Roll The Dice (DCI Cooper Book 3)

by B Baskerville

  Cooper scan read as childish giggles filled the room. “Oh! Wait. He was wearing it?”

  Keaton nodded, a sly smile on her face. “It gets worse.”

  “I believe you.” Cooper didn’t need to read all the ins and outs—so to speak—she already had a pretty horrific mental image that she was trying to shake. “Okay people,” she said, raising her voice to take command of the room. “Let’s try our best to focus. Paula, put that file away before anyone vomits.” She found her place next to the whiteboard and made eye contact with as many people as she could. “There have been a few developments. Firstly, as we’ve all read, Hanson has an alibi for the time of the murder.” She took a red pen and drew a line through his name on the whiteboard.

  “Dirty old perv,” someone called out.

  “Quite. Said dirty old perv was tailed all day yesterday. Saffron?”

  Saffron Boyd swallowed and stood up. She wrung her hands together and spoke quietly. Was she nervous, or did she simply not like it when everyone looked at her? Cooper didn’t know.

  “Ma’am, em, boss. There was nothing to report until the evening when Hanson received a call and became increasingly angry. After the call in question, he paced for a while, and it was only once his wife left to take the dog for a walk, that he made a series of other phone calls, all similar in tone. He didn’t leave the family home.”

  “Do we know who called?” Cooper asked.

  “I’m waiting for the phone company to get back to me.”

  “Well chase them. We don’t have time to waste.”

  “I will, boss.”

  Tennessee raised his hand to get Cooper’s attention. “If he waited for his missus the leave, he was probably talking to the mistress. He knew we were going to speak to her, but he probably didn’t count on her on giving quite so many details. Might explain his anger?”

  “It could.” Cooper paused, hugging a beige coloured folder to her chest. “Or, word reached him about what went down in Frankland.”

  “You’re right,” Tennessee said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he fired back in some way.”

  “I can guarantee he’ll want revenge. We need to act quickly. Before Nixon gives himself a heart attack—” The word caught in her throat and she struggled to fight back the tears. Ben was undergoing bypass surgery to improve blood flow to his myocardium. She wouldn’t be able to speak to him for hours, possibly days, so for now, she had to battle on. “Is Hanson still at home?” she directed at Boyd.

  “As of twenty minutes ago. That’s when I called the team who took over from us last night.”

  “Which brings us to the other developments.” Cooper filled her lungs with air and exhaled slowly. “Regarding the murder weapon. Both Dylan and Charlene deny having ever seen the Glock. However, George tells us that not only did the gun belong to his father, but that Dylan knew about it and therefore lied to us. Now according to George, Theo would have also known that a gun was stashed in the office at all times, and Dylan told us Theo used to go clay pigeon shooting. I had someone check the SGC records; Theo Blackburn was the registered keeper of a Blaser F16 from 2016 to 2018. Prior to that, he had a Beretta DT11. His licence has expired, but young Theo was quite the marksman. He was a regional champion at fourteen and national champion at sixteen.”

  Around the room, people exchanged glances at the news that Theo knew how to handle guns much bigger than a Glock. 29.

  “But here’s the real kicker,” Cooper continued. “Fletcher Blackburn may have died from gunshot wounds to his chest, but he was also poisoned.”

  A murmur floated through the incident room like a Mexican wave, moving from Cooper at the front to the officers right at the back. Heads turned, shoulders shrugged.

  “A chemical derived from foxgloves was found in his system during the autopsy. It’s highly toxic, and chances are that Fletcher was either very ill or indeed dying when he was shot.”

  Martin shuffled in his seat and caught Cooper’s eye. “Didn’t the man who owns LOL say Fletcher was looking peaky?”

  Tennessee spoke in the affirmative. “Yeah. Said he was sweating and tugging on his collar.”

  Cooper nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Keaton was wiggling her pen around in the air.

  “Paula?”

  “Are we thinking someone got bored waiting for the poison to kick in?”

  “That’s what I was wondering. I’ve already taken the liberty of printing off the search histories from the laptops and tablets the SOCOs removed from the Blackburn residence. Printouts are in your files, but I’ve seen nothing to suggest any of the Blackburns were researching poisons.”

