The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

  Forty

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ Karen Cooper asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Not yet, anyway. But the situation was so fluid, and moving so quickly, that I had no idea how long that would be the case. In truth, I was struggling just to keep up with events, never mind get on top of them. Chris and I were sitting in an interview suite with the one woman who should have been able to help in that regard, and she was giving us nothing. Every now and then, there’d be a polite knock at the door, and an officer would deliver a swiftly jotted update. It wasn’t exactly interrupting the flow of conversation.

  ‘Then I want to go.’

  Karen half stood, but then didn’t seem to have the willpower to complete the move. I just stared at her until she settled back down again.

  ‘If I’m not under arrest, then I don’t have to stay here.’

  ‘No. But I think it’s in everyone’s best interests if you talk to us. Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Anyway, where would you go? I’m sure you understand that your home is out of bounds for the time being. That it’s currently a major crime scene.’

  ‘I want a lawyer, then.’

  She was staring down at the table, so I risked a curious glance at Chris, and he returned my expression. Am I under arrest? I want to go. I want a lawyer. They were all phrases that would normally have set alarm bells ringing. And yet, as far as we knew, Karen Cooper wasn’t in any trouble. She was as much a victim of her husband as everyone else he’d hurt, the exact details of which we were still trying to work out.

  We could be sure of at least three others. It was nearly two hours since the incident at Petrie Crescent. A young man named Kieran Yates was presently in a critical condition and unlikely to survive, while two WPCs were both in hospital. Sergeant Melanie Connor remained critical but stable, while Sergeant April Graves, who had been less seriously injured in the attack, was awake now and able to talk about what had happened.

  The facts on the ground were these. A woman named Margaret Smith had placed an emergency call just after three o’clock this afternoon. She was obviously in extreme distress, and told Dispatch that a relative of hers had been badly assaulted and needed an ambulance immediately. The attacker had already fled the scene, but she’d given a basic description of his vehicle over the phone – a black Range Rover of some kind. The man lived next door, and his name was Derek, but she didn’t know his surname.

  Officers and an ambulance crew had been in attendance at the scene within minutes, where they found Margaret Smith in the front garden, sobbing quietly, her clothes soaked with blood, cradling what appeared at first glance to be a body in the undergrowth. The young man, subsequently identified as Kieran Yates, had been severely injured. His face was a mask of blood and his breathing was weak. As paramedics cleared his airway, he suffered a heart attack, and they’d worked hard at the scene to save his life.

  Margaret Smith explained that she’d managed to fight the attacker off, causing him to flee the scene. The police were already next door, she told officers: she’d shouted for them, but they hadn’t come out, and she’d been reluctant to leave Kieran alone in the garden.

  When officers entered the neighbouring property, they found the two WPCs on the kitchen floor. Graves was semi-conscious, and had managed to prop herself up against the cabinets, while Connor was unconscious. Both were bleeding heavily. Karen Cooper herself had been found huddled in the front room, in the corner between the radiator and the door. She had her hands pressed to her eyes and was rocking gently. After an initial examination by paramedics, she had been brought to the department. The assailant had been quickly identified as her husband, Derek Edward Cooper, whose whereabouts were currently unknown.

  Officers down.

  ‘I really don’t think a lawyer will be necessary,’ I told Karen now. ‘For the moment, we’re just trying to get a handle on what happened this afternoon. It’s important that we do that quickly, so we can locate your husband. A lawyer is only going to complicate things and get in the way. That’s not in anybody’s interests, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said again.

  ‘Trust me, then.’ I leaned forward. ‘Let’s start with this afternoon. You left work early, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘Because I was upset. Derek came to pick me up.’

  ‘What were you upset about?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Despite all the make-up, Karen Cooper didn’t strike me as much of an actress, and I didn’t think that was true. But I filed it away for later.

  ‘All right. So Derek picked you up. Is that normal? Does he usually come to get you?’

  ‘Not always. Sometimes.’ She shrugged. Her manner was frustrating. At first, it had been as though she didn’t understand the severity of the situation – as if what had happened this afternoon was just some minor inconvenience that really ought to have been sorted out by now. And then, as reality had settled in, she’d become more sullen.

  What the hell is wrong with you, Karen?

  But then, I reminded myself, it was likely she’d suffered a great deal of trauma. There was bruising beginning to appear around her left eye, and tears had spread her make-up in streaks down her face. It was obvious that she’d been assaulted by her husband this afternoon, and it was difficult to believe it had been the first occasion. In an earlier interview with Margaret Smith, the elderly woman had alluded to this. Perhaps Derek Cooper’s violence was now such a natural setting for Karen that she was having trouble comprehending why the outside world would care. Perhaps she was even in shock.

  I said, ‘Your neighbour told us she’d spoken to you last week. In a café?’

  ‘Yes, I remember that.’

