Beggars Banquet

‘Good lad.’ Beattie started to read from the two stapled sheets. Gillian Webster, he read, had now given a description of the room she’d been kept in during her ‘ten-day ordeal’. Not so much a room, more a cupboard, kept in darkness. She could hear distant traffic, as though heavy lorries were passing outside. But she was tied up, mouth taped shut, and couldn’t cry out.

Beattie read it again. Well, it was true he’d kept her mouth taped shut occasionally, but everything else was a fabrication, another false account.

‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Are they still questioning Cooke?’ Duniec nodded. ‘And I suppose they’ll be giving his factory the once-over?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Stands to reason, Stef. This cupboard could be in Cooke’s factory. I’ve just come from there. He’s been laying off staff. The only person left is a secretary, and I doubt she goes anywhere near the shop floor – she might get her hands mucky.’ He glanced again at the paper. ‘Lorries going past… sounds just like an industrial estate.’

‘I suppose it does,’ Duniec said quietly.

‘And if he’s been laying off men, what does that tell you?’

‘His company’s in trouble.’

‘Dead right. So tell me, young Stef, is Cooke wealthy or skint?’

‘Skint, I suppose.’

‘And desperate.’

‘So he kidnaps someone he knows… How could he hope to get away with it?’

‘All we know is that he knew the parents; we don’t know Gillian knew him.’

‘But he let her see him,’ Duniec protested. ‘He must’ve known she’d give a description – that her father would see it…’

Beattie nodded. Precisely. That was just one of the flaws. Would Cooke really have kept her in his factory, with someone else on the premises all day? How could he feed Gillian without the secretary becoming suspicious? Gillian’s story was badly flawed. But Beattie wondered if the police would see that. He could see what Gillian Webster was doing, and how she was doing it. He just couldn’t account for the why. But he had an idea now, a good idea. He only needed to study the photographs again.

Meantime, Stefan had obviously been considering all the flaws too.

‘Like you say, he must have been desperate.’

‘He was desperate all right, he just wasn’t very bright.’ He tapped Duniec’s shoulder with the rolled-up press release. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He winked. ‘Remember the byline.’

‘And the seven-fifty words!’ Duniec called after him. ‘I’ve already made a start!’

Without looking back, Beattie gave a raised thumbs-up. Duniec watched till he was out of sight, then turned back towards the reporters’ cars. Three men were in a huddle next to a red Porsche.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, interrupting them. One man, the one with a proprietorial hand resting on the Porsche’s roof, spoke for all of them.

‘What is it?’

‘You’re Terry Greig, aren’t you?’

Greig puffed out his chest. Of course he was Terry Greig, king of the tabloid newsroom, scourge of copy-takers. And here was another tyro looking to make his acquaintance.

‘What can I do for you, lad?’

Duniec didn’t like that ‘lad’, but like Beattie’s ‘Stef ’ he let it lie. ‘Did you see that man I was talking to?’ he asked instead. ‘In the sheepskin jacket?’

Greig nodded. Little escaped him. ‘I saw him earlier,’ he confirmed.

‘Right,’ said Duniec. ‘And have you seen him before? I mean, do you know who he is?’

‘Don’t know him from Adam. Football manager, is he? Third Division? They’re the only buggers would wear a coat like that.’

‘Except for Brockman,’ added one of the other reporters.

‘Except for old Brockie,’ Greig agreed. Then they all laughed, all except Stefan Duniec. When the laughter had died and they were waiting for him to leave, he turned his gaze once more to Greig.

‘He wrote up the Ripper case for the Telegraph.’

‘No he didn’t, not unless he meant the Belfast Telegraph.’ They all laughed again. Even Duniec’s lips were bent slightly in what might have passed for a smile.

‘What’s it all about, lad?’ asked Greig.

‘Could we step inside the station, sir?’ Duniec said. To anyone standing within earshot, it didn’t sound much like a question…

The man who called himself Des Beattie was packing his bag.

He tore the ring-pull from another can of McEwan’s and gulped from the can. The photographs were lying on the bed. He paused in his packing and studied the photos again. Cooke with Duncan Webster. Cooke with Mrs Webster. Cooke looking very comfortable with Mrs Webster. Cooke looking extremely uncomfortable with Duncan Webster, looking like maybe he owed the man money, money he couldn’t hope to repay. But that wasn’t Cooke’s problem. No, Cooke’s problem was the wife. Look at the two of them: touching, kissing. With Mr Webster, Cooke looked more like a business acquaintance than anything; but with Mrs Webster he looked like a very close friend indeed.

Whether Webster knew or not, he couldn’t tell. But the daughter had known. Gillian Webster had found out about Cooke and her mother, about their affair. Christ, and she was Daddy’s little daughter, wasn’t she? When she’d spoken to him of her home life, hoping to ingratiate herself, hoping he wouldn’t harm someone he knew as a real person rather than an item (yes, she’d been clever all right), when she had done this, she had spoken always of her father first, her mother second. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy: it had always been Daddy. While Mother had remained just that: ‘Mother’.

All those hours she’d been alone, those hours with little to do but struggle against her bonds, little to think about but… but how to turn this little adventure to her own advantage. She would set up Bernard Cooke. She must have known his company was in trouble, giving him the motive. Who would suspect she’d lie about something like this? No one, no one would know except three people: Cooke himself, the mother, and the real kidnapper. Cooke would protest his i

It was true, wasn’t it? He wasn’t going to do anything. He was going to leave this town and never return. With Cooke inside, the heat would be off, the police would stop checking airports and seaports. Yes, a foreign holiday, somewhere su

That was that.

He opened another can and picked up the photo, the one of Cooke and Mrs Webster kissing. The more he looked at it, the more he saw that he could be wrong. What if it was just a friendly kiss? These types, types like Mrs Webster, they could get overfamiliar. What if it had nothing to do with the mother? What if… what if it had to do with Gillian instead? She’d told him, ‘Daddy doesn’t like it when I bring home older men.’ Could there have been something between Gillian and Bernard Cooke? Maybe he’d broken it off and she was out for his blood…

Wait, think a bit. If Cooke was single, it wouldn’t work. It only worked if he was married and had to hide the relationship. His head began spi

He caught that word ‘item’ and smiled. If they’d been an item, people would have seen them together, somewhere they felt safe from Mr Webster. Maybe that was why Cooke started using the pub across from the estate more often; nothing to do with his financial troubles. It should be easy enough to check. He’d go there now, on his way out of town. He thought of Stefan Duniec. Stefan, who probably wasn’t fit to report on a flower show, never mind a police inquiry. There were some real thick bastards in the world, when you thought about it.