Northern Roulette (DCI Cooper Book 4)

by B Baskerville

  Tennessee leant towards him, both hands on the table. He watched as Hall recoiled and then shuffled backwards in his chair.

  “Look, I wasn’t hiding, all right?” He scratched his head again. “I just wanted to go somewhere for a few days and be by myself. You know, look at fields and trees, not buildings. Drink out of a river instead of a can of crap lager. You know, be somewhere where the little things that piss ya off about modern living don’t get to ya. No phones, no emails, no bloody annoying junk mail through the door. And if that makes me a damn criminal, well….”

  Tennessee considered the man. He was agitated, but he was also pissed off. “If you don’t like motorways and dual carriageways, why were you driving through the Tyne Tunnel?”

  “Because if I wanted to get north of the water again, it was that or the Tyne Bridge. The toon is a fuckin’ nightmare with bus lanes and one-way streets, so I chose the tunnel.”

  The Tyne Tunnel was notoriously overpriced. No one Tennessee knew would choose the tunnel over the bridge unless they were in a hurry or it saved them a significant amount of time. He paused, quite comfortable in the silence, and took a sip of warm water with honey and lemon. Unless they were in a hurry, it saved them time, or they were in the area anyway, he thought.

  The cup warmed his hands. He held it for a moment longer before stating, “You were in the vicinity of your mother’s house.”

  Hall narrowed his eyes, confused. “You what?”

  “The entrance to the Tyne Tunnel isn’t too far from your mum, Beth Beaumont’s, house.”

  His face reddened. Even through the muck, the colouring in his cheeks was clear to see. “Listen, just because she pushed me out her lady parts don’t make that bitch my mother. The television did a better job of raising us kids than she ever did. And how was I supposed to know she was still living ‘roond there? Haven’t spoken to that cow since the day they made us pack our bags and leave to go to some stranger’s house.”

  Hall certainly hated his mother. The vein pulsing in the side of his temple was a testament to that.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. You, or a close relative, murdered three people.” He opened a brown folder. “If you’re guilty, the cheek swab we took earlier will confirm it, so there’s really no point in lying to us. Is there anything you’d like to tell us, Phillip?”

  Hall was statue-still for a moment. “First it’s murder, now it’s three murders? Bloody hell. I told you, I’ve been—” He swallowed and rubbed a big hand over his jaw. “Wait. Is it Beth? Has Mam been killed? Is that why you’re gannin’ on about her house?”

  Tennessee slid three photographs over the table. Images from the morgue of Eve Lynch, Charles Pennington and Ronan Turnbull. The pictures were deeply unpleasant to look at.

  Hall grimaced and looked away. With his eyes still averted, he placed a shaking finger on the photo to his left. “I recognise her. She was my social worker.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “God, no.”

  “Did you like her?”

  Hall squirmed, moving his weight over to one butt cheek. “I guess. She was younger than most socials we dealt with. Somehow that made her seem nicer. She was kind but a bit useless really.”

  “I need you to look at the other two photographs again, Phillip.”

  Hall pulled his eyes back to the desk as if it were a monumental effort. He looked back and forth at the two faces and shook his head. “No. I don’t know them.”

  “That’s a lie,” Tennessee said. “This is Charles Pennington. He taught you at King George’s Primary from eighty-three to eighty-four.”

  The man shrugged. “I guess he looks vaguely familiar. Pennington was all right as far as teachers went. Bit of a fuddy-duddy. I’d have no reason to kill him, though.”

  Cooper lifted her head. “So, you did it just for fun?”

  “No. That’s not what I said. You’re putting words in my mouth.” He turned to Tennessee. “She’s putting words in my mouth.”

  The two detectives gave each other a wry smile as Hall agonised.

  “How long is this DNA test going to take anyway? I want to get out of here.”

  “Depends,” said Tennessee.

  “Depends on what?”

  “How nice we are to the lab technicians.”

  Tennessee was doing a good job as far as Cooper was concerned, but the room felt stifling. She wanted to push the pace and get either a confession or some good intel out of Hall before she passed out. The air felt thick in the interview suite; she tugged at the open collar of her shirt and told herself it was just Hall’s body odour.

