‘One of my mates.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘No,’ Matty whispered, before turning his head left and right. ‘She’s all fucked up. I think they broke her nose.’ A chill descended over Molly as his words filtered down the line. She shifted position, pins and needles spiking in her legs. She wanted to shout at him to call an ambulance. To tell her where he was.
‘Shit. Has she been dealing?’ Molly whispered, forcing herself to stay calm. ‘There are some dodgy blokes about. I heard another body washed up on the shore.’
Matty’s image shook for a moment as he transferred the phone to his other hand. ‘Dunno.’ He paused, biting down on his thumbnail. ‘She’s scared shitless. She won’t talk to anyone.’
Molly’s spirits plummeted. Was April connected to the body on the shore? She brightened as if a thought had suddenly occurred. ‘There’s a cop shop in town . . . She should report it.’
‘You kidding me?’ Matty’s whisper was sharp. ‘That’s that last place she’ll go!’
‘Chill, will you?’ she said, disgruntled. ‘I’m just trying to help.’ It was frustrating, trying to get to the root of the group’s issues without rushing things. Was this what it had been like for Carla? One step forward and two steps back?
The weight of Matty’s problems were evident on his face. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you. It’s just . . . sometimes I don’t know what to do.’
A sigh trailed from Molly’s lips as she tried to come up with a solution. ‘What about one of them PCSO wotsits? Dad says they’re as much use as a chocolate fireguard, but they’re always in town if you need help.’ It pained her to say such things, but it was all in the name of acceptance. She only hoped that nobody was listening on the other side. Time was limited. She imagined the phone on her desk ringing, unanswered.
‘It’s her face . . . She’s no good to anyone like this.’ Matty shook his head, as if dismissing a dark thought. ‘Tina will sort it. She’s out looking after her.’ But he did not sound convinced. His phone shook as he rose from the sofa and approached a window. He peered through the grubby glass as Molly searched the background for clues.
‘Are you worried about going out? You must . . . you know, see stuff. What do you do when it all kicks off?’ Molly strained to hear background noise. A door closed in the distance, but there was nobody in view.
‘We have someone looking out for us. But if we cross the line . . .’ Stepping away from the window, Matty’s words were low. He seemed restless, prowling, like a caged animal. ‘We’re only here as long as we’re useful,’ he mumbled, before sitting down. ‘And I’ve got to play my part. It’s time for me to step up.’
‘What do you mean?’ Molly said, stretching out her legs.
‘Nuthin’,’ Matty replied, ‘just talking to myself.’ He returned his attention to Molly. ‘We’ll be out tonight same time, same place. If you want to come with us, it’s your last chance to get on Tina’s good side before we’re moved on.’
‘Ah no, whereabouts?’
‘Tina won’t tell me. She reckons I say too much.’ A small smile played on Matty’s lips as he acknowledged the truth.
‘Fancy spraying a few walls?’ Molly said, trying to work the subject of graffiti in. ‘I reckon I can sneak out.’
‘I’ve run out of paint,’ Matty replied, his face swivelling around. There was a voice growing louder, and a fleeting look of panic crossed his face. ‘That’s Tina. See you tonight, yeah?’
‘Will do, mate,’ Molly said, pressing a screenshot just before he ended the call. Quickly, she changed back into her shirt. At least she had captured his face. Now to write everything down while it was fresh in her mind. Paddy had not been waiting outside the door. She unpeeled the ‘do not disturb’ sign, hastily written on a Post-it note, that Paddy must have stuck to the door. So much for keeping watch, she thought, almost jumping out of her skin as Gary bumped into her.
‘You all right?’ Gary said, his eyebrows raised. ‘You got someone in there or what?’
‘I wish.’ Molly smiled, returning the cap and T-shirt to Steve’s gym bag. She needed to record the conversation before it escaped her. Matty and his friends were being shunted about from one place to another. Was April’s beating connected to George Shaw’s death?
Matty had obviously been in the care system, so there had to be a record of him somewhere. He had a father he didn’t know and a mother who had not been able to cope. But by the sounds of it now, he had run away. Her head down, she scribbled as much of their conversation as she could remember.
