Northern Roulette (DCI Cooper Book 4)

by B Baskerville

  Cooper moved to the front of the room and wrote the name Natalie Beaumont on the murder wall. “Get me what you can on her,” she told the room. “You have five minutes.”

  Around her, computers were fired up as everyone logged in to a series of databases. Within seconds, they had her address.

  “Arrested in twenty-twelve,” Whyte repeated, his eyes scanning back and forth as he read the PNC. “Bloody hell. She’s on a no-fly list.”

  That piqued Cooper’s interest. “Blimey. You don’t see one of those every day. Email me the document.” She pinched her nose, wondering what Natalie Beaumont had got herself into. Isis? Far-right extremism? Far-left? “Anything else?” she asked the room.

  Keaton’s pen was aloft. “I know that name: Beaumont. It came up earlier when I was collating lists of everyone Charles Pennington taught. Not a Natalie Beaumont, but a Jason and a Kerry.”

  The net was tightening; adrenaline danced inside Cooper. She’d let herself be distracted by her own domestic situation, but now she felt how thirsty her brain was for information. She surveyed the room, looking for Tennessee.

  “Alfie has a fever,” Keaton explained. “It was his second swimming class last night, and Tennessee thinks he picked something up from one of the other toddlers. He said his mother-in-law has a cold, and Hayley, well she…” her voice trailed away.

  Cooper mouthed, “Depression?”

  Keaton nodded, a sad look on her face.

  “Okay. Well, grab your things. You’re with me,” Cooper said, zipping her handbag closed and pulling the strap over her shoulder. “Address?” she called over to Martin.

  “Warkworth.”

  Cooper sighed. Warkworth was almost an hour away. She gave Atkinson a fleeting hug, releasing him quickly. “Dinner tonight? Mum said she’d cook.”

  Atkinson was pleasantly surprised that Cooper had moved in for a hug with so many colleagues around. He’d been less pleased by how she’d flinched and pulled away so fast. He caught the look of pain she tried to disguise. She was sore and low on energy. He wasn’t a religious man, but as soon as Atkinson was back in the fresh air, he looked to the sky and asked for Cooper’s next check-up to show she was still in the clear.

  The pebble-dashed semi-detached home on Morwick Road looked odd to Cooper. Its garden was neat with precision trimmed privet hedges but the home only had one upstairs window facing the road. Rather than resembling a face with two upstairs windows as eyes, this house, along with others on the road, looked more like a cyclops.

  Turning to look in the opposite direction, Cooper saw the houses would have a distant but unobstructed view of medieval Warkworth Castle.

  Cooper had chosen Keaton over Martin, Whyte or Boyd as she thought she might need some muscle. But while Keaton drove, Cooper read the email Whyte had sent her. It turned out Natalie Beaumont was on British Airways’ internal no-fly list rather than the government one. Realising Natalie Beaumont was unlikely to be part of a terrorist cell, she called during their drive to make sure she was home.

  Keaton parked behind a purple car adorned with stickers advertising Nat’s Cleaning Co. When she and Cooper knocked, the door was opened immediately.

  “Natalie? I’m DCI Cooper. I called from the car.”

  Natalie nodded and ushered them into her living room. She was in her early forties, and though short in stature, she had a strong build. She’d pulled her hair back into a tight bun which accentuated her pointy chin, and she wore black leggings with a purple t-shirt emblazoned with the same company logo as her car.

  “You said you needed to talk to me about my family?”

  Keaton nodded as she took a seat. “Your DNA was entered into the system following the incident in twenty-twelve.”

  “I’m so bloody embarrassed about that,” she said, her cheeks blooming with red blotches. “Too much sun and alcohol. It wasn’t even my fault.” She sat and propped her elbows on her knees and peeked at Cooper and Keaton through her fingers. “Hen party in Ibiza. We had a great time, but some of the girls were getting lippy on the flight back. Freya was the worst, talking like she owned the whole damn plane. It turned into a right palaver. Families started arguing with us, then the flight attendants joined in. Then we started fighting amongst ourselves because me and Caz were telling the others to shut up and stop causing a scene. Anyway, we were all arrested on landing.” She peeled her face from her hands and slumped back into her armchair. “It was Freya’s hen do, and half of us were so mad at her we didn’t go to the wedding.”