  “Surely they would have wiped their search history.”

  “I would have thought so,” Cooper said. “But regardless, nothing is ever truly deleted. Tech will update us if they find anything at all relating to foxgloves or poisons. Tennessee, Keaton and Martin, we’re going to Morshaw. I want handwriting samples for each member of the family. The fake entry in the diary is still a key piece of evidence. Whyte and Boyd, stick to Hanson like glue. He probably knows he’s being tailed and therefore won’t get up to much.”

  “What about the Roker Boys?” Whyte asked. “Shouldn’t we put them under surveillance?”

  Keaton pulled a file from within another file. “Here’s what we got from Local Intelligence. No top guy as such. It’s a four-way partnership. Toby Beck, Richie Boyer, Alex Deacon and Kayla Dunn.”

  “Kayla?” Whyte looked doubtful.

  “You heard. Despite their name, the Roker Boys are shattering the glass ceiling for female mobsters everywhere.”

  “Go feminism,” Cooper said dryly. “Nixon’s not going to approve much or anything in the way of surveillance. Budgets are tight, overtime is a thing of the past, and we don’t have anything to justify a warrant, let alone a phone tap. The best we can do is talk to them and get alibis for the time of the murder. Can you action it, Whyte?”

  Whyte nodded. “I’ll get the locals on it. Do we have the names of their capos and soldiers?” he asked using the mafia terms for those below boss-level on the mob family tree.

  “All in the file,” Keaton said, handing it to Whyte. She stood up and popped on a pair of sunglasses. “Right then. It’s a lovely day, let’s go catch a killer.”

  - Chapter 22 -

  Dylan Blackburn knocked on the door of a house in Arthur’s Hill. The house had no door number, not that it mattered, it never received any post because officially, no one lived there. When no one answered within ten seconds, he began to knock harder and harder. A constant thunder of fist against wood until it was opened by a small, undernourished man with a haircut that made him look like a toilet brush. Dylan Blackburn was not the sort of man to wait for an invitation. He forced his way in, picked the man up in a vice-like grip and carried the starveling to the kitchen where he dropped him onto a plastic chair.

  “Here, man, Dylan. There’s nee need for this.”

  Behind him, Dylan could hear Morrison following him in and shutting the front door.

  “Quiet,” Dylan said. He pulled a length of rope from his back pocket and began securing the man to the chair.

  “Dylan! Dylan!” His voice was filled with fear. “Whatever he’s told you, it’s bollocks. I swear, it’s bollocks.”

  Morrison lurked in the doorway to the kitchen. “Where’s the money, Pickett?”

  “What money?”

  Dylan had no patience for Pickett. He was a dirty rent boy who should be grateful. Most little shits in his line of work lived on the street. They’d sheltered him, given him a safe place to sleep in exchange for a fair share of the profits, and because Pickett—who was nineteen or twenty—looked about thirteen years old, there was always plenty of profit. Dylan didn’t take any joy in hurting skinny weaklings, especially if they’d never raised a hand to him first, so he gave the scrote one last chance.

  “Truth or dare?”

  Pickett stopped squirming and looked up. He had a sore on
his mouth and what was either terrible acne or a suspicious-looking rash across one side of his face and down his neck. “Huh?”

  Dylan repeated himself, more slowly this time. “Truth or dare? Truth, you tell me where the money is, or dare, you pull out one of your teeth with these.”

  He slammed a pair of pliers on the kitchen table so hard that Pickett jumped in his seat and let out a squeal like a rusty hinge. “Nee way. Come on, Dylan, I didn’t take any money. I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  He started to cry. Man, he hated it when they cried. The criers reminded him of himself when he was seven or eight, when the other kids would form a circle around him in the schoolyard and take turns spitting on the weird-looking kid. Dylan knew what was at stake here. Morrison was a capo and wouldn’t usually concern himself with these matters. He should have left it with Hurls to divvy it out to one associate or another. Still, Morrison—one level down from Fletcher—had told Hurls to tell Dylan. It was a test; Dylan had to show strength. He had to show he was unflappable and capable of handling anything. He was Fletcher Blackburn’s eldest son and the throne should go to him. He’d fucking earned it, unlike Theo, who caused nothing but trouble. He had to show he was a leader before this whole enterprise went to shit.

