Roll The Dice (DCI Cooper Book 3)

by B Baskerville

  Lily wiped her face on the back of her hand, wincing as she touched yellow flesh near her eye. “Yes.”

  Cooper was glad Lily was talking, and she seemed to be warming up slightly. Her shivering was less pronounced. “You didn’t really know what your father did for a living, did you?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you knew what Charlene used to do. She didn’t hide it. You knew she earned great money, and you wanted some of that, so, you took a job at Vixen.”

  “YOU WHAT?” Theo’s attitude changed in an instant from that of a concerned boyfriend to an angry abuser. “You danced for dirty old men?” he spat, stepping forward to tower over the weeping Lily.

  Lily flinched, cowering further into the corner. “I— I just danced. I didn’t strip or anything, Theo.”

  “Back off,” Dylan warned, his teeth bared at his cousin.

  Theo ignored him. “You little slapper.”

  Rage coursed through Cooper. The word stung her as much as it stung Lily. “Out,” she commanded, pushing Theo in the chest. He didn’t budge. She saw Tennessee and Tucker lurking in the shadows, ready to assist if needed. “Do I need to remind you, Theo, that I can reopen the Harbour Lights case any time I damn well like? Now get out.” He looked at her as if she wouldn’t dare and when she raised her right brow to challenge him, he ground his jaw, folded his arms and walked away.

  Cooper let out a sigh and realised her hands were shaking. She wiggled her fingers for a few moments while she calmed down before continuing to talk to Lily. “The money was good at Vixen. You worked the quiet afternoon shifts as it meant you could juggle it with your job at the beautician’s, and you always made it home for dinner. No one would be suspicious. No one would know. You had no idea your family charged protection fees to the owner.”

  Cooper faced Dylan, who was massaging his temples. His hands were so large he could rub both sides of his head with one hand. “Dylan, the owner of Vixen—Aleksei Pavlovich—told me you never go in the bar.”

  “Yeah. I… I make the girls nervous. I can see it in their faces. They don’t like to look at me.”

  Cooper felt for him. He was a brute all right, but he was also the product of his upbringing. She’d been sneered at when she pushed a pram while wearing her school uniform, and kids had pointed when the wig she used to wear would slip. But she’d never know what it was like to be Dylan, to wear the damage of abuse so obviously.

  “Aleksei said you’d go to the back door and wait for one of the bartenders to bring out the cash. Then you’d take off.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t like to hang around.”

  “But you were ill on Monday. Poisoned. So Fletcher did the rounds himself. He wasn’t going to let the fact he was nauseous and probably seeing double come between him and his money.”

  “Not when he’d already called me every name under the sun for taking a sick day.”

  “Do you think your father was the sort to just go to the back door of a gentleman’s club?”

  He shorted, but not out of amusement. “Not a chance. There’s no way he’d go to Vixen or Bambi Bar, or any of those clubs, and not go in to take a look at the girls.”

  Cooper carefully leaned forward and patted Lily on her knee. “Aleksei said your father’s mood suddenly changed. He described your father as happy but sickly-looking one minute, then like he was ready to kill someone the next. He saw you, didn’t he?”

  Lily’s mouth opened, and she gasped for breath, her eyes pleading with the ceiling as if asking for forgiveness. It took several minutes and a lot of soothing words from her brother before she was able to speak through the panic.

  “I came out of the dressing room and got on the stage. He was sat there, drinking whiskey and… and… our eyes met. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. He stormed out of there so fast. I just jumped off the stage and ran back to the dressing room. I couldn’t go back on after that. I couldn’t do anything.”

  “Where did he wait for you?” Cooper asked.

  “The back alley.” She doubled up. Her shoulders rounded, head bowed, legs crossed in front of her. She looked half the size she was; like someone who wanted to be so small that they’d disappear. “I put my jacket on. I wanted some fresh air because it was like I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed a packet of cigarettes and went out the back to have a smoke, but my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t light it. His… his car came screeching round the corner. He got out and dragged me into it.”

  Dylan formed his free hand into a fist and cracked his knuckles.