  “Okay, Phillip,” she said, pulling her chair in so her knee brushed against that of her interviewee. She felt him flinch away. “If you want to get out of here before the lab results come back, you need to give me something solid. Where were you on the evening of Friday the twenty-first and the morning of Saturday the twenty-second of June?”

  “I was camping,” he said through gritted teeth. “In the North York Moors.”

  Cooper didn’t appreciate his tone but she persisted nonetheless. She tapped the image of Charles Pennington. “And the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth of June?”

  “North. York. Moors.”

  “This is Ronan Turnbull,” Cooper said. She tugged at her collar again. The room was hot and stuffy, and the inside of her shirt was coated in a thin film of perspiration. Hopefully she wasn’t giving off a smell like Hall’s. “He was a boxer. Trained at a gym not far from where you grew up. He’s the same age as you.”

  “So?”

  “Did you train with him?”

  “I didn’t box.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Think I’d remember getting punched by this bloke.” He glanced at the photograph. “He looks as if Tyson Fury had a baby with Brad Pitt, then the baby was thrown down a flight of stairs.”

  Cooper straightened, wanting to slap him. His disrespect for the dead and the way he could make such a flippant remark about throwing an infant down some stairs irked her.

  “He wasn’t your rival? Didn’t beat you to a regional final?”

  “No.”

  “And where were you on the first and second of J—”

  “I’ll give you a clue. It starts with N and ends in ‘orth York Moors.”

  Cooper slapped the table with both palms. The resulting sound made both Hall and Tennessee jump.

  “I don’t want to be here any more than you do, Phillip. So if you don’t want to sit in the cells all day waiting for your results to rule you out, you’re going to need to be more specific. Did you stop for petrol, or buy food when you were there? Nip into any local pubs?”

  He rubbed his head; a flake of dandruff floated down to his moss-coloured jacket. “No.”

  “Did you use a credit card for anything? Or go anywhere where you’d likely be picked up on CCTV?”

  “No. Fuck.” He looked to the ceiling. “I passed some other hikers, but no, I didn’t stop and talk to anyone. I slept in my tent and kept off the beaten path. This is what I get for liking nature?”

  Tennessee got to his feet and paced the room, his footsteps matching the tick-tock of a plastic clock hanging from the wall. He was aware of Phillip Hall tracking his every movement.

  “I’m covered in muck.” Hall held up his hands, rotating them forwards and backwards to display the coating of soil and grime on either side of his arms. “You must believe me. I was hiking. Had nee idea any of this nonsense was gannin’ on with my family.”

  “See, I like hiking, too,” Tennessee said. “And here’s my problem. While you do look and smell like someone who’s been sleeping in a sticky tent for a couple of weeks, I have one question. Why no insect bites?”

  “DEET,” he answered quickly.

  “You don’t smell of DEET,” Cooper said.

  “She’s right. You don’t smell of DEET in the slightest. So, until we can prove you were in the moors, or the DNA comes back negative, I’m going to keep asking q
uestions. When was the last time you talked to your brothers?”

  For another thirty minutes, Tennessee tried and failed to get anything useful from Phillip Hall. He claimed to not know where Marcus was, or if his brother was even in the country. He didn’t know if Shane or Tyrone were still using their birth names or if, like him, they had adopted new monikers.

  “Could your brother, Shane Beaumont, be going by another name?”

  “I really don’t know. We didn’t keep in touch.”

  “What about Tyrone?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re strangers to me. I don’t know if I’d even recognise them if they walked past me.”

  Having grown up as an only child, Tennessee couldn’t relate. He’d always wanted a brother or sister and was quietly envious of Keaton’s relationship with her brother. He thought of Alfie, his young son, and how he wished for more children. Then he thought of Hayley, and his heart seemed to lower in his chest. What if she reacted to future births the way she had with Alfie? He couldn’t ask that of her.

  While the young father briefly disappeared into his thoughts, Hall was still talking.

  “...Last time we were all properly together was the day before Dad died. We weren’t allowed to go to the funeral. No place for children, they told us. Dad must have known it was coming because he called us into his bedroom one by one to talk and give us gifts.”