  “Don’t want to play truth or dare, Pickett? That’s fine, you can take the forfeit instead.”

  “Nah, nah. Dylan, listen... Listen, mate—”

  “I’m not your mate.”

  “Sorry. Sorry, Dylan.” He tried to hold up his hands to apologise, but because of the rope, couldn’t lift them more than a centimetre from his thighs. “It’s not that I don’t want to play. Truth. I pick truth.”

  Dylan scraped a second chair across the linoleum floor and sat facing the thin, frightened man. “All right.” Dylan leant in so that his face was less than three inches from Pickett’s and yelled, “WHERE IS THE MONEY?”

  More tears ran down his face. “There is no money. I haven’t been lifting. That’s the truth, Dylan. That’s the truth. Hurls has just got it in for me.”

  Dylan could feel the rage building as it had done so many times before. He struggled to keep it at a simmer. “I’d think carefully about insulting someone like Hurls.”

  He couldn’t kill him. Well, he could—easily. But dissolving their under-sized earner isna vat of hydrofluoric acid wouldn’t get them their money back, and it would cut their future income.

  “I wasn’t insulting him. I was just—”

  Dylan looked at Morrison. He didn’t look impressed. Shit. It was time to get serious.

  “Just nothing,” Dylan growled. “I’ve had enough. You get the forfeit. Time to say goodbye to your legs.”

  He stood, grabbed both of Pickett’s legs and placed his feet on the chair from which he’d just stood. He raised his own foot and hovered it above Pickett’s left knee joint.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no. Not my legs. Please, please, I need my legs.”

  Tears flooded from his eyes.

  “You’re a fucking low life, addict, rent boy. You don’t need legs; you only need your gob and your arse.”

  Dylan stomped his leg downwards. Through the thick soles of his boot, he still felt the snapping of Pickett’s fibula and tibia.

  The scream that followed was bound to trigger a migraine; it would kick in in an hour or two. It was a good thing they’d soundproofed this place.

  Saliva poured from Pickett’s open mouth as he writhed in the chair. Dylan raised his foot again, this time hovering it over his right leg.

  “WAIT,” he bellowed, closing his eyes. “Under… the bed… Loose floorboard.”

  Bingo.

  Dylan kept his leg raised and primed while Morrison went to check. When he returned, he was waving a wad of cash.

  “Three g’s.”

  Dylan placed his foot back on the floor and looked down on the snivelling thief.

  “Please… I need an ambulance.”

  Morrison had barely taken his phone from his pocket when Dylan slapped it from his hand. The phone skidded across the dirty floor and came to a stop by an overflowing bin. Morrison looked like his spleen was ready to blow.

  “We need the lad fixing up so he can see punters again,” he growled.

  “You mental? Bringing the flashing blue lights round here?”

  “I was going to leave him in the street,” Morrison said through clenched teeth.

  Dylan walked right up to Morrison and towered over him. “Still too close for comfort. Drop him by the phone box in the park.” He pushed past him. “And have someone follow him to the hospital. Make sure he doesn’t nick off.”

  Dylan needed to get home and take a beta-blocker before his vision started to cloud, but despite his sore head, Dylan smiled as he strode away. He’d just given a capo an order. What did that make him?

  * * *

  In another area of Newcastle, Aleksei Pavlovich unlocked Vixen. He deactivated the gentlemen’s club’s alarm system and picked up his post from the doormat. He shuffled the letters together into a neat pile and thumbed through them one by one. Electric bill, tax demand, flyer for Indian food, bank statement and, oh joy, a letter from the water company to say his rates were going up. Again.