  “The reason we’re here, Natalie, is because a DNA sample found at a crime scene closely matches yours.”

  She looked nervous. “What does that mean? Closely matches?”

  “The sample belongs to a male relative of yours. We need to find your father and any brothers or male cousins as quickly as possible so we can eliminate them from the investigation.”

  “Right,” Natalie said bluntly. She sucked her lips into her mouth and lowered her brows half an inch. “You know I was adopted?”

  Cooper shook her head.

  “Right,” Natalie said again. She glanced at the kitchen. “This requires tea and biscuits.” She pushed herself to her feet with shaking hands. “I don’t really talk about my parents. Give me— Give me five minutes.”

  She returned in no time with quaint china teacups filled with weak tea and handed Keaton a packet of custard creams.

  “I’ll start at the beginning, I suppose. My birth parents were Beth and James Beaumont. We lived on Buchanan Street.”

  “In Hebburn?” Keaton asked, tearing open the packet.

  Natalie nodded. “Yeah. There were nine of us kids. Three girls, six boys.”

  At times, Cooper felt like she had her hands full with just Tina. She couldn’t imagine another eight children in the house. “Nine? That’s a big family.”

  “It got bigger.” Natalie stood, reached over to Keaton, took a biscuit, and sat back down. She dipped it in her tea and let the excess liquid drip back into the cup before taking a bite. “James got lung cancer. It was terrible. I don’t remember all that much because I was about nine when I left, but I remember the coughing and how weak and helpless he looked at times. It was a long illness, and us kids were – well, we were neglected before he died – but we were really neglected afterwards.” Natalie dipped her head towards Cooper’s notepad and pen. “There was me, Kerry and Grace. Then the boys were Jason, Kevin, Robert, Tyrone, Shane and Marcus.”

  Cooper jotted the names down. “Any middle names?”

  “Yeah. Robert was Robert Phillip, and Tyrone’s middle name was Douglas. Do you need the girl’s middle names?”

  Cooper shook her head.

  “After James died, Beth spiralled. She started doing meth. I didn’t know that at the time, but I worked it out when I got older. And because all she cared about was drugs and her new boyfriends, we hardly got anything to eat. So, we were taken into care. The lot of us. Us girls were lucky, though. Really lucky. First, we got to stay together. Second, we hit the jackpot with the couple who fostered us. They ended up adopting us girls. We were all old enough to know they weren’t our real Mum and Dad, but we called them that all the same.” She paused. “But you’re here to talk about the boys.” She dipped what remained of her biscuit. “The boys were split up; I mean, no one could take on six boys at once. Marcus and Jason stayed local, and we all kept going to the same school to begin with, which was nice. It felt like we still had some sort of normality.”

  “King George’s?” asked Cooper.

  “That’s right. At first, we’d get letters from the others, but they stopped after a while. I guess they were getting on with their own lives. New families, new schools. I don’t know. I think they got bounced about a fair bit between foster parents. Kevin and Robert could be a handful. When I got older, my parents – adoptive parents – wanted to move. Dad got a job in Newcastle, so we moved to Kenton and went to school there. I lost touch with Marcus and Jason after that.” She exhale
d forcefully, looking into her teacup for answers. “You don’t— What crime did you say this was to do with?”

  “I didn’t,” Cooper said.

  Keaton steered the conversation back to Natalie’s male relatives. “You said the family got bigger?”

  “Yeah. Bloody Beth Beaumont. Have you heard of baby addiction? Basically, she was addicted to newborn babies. She liked the attention she got when she was pregnant, and she got this intense feeling of dependence from caring for infants. The second us kids became toddlers, she’d lose interest and want a new baby. It’s a form of compulsion. An obsession.”

  Natalie placed her cup on a side table and got to her feet. The muscles in her face had tightened as she dredged up memories from her childhood.