  “He raced home. Speeding. I was sure we were going crash into a tree and go up in flames. I was crying, and he was calling me all sorts. I told him that he never called Charlene those names, but it made him even madder. He said it was different, that I was his daughter and I was an embarrassment. He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me into the house.”

  Terror gripped Lily, she squeezed her eyes shut, grabbing Dylan’s hand so tightly the ends of his fingers turned pink. Her other arm slammed downward, shattering the bottle against the concrete floor. Shards of green glass ricocheted off the wall next to her; the bottleneck, with its knife-like edges, remained clasped in Lily’s hand.

  “Take your time,” Cooper said as calmly as she could. “There’s no rush.”

  “I kept asking Mo to help me. I begged him.”

  “But he’d never go against his employer?”

  She shook her head from side to side. “It was like he couldn’t even hear me. Dad— Dad dragged me into his office and slammed the door. He was slapping me, punching me.” She took her hand away from Dylan’s and touched the tender skin around her eye. “I fell to the floor and curled up. I wrapped my hands around my head to protect myself… but he started kicking me instead.”

  Dylan winced. The story of abuse all too familiar to the eldest of Fletcher’s children.

  “He wouldn’t stop. He just kept kicking me, over and over. I tried to crawl under the desk to get away from him… and I saw the gun, taped under there… I thought… I thought he was going to kill me.”

  “I believe you,” Cooper said. “You grabbed the gun. Then what?”

  “He backed away for a second, long enough for me to clamber to my feet and move towards the door. I wanted to make a run for it. I was going to pack a bag and go to Theo’s.” She grimaced, perhaps recalling how Theo had just spoken to her. “Then Dad lunged at me and the gun went off. I… I don’t remember pulling the trigger. He fell over the desk and onto the floor. Then I shot him again. That time, well, I suppose that wasn’t an accident. I had to make sure he didn’t get back up. I killed him. Oh, God. I killed Dad.” She screamed, pulling her blanket open and stabbing the bottleneck into her thigh, once, twice—

  Dylan lunged, grasping her hand in his. “Stop, Lily. I won’t let you do this.”

  He pulled the make-shift weapon free and tossed it from the bunker’s window. Cooper heard it shatter. Dylan quickly folded a blanket and pressed it to Lily’s leg, stemming the flow of blood, but only for a moment; a circle of red was already blooming on the green fabric.

  “It’s okay, Lily. It’s okay.”

  “Time to get her out of here,” Cooper said. She motioned for Tennessee to get a paramedic, but Dylan had already scooped her up and was carrying her towards the exit. The three of them blinked as they emerged into the sunlight. Two paramedics helped Dylan lay Lily on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance. The shorter of the two cleaned her wounds while the other secured her to the bed ready for transport.”

  “Berwick?” The shorter one asked, referring to the nearest big town.

  The taller one shook his head and tightened a strap around Lily’s legs. “Too much blood loss. We’ll take her to Cramlington. We need to floor it.”

  “Dylan,” Cooper called. “Go with DS Daniel; he’ll follow the ambulance. I don’t have time to argue. We need to go now.”

  Thankfully, he did as he was asked and jumped from the vehicle. Tennessee already had th
e door to a squad car open and ready for him. As the doors shut, Cooper asked how she could help.

  “Hold this.”

  Cooper pressed clean gauze against Lily’s neck. She looked even paler.

  “I didn’t want to shoot Mo,” she said, her breathing shallow but rapid. “I was frightened, and I knew he was armed. I thought he’d shoot me if he saw me with the gun, so I just… You know.”

  Stroking her hair, Cooper tried to relax Lily as the ambulance raced south along the A1. When they arrived at the Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, they were met by a team of surgeons and nurses who wheeled Lily away through double doors. It was four and a half hours before Cooper saw her again.

  Cooper didn’t think Lily was a danger to the public, but following protocol, she had to arrange for officers to monitor the ward at all times. Regardless of Lily’s reasons, she’d still need to be taken into custody for the time being, and Cooper couldn’t risk her doing another runner.

  Greeting a pair of officers, Cooper and Tennessee briefly spoke with Lily’s surgeon before following him onto the ward. There were only two patients in the eight-bed ward, and they had been placed in opposite corners of the long room. The doctor pulled back a curtain and busied himself with charts, heart rates and blood pressure readings. Next to the bed, Dylan snored loudly in an uncomfortable-looking chair.

