutes and two glasses of water before she finally started to calm down. Valerie asked if she’d like a solicitor now, but she refused. ‘No, no, I don’t want anyone else here.’

  When Kirsten had recovered some of her composure, Swann said, ‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Why don’t you tell us in your own words what actually happened.’

  Kirsten wiped her face with the palms of her hands. ‘I was sixteen,’ she said, her voice small and shaky. ‘That’s when he first came to see me. He said he’d heard that the police were looking into the Minnie Bright case again, that her mum wanted us punished for making Minnie go into the house.’ She gave another light sob and gazed at Swann pleadingly. ‘It was only a game. We didn’t mean … we didn’t know that she …’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Swann said in a kindly tone. He passed another tissue across the table.

  Kirsten dabbed at her eyes before she continued. ‘I was scared, you see. He said we were all old enough now to go to prison, that it could be … could be years before we got out again. He said he didn’t think it was fair. He said he wanted to help me.’

  ‘And how was he planning on doing that?’ Valerie asked.

  A red flush stained Kirsten’s cheeks again. ‘He said he knew people, high-up people like judges and lawyers, MPs and that … and that if I was nice to them, if I … well, they’d make sure the case stayed closed. He said it was the only thing to do. And he said I mustn’t tell the others, mustn’t tell anyone else. It had to be our secret.’

  Valerie winced inwardly. How many times had she heard stories similar to this one – young girls exploited through fear or need, used and abused by predatory men. For the first time that afternoon, she felt sympathy for Kirsten Cope. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He got me a flat and everything. He was nice at first, really kind. So long as I did what I was told, it was all okay.’

  ‘And when you didn’t?’

  Kirsten gave a shudder, the response more descriptive perhaps than any words could have been.

  ‘How long did this go on for?’ Valerie asked softly.

  ‘A couple of years. Until I was eighteen.’

  When she was no longer young enough or fresh enough, Valerie thought, to satisfy the perverted needs of the men who were abusing her. ‘And then? Did he leave you alone, or …’

  Kirsten gave a quick shake of her head. ‘He said I was his, that I’d always be his. He said he’d saved me from jail and so I owed him. I was starting to get some work then, just small parts, but he reckoned I could make it big. He found me an agent and everything. He said, if I played it smart, I could be the next Jordan.’

  Valerie was aware of Swann’s gaze flicking instinctively down to Kirsten’s chest. The D-cup breasts, swollen with silicone, jutted beneath her skimpy T-shirt. ‘And he took a share of your earnings, I presume?’

  Kirsten shrugged. ‘But things got better then. I mean, he couldn’t … he couldn’t hurt me any more. Not in that way. He couldn’t leave any bruises, see? Not if I was filming or having photos done. It was all going good,’ she said bitterly, ‘until that reporter woman turned up.’

  Valerie baulked at the girl’s definition of ‘going good’ but knew that it was unfair to make judgements. Kirsten Cope had been controlled and manipulated from an early age. For her, the new situation must have been a hundred times better than the old one. ‘Jessica Vaughan,’ she said.

  ‘That’s her. She came sniffing round but I wouldn’t talk to her. He said I mustn’t. She’d found out, you see, about what I’d done, about how we’d escaped going to jail, and that was what she was really going to write about.’ Kirsten’s voice rose an octave, becoming thin and whiny. ‘She was going to get the story splashed all over the Sundays. It was going to come out about … about …’ Kirsten buried her face in the tissue, snivelling loudly.

  Valerie had no time for Jessica Vaughan – she could well believe that the woman had been looking for a scandalous angle – but she was also aware that there had never been any suggestion of the girls being prosecuted. Kirsten had been played, just like they were playing her now. ‘Do you have any idea how she found out?’

  Kirsten blew her nose and nodded. ‘He said it was Hannah Bright stirring up trouble again. That the two of them were in it together. He said we had to stop the other girls from talking or all of us would end up in the dock. She’d have twisted our words, see, tried to make out that we’d forced Minnie to go into the house. And then she’d have written about all the other stuff too, about the judges and—’

  ‘Okay,’ Valerie said, interrupting before Kirsten had the chance to start weeping again. ‘So you reckoned that if you could stop the other girls from talking to Vaughan, this whole problem would just go away.’

  Kirsten balled up the tissue, put it on the table and pushed it away from her. ‘I told them it would ruin my career if the article was written, that no one would want to employ someone who’d been connected to the murder of a child. No one knows, see, ’cause I changed my name and everything. I gave them a thousand each, but then when Becky was killed, Paige rang me up. She guessed there was more to it, that there was other stuff I didn’t want coming out.’

  ‘And she wanted more to keep her mouth shut,’ Swann said.

  Kirsten nodded again. ‘Five grand.’

  ‘But you didn’t try to pay off Sam Kendall,’ Valerie said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘He said he’d deal with her.’

  Valerie was still waiting for Kirsten to reveal his name. She hadn’t used it, not once. Could it be Higgs? Or Livesey? And wasn’t there a boyfriend? Some footballer, she thought, although he didn’t seem a likely candidate. Whoever was pulling Kirsten’s strings was dark and sadistic and willing to kill. When Kirsten had f
irst embarked on her revelations, Valerie had felt a slightly shameful feeling of relief – at least this had nothing to do with the safety of Donald Peck’s conviction – but now a few doubts were starting to surface.

  Swann must have been thinking along the same lines, because he suddenly said, ‘Tell me about the call that Lynda Choi made to you on the night she died.’

  Kirsten screwed up her face. ‘She was drunk, not making any sense. She was rambling on about a light she’d seen. A light that had gone on in the house on the day that Minnie was … you know.’

  ‘Rambling on?’

  ‘Saying that it couldn’t have been the Beast and it couldn’t have been Minnie and so there must have been someone else in there. But there wasn’t. Everyone knows that sick bastard killed her. She kept going on and on like I was thick or something and just didn’t get it.’

  ‘Why was she so sure that it couldn’t have been Minnie?’ Valerie asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She didn’t explain? That seems a bit odd seeing as it was the reason she called you in the first place.’

  ‘I told you,’ Kirsten said. ‘She was pissed, wasn’t she? Completely trolleyed. I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying.’ Her forehead creased up as she tried to recollect exactly what Lynda had told her. ‘Pictures. Something to do with a picture she’d found in an old newspaper. And then she started saying about how she was going to go to the cops to tell them all about it.’

  ‘And you didn’t want that,’ Swann said. ‘Because you were scared she’d draw attention to the case again.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Kirsten admitted. ‘Yeah, I tried to calm her down and talk her out of it. That was why the call was so long. I said she’d be in trouble for lying all those years ago, that she was better off keeping her mouth shut. I mean, it wasn’t going to make any difference now, was it? Not after all this time.’

  ‘And then Lynda conveniently drowned.’

  Kirsten scowled at her. ‘That wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was an accident. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. But she was drunk, wasn’t she? She must have slipped and fallen in the water.’