The Sixth Window

by Rachel Abbott

  Becky looked as if she was about to pursue this, but Tom could see the man was getting agitated. He may have adopted a relaxed pose, but the constant flicking of his middle finger with the nail of his thumb told a different story.

  Tom glanced quickly at Becky and she clearly got the message. They needed to get what they could from Cooper before backing him into a corner, if that became necessary.

  Tom gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  ‘We appreciate you coming in, Sergeant Cooper. You’re no doubt aware that Bernard Gray’s death was always considered to be an accident, but we’re now reviewing everything in the light of what may potentially be new evidence.’

  Ed Cooper’s eyes locked onto Tom’s. ‘Does Natalie know this?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to talk about our conversations with Mrs Gray. Look, Sergeant Cooper, nobody’s trying to put you in a difficult position, so why don’t you tell us why you’re here?’

  Cooper pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and passed it across the table. Tom could see that the page contained nothing other than a web address and login details.

  ‘I found details of this website in Bernie’s things. I’ve looked at the site, and as Inspector Robinson seems so keen to understand what caused Natalie and me to split, it’s because she found a link to it on my computer and I refused to give her an explanation. At the time I thought it would be kinder not to shatter her illusions about her husband. The site sells indecent images of young teenagers. Most look to be about twelve or thirteen, but looks can be deceptive as we all know.’

  Tom watched the man’s expression carefully. Could he be making this up to hide his own involvement? Natalie Gray had obviously been ready to accept that Cooper was guilty.

  ‘I’m sure you’re aware that Gray was on the Operation Sphere team, aren’t you?’ Tom said. ‘I’m not entirely surprised that he had information about a website such as the one you describe. Why do you think it’s important?’

  Cooper’s eyebrows came together, and he looked at Tom as if he was totally missing the point.

  ‘It’s highly unlikely that anyone on Operation Sphere would have had administration rights for a site like this, but maybe not impossible.’ He pulled something out of his small briefcase. ‘This is the original notebook from which I took the photocopy. I didn’t want his wife to see the whole thing, so I told her the only other notes were about Christmas presents. They weren’t. Take a look.’

  Cooper pushed a notebook across the table to Tom. It was inside a plastic bag, and Tom emptied it out onto the table, careful not to touch the cover. They would need to be certain that Bernie Gray had actually handled the notebook, although many people had undoubtedly touched it since its manufacture. The cover was plain black, and Tom placed his fingers inside the plastic bag to act as a glove and held the edge of the notebook. He used a pen to flick it open.

  ‘Go forward a couple of pages,’ said Cooper. Tom did so. ‘There.’

  Bernie had written one word: ‘FREEDOM!!!’ The capital letters were large, and it seemed as if the word itself evoked the sense of escape that Bernie seemed to be looking for. But escape from what?

  Tom turned to the next page, which was headed ‘Option 1’. Under it was ‘TRUTH?’ He looked up at Edward Cooper, who nodded his head slightly as if to say, Go on. Tom turned to the next page, which was headed ‘Option 2’. On that page he saw the details of the website Cooper had told them about, exactly as the photocopy showed.

  ‘There’s no saying how long ago he wrote this, is there?’ Tom said.

  ‘Turn back to the title page, sir.’

  Tom did as he suggested and saw the reason for Cooper’s conviction that the notes had been written long after Bernie Gray had left the Operation Sphere team. On the title page was an inscription. It appeared the notebook had been a Christmas present given to Gray just days before he died.

  ‘Natalie and Bernie were big fans of Christmas, and even if they couldn’t afford expensive presents they all had stockings with lots of little gifts. This was one of them, I imagine, because it says it’s from Santa.’

  On the page immediately after the title page and before the notes that Bernie had written was a year planner with each of the few days between New Year and his death crossed through. A date two days after he died had been circled with a heavy hand that had nearly ripped through the page. It was clear that something important would happen on that day.