  “She had more kids after we were all sent to foster care. Six, I heard. All of them taken into care too. It’s ridiculous. Why didn’t someone stop her? Or – I don’t know – it’s not like we can force sterilisation on someone, but still, someone should have stopped her. At least fifteen kids. All neglected, all put into care.” She went to shove her hands into pockets but realised she was wearing leggings. “I was mad at her for so long. I guess I still am. You can hear it in my voice, can’t you?”

  “Take a deep breath,” Cooper urged, fearing Natalie might be on the verge of a panic attack.

  “So, male relatives... Yes, there were my six full brothers. Plus, another two half brothers, from what I heard. James, my dad, had a brother and a sister, but the sister died before we were born, and his brother lived in Australia. That seemed so exotic when we were little. Australia! The other side of the world. We rarely ventured outside of South Tyneside. And Beth? It’s hard to remember. I went to a birthday party for an Uncle Mark. He had three boys called Liam, Ed and – sorry, I can’t remember the other one, he was just a baby.”

  “That’s okay, Natalie. You’ve been a great help.” Cooper stood up.

  “Fifteen,” Natalie repeated, pacing quickly now. “At least fifteen kids that she had no intention of caring for beyond infancy. We weren’t dolls, for Christ’s sake. We were just kids!” She picked up her china teacup and hurled it at the furthest wall.

  - Chapter 36 -

  Cooper considered Leazes Terrace one of the most beautiful streets in the north. Or, it would be if a great big football stadium hadn’t been built right behind it. Four storeys of classical architecture and pristine gardens protected by wrought iron fences. It was a lovely place. So close to the city centre and yet so tranquil amongst Leazes Park, the lake and tennis courts.

  Cooper finished a phone call and signalled to Keaton to stop arguing with a traffic warden and just pay for parking.

  “That was Whyte. He’s already rounded up two of the cousins and an uncle.”

  “Bloody hell, that was fast,” Keaton said. “I’m gonna have to start calling him the Great Whyte Shark if he keeps that up.”

  “Before you choose a nickname for him, I’ll just let you know, one of the cousins lives on Berwick Park Road.”

  “That’s literally over the road from HQ.”

  “Took him sixty seconds to walk there.”

  After speaking to Natalie Beaumont, Cooper had phoned Nixon. He’d given her the go-ahead to round up and take DNA samples from as many of her male relatives as they could. It would be expensive, but it would be worth it if it led them to the killer. After a fifty-minute drive south through Northumberland and back into Tyne and Wear, Cooper was now looking for Kevin Beaumont. They’d found his address easily enough, and as a close relative of Natalie’s, there was a reasonable chance this was their man.

  Despite the pleasant serenity of her surroundings, Cooper’s stomach felt tight. She was well aware of the potential dangers and was secretly relieved that Nixon had ordered them to hang back until backup arrived. With backup ready to go and positioned at the front and rear of the house, Cooper approached Kevin Beaumont’s home. She opened the iron gate and climbed the stately stairs. An NUFC mug was visible through the window, and a black and white striped cushion adorned one of the armchairs.

  The door was opened by a slight woman who breastfed an infant under a shawl. Upon seeing the police on her doorstep, she moaned. “Oh, not again.”

  “Again?” Cooper asked.

  “The cars. Some little toerag has been keying the cars on the street and nicking their aerials.” She leant forward, supporting the weight of the baby, and looked up and down the street. “They haven’t done mine, have they? Red Mini Cooper?”

  Cooper shook her head. “Not that I’m aware. We’re actually here to speak to Kevin.”

  “Oh. Is everything okay?” She looked confused, eyes narrowed slightly, head pulled back, giving herself an extra chin.

  “We think he can help us with a case we’re investigating,” Cooper told her. “Are you Mrs Beaumont?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. Two kids but still no ring. I’m Elsa. I’d invite you in to wait, but I don’t know how long he’ll be.”

  Keaton subtly waved her hand to allow their backup to back off a little. She leant against the black railing. “I take it Kevin’s a football fan, living this close to St James’?”

  Elsa laughed. “Just a bit. Been a season ticket holder for as long as I’ve known him. We could have got a biggish house with a garden further out in the suburbs, but oh no, he had to be as close to possible to the hallowed ground.”

