Fragile Cord (28 page)

‘Sergeant Coupland?’ The lawyer
regarded him closely, trying not to stare at the greying curls
beneath the deep V of his shirt.

Coupland grunted as he cleared
his throat. The uniformed officers searching the refuse bins
belonging to the businesses along Chorley Road had been instructed
to dig the street up if they had to. He needed to buy time.

He flashed her his best
compliant smile.

‘Anyone for coffee?’ He asked
genially.

Alex had planned to go home.
She’d intended to put Ben to bed herself then sit Carl down and
share her fears about having another child. She wanted their
discussion to be rational, an exchange of views rather than the
tired slanging match that took place whenever she came home late
and hungry, frustrated by some aspect or other of the case she was
working on.

Feeling rational was becoming
an alien concept these days. As each day wore on she became aware
of a constant nagging in the pit of her stomach, a simmering unease
like a pressure cooker at boiling point. One false move and she
felt ready to explode. Her eyes were heavy and dark, one blink away
from tears. Maybe she was expecting too much of herself. Maybe
right now she just couldn’t do rational. She’d asked Coupland once
if he ever felt the same, if coming into contact with badness each
day had changed him as a parent. It was the one time he’d been
serious with her, showed her a vulnerable side to his personality
she hadn’t previously known existed.

Being a parent
means being paranoid
, he’d
counselled,
it went with the
territory
.
But
being a cop meant they saw things on a daily basis most parents
didn’t see. They
saw
the murdered children and the accident victims and the
physical damage that one person could inflict upon another. Close
up in graphic detail at the scene of crime, during the post mortem,
in the photographs pinned on the incident room
wall
.

Alex sighed; she thought she’d come to
terms with all that. She’d learned to separate Alex the detective
from Alex the wife and mother. They were two separate people that
she tried to keep apart, like exes at a wedding.

Yet Tracey Kavanagh had made
those two worlds collide. For how could she delve into Tracey’s
life and not make comparisons with her own? Here was a mother who
idolised her child, loved him above everyone else yet still caused
him harm. Alex thought of Ben and the ferocity of her love – a love
that would make her lay down her life for him – or kill others who
got in her way.

Sometimes
she’d catch herself looking at her son and her chest would fill so
much she was overcome with a mixture of joy and dread – joy at the
future and what it might bring – and dread, for exactly the same
reason. She’d always been a capable person, but what if she stopped
being able to cope, what if the constant worry became too much? The
fact that she would die for Ben was etched through her veins, but
this case had made her question herself. Could she ever become so
desperate that she’d contemplate taking him with her? She needed to
work out the answer to
that
– and soon, for until she did, another child was
out of the question.

She’d intended to share these
thoughts with Carl tonight. Carl, the free spirit who travelled
through life by the seat of his pants and by God she envied that.
It was partly the reason she loved him; if she’d hooked up with
someone too much like herself they’d have worried themselves into
the grave by now.

As it was, her plan for them to
talk had gone up in smoke. Her meeting with Charlie Preston had
been more than fruitful; it had been like walking through an
over-ripe orchard. Sergeant Coupland would need to hear the
information she’d become privy to as soon as possible, so after
walking Charlie back to her car Alex had scanned the staff car park
to check his car was still there before turning around, heading
back towards the station steps.

Coupland looked as though he
had taken root in his chair. He sat perfectly still, holding the
telephone receiver mid-air with a perplexed look upon his face. His
meeting with Doyle and Randall in the DCC’s office had been a
series of revelations, each one more shocking than the other. It
just went to show, he thought to himself, that it was possible to
love someone, share a life with them, yet not really know them at
all.

People, and the lies they told,
never failed to surprise him.

And disappoint.

He looked at his watch;
Horrocks’s solicitor had agreed to a twenty-minute break, the
evidence his team uncovered during that timeframe would be crucial.
They had motive, but nothing concrete to back it up. He’d made a
call to Robinson, no luck so far. He slammed his fist down hard
onto his desk in frustration. Surely these two head cases weren’t
cleverer than they looked?

