A Cross to Bear: A Jack Sheridan Mystery

by Vogel, Vince

  Jack felt terribly sad as he gazed at the wall. The girl would never add to it again. This mural to her life, which had grown over many years, stopped on Saturday forever.

  “That’s Becky’s wall,” Helen stated with satisfaction. “It was her place to go crazy.”

  Jack glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled. He then turned back and concentrated on the photographs. In a lot of them was the same spotty adolescent in various styles of baseball cap, doing his best tough guy impression.

  “Is this Coop?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Steven said from the doorway, where he stood as though afraid to come inside.

  “What’s his full name?”

  “Darren Cooper. I taught him ten years ago. He was a loser back then too.”

  “Have you got an address for him?”

  “No, but he’s got previous, so your guys should have an address.”

  “Has he been in contact with Becky lately?”

  “He was about a month back. Hanging around, harassing her.”

  “And then he stopped?”

  “He missed her was all,” Helen interposed softly. “When she first got out of Rampton, he wanted to see her. But eventually he understood. He never hurt her in any physical sense. He was just bad for her is all. Becky had enough problems without adding another.”

  “Did he ever threaten Becky?”

  “Not that we know of,” Steven said.

  “He wouldn’t,” Helen chimed in.

  Jack turned his attention back to the room. It saddened him to think that this space, so idiosyncratic to its occupant, would forever be frozen in this moment. Many parents who lose children in these circumstances often keep the bedroom the way it was the last time it was used. It’s like time has stopped and the room is suspended in the eternal last second of the child’s life. Maybe that was why they did it. Because inside that room, they could still feel that a part of their son or daughter was still around.

  The image of his own daughter, Carrie, came flooding into Jack’s mind as he glimpsed around the place. Her room also existed in the same state it had when she’d last slept in the house ten years ago. He’d kept it in perfect condition for whenever she came back. Even though she was a woman of twenty-seven now, and the Libertines and Red Hot Chilli Peppers posters that adorned the walls might not be her thing anymore, Jack still kept the memory of his daughter alive within that room. Every so often he would sit upon her bed and think of the daughter he hadn’t seen for so long, wondering where she was. Wondering who she was.

  “I have to warn you,” Jack said, turning toward the couple at the door, “Scotland Yard Special Crimes Unit is on this case as well as me. They’re going to want to take a look at her room. They’ll be taking things like her computer and stuff like that.”

  “What do they want with her computer?” Steven Cuthbert asked, and Jack observed a nervous twinge travel up the facade of his face.

  “It’s only to eliminate things. Precautionary. They’ll want to look at all her social media. You know, who she’s speaking with regularly. That sort of thing.”

  “But you said this was part of that crucifix thing,” Steven put to him.

  “No, I said we think it is.”

  “But you said she was.” Cuthbert paused and looked at his wife.

  “The killing was similar, yes,” Jack stated.

  “So wouldn’t that mean that Becky was chosen at random?”

  “These things are never truly random. Becky was chosen for a reason, whether by a complete stranger or someone she knew.”

  “Someone she knew?”

  “We can’t ignore any possibilities at this early stage.”

  “First you say it’s this crucifix guy, and now you think it could be someone she knew?”

  “I’m not actually saying anything, Steven. There are possibilities, and until I begin getting to the bottom of why your daughter was killed, I won’t know anything for sure.”

  “Please, Steve,” Helen said softly to her husband, turning to face him. “Jack’s doing his best.”

  “Like he did for John,” Steven Cuthbert quipped.

  She must have told him how she knew me while they were in the car, Jack thought.

  “That’s not fair,” Helen said to Steven.

  In a matter-of-fact way, Jack said, “We’re going to need you both down at the station within the next few days to make a statement. Obviously because of this difficult time, you can take as much time as you need. Someone from the Special Crimes Unit will be by later today to collect items of Becky’s for their own enquiries.”

  Having said this in an officious tone, Jack made his way to the bedroom door, ready to leave the house. As he was passing Helen, she took his hand and squeezed it. Jack stopped and looked down at her.

  “Thank you for taking me to see her,” she said.

  “You’re perfectly welcome, Helen.”

  Jack patted her hand gently with his free hand, and she let go. He then passed Steven, not bothering to say goodbye, walked down the stairs, and left the house.

  In the car outside, Jack gazed through the windscreen at the Cuthbert residence.

  “You get much information out of them?” Lange asked as Jack buckled his seat belt.

  “There’s secrets in that house, George,” Jack said, having completely ignored Lange’s question.

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “I intend to find out.”

  Jack started the car and reversed out of the drive.

  When he pulled out onto the road, he looked in his wing mirror and spotted a familiar vehicle parked a short distance away. He immediately stopped the car and got out.

  “What’re you doing?” Lange called after him while Jack strolled meaningfully off down the street.

  Along a line of parked cars, the vehicle he’d spotted was starting up and about to pull out when Jack marched straight up to it and stood directly in front, planting his hands down firmly on the bonnet. He glared through the windscreen at the desperate-looking Jonny Cockburn, who’d just been caught.