Was Tina running the show? She doubted it. Someone older was controlling them – this was organised crime. It was doubtful someone of Tina’s age would be able to transport them and find them all a place to stay as well as keeping them out of the public eye. She had wanted to ask him more but could not risk him smelling a rat. ‘I’ve got to play my part. It’s time for me to step up.’ Matty’s words rebounded in her mind. Was it Matty’s turn next? The thought of them being sex-trafficked was too ugly to contemplate. But she had pushed the young boy enough for one day. ‘We’re only around as long as we’re useful.’ His words had made her blood run cold. Had April outlived her usefulness? She would present her findings to the DCI and take it from there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Amy huddled over her coffee cup, her head bowed. She was glad to escape the hospital, now Lillian was on the mend. The surgeon had told them that it could have gone either way. But Lady Luck had a twisted sense of humour and granted Lillian yet another chance. Why did she deserve such good fortune while innocent people died? And why had Lillian provided her with the information she needed to track down Sally-Ann’s daughter? Weariness seeped into Amy’s bones. She had visited her mum in the afternoon and showered to escape the memory of Lillian, scrubbing her skin until it was bright pink. Now she was sitting next to the window in a cafe in Notting Hill. Mercifully, it was half empty, taken up with a few couples caught up in their own worlds. Amy had scheduled a meeting with Darren before she returned to the coast. She didn’t want anyone from work to see her. She didn’t have the energy to explain herself.
Darren was younger than Amy expected, but he had a certain something about him. ‘An old head on young shoulders’, as her father would have said. He had an impressively thick beard and a kind yet determined face. He encased Amy’s hand in a firm grip before sitting down.
‘I suppose I should thank you,’ Amy said, as he rested his folder on the table. ‘But she wasn’t worth risking your life for.’
‘They weren’t interested in hurting me. She was lucky I was there.’
‘Good old Lady Luck,’ Amy said dolefully. ‘There’s plenty of people who’d say she got what she deserved.’
‘Once a copper always a copper.’ Darren shrugged. ‘You would have done the same.’
Amy wasn’t so sure. She hated her mother for making her think this way. ‘I can’t stay; I’ve got a live murder investigation on the go. You said you had some information?’
‘About her past, rather than her present. I did a bit of digging, figured you’d be interested.’
‘I’m not sure if I am, but you may as well tell me now you’re here.’ Darren had been hired to ensure Lillian stayed out of trouble. Was her past relevant? She rifled through the innocuous-looking manila folder. The documents appeared official, the information within stamped ‘highly confidential’. Another example of how Darren could reach places she couldn’t.
‘How did you get your hands on this?’
Darren threw her a sly smile. ‘Now, Amy, you know better than to ask me that.’
She understood. ‘I’m grateful. However you came across it.’
Darren gave her a non-committal shrug. ‘Someone close to her was prepared to talk.’
‘You’re wasted as a PI.’ Amy turned the pages, skim-reading the words. ‘Are you sure I can’t persuade you to come back? We could do with someone like you on our team.’
‘Nah, too
many rules and regulations. I was strangled with red tape.’
‘I can sympathise with that.’ Amy pushed the papers back into the file. This was not the moment to read them. She was needed at Clacton. Lillian had taken up enough of her time. She raised her cup to her lips and enjoyed the warm, velvety latte as it slid down her throat. She liked that Darren hadn’t asked her any personal questions. He seemed a quiet soul by nature, despite his occupation.
He gestured towards the file. ‘I take it that’s all you’ll need from me. Looks like Lillian will be off her feet for some time.’
‘Actually, no.’ Amy rested her cup back on her saucer before licking her top lip. ‘I’ve got a bit of an untrustworthy lead for you to follow up on . . .’
‘Untrustworthy leads are my forte.’ Darren grinned. He had a nice smile. A definite advantage, given his occupation. He reminded her of Donovan, except he was more relaxed when it came to work.
