‘Were you just playing a game with me? I feel so stupid. What you did today was cruel. Please tell me, what is going on?’
I wrote a reply straight away, making no reference to whether or not I’d been on the train. She could think what she liked about that.
‘Dear Sonia, I am sorry if I have hurt you and I am sorry that I could not meet you as arranged today. But I’m afraid the truth is that whatever there was between us is now over, albeit before it really began. Not only could I not meet you today, I cannot ever meet you. I hope you will find someone who is worthy of you. I am not. You may not think it now, but you have had a lucky escape. Saul.’
I was crying again as I pushed the send button. It was a sparse, blunt message. I felt I had no choice. Whatever Sonia might think, I am not a cruel or callous man. Really, I am not. I am a mixed-up wreckage of a man, that’s all. That is the reason why I couldn’t have a proper relationship with Sonia, nor even meet her. It wasn’t anything to do with her. She seemed perfect. It was down to me being me, the me I have had to learn to live with.
I sat looking at my computer screen. There was a ping within just a few minutes of my emailing Sonia. Up popped another message from her.
‘How could you do this?’ she asked. ‘How could you behave like this? You haven’t even given me any sort of explanation. Couldn’t we at least talk on the phone? You have my number. Call me.’
I switched off the laptop, fetched a bottle of whisky and a pint glass from the kitchen cupboard and took them both with me into the bathroom, where I ran myself a very hot bath.
I climbed in straight away, without adjusting the temperature, even though the water was almost burning and turned my skin an angry red. I didn’t care. After a while, the sensation became quite pleasant. I poured the best part of half a pint of whisky into my glass, topped it up with cold water from the bath tap, lay back, and tried to relax. I hoped the whisky, combined with the restorative powers of the bath, would make it possible for me to forget the horrors of the day and move on to dealing with the rest of my life.
Today was over. Sonia was over. I would never call her and I would never email her again.
She knew me only as Saul. I hadn’t told her my full name. She had no idea where I lived, although she may have thought she did. She had no phone number or address for me and the email address I’d used throughout our correspondence would never be used again.
I wouldn’t even look at it. I would cancel it, that’s what I would do. Then her emails would bounce back to her.
That would be kindest, because it would surely make clear to her that there was no hope, that I had disappeared from her life for ever. Like I always do.
Eight
Willis took PC Claire Brown with him to interview the second Mrs Terry Cooke, at the unkempt, council house she shared with her husband and their three young children. As Vogel had hoped, the woman was taken totally by surprise. She seemed rather alarmed.
‘It’s just routine, Mrs Cooke,’ Willis told her. ‘I’m sure you know by now that Mr Cooke’s daughter has been found dead?’
Willis turned the remark into a question, although he was pretty sure of the answer.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Susan Cooke. ‘My Terry called me almost as soon as he knew the worst. Terrible. Terrible. But I can’t help you, I don’t know nothing about what happened. She was murdered, wasn’t she? Well, how would I be able to tell you anything? I barely knew the girl. Her mother didn’t like Terry bringing her here, bloody snob she is. Thinks folk who live in a council house are beneath her. Well, she’s only got her place because she took all my Terry’s money when he left her. He don’t like living in a council house neither. Blames me for how we live. He certainly wouldn’t bring that girl to this place, not his little princess.’
She paused, waving a hand wearily at the small, front garden, which was a brown desert growing only the odd stinging nettle, an old bedstead, a rusting bicycle and a pile of bulging, black, plastic, rubbish bags. She touched a fading bruise on her left cheek.
‘Anyway, they didn’t ever meet here,’ she continued with a forlorn little sigh. ‘They used to go out. My Terry and the girl. He never wants to spend any more time here than he has to. Not nowadays. That’s just how it is. So I don’t know…’
Willis brought the avalanche of words to a halt with a raised hand. Susan Cooke was still standing in her own doorway. The two police officers remained outside.
‘Please Mrs Cooke,’ he remonstrated. ‘Can we come in and talk about this indoors?’
Susan Cooke didn’t look too sure at all. She pushed a strand of lank, peroxide hair back from her forehead. Willis noticed how dark the roots were. He hated that sort of thing. This was a woman who might once have been pretty, but now, he thought, her pale face merely reflected the damage wreaked by a lifetime of disappointment.
Willis glanced pointedly up and down the street, as if looking for curious neighbours or twitching curtains.
‘Yes of course, come in,’ said Susan Cooke finally, holding the door wide open. She led the two officers past a kitchen, where dirty dishes overflowed the sink, and into a grubby, ill-furnished sitting room. Every available space seemed to be covered with something: newspapers, magazines, beer bottles, dirty cups and glasses, abandoned coats and scarves, assorted children’s toys, a broken railway carriage, a teddy bear with one arm, a grimy looking Game Boy and a toy mobile phone.
The woman began to clear a space on the sofa big enough for two. It was several seconds before Brown and Willis were able to sit down.
Willis did so with some distaste and, only with the greatest effort, avoided trying to brush clean the seat of the sofa, with one of the tissues from the small packet he always kept in his pocket.
Willis did not know what a far cry this slovenly home was from the two Vogel had visited on this case so far, that of the first Mrs Cooke and of her second husband’s mistress, Daisy Wilkins. He did know this was his idea of hell.
Susan Cooke seemed to read his mind.
‘It’s the children,’ she said, as if that explained everything. ‘The ’ouse is too small, you see. Three came along almost straight away. The first before we were married, then the other two. Twins. Never been twins in either of our families, but we ’ad ’em. The council won’t give us a bigger one. It’s got three bedrooms, they say, and that’s enough. But the third one’s a box and you can’t swing a cat in this room. We’ll never be able to afford our own place, not on his wages. With what he gives that ex of ’is too and I can’t work, not with they three. He gets that mad about us living like this. I can’t cope, that’s the trouble. It’s me nerves you see.’
She finally stopped talking.
Her glance strayed to the table alongside the chair she was sitting on. Willis followed her gaze. A small bottle of pills stood next to a glass of water. Prozac, or something similar, guessed Willis. Happy pills. A powerful tranquilizer of some sort, for sure. He watched the woman stare longingly at the little bottle, as if fighting a battle within. Finally, it became clear that the battle had been lost.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, I need to take my medication.’
With a trembling hand she reached for the little bottle of pills, extracted two, took a sip of water and swallowed. Her eyes closed, as if already in anticipation of relief.
‘How old are your children?’ asked PC Brown gently. She was one of the older women constables and of the old school, having left the force to bring up her own children and then returned. Her quiet manner and the note of sympathy she injected into her voice whenever appropriate, often made her invaluable in a situation like this. Willis had chosen her deliberately from the women officers who had been available.