Not yet, thought the policeman. But pretty soon you might be, if I have my way.
However, Cooke seemed to accept the matey approach for what it wasn’t.
‘OK, Mel comes to me every other Sunday, you see.’ He paused. ‘Or she used to.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Willis, striving to continue to sound casual. This was beginning to back up what Cooke’s wife had said, that there had been some sort of rift between father and daughter.
‘Oh, you know, she’s growing up…’ Cooke appeared only to realise what he’d said after he’d said it. ‘I mean she was growing up,’ he amended grimly. ‘She had her own friends. She didn’t seem to want to hang around with her old dad so much any more.’
‘So, when did you actually last see her?’
‘Nearly three weeks ago. She missed last Sunday.’
‘And do you know why?’
‘Yep. She spun me a yarn, but I found out that actually she’d been off with her mates. She preferred to be out and about with them, any chance she had. Well, why wouldn’t she? At her age.’ Cooke sighed. His shoulders slumped even lower than before. He seemed to be a man resigned to life serving him one cruel blow after another, thought Willis; the most recent being the death of his daughter.
The policeman might have been moved to feel a certain sympathy for Terry Cooke, were it not for the bruises on Susan Cooke’s face and her nervous response when asked what had caused them. Cooke came across as a weak and ineffectual sort of man, both mentally and physically, Willis suspected. But he would be a heck of a lot more physically powerful than his wife — and his daughter — and Willis reckoned it was the weak ones who were the worst. After all, he knew that only too well from personal experience.
He would have liked to have challenged Cooke about his wife’s bruises and given him a hard time. However, he knew that would only be counterproductive at this stage. They had nothing on Cooke. They needed information. Retribution would come later though, Willis was quite determined about that.
‘What about her stepdad?’ he asked, his voice still without expression.
‘What about him?’ countered Cooke, just a tad aggressively.
‘Well, was Melanie close to him?’
Cooke shrugged. ‘Always told me she didn’t like him. That I was the only dad in her life, but they seemed to get on all right. Sometimes I thought she probably used the same approach with him. Knew how to get round you, did our Mel.’
‘It can’t be easy having your daughter brought up by another man,’ Willis continued.
‘No it bloody well isn’t,’ Cooke responded tetchily. Then he paused. ‘What are you getting at, Mr Willis?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Willis. ‘Nothing at all. Just trying to solve a crime, mate. And I’m very grateful for your help, really I am. I know how hard this is for you, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind going over your whereabouts on the night Melanie died? Just so I have it straight.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Like I told Mr Vogel, I was in bed asleep with my missus, when Sarah called my mobile. I woke up and checked who was phoning in the middle of the night. By the time I realised it was Sarah, she’d ended the call. I phoned back straight away. I knew it had to be something important for her to call me at that hour.’
‘What time did Sarah call you?’
‘I know exactly. I checked. It was quarter to four.’
‘And you’d been in bed for how long?’
‘Since about ten. We went to bed early. I was knackered. I’d left for work at five in the morning yesterday.’
‘So you guessed at once that something serious had happened?’
Cooke nodded. ‘Yes, but I was shocked rigid when she told me that Melanie hadn’t come home. She’d never stayed out til that hour before. She is only fourteen for God’s sake.’ He paused, perhaps realising that he had used the present tense again. He didn’t bother to correct himself this time. ‘I just got out of bed, into my car and drove right round there.’
Then he paused again.
‘But you know, I didn’t expect wh-what happened, n-not even then. Perhaps I just didn’t let myself think it.’ Cooke stumbled over his words and his voice trembled. He wiped one hand over a sweaty forehead. ‘She was a teenager, right at that tricky age. She’d always been a good kid, but lately, well, she’d started to play up. I expect her mother told you that?’
Willis didn’t respond.
‘Maybe not. Rose-coloured spectacles with our Melanie. She let her do exactly what she wanted, half the time.’
Willis smiled to himself. That was more or less what Cooke’s wife had said about him. That he put Melanie on a pedestal and could see no wrong in her. That she wrapped him around her little finger.
‘Anyway, I was shocked rigid at first, right enough,’ Cooke continued. ‘But as I was driving over to Sarah’s and I started to think a bit more clearly, I told myself Mel was probably just off with friends doing what kids do, the things they never tell their mums and dads about…’
‘Until four o’clock in the morning?’ queried Willis.
‘Well, there’s always a first time for something like that, with teenagers. That’s what I wanted to believe. Then you lot turned up with the news that she was d-dead, and… and…’
Cooke paused again and looked as if he might break down. He pulled himself together enough to continue speaking.
‘I’ve lost my princess, Mr Willis,’ he said. ‘And I’ll never get over it. Never.’
Saul
There could never be another Sonia. That was one thing I had to make sure of.
She’d got too close to me. I nearly met her and almost let her see me in a public place. She was a quintessential, old-fashioned Englishwoman, who lived in Cheltenham and thought I was the quintessential, old-fashioned, English schoolteacher. I came so near to letting her into my life and that would never have done.
Yet, deep inside, it was what I wanted. A normal, ordinary life with a normal, ordinary woman at my side.
If only I wasn’t what I was and hadn’t done all that I had. If only I could roll back the years, reinvent not just my present but also my past.
My experience with Sonia had really upset and surprised me, because I’d half convinced myself that I would be brave enough to meet up with her and take my chance, but I couldn’t. Despite this failure, however, I still wanted the same things: the wife and the children…
I had to find a different way.
It was a story in The Sun — about a 69-year-old, British man married to a 23-year-old, Thai girl — that got me thinking. The man had used a specialised, online dating agency called Thaibrides-introductions.com.
This turned out to be a bit more than a dating agency. They provide you with a video featuring around 400 girls. You compile a shortlist of about a dozen and then fly out to Bangkok to make your choice.
The agency sends over about eight men a month and boasts one hundred per cent success, claiming that most men proposed within ten days of meeting and choosing one of the girls on their shortlist. Presumably that was what they meant by success, I thought, not necessarily what might or might not come afterwards.
You were allowed limited browsing without signing on. The women had many different looks, from the clearly flirtatious to the demure, and sold themselves on the site in different ways. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was a desire to find a partner they could settle down with for the rest of their lives. That was what I wanted. It was just unfortunate that there was so much about me which made that difficult. However, I felt cautiously optimistic that, with a woman from a different culture, it might be possible after all. I felt I wouldn’t have the same pressure to reveal myself fully. Everything I read and heard indicated that these women, with their dreams of a western-style marriage, would be more accepting, more pliable.