A Dark Place to Die (38 page)

Zoe can feel his cock hard against her buttocks.

She waits for the rape.

It doesn't come. The madman wraps an arm around her, his breathing close in her ear.

'Art,' he murmurs. 'I did art. At the Hannemann Buildings.'

Zoe doesn't say anything in reply. She lies still until she realises he's asleep. Cursing herself for her inability to do anything, she closes her eyes and thinks about Koop until, eventually, she too sleeps.

68

The cops are crawling all over Koop's property.

Sullivan returns, ashen and apologetic, along with a bigger team from Tweed Heads. A second team from the Gold Coast is there too, headed by John Collins who has been tipped off by Warren Eckhardt. While they establish the crime scene, and surreptitiously bicker over jurisdiction, Eckhardt shows up looking like hell.

Koop is sitting on the old car chair at the back of the fig tree, holding an as yet unopened bottle of booze, when he smells the smoke from Eckhardt's cigarette.

'I told them everything I know,' says Koop without looking up. 'Everything.'

'I don't know what to say,' says Eckhardt. He butts his cigarette and lights another. 'It's bad.'

Koop doesn't say anything for a moment. 'He's got Zoe. North's got her.' His voice is flat.

'Maybe.'

'She's not here, Warren.'

'It's fucked up, Koop. There's no getting around that.' Eckhardt's voice is low. He swats an insect from his face
and holds his cigarette out. 'Can you believe it? Persistent little fuckers, eh?'

Koop looks at Eckhardt. 'What's Collins's take on it?'

'He thinks that North's involved, although as yet there's only your word that this guy is what you say he is.'

'They talked to Liverpool?'

'Of course, and there's some credibility from that end.'

'But . . .?'

'But North is clean. On paper at least. There's no way to get around that one. He landed here a few days ago on his own passport. As far as the law is concerned he's an innocent visitor.'

'Come on, Warren.'

Eckhardt holds his hands up. '
I
know you're right, Koop. Since North's arrived there's been a lot happening and that's what Collins is concentrating on. He knows you're right, if that's any consolation. It's a lot to swallow that all this is a coincidence; North's arrival and World War Three breaking out. We're not idiots here. It's just that . . .'

'That what?'

'The whole thing with you and your wife and . . . the victim.'

'With Mel, you mean?'

Eckhardt drags heavily on his cigarette and stares into the distance.

'Look, Koop, what you do in private is none of my business. But put yourself in our shoes. I know you didn't have anything to do with Melumi Ato's death. Collins knows it too. But we have to report upwards and, given that the three of you have been sharing a bed, that's enough for them to want us to not leap to conclusions.'

'A fucking domestic? You think this is a
domestic
, Warren? Did you
see
her?'

'Yes. I saw her, Koop. We all saw her. And you, more than anyone, should know that we can't just jump because you say, "This is the guy." There's back-up from Liverpool, of a sort, from what we can tell. But they . . . we, have to look at it closely to see if there's anything else. Think back. When you were on the job, if something like this – the information, I mean – came in, what would you have done?'

Koop doesn't reply. Eckhardt is right, of course. A triangular relationship in a murder inquiry? It's a no-brainer.

He begins scratching at the black-and-white label on his bottle. 'And in the meantime, Zoe . . .' His voice trails off and the two men wait in silence. Koop looks at the bottle. 'I don't know why I'm holding this thing,' he says.

'Well, anything we can do to find her, we're doing it,' says Eckhardt. It doesn't sound like much, even to Eckhardt. 'You have somewhere to stay tonight?'

'Tonight?' says Koop. He turns east to where the sun is brightening the sky. 'Doesn't seem much point.'

Eckhardt glances at the house which is blazing with lights. 'Fair enough.'

He traces the point of his shoe through the grass.

'Sullivan told me they found where she was killed,' says Echkardt quietly.

He points across the paddock to a distant tent which has been erected over a patch of ground. Two technicians are taking photographs, the flash from their cameras flickering across the night.

'I know,' says Koop.

'There was a lot of blood.'

Koop nods. He, along with everyone else, missed the area on his search earlier. As if he knows what Koop is thinking, Eckhardt speaks. 'You couldn't have done anything to save her.'