  ‘She told us you mentioned that Derek had a temper. That he could lash out.’ I left a pause for her to reply, but she didn’t. ‘Is that what happened when you got home today?’

  ‘Derek was … yes. Derek was very angry.’

  ‘Does Derek get angry a lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘More and more angry recently, right?’

  She looked awkward. ‘There’s a lot of pressure on him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was made redundant. He’s always been a proud man. It’s been hard.’

  Chris took out a pen. ‘When was this?’

  Things had been moving so quickly that we were playing catch-up for the moment. I hadn’t even known what Derek Cooper did for a living. Karen told us now that he’d been a manager in a construction firm until last year, when the company had downsized and he’d been let go. He’d been unable to find work since. Before then, the money had been good, and they still had savings, but now they were beginning to struggle.

  ‘So he was under pressure. I don’t think that excuses him getting angry, does it?’ I gestured at her eye. ‘Not this kind of angry, anyway. So he’s lashed out at you before, Karen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you report it?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, looking small. ‘Like I said, he’s under a lot of pressure. And … well, you don’t cross Derek when he’s like that. Nobody does.’

  King in his own little domain, I thought. Well, it was one thing ruling over a downtrodden woman behind closed doors, another altogether facing down an entire police department. Officers down, I thought. You don’t cross Derek. He was going to find out.

  I pulled a sheet of paper from the file in front of me: a hastily printed transcript of the testimony April Graves had given from her hospital bed.

  ‘Your husband attacked two police officers immediately after they entered the property,’ I said. ‘They were there to address an issue regarding your next-door neighbour, but the front door was ajar, and they heard shouting and crying coming from inside, so they moved into the kitchen.’

  ‘I didn’t see them.’

  ‘No, but your husband confronted
them. Sergeant Graves was closest to the living room, and he struck her on the side of the head with a rolling pin. There was no preamble. She wasn’t anticipating it, and didn’t have time to see it coming. The blow knocked her unconscious.’

  It looked as though the other officer had had a chance to fumble with her Taser, but not enough time to use it. Derek Cooper had struck her several times, the last few most likely when she was already incapacitated on the floor. He’d then gone outside, walked casually down his path and up his neighbour’s, and attacked Kieran Yates with his bare hands, beating the young man almost to death.

  ‘We found the rolling pin in the kitchen bin,’ I told Karen Cooper. ‘He’d stuffed it there like it was a regular piece of rubbish that he was done with. Nice of him to tidy up after himself, I guess. Weird, but nice.’

  She looked at me, trembling slightly, but didn’t reply.

  ‘Where is he now, Karen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s go back, then. You left Eyecatchers at what time?’

  ‘I’ve already told you all this.’

  ‘We’ll do it as many times as we need to.’

  ‘About half one. Oh God.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘Maybe a bit after.’

  ‘Because you were upset.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You still haven’t said why.’

  ‘We had an argument, all right? Derek had done something I didn’t like.’ There was a sudden pleading tone to her voice. ‘Can’t we leave it at that?’

  I stared at her for a few more seconds.

  Derek had done something I didn’t like.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We really can’t leave it at that. What was it that he’d done, Karen?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we have to. Do the names Sharon Hendricks and Amanda Jarman mean anything to you? They’ve both worked for you.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘They were both assaulted and badly beaten. You know about Sharon, of course. She survived. But Amanda was attacked last night. She died as a result of her injuries.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She went pale. ‘Oh God, no.’

  ‘Was Derek out last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was that what you were arguing about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. He didn’t come home last night, and that was what you were angry about.’

  ‘He didn’t go out.’

  ‘You’re lying, Karen. Why bother protecting him now?’

  She didn’t answer, but it was clear to me that that was what she was doing. It was frustrating, as I could see straight through it, but many victims experience a kind of Stockholm syndrome, and I forced myself to remember the kind of pressure she must be under here. Not that it made the situation any less urgent.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Friends? Other family? Somewhere else?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Finally I lost patience with her.

  ‘Listen to me, Karen.’ I leaned forward. ‘I get that you’ve been through a lot, and that this is hard for you to deal with. But if your husband hurts anyone else, and you could have stopped it, you’ll be partly responsible for that. Do you understand me? Do you not—’

  ‘I know that,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t you think I know that?’

  And then before Chris or I could respond, Karen Cooper began clawing desperately at her own face, as though she might not know the answers to our questions, but a woman hidden deep beneath her skin might, if only she could find her again.

  So, Derek Edward Cooper.

  Are you our man?

  Back in the operations room, I was sitting at my desk and looking at the only photograph we had of Cooper. At the end of the interview, Karen had needed to be restrained and sedated, and she wouldn’t be talking to us again for the time being. But her husband – the man on my computer screen – remained at large. So far there had been no sightings of either him or his vehicle.