  Hall’s voice caught in his throat. The first time he’d shown any emotion other than anger or self-preservation.

  “It was like some fucked up version of Christmas. We didn’t have much money, and it wasn’t like Dad could get to the shops the state his lungs were in. So he gave us the stuff he treasured. He gave me a compass he’d had since he was in the Scouts. I kept it for years. Lost it in Snowdonia the summer before I turned thirty.”

  He sighed and propped an elbow on the table so he could rest his face in his hand. “I was such a little shit at the time. I thanked Dad, of course, but I was actually kind of pissed off. I wasn’t into hiking then; I am now, but not back then. I snuck into wor Kelly’s room one day to see what she got. I found this old collector’s coin in her pyjama drawer and I got so jealous because I thought maybe it was worth something. Then I found out Tyrone got Dad’s new footie shirt—”

  Tennessee stopped pacing. It felt as if all the moisture had been sucked out of the room. The slow withdrawal out to sea before the tsunami rolled in. He dove into a file, and with a shaking hand, slapped a picture on the table.

  “Aye, that’s the one. Bloody swamped him.”

  - Chapter 45 -

  All hell broke loose.

  James Beaumont had given his sixth child, Tyrone Beaumont, a football shirt as a parting gift before his death in 1988. Cooper pictured the seven-year-old being called in to see his dying father, the fear and sadness he must have felt. It was lung cancer that killed James. Young Tyrone would have heard a cough that never let up, rattling in his breath as fluid built in James’s chest and throat. He’d have seen his father waste away no matter how much he ate, witnessed a man in constant pain when the illness spread to his bones. He’d have been scared about how life would change once his father was gone. But being from a poor household, Tyrone may have been thrilled to receive the football shirt, only to have guilt punch him in the gut over the circumstances that brought it to him.

  Cooper couldn’t spend too long thinking of the scared, helpless Tyrone, for the same distinctive yellow and green away shirt had been connected to all three murders. There was the scrap of fabric in Eve Lynch’s hand, the fibre on Charles Pennington’s body, and Atkinson had confirmed another thread was found in Ronan Turnbull’s home. She wanted every person connected with Tyrone Beaumont brought in to help with their inquiries, and she wanted it done yesterday.

  “All the siblings, even the half ones. Any relatives in the northeast, anyone who fostered him or anyone who was fostered with him. Former employers, anyone we can connect with him.”

  “And if they can’t come in to speak to us today?” Whyte asked.

  “Then we go to them,” Cooper told him. She wrapped an arm around her stomach as she looked out the window. It was a lovely day: a blue sky, mottled with fluffy clouds and white contrails, people making the most of the warm weather in shorts or skirts, sleeveless tops and shades. But Tyrone was out there somewhere, planning another kill, no doubt. They had a police presence at Beth Beaumont’s house but didn’t know who else he may be after.

  “I want to know the last time they saw him. I want to know what name he’s using, what was said, any rumours they heard.”

  Whyte signalled to Boyd to follow him, and they left to organise the mass gathering of local Beaumonts.

  “Paula,” Cooper called. “Get on the phone and speak to anyone who’s not in the area, especially foster parents and siblings. Even if we’ve spoken to them before, they might have thought of something else. Keep prodding.”

  Keaton scribbled down a list of names and picked up the handset of the nearest phone.

  “Tyrone seemed to drop off the face of the planet after 1999,” continued Cooper. “Last we know, he was working in a caravan park near Berwick. After that, we have nothing. I know we’re going back a while but see if we can find someone who worked with him. They might know where he went next.”

  “Berwick’s on the Scottish border. Should I check in with the cousin in Edinburgh?”

  “Good call. Do it.”

  Cooper turned from Keaton, allowing her to get on with the task at hand. She was pleased to see everyone starting their various jobs; teams were formed, phone calls were made, and records searched. She approached Tennessee; he was hunched over a computer, typing furiously. He coughed into his elbow, opened a menthol sweet and popped it in his mouth. Angrily, he scrunched the wrapper in his fist, using it as a miniature stress ball.

  “No Tyrone Beaumont, no Tyrone Douglas Beaumont, no Ty Beaumont, nothing. No record in the PNC or the database. DVLA has nothing, nor does National Insurance.”

