Children's Crusade

Chapter Fourteen

"I always thought you kind of fancied me, Kate," says Cooper, after swilling down the last mouthful of turkey with a swig of Chablis. It's the first thing he's said since I entered the room, escorted by two guards, and sat down to dinner.

The spread was impressive and smelt incredible. I considered refusing to eat, sitting there with my arms folded, defiant. But that would have been self defeating. I practically lick the plate clean, despite the nausea that his proximity provokes.

I consider correcting him, telling him I'm Jane now. But I pause for a moment as it occurs to me that the distinction is no longer so clear cut. Not now, not with this man sitting across the table from me.

"I did," I reply. "But I always had really, really crappy taste in men."

"Had?" he asks, amused.

"I've had better luck since the world ended."

"So I gather."

"Excuse me?"

"I heard on the grapevine that you hooked up with my old mate Sanders." He leans back in his chair, smug at my surprise.

"Oh yes, I've been keeping tabs on you, Kate. Or, rather, my friends have."

"The Americans."

He nods. "I couldn't believe it when your alias cropped up. I tried to tell Blythe that he'd got the wrong end of the stick, but he didn't buy it. He was so convinced you were some kind of spook."

I have a fork. If I launch myself at him, I've got a better than even chance of getting it through his eyeball. But he knows that I won't. The reason I can't kill him now is the same reason I couldn't shoot him in the Commons. I need answers. Unfortunately, I don't know how to begin asking the questions.

I can't tell whether he's changed in the last eight years, or whether the version of him I met before The Cull was a carefully constructed act. Is this the real man? He's not that different. Speech patterns and body language are the same. The smile, the eyes, the good natured air of vague sarcasm — it's all exactly the same.

"You have so many questions for me, don't you?" he asks.

I nod.

"Then hit me. I'll fill you in." He dabs his lips with a napkin and pushes his chair back from the table, stretching his legs out and linking his fingers behind the back of his head. The midday sun is streaming through the lead latticed windows along the riverside wall of what used to be the Speaker's Cottage. It casts his face into sharp relief.

I try to form my first question, but I come up blank.

"Let me get you started," he says, smiling, for all the world the image of the genial, helpful friend. "Spider is dead. He died that very day."

The same day I did.

"How?"

"I garrotted him."

"Why?"

"He had outlived his usefulness."

I shake my head. "No, sorry. You have to go farther back."

"The clues are all there. You work it out. The point is that the man who killed your brother is dead."

"But you let me think he was still alive."

"Yes, I did. Listen, your role in leading me to his base of operations in Manchester was invaluable. I'd been trying to get a bead on that place for months. Little bastard wouldn't tell me where it was. That was the problem, really. He'd decided not to trust me any more. Thought he could go it alone, run the business without my help and protection. Or, most importantly, without paying me my cut."

"So you taught him a lesson."

"Just so. The idea was that he would kill you himself. I planted that really obvious bug in the phone, assuming he'd find it and shoot you. How was I to know he'd go and kill your brother instead? That was a shock, I can tell you, to find out you were alive. I couldn't just kill you, not after that. It would have aroused too much suspicion. So I managed to wangle you into witness protection."

"And of course my absence protected you, not me."

"Exactly."

"You must have needed someone else on the payroll, someone at Hereford."

"Natch."

"And another bug besides the one in the phone."

"In your shoe, set to become active after a couple of hours so that it would avoid detection."

I nod, dotting Is and crossing Ts in my head. "So you ran Spider's operation, he was just a front?"

"Uh-huh."

"And now…?"

"Now I don't need a psychopathic Serbian mass murderer as my mouthpiece. There's nobody to stop me running my business just the way I want. I use his name though. It had kudos in certain circles. Even after The Cull, there were people who knew the name. It made things easier."

My mind works furiously, piecing it all together.

Cooper must have met Spider when he was in Serbia with the SAS during the Balkan conflict. Spider was probably already running some kind of organised crime ring, maybe even a trafficking route. Cooper offers him a way into the British market and they go into business together. Then he leaves the army and joins the police, managing eventually to get himself assigned to the case, making sure no-one gets close to his operation. This all works nicely until one day Spider gets cocky and tries to shut him out and run a Manchester 'branch' all on his own. He must be watching Cooper, making sure he isn't followed. That must be a very complicated game of cat and mouse. No matter what Cooper tries, Spider outwits him.

Cooper needs a way in that Spider won't see coming. And then I turn up, eager little lamb, and lead him straight there. Cooper uses a few of his mates from the SAS to storm the warehouse. At least one of them must have been on the take.

(Sanders? No. I dismiss the thought. Couldn't have been.)

God knows how he spun that one, but he must have had some way to get his bosses to swallow it. He shuts the warehouse down and then hides me away in St Mark's where I can't be any threat to anyone.

Cooper sits opposite me, studying my face as I process everything he's told me.

"You're wondering who you can take revenge on now, aren't you, Kate?" he asks. "Spider's dead, and even though I duped you, I was not directly responsible for James' death."

"Indirectly, though. You planted the fucking bug."

He shrugs. "Kate, he was dead the moment he caught Spider's eye and you know it. The bug was an excuse on a particular day. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else."

He's right. I do know it.

I consider the man sitting before me and I'm confused. Spider was obviously a monster. Everything about him screamed danger — the way he looked at you, the way he moved, the way he spoke. He was a predator, a shark, a psychopath.

But Cooper is different. Kate never had a moment's unease about him. He was jovial and pleasant but inspired confidence. And he still has an easy capability about him. He doesn't seem unhinged or mad, scary or dangerous at all. He seems like a bloke. Just an ordinary bloke.

He thinks of people as goods to be traded, commodities whose profit potential can be realised — but his manner gives no hint of the pitiless void at the heart of him.

"I spent so long fantasising about what I'd do to that man, if I ever had the opportunity," I say.

"I bet you did. But I'm not him."

"No, you're not. You're the man who used me, set me up to be killed and then condemned me to a life ruled by a lie."

"Mea culpa."

"You're also the man who trafficked vulnerable girls into hell."

"That too."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Because I can," he says, a parody of abashed modesty, like a cocksure young man admitting to sleeping with a friend's girlfriend; he knows it was wrong but he actually also thinks it was kind of cool.

"But surely you must have realised it was wrong?" The words feel foolish and naive, but I want an answer.

"The world was built on slavery, Kate. How do you think this country got built? Or America? Or Rome or the pyramids or anything lasting? What I did, what I do, is perfectly natural. The slave masters of the past were pillars of the community, members of guilds and lodges, knighted and rich, the toasts of the town. Why shouldn't I be?"

I look at this man I once invited into my bed, and I feel sick to my stomach. Spider may have been a monster, but he wasn't the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

"I never took advantage. It's important you realise that," he continues. "I busted countless drug dealers in my time. They all had one thing in common — they were users too. The ones who didn't get caught, the smart ones, stayed clean. It was the same with me."

"So that makes it all right then?" I am on the verge of shouting. I take a deep breath.

"I trafficked them into the country, I set them up, sourced the clients and took the money," he says, for some reason intent on justifying himself to me. "But never, not once, did I ever take advantage of one of them. That would have left me vulnerable, you see? There was no room for emotional attachments on the job.

"I had a girlfriend. That surprises you, doesn't it? Jenny. Nice woman, worked for HBOS. Thought I was a dull copper, which kept me safe. And her."

It takes me a moment or two to collect my thoughts.

"All right, morality aside, how did you pull this off?" I gesture to the building around us. "How did you end up here?"