  “Turn the engine off,” Jack demanded.

  With a groan and a shrug, Jonny did as he was asked. Jack then sauntered around to the driver’s-side window, where the journalist wound it down.

  “The rain’s stopped for a while at least,” he remarked casually.

  “Never mind the bloody rain. What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Jack, but England’s not quite a police state yet. Give it a few more years of the Tories in power and perhaps, but not yet.”

  “Get to the point, Jonny.”

  “Meaning that I can drive and park my car where I want.”

  “But why this particular cul-de-sac?”

  “It’s as good as any.”

  “Cut the shit, Jonny. You were following me.”

  “I was not.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  The glimmer of a smirk traveled across the journalist’s pockmarked face.

  “Well, while you’re here, Jack,” he said in a cocky tone, “how about a few questions?”

  Jack instinctively began walking back to his own car.

  “Is that the girl’s parents?” Cockburn shouted after him.

  Jack stopped dead in the center of the road, turned on his heels, and pointed his finger straight at Jonny.

  “You leave those people alone,” he said firmly, his eyes pointing as hard as his finger.

  “Just answer the question.”

  Jack’s eyes bulged, and Cockburn shrunk a little in his seat.

  “You’ve been warned, Jonny,” Jack growled at him. “Warned.”

  Jack got back to his car and drove him and Lange out of there, his head filled with the buzzing cry of a million thought flies swarming around.

  10

  The next move for Jack was to see Lauren Chalmers, the last person to have seen Becky alive. Considering that the identification of her body was the fi
rst real lead in this case, he wanted to get as many facts on Becky’s disappearance as he could and get them as soon as possible. He’d had Lange call the number for Lauren that Helen had given him, and ascertained that the girl was at home with her mother. They were driving there now through a pitter-patter of light rain.

  As he drove, Jack’s mind wandered toward thoughts of his own daughter, Carrie. A hollow yearning opened up, as it always did whenever Jack remembered the past. He hadn’t seen or spoken directly to his daughter for ten years. Not since she was seventeen. The last thing she’d said to him was that she never wanted to see him again. As a matter of fact, she had screamed it at him while storming out of the house with a bag of her clothes. He still remembered that tearful scowl she wore on her face as she’d walked out of his life.

  For the past decade, he’d only gotten to hear about his daughter secondhand, through relatives or his contacts in the police.

  They arrived at the home of Lauren Chalmers in a suburb that had the same pristine monolithic redbrick look as the Cuthberts’ place. This time, Lange went with Jack. An attractive middle-aged woman answered the door, and the two detectives held up their badges.

  “Mrs. Chalmers, I presume,” Jack said.

  “Yes. Come inside.”

  The lady of the house spoke with a clean-cut accent and was wearing a pretty yellow summer dress that was a little out of tune with the weather. She was at least six feet tall with long brown hair that poured like a waterfall down her lean back, and when she’d opened the door, her alluring appearance had slightly startled both men.

  “Put your tongue back in, George,” Jack whispered to Lange as they followed her inside.

  Once they’d removed their shoes and coats, she ushered the detectives into the lounge, where they found a china tea set already laid out on the coffee table and a young brunette girl sitting on a chocolate leather couch. She was the image of her mother at a younger age, tall and athletic with long hair and a tanned complexion. She was probably already fighting the rabid boys off with a stick, Jack thought.

  “You must be Lauren,” he said.

  “Yes,” the girl answered meekly, the worried look on her face of an innocent being visited for the first time by the police.

  Like the house itself, the lounge was similar to that of the Cuthberts’. Two large chocolate-brown leather couches faced each other across an Ikea pine coffee table that matched the rest of the unremarkable plain pine furniture in the room. Bookcase, television stand, and small tables with featureless clay vases of assorted dry flowers. Even the flat-screen television looked the same as the one Steven Cuthbert had been lounging in front of earlier, and Jack felt he was setting foot inside a catalog showroom.

  The two of them took a seat across from Lauren. Mrs. Chalmers went about preparing the tea. Once it was organized, she took her place beside her daughter.

  “I take it this is about Becky going missing?” Mrs. Chalmers asked.

  “It is.”

  “Is she okay?” Lauren enquired timidly.

  “I’m afraid she’s not.”

  “Oh my!” the teenager let out, throwing her hand over her mouth, mother instinctively grabbing hold of her shoulders.

  “What’s happened?” Mrs. Chalmers wanted to know, a dejected look added to her own face.

  “I’m afraid that a body has been found, and we’ve identified it as Becky Dorring.”

  Lauren’s hand gripped her mouth even tighter, and she burst into tears, throwing herself into her mother, who instinctively pulled her in.

  “It’s this body they found in Epping yesterday, isn’t it?” Mrs. Chalmers interjected.

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss that, madam. But I do need to know everything that your daughter can tell me about Saturday night and the last time she saw Becky.”

  It took at least a minute for the girl to stop crying, her mother holding her and cooing into her ear the whole time until she settled.

  “She left just after nine,” Lauren began once she had, dabbing her nose with a tissue. “We studied until half eight and then watched television for half an hour.”