  Aleksei switched on the lights and shielded his eyes as the bulbs stuttered and flickered into life. What had become of his baby? His club had been the talk of the town when he opened in 1995. Lawyers brought clients here for a light lunch, to butter them up and seal the deal.　Accountants came after work to celebrate having saved their bosses millions by making a thousand hard-working, blue-collar guys redundant. Footballers came to throw their money around and party the night away. He had the prettiest girls in town and the money they attracted meant Aleksei had been able to buy the most exquisite things for the club. It had been opulent. Now, his baby was depressed, like a faded photograph or a wilting flower. It made him sad just to be there. Lad culture was discouraged in big businesses; shareholders had no interest in indiscretions that could land their firm on the wrong side of a Twitter mob. And the footballers stayed away, instead choosing to spend time with their families. What was the world coming to?

  Aleksei opened the dishwasher and found two glasses hadn’t survived the wash cycle. Wonderful. More things that need replacing. There’d been a leak in the bathroom for three weeks now, and he couldn’t afford a plumber. His favourite blonde had quit after getting herself pregnant, the graceful brunette with legs up to her armpits hadn’t shown up in days, he was behind on his car payments and he was sure one of the bouncers had his fingers in the till. And now, to top it off, Fletcher Blackburn was dead.

  Aleksei was no fan of Fletcher Blackburn, nor was he a fan of his ogreish son. Coming round every month demanding their pizzo. That’s what the Italians call it: a pizzo. Aleksei called it extortion. At least Fletcher had been consistent, the pizzo hadn’t been raised since the turn of the millennium. Just shy of a monkey each and every month. Four hundred and fifty fucking quid. It was money Aleksei could have used to fix the leak, to pay his car off, to put towards his mounting credit card debt. Now Fletcher was gone Aleksei was worried about who would take his place, because someone would definitely take his place. And when they did, how much would the pizzo be then?

  There was a noise in the back alley. The damn cat must have got in the bins again. He thumbed through the pile of letters once more and let out a long sigh at his electric bill. Choosing the ostrich approach of burying his head in the sand, Aleksei dropped the pile of letters in the bin. They could wait until next month’s reminder.

  Years ago, Aleksei had tried to rally the other bar, club and restaurant owners in this and the surrounding streets. He’d heard of the addiopizzo movement in Sicily and hoped to start something similar in Newcastle. A union of sorts. But people were nervous about going against the Blackburns. Venues had been trashed for refusal to pay, people had been hurt, maybe even killed. Aleksei poured himself an apple juice and leant over to rest his head on the bar; it smelled of cleaning pro
ducts. Perhaps, now that Fletcher was dead, it would be a good time to try and form his addiopizzo union again. He closed his eyes and wondered if such a thing could work on Tyneside, then he was distracted by another noise.

  Aleksei froze, focusing his hearing towards the dressing room that the girls used. There was a rustling and a crackling, followed by a whooshing noise. It wasn’t the damn cat, and it wasn’t in the back alley.

  - Chapter 23 -

  Forensics thought they’d collected all they needed from the Blackburns’ home in rural Northumberland, but given the news about Fletcher’s digoxin poisoning, they pulled their bunny suits back on and scattered themselves around the grounds of the manor home in search of more clues. With the SOCOs dressed in identical white all-in-ones, complete with hoods and boots, it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. Atkinson could be any of them. Cooper had her team record their attendance in the crime scene log book, then they pulled on their own PPE to protect the scene and got to work looking for handwriting samples. The grounds, study and kitchen were bustling with activity, so they began upstairs in the bedrooms.

  “This is the master bedroom,” Cooper said, pushing open a heavy, solid wood door. It was exactly how they had left it on Tuesday. That was only two days ago and yet so much had happened. It was one of those weeks when you were so busy that time slipped away from you and days ended before you even felt like they had begun and yet the week passed at a snail’s pace. Despite the slow pace, Cooper loved the hunt, not in the visceral way that Keaton loved it, but in the problem-solving sense. This was a logic puzzle that needed to be unlocked. Unfortunately, as much as Cooper wanted to see the case through to the end, there was the matter of her father and her need to see him as soon as possible. When Ben Cooper came out of surgery, he’d be kept in intensive care, be monitored for arrhythmia and pumped full of drugs to thin his blood. Part of her craved stability. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the sort of job where you could take leave whenever it was required? To work the same hours each day, knowing exactly what was expected of you and what needed doing for each shift? No, she thought, stopping by the dresser drawer where Hong Evanstad had found Fletcher’s gun. Absolutely not.