‘It’s regarding Sally-Ann’s child. Lillian gave it to me, so I’m not sure what she’s getting out of it.’ Sliding a pen from her jacket pocket, Amy scribbled down what she discovered that morning on the back of a napkin. ‘She has a habit of sending me on wild goose chases, so I’d take it with a pinch of salt.’
‘Goes without saying.’ Darren cast his eyes over the information before pocketing it. He checked his watch. Like her, he was on a schedule, and his time did not come cheap. ‘Anything else before I head off?’
Amy waited as a waitress strode past them, her tray rattling with used coffee cups. ‘There is. And it pains me to ask.’ Amy had questioned herself numerous times about what she was about to say. It was more painful than her clash with Lillian, more worrying than finding Sally-Ann’s child. She couldn’t bring it up with Donovan; at least, not until she knew more. She had promised Donovan she would do things by the book, but Darren was a law unto himself. Perhaps it would come to nothing, but she had to try. ‘I have something . . . delicate to discuss. Can you promise no one will have access to what I’m about to tell you?’
‘I’ve got one assistant. She can be trusted.’
Amy drummed her fingers on the table. To say it aloud would make it real, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for that yet.
Darren leaned forward. ‘If it’s bothering you this much, then it’s worth looking into.’
Without another word, Amy dipped her fingers into her handbag and pulled out a list of names. Some had notes to the side, some didn’t.
Darren smoothed down his beard as he read through the list. ‘Riiiiight. Right,’ he murmured, finally meeting her eye. ‘I don’t like uncovering stuff like this. Pisses me off.’
‘But you’ll do it?’
Another reassuring smile. ‘I never say no to work.’
Amy sat staring into the distance long after Darren had left. She inhaled the sweet smell of oven-fresh cinnamon buns, basked in the luxury of a few seconds of alone time. She wondered how they were getting on back at the office. Once, she had trusted each and every member of her team. But it was there, in black and white. Leakages to the press that had spanned back over the last year. Information that only a handful of people would have known. During their last big case, a suspect had informed her of misconduct by one of her officers, claiming the officer had taken him to the shower block and allowed Samuel Black, the Love Heart Killer, to speak to him over a mobile phone. The disclosure had been made to her alone. The custody shower was one of the few places that did not have CCTV. Her informer had not reported the misconduct because he had been too scared. ‘Samuel said he could get to me anywhere. That he had people on the inside,’ the informer had whispered to her. He would not say who. But Amy had her suspicions. She’d had them for some time. Her jaw clenched. How could they work alongside her then go behind her back to intimidate a witness? They didn’t deserve to be in the job, let alone in her team. But she was playing the long game. Solid proof was needed in order to back up any claim. Already, the cogs in her brain were rolling as she worked out a plan. But the sense of betrayal would stay with her for a long time to come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MO
As Mo sat in her therapist’s office, it felt as if she was making ground. She tugged at the silver stud in her earlobe. Going over everything helped her to make sense of it all. She could see how she had been used, treated as a commodity. She did not blame Jen. She had become Jen. She knew now that Jen would have started off precisely the same way. It wasn’t just Wes who placed her in the cycle of abuse. It was all the men who came before him. Where did it start, and how did she make it stop? Perhaps it was too big for them all. Committing murder was her only way of tipping the scales in her favour. It helped her regain her power, made her whole again. She still didn’t feel that she had done anything wrong. People were basically animals. It had always been that way. For a while, she had been timid, but then she grew wise. More so, she became angry. She learnt to channel the hatred inside her while sending a message to the world.
Mo picked at some loose wool on the sleeve of her cardigan. She was lying down but didn’t need to be hypnotised. She knew the rest of the story well enough. ‘I saw less of Wes after the party. He lost interest in me after that. I should have been hurt, but by then, heroin was my new love affair, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Everything spiralled downwards after that. Jen stopped hiding the fact that they’d been selling my body all along.’
‘What about your family? How did they handle it?’ Ms Harkness scribbled down every word Mo spoke.
‘Mum took it pretty hard. Depression consumed her. She took her eye off the ball. That’s when the social got involved.’