  “And you saw her to the door?”

  “Yes. I waved her off. I always did. She was on her bike.”

  “And what was the last you saw of her?”

  “She cycled to the end of the street and turned off.”

  “Which way did she turn?”

  “Left. Toward Arradine. That was the last I saw her. Then about an hour later, her mum, Helen, called saying she hadn’t been back yet.”

  “Did Becky tell you that she was going to meet anyone before going home?”

  “No. She said she was going straight home.”

  “How was her behavior? Did she talk to you about anything in particular? Did she seem agitated?”

  “No. She was happy. Really happy. She’d had it so hard in her life, but now with her A-Levels coming up, she was genuinely excited for the future.”

  “When you say she’d had it hard in her life, you mean the death of her father?”

  “And her brother ending all contact with her. She used to talk about her brother a lot. How much she missed him.”

  “What else constituted a hard life for Becky?”

  “Like you said, her father getting killed. And she didn’t get on with her stepfather either.”

  “Did she ever say anything to you about Steven Cuthbert?”

  “Not really. It was nothing like he hit her or anything. She just never really spoke about him, but when she did it was to complain.”

  “Complain about what?”

  “That he was always hassling her for the way she lived her life. Always trying to control her. But then Mr. Cuthbert’s always been a bit of a dick.”

  “Lauren!” her mother scolded.

  “Sorry, but he is,” she retorted, glancing at her mother and then back at the detectives. “He’s a teacher at our school. At Mary Magdalene’s. He’s deputy head. You can always hear him shouting at his class or belittling someone. He’s not very well liked. He taught me science in year eight, and I hated him. He’s really slimy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like he’s always shouting at the boys, but then he’s really sweet and sleazy with the girls.”

  Jack underlined Cuthbert’s name in his notebook.

  “What about her ex-boyfriend Coop?” he then asked.

  “Coop was this older guy. I didn’t really know him. He went out with Becky before I hung out with her. See, I was always in the year below. But when she got held back, she was put in my form group. So I’ve only really known her this past year.”

  “Did she ever mention Coop to you? Talk to you about him?”

  “Only when he bugged her.”

  “How’d he bug her?”

  “By turning up at places, like outside school and stuff.”

  “He did this often?”

  “About twice a week. But not for the last month.”

  “Do you know what split them up?”

  “When she had her breakdown.” She paused, unsure if she’d said something she shouldn’t.

  “It’s okay, we know all about her time in Rampton,” Jack reassured her.

  “Well, when she went inside the institute, she got herself together and decided to stop taking drugs. Coop was drugs. Because of that, she couldn’t be with him anymore. And, plus, she always told me that she was really angry at him for something he’d made her do.”

  “What did he make her do?” Jack enquired, his eyebrows rising.

  “I don’t know. She never said. Becky always had a way of saying stuff without actually giving you any real facts. Like she needed to talk about it but was afraid of saying it directly. She told me that he’d forced her into something years ago, and she couldn’t forgive him for it. But that was it.”

  “Did you ever see Coop approach Becky?”

  “Up until a month ago, he was regularly waiting for her outside school. The teachers would come out a
nd get rid of him, so he would hide up in one of the streets around the corner and catch us as we walked home. She’d just ignore him while he pleaded for her to listen to what he had to say. One time, he was even waiting for her outside my house. He must’ve followed her here or something. She went crazy at him that time. I was stood at the door, and he just appeared from nowhere. Like always, he started pleading for her to listen to him, to hear that he was clean, that he’d changed for her. It was pathetic—he was like a little kid.”

  “Did Becky ever say anything to him?”

  “Most of the time she’d keep telling him that she couldn’t see him, that he had to move on. Afterwards, she would be crying. She had so much pity for him. He would shout out that he loved her with all his heart, and she’d reply that if he loved her, he’d give it back.”

  “What did she want him to give her back, Lauren?”

  “Again, she never really said. Only that it was something very special to her that he’d taken from her schoolbag one time when he’d bumped into her.”

  Jack scribbled this down, that Coop had something of Becky’s.

  “Was he ever physical?”

  “No. I asked her once, and she swore to me that he never laid a hand on her. That he practically worshiped her and would never hurt her. He was a damaged boy, she said. No one ever really loved him until she did.”

  “You say the harassment stopped a month ago. Did Becky tell you why?”

  “She never really knew. He just stopped. She got worried… huh! Typical Becky. Always worried about someone else.” Lauren wiped a tear away from her eye. “She even went round his house a couple of times, but he wouldn’t answer. She could sense that he was in there, but he wouldn’t come to the door.”

  “Is there anything else that you can think of that might be of importance to our investigation?”

  The girl thought for a second before answering that she couldn’t. The interview was over. Jack thanked them for the tea and left his card with the mother. Mrs. Chalmers saw them to the door, and they left.

  In the car, Lange began messing around with something on his phone and then handed it to Jack.

  “What’s this?” Jack said dubiously as he took it.

  “The route that Becky Dorring was traveling Saturday night. It’s the cycle path that goes from here, through Arradine and into the Cuthberts’ estate.”