He’d been intending to call
Benson, clear up the final piece in Tracey Kavanagh’s jigsaw that
was her life. Bad news came in threes didn’t it? He might as well
go for the full house. He was hunched over his desk cradling the
phone with his shoulder when Alex walked purposefully into the CID
Room. ‘Sarge-’ she began, but he held up his hand to silence
her.

He nodded into the phone, said
a series of ‘uh-huhs’ before letting out a long slow whistle. When
he replaced the receiver he had the look of someone saddened by
what they’d been told even though they’d been expecting it, like
the death of a terminally ill relative. He stared into the corner
of the room so hard Alex turned to see if someone was there but the
space behind her was empty. She moved sideways a little so she
entered Coupland’s line of vision.

‘Sarge,’ she said impatiently,
‘Tracey Kavanagh was on the Witness Protection Scheme.’ Coupland’s
eyes locked onto hers in an instant. He nodded his head gravely,
wondering what else she’d discovered. Alex was a grafter all right;
she’d overtake him on the career ladder in the not too distant
future, no question.

‘I know’ he replied evenly,
reluctantly bursting her bubble. ‘And I’ve just discovered the
identity of Kyle’s father.’

Alex dragged her own chair to
beside Coupland’s desk and sat down. She was put out he’d uncovered
Tracey’s secret the same time she had, but her natural curiosity
got the better of her. ‘Charlie could only give me the bare bones,
she’d been brought in to deal with Tracey’s father after he was
sentenced, her main role is coordinating restorative justice.’

‘No kidding,
eh?’ Coupland skitted, ‘Well I wish her well with
that
.’

Alex nodded
impatiently. ‘Go on.
Give
.’

Neither Coupland nor Curtis had
been allowed to keep the confidential file Paul Riddell had slid
along the desk to them but that was no hardship. What Coupland had
read in the quiet of the DCC’s office would stay with him for a
lifetime.

The file provided a detailed
back-story:

Number 17 Langley Road was an
unassuming house in a quiet terraced street in the north west of
England. The owner, Harold Sweetmore, was cheerful and hardworking.
His wife Margaret was a busy, lively mother. They were generally
liked by the neighbours either side of them, harmless enough by all
accounts, although there had been gossip about the to-ing and
fro-ing that took place most nights. Some felt they disciplined
their children too harshly, although there was nothing specific
enough to warrant a call to Social Services.

Harold was a trawler man by
trade, the photo on his file depicting the broken veined skin of a
man exposed to harsh weather. A wide face topped with dark wiry
hair. He skippered fishing boats in the North Sea, which took him
away from home for weeks at a time. He’d tried to find local work
but wasn’t built for staying indoors, his frame too bulky to sit
behind a desk, his shovel-like hands too big for work on a
production line. Fishing was in his blood, was all he’d ever known
as man and boy.

His father had been a trawler
man, like his father before him and during his childhood he’d never
once ventured beyond the tight-knit Hebredian community where he’d
been born. Fishing was a way of life, put food on the table,
clothes on the islanders’ backs and when the sea went against them
every man on the island would join in the rescue without a second
thought, continuing their search until all were accounted for –
alive or dead. Life was a series of unforgiving storms punctuated
by loss. The trade suited Harold; he thrived on the constant battle
against the elements, the surge of power he felt when he’d ridden
out another storm. He began to live for the rush of adrenaline that
ran through him every time he was in complete control.

He met Margaret; the woman who
would later became his wife, during her only visit to the island
when she and her widowed mother came to visit an elderly aunt. A
plain woman, with a body intended for heavy work, Margaret was
flattered by Harold’s attention. The romance blossomed quickly and
when she returned home he accompanied her, moving her mother into a
smaller bedroom at the back of the house, installing himself and
Margaret into the master bedroom. Unwilling to learn a new trade he
returned to his trawler on the North Sea, coming back to the family
home every couple of weeks.