‘You mean children’s social care?’
Mo nodded. ‘I’d stopped going to school. A report was made. They weren’t too impressed when they came to the house. One kid on drugs and the other so neglected that he was eating from the bin.’
‘Really?’
Mo nodded, noticing sympathy in her therapist’s eyes. ‘I’d just got home. I’d been out all night being shuffled around from one party to the next. To me, it was a way of getting high and not having to pay for it. I didn’t stop to think about Jacob. I turned my back on him. Back then, when he tried to wake me, I wasn’t able to move. My head used to feel like it was going to explode and every muscle in my body ached from the night before.’ Mo stared at the ceiling, the image of Jacob’s pallid face imprinted on her mind. She hadn’t noticed how the circles beneath his eyes had darkened. How he had grown yet stayed the same. ‘Underdeveloped for his age’ was what they had said. ‘He’d try to wake me in the mornings, but I’d be so far under, I’d hear him sobbing in my dreams . . . sometimes I still do.’ Mo sighed, wishing she could turn back the clock. She could see him, barefoot, wearing his tatty old pyjamas with the buttons done up wrong.
‘You mentioned children’s social care?’ her therapist said, moving things along.
‘It must have been two . . . maybe three o’clock in the afternoon. I was woken up by a terrible racket downstairs. Mum was screaming at the top of her voice. First, I thought my stepfather had come home. I wrapped a blanket around myself. I was still a bit out of it, which didn’t help her case. The social worker took one look at me and said she was taking action to have us both removed from her care.’ That day was burnt in Mo’s memory because it was the day Jacob was taken away from her. ‘Mum shouldn’t have let it happen.’ Mo blinked. ‘Betrayal like that runs deep.’
‘So, you were both taken into care?’
Mo swallowed the tight lump forming in her throat. ‘Because she was weak. I vowed never to be weak like her. Sometimes I’d run away from the home. Find some parties, score some drugs. But then everything dried up. I had to face the truth. The sort of people who mixed in those circles wanted younger girls than me. So, I thought, if I couldn’t beat the system, I could work it to my advantage. It was time for me to be the one on top.’
‘How do you feel about it now?’
Mo stared at the ceiling
as the timer beeped to signal an end to their session. It was remarkable how far she had come. ‘I’ve come to terms with myself.’ She swung her feet on to the floor. ‘I am who I am, and I make no apologies for it.’
When she left her therapy session, she did so with her head held high.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Amy turned a corner as she entered the bowels of the station, crashing headlong into Bicks. ‘Sorry!’ she said, bending to one knee to pick up his files, which had slid to the floor. ‘That’s what I get for rushing.’
‘No bother.’ Bicks bent to scoop up the paperwork. ‘It’s ready for shredding anyway. How are you?’ he said, clutching the papers to his chest. ‘Making headway, I hear.’
A number of leads had come in during her absence and she had hit the ground running upon her return. Donovan’s meeting with the Leicestershire sex offender left them in no doubt of the nature of the seaside attacks. She was confident their latest drowning victim had not committed suicide.
‘Our victims were after more than candyfloss and doughnuts, that’s for sure,’ Amy said. Each crime was a double-edged sword, with vulnerable young people at its core. But thanks to Molly’s ingenuity, she had not only captured an image of one of the boys but was due to meet him tonight. April’s situation was a serious cause for concern. ‘The boy is a key witness. We’ll soon be making arrests. You’ve not seen Donovan, have you?’ Amy said, remembering why she’d been heading to CID in the first place.
Bicks jerked a thumb behind him. ‘He’s in the NPT office.’
The neighbourhood policing team office was a good place to be if you were after some peace and quiet. Its officers were proactive and usually out pounding the streets. Amy was pleased to find him sitting alone at a computer, but he did not return her smile. He looked sharp in his suit and tie, having come from the briefing half an hour before.
‘Sorry I missed briefing.’ Amy perched on the edge of his desk, presuming that was why he was peeved. The room housed several computers, a bulging bin and stacks of dusty old files.
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