  Cooper smiled at Lily. “How are you feeling?”

  “She’ll be woozy for a while,” answered the doctor on Lily’s behalf. “And Lily, you didn’t react too well to the anaesthetic. If you continue feeling nauseous, just press this button.”

  She blinked wearily but brightened when she saw Dylan next to her.

  “You’ll have to go over all of this again later, but I hoped you could clear a few things up for us,” Cooper said.

  She lowered her eyes, then nodded once.

  “What were you wearing when your father dragged you back to Morshaw?”

  “Erm… a bikini, a red one, with a denim jacket and heels.”

  “These heels?” Cooper showed her a photo that had been taken of the inside of Lily’s wardrobe.

  Another nod.

  “We had an expert bloodstain analyst assess your father’s study. I released Charlene and initially dismissed you as a suspect because our expert told me the shooter had to be between five-foot-ten and six-foot-two. How tall are you?”

  “I’m five-five.”

  “Even in a pair of high heels, you’d still only be five-eight, five-nine at a push. But these…” she tapped on a pair of shoes with see-through heels that had caught her eye during the search for handwriting samples. “These are eight-inch perspex platform heels. Otherwise known as…”

  “Stripper heels,” Lily answered with a sigh.

  “Which means, on Monday, you were six-foot-one.”

  Dylan stirred. “Hey, you’re awake,” he said with a smile. It was the first time Cooper had seen him look happy.

  Something was troubling Cooper. She asked, “Why did you write Hanson’s name in your father’s diary?”

  “I didn’t know who he was at first, but I kept hearing his name around the house—the Hanson meeting this and the Hanson deal that. Dad made me go out with his son, Richard, a couple of times and he kind of creeped me out. I didn’t like him. He was really cagey about his family and how they knew ours… and I knew the boys hated him. Theo told me he was a… well a bad person, so I… I thought it would help, or at least buy me more time. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wiped the diary with my jacket; under the desk too. Then I got out of there, but I still had the gun and… Oh god, you have to tell Charlene I’m sorry. Promise me, Dylan. Tell her I’m so sorry.”

  “Why hide it in her jewellery box?” Cooper asked.

  “I knew it locked. And Charlene kept the key in the nightstand. I got cleaned up, cleaned the gun and got out of there. I was going to go back later and get it, but I thought what if someone’s found them already? What if Dylan or George found them and the police are already there? So, I called Charlene and arranged to spend the day with her. I thought it would give us both an alibi. I tried to make it right. I didn’t mean to frame her. I tried to tell you she wouldn’t do that.”

  Lily was becoming increasingly anxious, and her doctor looked like he was ready to throw Cooper and Tennessee out of there.

  “Try to relax,” she told her.

  Dylan stood, moved to the bed and sat on the edge so Lily could nuzzle into him. “The long sleeves and heavy make-up. You’ve been hiding the bruises he gave you, haven’t you?”

  Lily’s head bobbed in and out of his chest. He protectively stroked her black hair and addressed Cooper. “It was self-defence.”

  “I know that,” Cooper said. “But she’ll still be charged.” She felt for the young woman, and though she hoped the CPS would be lenient, forgiving even, she knew Lily’s life would never be the same. She was going to have to live with this forever. “I’m sorry, Lily. Dylan, you should call your lawyer. He’ll know what to do.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll get someone new. Dad’s lawyer was a tax and finance specialist. I wouldn’t trust him with this. Not with you, Lily. I’ll get you the best.”

  Cooper looked at Tennessee. He returned her stare with a bob of his head; it was time to let the young woman get some sleep and recover from her surgery.

  Before leaving, Cooper thanked Dylan for his help while they’d been in the bunker. She couldn’t know how it would have played out without him, but she knew he’d acted swiftly when they’d needed to carry Lily out of there. Thanks to him, Lily hadn’t bled out. Tennessee held the curtain for Cooper. As she left, she reached into a pocket, retrieved a small white card and placed it on the corner of the bed.