  ‘Where did you find it, if Mrs Gray knew nothing about it?’ Tom asked, closing the notebook.

  ‘I told her it had dropped out of one of the boxes when she was moving into my house, but that isn’t strictly true. I found it inside an old VHS box. I was looking through everything of Bernie’s that Natalie had brought with her, checking if there was anything that I would prefer her not to see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Becky asked.

  Cooper paused for a moment as if measuring his words. ‘In the months before he died I felt sure Bernie had secrets. He wasn’t himself. I knew it was Natalie’s plan to go through everything of his with her daughter, and if there was anything incriminating – anything that might upset them both – I thought it better to remove it.’

  ‘Did you find anything else?’

  ‘No. Natalie asked her friend Alison to move the boxes to her place before I had the chance to go through everything.’

  ‘And you think he was concealing this notebook, do you?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I think he hid it in the VHS box because he knew Natalie would never think of looking inside.’

  ‘Do you think the content is significant?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to make of it. He seemed to have three options for achieving his freedom – from what, I don’t know. The third one means nothing to me, though.’

  Tom flicked through the notebook until he came to the page headed ‘Option 3’. He stared at the two words written there for a moment and then pushed the book across the table with his pen to Becky. He didn’t need to look at her to know that she would understand instantly.

  The final route to freedom was a name known only to a few – the original members of Operation Sphere and now Tom’s team. Amber Blackwood. The girl who had filed the original report with Crimestoppers two years ago. Six months before Bernie Gray died.

  72

  Scarlett quietly let herself into the apartment with her mum’s key. It was hard to believe everything that had happened that day, but now she finally understood it all. Her dad had been working undercover in a dangerous world, and that’s why he had died. It didn’t diminish the pain of having lost him or the dreadful memory of the last words she had spoken to him, but she was so proud of him. Maybe that was what all the secrecy had been about in the last few months of his life. He hadn’t been allowed to tell them, so when he went out more often than usual it must have been because he was meeting Lewis or their ‘handler’, as Lewis called their boss. She still didn’t understand why he had received that text, but maybe he hadn’t been having an affair at all. Maybe there was another explanation. Scarlett now felt guilty that she had ever thought that – and that she had accused her dad.

  The weight of believing that he was cheating on her mum was finally lifted, but now she had to work out how best to keep his memory safe. She was going to have to be so careful about what she said to anyone, including the police. For her dad’s sake, she had to keep Lewis’s secrets safe. She closed the apartment door quietly and leaned on it for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘But I won’t let you down.’

  Her thoughts were so focused on all she had discovered that it was a moment or two before she noticed that her mum’s bag was on the breakfast bar. She was about to shout, ‘Hello!’ when she heard her voice coming through the open bedroom door. She sounded upset, and Scarlett moved silently across the room.

  ‘I’ve been trying to track down the agent that rented the flat to me, but the phone isn’t answered. The address on the agreement i
s in south Manchester, but I can’t find them on the Internet.’ There was a pause. ‘Of course it matters! Bernie had a note of this address – and another apartment in the south wing. Don’t you think that’s odd?’

  Scarlett didn’t know who her mum was speaking to, but there was a long gap while she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  ‘Yes. I’m telling you. It was written on a receipt from a couple of days before he died, and I’ve got no idea why.’

  Silence again, but this time briefer. ‘I found it yesterday, but so much else has been going on that I’d forgotten all about it until now. It’s weird, and I’m beginning to think that I didn’t know my husband at all. It’s as if he had a secret life that he managed very successfully to hide from me.’

  Scarlett gasped. She was right, of course, but Lewis said she mustn’t be told. It would be dangerous. Scarlett needed to stop this before any other clues were given away.

  She turned back to the kitchen area and dropped the keys noisily on the worktop and shouted, ‘Hi, Mum. I wasn’t expecting you to be home.’

  ‘Scarlett’s here. I’ve got to go.’ Scarlett heard the words spoken hurriedly as she pushed open the door to the bedroom, her wide smile hopefully convincing her mum that all was okay.