I could, thinks Koop. I could have stayed at home.

69

Menno Koopman had wanted Zoe as soon as he saw her.

1981. Liverpool. Another universe. A party in Gambier Terrace to which Koop has definitely not been invited, but to which he goes anyway – along with the rest of the Saturday Night Squad, nightsticks in hand and full of testosterone.

The party's in a top-floor flat smack in the middle of the long row of regal Georgian houses sitting opposite the massive bulk of the Anglican cathedral. In any other city, or perhaps at any other time, these houses would have been the most expensive. They'd been built as showpieces by merchants and bankers, on the highest ground overlooking the source of their power and influence: the city and the river. Whenever Koop goes there, it's as a copper on call.

The police know Gambier Terrace well. The houses have fallen into semi-dereliction as the money moves out of town and the place is filled with dealers, arts students, the odd squatter. The whole place still looks like those early Beatles photos, the good moody ones, the ones by Astrid Kirchherr, with the band in black jeans and leather, before Brian Epstein cleaned them up.

Koop tries to recall the exact moment he'd seen Zoe.

A Saturday night, he remembers that. Around twelve, and he and Geoff Suggs have been called to assist officers called to a party at the Terrace. It's easy to find, the music blaring out over the end of Hope Street; Lee Scratch Perry's 'Super Ape'. Reggae is popular amongst the punkers and art students, as well as with its regular West Indian constituency, Gambier Terrace marking the edge of the black section of Liverpool. Thick bass and spaced-out dub fills the air.

'Fuckin' jungle bunnies.' Suggs pulls a face.

Even now Koop squirms with embarrassment at the recall of the easy racism. He wasn't embarrassed at the time; he knows that in itself is a cause for some retroactive shame. To be a copper then was to be racist, it was that simple, as normal as breathing; the only question being what degree of bigotry each policeman brought to the job.

As the son of a Dutch father and English mother, Koop has been on the end of a milder form of it himself for much of his life. Despite being born and bred in Liverpool, his name marks him out as 'foreign' and therefore not quite right in some intangible way. He is white and European, but even that doesn't stop him getting called a lot of inventively obscene names.

The worst is when people confuse his heritage with German. In the 1970s, the wartime bombing of the city is as plainly evident as a badly sutured wound, the destruction and devastation remaining as a daily reminder of the Luftwaffe. No-one wants to be German and in Liverpool.

At twenty, Koop doesn't question the culture – the sub-adolescent canteen banter which he joins in with. The
'jokes', none of which he ever finds funny, but with which he laughs along, a bit of his self-respect ebbing away with each forced smile or chuckle, like sandstone from a crumbling cliff-edge.

God, the names they use, the way they treat the 'ethnics'. The discriminatory and subsequently volatile abuse of the 'stop and search' law. The truly foul treatment dished out to the only two black recruits he remembers seeing in those pre-riot days.

It curls his toes to think about it.

He never goes along with the beatings, or the stitch-ups. He has, perhaps, turned a blind eye on more than one occasion, bad enough in itself, but understandable in the context. The city is simmering. Toxteth will erupt in riots only months later and Koop isn't surprised when it does. He's never been in any doubt why Margaret Thatcher has been upping his pay. Revolution is in the air. Not the theoretical sort talked about by middle-class socialists. Actual revolution. Militant Tendency are in the ascendancy in the ruling Labour Party. There is credible talk of Liverpool declaring itself an independent People's Republic and seceding from the United Kingdom. In cabinet, Thatcher discusses abandoning the city.

That Saturday night they shoulder their way in through the jeering crowd, Suggs casually slapping a joint out of the mouth of a stumbling student dressed in a suit constructed out of what seems to be polythene sheeting.

'I'll be back for you later, Captain Plastic,' he hisses, jabbing a finger as thick as a Cumberland sausage in the wide-eyed student's face. 'Stay there, you cunt.'

The boy shrinks against the plaster wall, a meerkat making way for a rogue elephant, his clothing crackling against the peeling plasterwork.

The two coppers move onwards, no time for Suggs to waste on simple possession when there might be a decent ruck waiting up ahead. And the maxim of never dawdling on the way to help your brother officers (no sisters, of course, not then).