  * * *

  When Dylan Blackburn was sure his sister had fallen back to sleep, he picked up the piece of card that the detective with the short hair had left, and walked to the window for some fresh air. He felt heavy with the weight of a crumbling family on his shoulders, but it was a weight he was determined to bear. He would save his siblings and breathe new life into the Blackburn name.

  He took in the view of a fan-shaped car park and waited until the two detectives reached their car and drove away. Glancing down at the piece of card in his hand, Dylan turned it over. It was a business card: Oliver Timms, Defence Lawyer.

  - Chapter 29 -

  Gentle waves lapped at the shore. Bands of white were pushed up the golden sand by the enduring power of the North Sea. The sky was cloudless and bright, the sea, aquamarine with hints of grey. Longsands beach looked glorious. To the south, the ruins of Tynemouth Castle and the Priory loomed over the cliff face, and to the south, the steeple of St. George pierced the sky.

  Cooper watched the water, almost hypnotised by the rhythm it held. In, out, in, out. A never-ending force. As sure as the Earth kept spinning, the tides would keep moving. Just like crime. One case in, one case out. As soon as one investigation came to a close, you could be damn sure another would emerge. With various Blackburns either dead or in custody, and with Hanson facing life for arson and manslaughter, Cooper hoped that organised crime in the region would take a dive. That was wishful thinking at best and pure naivety at worst. The Roker Boys or the Daytons would move in and battle over the remnants like scabby seagulls fight over chips. If she was lucky, there’d all take each other out and leave the city mob-free, however, she’d never been the lucky sort. Now that the Blackburn / Moradi case had drawn to a close, Cooper was feeling refreshed and physically lighter. She worried about Lily and what awaited her. She’d wanted to hunt a cold-blooded killer but had instead found a scared little girl who feared for her life.

  A staging area had been set up at the south end of Longsands, next to Crusoe’s café. Commissioner Begum from Northumbria Police and Chief Fire Officer Spence delivered speeches while spectators gathered for the charity triathlon. A representative from the Fishermen’s Mission, a charity that provides welfare and support for fishermen as well as runni
ng services for lost seafarers, thanked Begum and Spence. He took the microphone, spoke about the important work of the Mission, and expressed his gratitude to those involved in today’s fundraiser.

  Cooper pulled her dressing gown tighter around her. Underneath it, she wore a plain black bathing suit that didn’t entirely cover the impressive black and grey chest tattoo she’d recently acquired. The design of roses, complete with leaves and thorns, perfectly hid her lumpectomy scars and covered not only her breasts but some of her upper chest and shoulders.

  The relay triathlon would soon begin. Cooper took her place on the starting line with all the other poor sods who’d been strong-armed into doing the swimming leg. All body types were represented, from hulking firemen to more heavy-set women who were giggling with each other to cover their nerves.

  Elliot Whyte took the spot next to Cooper. “Good luck, ma’am.” He removed his robe and added it to a growing pile. Cooper did the same. “Fuck me. It’s colder than I thought. I’m freezing my fucking tits off.” Suddenly his jaw fell. “Ah, shit. Sorry.”

  “Relax. It’s just a phrase, and besides, I didn’t have a mastectomy.”

  “Oh. Well, good.” He looked away, fixing his gaze on the grey-blue that awaited them.

  Cooper thought he looked uncomfortable so she couldn’t resist making it worse. “And since when were you worried about hurting my feelings?”

  Before Whyte could answer, a bell rung to signal the start of the race. Cooper didn’t waste a second, she sprinted towards the sea, all the time wondering what the hell she was doing there. How had Tennessee convinced her to do this? Her feet met the shallows. Jesus. The water was icy cold. High-pitched squeals filled the air, and once the water reached groin level, the men felt their prized possessions rapidly start to shrink. Cooper tried to block out the cold, telling herself she’d been through worse, that cold water was nothing compared to chemo. The tactic worked and Cooper was soon deep enough to dive forward and begin swimming. She followed the route marked by buoys, concentrating on her breathing and maintaining a steady pace. The cold began to seep beyond her skin and chilled her to the bones. She’d kill Tennessee when she got her hands on him. He owed her big time. Sod it, he could look after Steven Seagull instead of Keaton.