  There would be other photographs soon, taken from his home, but for now this was all we had: the passport-sized photograph from his driving licence. It was a few years old. Cooper had lost the licence for a while, following repeated points for speeding, which seemed to fit the growing picture I was building up of him in my head. A man who felt that the rules applied to other people, not him. A man who didn’t like it when things didn’t go his way.

  In the photograph, his hair was receding and close-cropped, and his face was strong and broad in a way that suggested his body would be too. He looked hard, and nowhere more so than in the eyes: the glare he was giving the camera was the kind designed to back another man down in a bar. Even in a still image, he seemed full of barely suppressed rage.

  I thought about how the victims had described their attacker. The words they’d used. A monster. A concentration of hatred. The photograph was silent, of course, as it had to be. But it reminded me that our attacker always had been too. That he seemed to hate his victims too much for words.

  Are you our man?

  We could link him to Sharon Hendricks and Amanda Jarman through his wife’s employment, but to an extent they remained satellite investigations to the main one. He had lost his job not long before the attack on Sharon Hendricks, and had been unemployed since, which would have given him the opportunity to access the victims’ homes in the daytime. But obviously that was all circumstantial.

  What else?

  The Coopers had two children, both nearly in their teens, which made me think again about the playground by Adam Johnson’s house. Who goes to a playground? Children and their parents. It was local to the Coopers, and Johnson had lived in that strange cottage there since childhood. It seemed possible that Derek Cooper had seen Johnson near the playground, and then recognised him in Sharon Hendricks’ back garden on the night of the attack. And that, upon visiting him, he’d found someone he could dominate and use.

  Possible.

  Then there was the psychological angle. The escalation in our creeper had been evident from the increasing ferocity of the attacks. Whatever the reason behind it, it seemed clear enough that Derek Cooper was also undergoing a meltdown of some kind, and that this afternoon he’d boiled over. The officers had only been there about some dead bees, but perhaps he’d suspected otherwise and attacked them before they could arrest him for what he thought they were really there for. Sticking the rolling pin in the bin also suggested disassociation from reality.

  It’s you, isn’t it, Derek?

  It had to be. I was sure that both Sharon Hendricks and Amanda Jarman had been attacked by the same man as the others, and that led straight to Eyecatchers. It could hardly be a coincidence that a man associated with the shop had also gone ballistic today and vanished off the grid. Cooper must have known that attacking Amanda would bring us to his door. Which meant either that he was out of control, or that he no longer cared about getting caught.

  You’re the monster Adam Johnson talked about.

  I pulled up the online file for Johnson’s attacks, then scanned through to find a number for Jane. Perhaps something about Cooper would jog her memory – remind her of something else Johnson had said. But the only number we had was her home phone, and it went to voicemail. I could have kicked myself for never taking a mobile contact for her.

  I left a short message.

  ‘Jane, it’s Zoe Dolan. We really need to go over what Adam Johnson told you again. It’s a matter of urgency. Can you give me a ring as soon as possible, please?’

  Since I didn’t know for sure where I was going to be, I gave her my mobile number, then hung up.

  ‘Result,’ Chris said.

  I shook my head. ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve found his Range Rover.’

  On the far side of the incident room, there was a flurry of activity. Officers on phones were clicking fingers at each other, everybody already moving.

  �
�Where?’

  ‘It’s in that open-air car park by the side of the bus station. No ticket or anything. Looks like he’s just abandoned it.’

  ‘Shit.’

  That was bad news. The city’s bus station was a long, double-sided building, with local buses leaving from one side and coaches dispersing from the other, threading out all around the country. With a two-hour head start, Cooper could be almost anywhere by now.

  Chris said, ‘He ditched the vehicle because he knew we’d be looking out for it. Figured he wouldn’t get far enough in it.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘The station will have CCTV.’

  ‘Which we’ll now have to sort through to find out exactly which coach he’s on. He’ll have paid cash. By the time we discover where he went, he’ll have been there for hours. And if the coach made multiple stops, we’re even further behind.’

  Unless we were incredibly lucky, Derek Cooper would have at least one more night on the loose, and a man in his situation could hurt a lot of people in that space of time. Especially when he had no reason not to.

  ‘We’re already tracing friends and family connections,’ Chris said. ‘All this does is broaden the net.’

  ‘To most of the country.’

  Something else was bothering me, though, and it took me a few quiet seconds to work out what it was. Even though Cooper appeared to be in meltdown, there were still flashes of cunning in his behaviour. He’d waited with Amanda Jarman all that time last night. He’d been careful with the text messages. And even something as bizarre as the rolling pin he’d used to attack the officers in his kitchen – stuffing it into the kitchen bin was pointless, but it still showed a flicker of awareness. And then there were—

  ‘The windows,’ I said suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the victims’ houses.’ I turned in my seat to look up at Chris. ‘He always climbed out of the window afterwards. He got in easily through the front door, but never left that way.’