Riddell had then picked up the
story: ‘To help supplement the family income Margaret took in
lodgers, young girls who’d had problems at home, most were
runaways, many had grown up in care. Misfits.’

‘Easy to spot if you know the
places to look for them,’ Coupland acknowledged, ‘Bus stations,
railway stations, burger bars.’

‘The neighbours sniggered that
it was always young girls,’ Riddell continued, ‘but their laughter
turned to horror when the extent of what had been going on began to
unravel in front of them. It was during a particularly hot summer
that neighbours complained of a foul smell emanating from the back
of the terraced row of houses. It was only when the drains were
inspected – and the source of the smell pinpointed to be coming
from the Sweetman property, that police were alerted.’

The Acting DCC John Dawson’s
input reminded them he was still in the room: ‘Background checks
into the couple revealed that following a complaint by an ex-lodger
several years earlier they had been charged with a number of
offences, including rape and buggery, but the case against them was
dropped when the prosecution witness failed to testify. The Senior
Investigating Officer….’ He paused, scanning the case notes in
front of him, ‘...a DI Janet Reid, who had also investigated the
initial allegation, began to suspect that something terrible was
going on at the house and obtained a search warrant enabling her to
gain access to the property. The following day police started to
dig up the garden.’

Coupland and Curtis read the
remaining notes in silence, seemingly neither senior officer wanted
to provide a voiceover for what happened next. A mechanical digger
was brought in to remove the topsoil, followed by a team of thirty
officers, working in relays, sifting shovelfuls of earth through a
sieve. This was the start of an excavation so gruelling all
officers involved would receive stress counselling. On the second
day a trowel hit something hard and the loose soil was scraped away
to reveal a human skull. Over the next five days the decomposing
bodies of six women were unearthed in the grounds of the house. The
victims had been sexually assaulted then strangled, their bodies
trussed up with rope.

During the trial the lodger
who’d escaped the Sweetmans’ clutches gave evidence against the
couple. A runaway herself, they’d offered her board and lodgings in
return for looking after their two young children. What she hadn’t
bargained on was the couple’s bizarre open marriage and their
desire to include her in their sex games. After a couple of nights
she took off but felt guilty about leaving the couple’s little girl
and her brother, who were no strangers to their parents’ bed.
Occasionally, to spice things up, or to keep them going while they
were in between victims, they turned on their own son and daughter,
raping them for entertainment. The children, both teenagers by the
time of the couple’s arrest, gave evidence against their parents in
court.

Convicted for six murders, the
couple were sentenced to life in prison. Weeks later Margaret was
found hanged in her prison cell. She had made a noose by plaiting
strips of sheet together. Standing on a chair she had tied the
home-made ligature to a ventilator shaft, looped it around her neck
and kicked the chair away.

Coupland kept the summary he
gave Alex as succinct as possible, not pausing for questions but
maintaining the pace of an oncoming train. Now he was coming to the
part that had connotations for everything that came after; it had
the potential of being a very long night.

He continued: ‘Apart from the
bodies, one of the most startling discoveries inside the house were
the hundreds of pictures adorning the walls. Lifelike drawings and
pen and ink sketches of family members posing with each
unsuspecting victim were displayed in every room. This evidence
played a crucial role for the prosecution in proving that the
victims had been on the premises, at least long enough to have
their portrait taken. The signature at the bottom of each drawing
was D. Sweetman, the couple’s eighteen-year-old son, David.’

The file notes contained
reports from experts commenting on David’s drawings of his sister.
The teenager had managed to capture a range of emotions from fear
to anger to sheer helplessness, the mental trauma they’d witnessed
evident in every shadow in her young face, in every brushstroke
planted on the canvas. These portraits would later secure him a
place at Art College.