  Cooper sat next to him. She pouted before suggesting, “Perhaps Beaumont became Beau?”

  His index fingers jabbed at the keyboard as he leant back in his seat, balancing on the two back legs. “Nope. I’ll try Ty Beau.”

  “My mum used to do that,” Cooper said with a snort. “Tae Bo, that is.”

  “Mine too. She accidentally kicked the sofa and broke a toe.” He leant further back. Another cough sweet and more jabbing at the keys. “He might have used his middle name. Robert Phillip became Phillip. Maybe Tyrone Douglas became... Nah, it’s another dead end. No Douglas Beaumonts look like good matches.”

  “Try Doug.”

  Tennessee started crunching his teeth against the outer layer of the hard sweet. The cool medicinal smell of peppermint wafted up to Cooper’s nostrils.

  “Douglas, Doug, Dougie,” he repeated in a whisper. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

  Tennessee gasped; his body shuddered as the seat toppled backwards, his back hitting the floor with a thud.

  Cooper was about to laugh when she saw the silent, wide-eyed, open-mouthed look on her colleague’s face.

  Tennessee was choking.

  Pulling him to his feet, Cooper slapped her hand on his back three times. It was no use; the sweet was lodged deep in his throat.

  No, no, no. Their training meant Cooper stayed calm on the surface. Her face was all business as she asked him to bend over the desk while she slapped the middle of his spine again and again. Internally, she panicked. She couldn’t lose Jack. Not Jack. Her friend and colleague, Hayley’s rock and Alfie’s world.

  He was going blue.

  His legs started to shake.

  The phone in Keaton’s hand clattered to the floor as she leapt to her feet and wrapped her arms around Tennessee’s middle. She formed her left hand into a fist and placed it just below the ribs. She wrapped her right hand around the left and pulled with all her might, lifting the tall man off his feet.

&nb
sp; Nothing.

  “Try again.” Cooper couldn’t keep her cool any longer. Tears rushed to her eyes as Tennessee’s body went limp. She’d never felt so useless.

  Nothing.

  “Again, Paula.”

  There was a pop, and the cough sweet flew in a great arc across the incident room. Keaton released Tennessee, and he fell to his knees. He gulped in a lungful of air, then another, and another. His breath came in audible whoops as oxygen rushed into his body.

  Cooper rubbed his back as he knelt; he’d scared the crap out of her. By the looks of Keaton, he’d done the same to her. She was ghostly white, pacing by the window, her hand clamped to her mouth as tears streamed down her face. In all their years working together, Cooper had never once seen Keaton cry.

  Tennessee grabbed the edge of the desk with one hand, his other pointed up at the screen. It pointed to his last search.

  When his voice came, it was raspy and sounded painful. “Dougie Beaumont,” he wheezed. “I met the bastard.”

  - Chapter 46 -

  Grainger Town, the historic heart of Newcastle, smelled of breakfast food and smoke. There’d been a basement fire earlier that morning; Tennessee read about it during his morning scroll through the latest news. There were few shoppers and tourists at this time of the morning; instead, the streets were filled with wait staff, store assistants and delivery drivers. It was eight a.m. and Grainger Town was beginning to wake from her slumber. Pigeons fought over crumbs, shutters were raised, and every few minutes, the stairs around Grey’s Monument spewed commuters from the Metro station that lay beneath it.

  The Black and White Warehouse was still closed. The plain entrance showed no signs of life, and there was no movement in the windows upstairs. A laminated card warned smile you’re on camera. Tennessee rested his back against the door and finished the black coffee he’d picked up from a food truck. He used his free hand to massage the sides of his torso. His ribs ached from the life-saving manoeuvre Keaton used yesterday. He decided not to tell Hayley what had happened at work the previous day. He hated keeping secrets from his wife, but she had her own battles and fears to deal with. She fretted enough about the dangerous nature of his job, she didn’t need to worry about his inability to distinguish his oesophagus from his windpipe as well. Moments later, a hairy man dressed in jeans and a black vest emerged from the Metro station. He swung a set of keys in his hands and hummed a nineties dance hit that Tennessee couldn’t remember the name of.