  ‘Who were you speaking to?’ she asked.

  Her mum looked distracted and shook her head. ‘Just the letting agent. Anyway, I thought you were coming straight home. Where’ve you been?’

  Scarlett silently acknowledged to herself that neither of them seemed prepared to tell the other the truth at the moment. Whoever she had been speaking to, it wasn’t the letting agent.

  And now it was Scarlett’s turn. ‘Oh, I’d dried off by the time I got close to home, so I went down to the Printworks to see what films were coming up.’

  ‘But the front door was open.’

  ‘What?’ Scarlett suddenly realised what must have happened. She couldn’t have closed the door properly when she ran out after Kelsey.

  ‘It was the fire alarm,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise the door hadn’t closed behind me. I’m sorry, Mum.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. No harm done. Just make sure you lock it when you’re inside, okay? Anyway, what’s on at the cinema? Do you want to go?’

  ‘No. Nothing exciting. I’m going to have that shower now, though, if that’s okay.’

  Maybe it would be better if they went to the cinema, Scarlett thought. That way they wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the evening lying to each other.

  73

  Tom and Becky were standing outside the interview room. Edward Cooper had received a call on his mobile and had said he would like to take it in private, if that was okay. It seemed easier to leave him in the room so that Tom and Becky could talk.

  Tom glanced through the small window in the door. Cooper was running a hand over his bald head, and he looked worried.

  ‘What did you make of the notebook, Becky?’

  ‘The most obvious interpretation is that Bernie Gray was planning on escaping his life for a better one. Freedom probably means that he felt trapped. If he was running the website he would be pulling in a lot of money, so perhaps he was planning on using that to set himself up elsewhere.’

  ‘I agree, but what does Truth mean? How does that give him an escape? And how did Amber Blackwood provide him with an out from his current life?’

  Becky bit her bottom lip. ‘I don’t know. According to Megan Jenkins he wanted to extricate himself from the relationship with the other woman, so maybe that’s what he meant by Freedom. What are we not getting here, Tom? It’s looking more and more likely that he was killed on purpose, given that his life and the lives of those around him were more complex than they originally looked. But if that’s the case, someone needed to know his routine, know he was going to be out that morning at that exact time.’

  Tom looked through the window into the interview room. Cooper had ended his call and was looking concerned about something.

  ‘And another thing,’ Becky said. ‘Given that Cooper is so obviously jealous of the fact that Natalie thought Bernie was perfect, why was he trying to protect her from finding the notebook or any of her husband’s other secrets?’

  ‘Oh, that’s an easy one to explain. You’ve know the saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger”? If Cooper had shattered all her illusions about her husband she would have hated him for it, irrational as it seems. Smart move to keep quiet, if you ask me. Let’s go and have another chat with him. Maybe he can throw some light on Bernie Gray’s supposed affair. Another piece of news he wouldn’t want to pass on to Natalie, at a guess.’

  Tom pushed the door open and stood back to let Becky go ahead of him.

  ‘Is everything okay, Sergeant Cooper? You’re looking a bit worried,’ Tom said.

  ‘No, no. It’s just a work thing.’

  Tom was certain it was something more than that, but he couldn’t force the man to tell him.

  ‘There’s something else we wanted to run by you,’ Tom said. ‘We’ve been informed that Bernie Gray was having an affair. Do you know anything about that?’

  Cooper’s mouth set into a grim line and he glowered across the table at Tom. ‘I don’t know why anyone would have told you that. I’m sure it’s not true.’

  ‘Well, it seems that Scarlett thought so too. She originally believed her father was having an affair with her mother’s best friend.’

  ‘What, Alison?’ Cooper barked out a laugh, but it sounded forced to Tom.

  ‘According to our source, Sergeant Gray was having an affair with a nurse. Is Alison a nurse?’

