I drove out of the car park and a couple of hundred yards down the road to a burger restaurant, where I pulled in. I waited, but there was no sign of a following car. Now that I thought about it, I’d read in one of the court reports that Barry Cooke could not drive. It was on his side in the Marshall case, for as Barraclough had said, Cooke’s alibi was that he was at a party four miles away from where Sophie Marshall’s body had been found. No way could he have walked that distance and back. Someone would have to have driven him there, which, as Barraclough said with a smile, was most unlikely.
Still, Barry Cooke had been to court several times. So had Ray Boyd. And so, in all probability, had Boyd’s girlfriend. Any one of them might have seen Sophie Marshall before. Maybe she’d been picked out…
None of which got me any further. Proof was the thing. The police needed proof. I waited, but there was no sign of Barry Cooke, so I started the car again and drove home to my wife.
Next morning, as I parked the car outside my offices, I saw him again. He was good at being furtive, but solicitors deal with furtive people all the time, and I spotted him straightaway. I locked the car and started towards him. At first, I thought he was going to run for it, but he decided instead to stand his ground. He put his hands in his pockets and waited for me.
‘Are you following me?’ I asked.
Barry Cooke shook his head. ‘Got a right to be here, haven’t I?’
‘I saw you yesterday, skulking.’
He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So why are you following me?’
He considered a response. Bad liars usually take their time. ‘That witness picked you out,’ he eventually said.
‘Yes?’
‘But the coppers are still hassling me.’
‘You want me to do something about it?’
He frowned. ‘No, I just… that witness picked you out.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She made a mistake, that’s all.’ I paused. ‘Maybe she was paid to make a mistake.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘How do you mean?’
But I just shrugged. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘are you going to stop following me, or must I call DI Preston?’
He screwed up his face. ‘Preston, that bastard. You’re all in it together, you lot. All matey, all favours and stuff.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
He just made another face and walked away. I watched him go. Then, trembling a little, I went into my office and opened a fresh bottle of brandy.
I knew I had to talk to the witness. The problem was: Would she talk to me?
It was difficult. I was finding it harder to get things straight in my mind. I knew I was in dangerous territory, and that things might get worse still. I spent all the rest of that day watching for Barry Cooke, but I never saw him. Maybe my warning was enough; maybe he was keeping his distance for reasons of his own. But someone did scratch my car. I phoned my wife and told her about it, explaining that after work I was going to get respray estimates from a couple of garages.
Then I headed out to Sophie Marshall’s estate.
I parked at a distance and had to walk down the very alley where she’d been attacked. It was a dreary spot, a narrow corridor bordered by high brick walls covered in graffiti. There was a railway line nearby, trains thundering past. A terrible place to die. I had to stop for a moment and control my breathing. But I went on.
It is difficult, more difficult than I’d imagined, to hang about on these estates while remaining inconspicuous. People came to their windows, and children stopped playing to stare at me. So I climbed the stairwell and walked about a bit outside the lines of flats, looking like I knew where I was going.
It was hopeless. After a nervous half-hour, I decided to return to my car. I was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands clutching the steering wheel, trying to calm myself down, when I saw her. She walked on loud high-heeled boots, spiky things, as spiky as she herself was. She wore tight black denims, ripped at the knees, and a baggy black T-shirt. She hadn’t brought Boyd with her, thank God. I didn’t want to have to deal with Boyd, not if I could help it. She had her head down, either sullenly or just to avoid eye contact with other pedestrians. Standard practice these days, sad to say.
She passed within feet of my car, but didn’t so much as glance at it. I gave her half a minute to walk down the alley, then got out of the car, locked it, and followed. I was giving her plenty of time. By the time I got to the far end of the alley, she had already crossed the quadrangle and was somewhere in the block. Then I saw her appear on the third floor. She walked to the fourth door from the stairs, and opened it with a key.
I followed.
I stood outside her door for the best part of a minute, then bent down to look through her letterbox. I could hear music, probably a radio. But no voices, no other sounds. I stood up again and looked at the nameplate on the door. It was a piece of cheap lined paper, stuck to the paintwork with tape. AFFLICK, it said. I knocked a four-beat rhythm, a friendly knock, then waited.
There was no spy hole, so when she came to the door she opened it. No security chain either. I pushed the door open wide and went in.
‘Hoi,’ she said, her voice a squeal, ‘what the hell-?’
Her voice died as she recognised me. Her cheeks went red.
‘I just want to talk, that’s all. Five minutes of your time.’
‘I’ll yell bloody murder,’ she said.
I smiled. ‘I don’t doubt it. Look, I wouldn’t have come here, but I need to speak to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I think you know. Can we sit down?’
She took me into the living-room, which was little more than a hovel. She went straight to the fireplace, switched off the radio, opened a packet of cigarettes, and lit one for herself. She never took her eyes off me. She looked scared. I cleared a space and sat down on the sofa. I crossed my legs, trying to look relaxed, hoping she wouldn’t see me as a threat. I didn’t want that.
‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘Do you know a young man called Barry Cooke?’
‘Never heard of him,’ she said defiantly.
‘No? He was on that lineup with me. He was standing right next to me. Short, hair tied back, scruffy.’
‘You’ve got a nerve coming here.’
She had pulled herself together. I’ll give her that; she was strong-willed.
‘Barry Cooke’, I continued, ‘is the man the police think killed Sophie Marshall. They were hoping you’d identify him.’
‘I identified you. It was you I saw.’
I smiled and looked at the floor between us. ‘The police are trying to pin down Barry Cooke.’
‘So what?’
‘So… you could help them.’
‘What?’
‘You could remember something about the man you saw that night. You could… change your mind.’ I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out an envelope.
‘What’s that?’ she said, curious now.
‘Money, a lot of it. A one-off payment for your cooperation. ’
‘You want Cooke convicted?’
‘I want someone convicted, and it may as well be him.’
Well, hadn’t I left Sophie’s body that way on purpose, remembering Cooke’s MO? Hadn’t I taken her money and jewellery? But I hadn’t counted on Cooke having such a strong alibi. I hadn’t counted on there being a witness.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘take the money.’
‘But it was you I saw that night.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said, feeling this to be the truth. What did it matter, a brief affair gone badly wrong? A threat to tell wife and colleagues? A chase through an alley? What did any of it matter in the wider scheme?
‘You killed her.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘But you did, and now you want to fit up Cooke.’
‘What I want,’ I said quietly, ‘is to give you some money. What have you got to lose? The police didn’t believe you when you pointed me out at the lineup. They’ll never believe you. You might as well take the money and tell them some other story.’