  Cooper’s thoughts turned to Tennessee. I think he’s a superfan.

  “I’m a rugby girl myself. Copthall stadium is my hallowed ground,” Keaton told her, allowing her casual chatting to put the woman more at ease. “Don’t suppose you know where Kevin is, do you? We think he might have witnessed something earlier this week.”

  Elsa hesitated. “He went for a few pints with his brother.”

  “Where?” Cooper asked, excited that she might get two Beaumont boys for the price of one.

  “I don’t know. But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say The Strawberry.”

  The Strawberry pub was within spitting distance of St James’ Park. On match days, the place was packed wall-to-wall with the black and white army. The venue’s unusual name was due to its history. Once upon a time, the area was a large strawberry patch. Nuns from St Bartholomew’s would tend the gardens, and the proceeds from their strawberry wine helped fund the nunnery. Outside, it was a magnolia building adorned with a giant logo for Newcastle Brown Ale. Inside, it was much like any traditional pub, apart from the drawings of football players on the wall and a sign reading Nee Mackems that hung from the bar. It was now late afternoon, and despite it being a school night, the pub was beginning to fill up with patrons wanting a mid-week escape in the form of Guinness or Brown Ale.

  Cooper hoped to get home at a reasonable hour. Tina had netball training after school so would be home just before six. If Cooper could meet two Beaumont brothers and be home in time to spend time with her family, it would be a successful day.

  The officers who had arrived as backup were instructed to give Cooper and Keaton space. They were to lurk at a distance, covering exits in case either Beaumont made a dash for it.

  It didn’t take long for Cooper to find who she was looking for. Usually, she’d enquire with the bar staff to see if they recognised the name or face of the person they were after, but that wouldn’t be required this time. Two men were sat at a table on the roof terrace; one looked like a bald Natalie Beaumont. They shared the same hazel eyes, pointed chin and slightly rounded shoulders. He sat back in his chair, one hand behind his head with his elbow aiming skywards. His other hand clutched a pint of lager. The other man’s posture was less relaxed. He cupped his drink with both palms and slumped forwards as if trying to make himself smaller. Unlike his drinking partner, he had a full head of chestnut hair.

  “Kevin Beaumont?”

  It was the bald one who looked up. “Who’s asking?”

  Cooper and Keaton identified themselves.

  “And you are?” Cooper asked the other ma
n.

  “Jason.”

  “Jason Beaumont?” Cooper asked.

  “Aye. Why?”

  Both men slurred their words, but while Kevin seemed as relaxed as he had when they’d walked in, Jason was avoiding eye contact and tapping his foot against the terrace floor.

  “We need to speak with you both urgently. Would you mind accompanying us to the station for a chat?”

  “Yeah, I’d mind,” said Kevin. “I’m enjoying a quiet pint with my brother.”

  “Sir, DNA from a series of violent crimes shows a familial match to your sister Natalie, whose DNA we have on record. The easiest and quickest way to eliminate yourself from the investigation is to provide us with a DNA sample. I can assure you, if it isn’t a match, the sample will be destroyed.”

  “A series of violent crimes?” echoed Kevin, sitting up straighter and peering at Cooper with questioning eyes. “Oh, bloody hell. It’s not what I think it is, is it?” He looked at his brother. “Drink up, Jason. We’d best get this sorted.” He lifted his glass and poured three-quarters of a pint down his throat.

  “I’m not going.” Jason’s voice was quiet.

  “Jason.” He bent over the table to whisper. “It’s those bloody sandcastle killings. Fuck’s sake. We go to the station, spit in a tube, tell them where we were when those folk got hurt, then you get to go home again. Right?” He looked to Cooper.

  “Exactly. And I hate to put it so bluntly, Jason, but you either do it the way your brother described, or we arrest you. I know that sounds harsh, but if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ll want your name scratched off our list as soon as possible.”

  “NO.” Jason Beaumont shot to his feet. “I’m not going nowhere.”

  “Jas—”

  But before Kevin could calm his brother, three uniformed officers were upon him.

  As Jason was tackled to the floor, handcuffed and escorted to a waiting police car, Kevin picked up his brother’s Carling and downed it in one.