Koop pats the student's cheek and follows his partner's black-clad back through the crowded hallway and up to the first floor, Suggs making good and sure he steps on as many toes as possible on his way up, a chorus of insults bouncing off his thick hide like a sprinkle of hailstones against the Liver Building.

Up to the first-floor landing and the air is thick with dope. It's easy to see where the other coppers are: the bathroom – such as it is – is the only half-empty space in the entire building. Outside the door stands a growing ring of agitated black youth and student types. Suggs and Koop push past with some difficulty. A thin black girl lies dazed on the floor, her skin gleaming under the fluorescent light. Another girl, white, not quite so skinny, is leaning over her, whispering to her.

Zoe.

'Joined us, 'ave yer, Koopman, you fucking cheese-munching cloghopper?' says Sergeant Gittings, who is regarding the black girl much as someone would look at a hedgehog flattened in the road. He glances at Suggs. 'The darkie fell over or somethin',' he says. 'Won't wake up and the other spearchuckers are gettin' restless.'

'She's been attacked,' says Zoe. 'And you lot are just standing around doing nothing.'

'Yeah, luv,' says Gittings. 'Whatever you say. Now fuckin' shut it or we'll pull you in too.'

Zoe stands up and Koop knows it's at that point he is lost. He's never subscribed to all that love at first sight garbage until then.

She is only small, but built like an athlete, a toned body long before that became common – he finds out later that she has a passion for swimming. Her hair is very short and has some sort of arty style to it that Koop couldn't have named, but privately thinks of as 'Art School Punk'. He can't now remember much of how she was dressed – he has a vague recollection of stockings and biker boots – but it would have been something unusual and sexy: with variations over the years and allowing for the fluctuations and vagaries of fashion, that has been Zoe's underlying style.

She moves towards Gittings who looks at her, his eyebrows raised in amusement. Gittings looks around at the other coppers as if to say: have you seen this? Zoe is clearly bent on telling Gittings what she thinks of him and, knowing Gittings as he does, Koop steps smartly forward between them, surprising himself as much as anyone else.

'Let me get some details off you, luv,' he says, kindly, ignoring the leering grimaces from the rest of the Saturday Night Squad who, like him, haven't been slow to recognise Zoe's obvious charms. Koop takes hold of her arm to lead her to safety.

Which is the point at which she headbutts him.

Koop smiles at the memory and involuntarily rubs his cheek where her head struck. He should have known better. 'Luv', indeed.

It takes a lot of persuasion to stop Gittings taking Zoe somewhere quiet and pointing out the error of her ways. As Gittings's teaching methods are rumoured to include straight-out rape, Koop has to act quickly and uses up a year's worth of brownie points in one go.

'Get out of my sight, Koopman,' growls Gittings. 'Take bitch number one,' he nods down at the black girl, 'to
casualty, and get bitch number two to wherever the fuck you want, just so long as I don't have to see her fuckin' face again. Suggs, you can help me spread some peace and love amongst our coloured brethren.'

Koop manages to get Zoe and her friend out without further incident and takes them to the Royal, ambulances at that point not venturing into Gambier Terrace. On a Saturday night the A&E is a zoo and Koop has to use some more valuable favours to bump Zoe's friend up the queue.

'If you think I'm going to be grateful, you've got another think coming,' she says as they wait outside the cubicle door for the girl to be examined. Koop doesn't push it. He just sits and talks a little and gives Zoe a lift home after her friend is kept in for observation, Zoe wanting her to fill out a complaint, her friend refusing.

She lives in Huskisson Street, not far from the site of the party. Koop writes his number on a sheet from his notebook and gives it to her. She looks at it scornfully but, Koop notices, doesn't throw it away as he feared she might.

She never calls.

But he sees her again, several times, soon after and in less dramatic circumstances. At a student-grant protest meeting he is policing. In town, at a few bars when they do the rounds before closing time. And then, crucially, as it turns out, off duty at a Clash gig at the Royal Court in October. Koop remembers her incredulity at seeing him there out of uniform. He doesn't know what she found more ridiculous; his liking for a band like that, or the way he's dressed. In truth, Koop is a fan.

At this gig, if not quite blending in, he is certainly unremarkable.