  ‘No, and as far as I’m aware Bernie didn’t know any nurses. And Alison Morgan’s a teacher. An art teacher.’

  Cooper carried on talking, but for Tom the sounds in the room blurred into nothing more than a background murmur. He had to focus on what the man had just said and why it suddenly mattered.

  Alison Morgan’s a teacher. An art teacher. Why was that setting bells clanging furiously in Tom’s head? He breathed in deeply as one very large piece of the puzzle slotted into place.

  Becky was speaking, but Tom didn’t notice as he interrupted.

  ‘Where does she teach, Sergeant Cooper? Alison Morgan.’

  ‘Somewhere in Manchester now, I think. Moved there a while back.’

  Not only was Tom pretty sure which school Alison Morgan taught at, but he thought he had actually met her. He’d had no reason to associate Miss Morgan, Jennifer Bale’s form teacher, with Alison Morgan who happened to be Natalie Gray’s best friend. It was a common enough surname. But it was a hell of coincidence, and he had one more question.

  ‘Do you know where she taught before her move to Manchester?’

  He knew the answer before it came.

  ‘She taught in Failsworth, from what I can remember.’

  And no doubt, Tom thought, in her role as art teacher she had organised a trip to a gallery with a group of girls. One of whom was Amber Blackwood.

  Before Tom was able to process his thoughts and decide exactly how Alison Morgan fitted into this complex puzzle, there was a knock on the door and Keith popped his head in.

  ‘Sir, ma’am, do you have a moment?’

  Tom and Becky excused themselves and followed Keith out into the corridor.

  ‘What’s up?’ Becky asked. Keith wouldn’t have interrupted them for nothing.

  ‘Kieran O’Connor – the young man whose DNA was on the whisky bottle found in the car that killed Bernard Gray – his alibi has finally checked out. He had difficulty telling one day from another around that time, and from what we can gather he seems to have been permanently drunk. God knows where his parents were. Anyway, we’ve got photos to show he was where he claimed to be that morning, because they were posted online by one of his mates. He was suffering in a big way from overindulgence the night before, and for some unknown reason the sight of him vomiting was thought to be of general interest to his friends.’

>   ‘Shit. Can he remember where and when he dumped the car?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Well now that he knows his alibi’s holding up, he’s become a bit more communicative. He’s already told us he abandoned the car in the early hours of the morning about six hours after he stole it, which would make it two days before Sergeant Gray was killed. But what we didn’t know is that he ditched it because he was being followed.’

  ‘How does he know that?’ Becky said.

  ‘Because when he saw the lights of the car behind him he’d tried going down some back roads, doubling back on himself, but the car stuck with him, so there was no doubt about it. The vehicle in pursuit was dazzling him in his rear-view mirror with its headlights on full beam, so he couldn’t see what sort of a car it was or who was driving, and although the car pulled up behind him when he stopped and made a run for it, nobody got out to give chase.’

  74

  For once Natalie had been glad that Scarlett had chosen to sleep on the sofa the night before. She hadn’t queried it with her daughter, knowing that if they had shared a bed she might have been tempted to pour out all her worries. Ed had tried to call her twice, but she had rejected his calls, and she still had no idea why Bernie had had the address of the apartment they were living in. She had decided that as soon as she could she would go round and check out who lived in apartment 210S, the other number scrawled on the back of the receipt. Perhaps they would be able to solve the puzzle for her.

  She didn’t know if she should believe Ed’s story about finding the details of that awful website in Bernie’s junk either. He could have made that up to disguise his own part in it all.

  She felt a wave of guilt wash over her for not trusting Ed, believing instead in the one man who couldn’t answer for himself, but if one of them was lying she hoped it wasn’t her lovely Bernie. She had never doubted him, and had always been certain that he loved her and Scarlett, even in those last few months when he hadn’t been himself. She had tried to give him the space to work out whatever was bothering him, and he had known that if he needed to talk to her about anything, she would have listened.