Paparazzi

by Jo Fenton

  “I don’t know. But it makes more sense that he’d help Penny, rather than kill Linda. If she roped him in because he has a grudge against Troy for ‘stealing his girl’, he’d probably be only too keen to help. Maybe he doesn’t know that Penny murdered Linda?”

  “Possibly. But more likely his grudge against Troy outweighs his horror at what Penny has done. Or he just hasn’t thought about it.”

  “Either way, we’ve just arrived at the address you gave me, Becky. I assume the warehouse is near here?”

  I nod. My stomach has suddenly gone into hyper-drive, and I suppress a wave of nausea.

  “Okay. I’ll let Finn know where we are and ask for discreet and careful back-up. Please God that Nigel – and Penny, if she’s involved in this – won’t be armed.”

  “Whoever killed Troy’s family is capable of further murder, don’t forget.” Joanna puts her hand on my shoulder. I don’t know if she means to be reassuring, but it doesn’t work. “They might not have guns, but they’re pretty adept with knives. We need a stronger plan before we go barging in there.”

  “Stronger than the one I proposed earlier?” I hand Joanna back her phone.

  “Yes. You were going to go in, negotiate with Nigel, and get Emma back for Troy. It’s a bit weak.”

  “Obviously, we’re going to be listening to Troy, and when it’s appropriate we’ll go in and help.” I hear my phone ping and check the message that’s just arrived from Finn.

  ‘Bloody hell, Becks. Are you okay going in there?’

  ‘No choice. Can you back us up?’

  ‘I’ll be there in 15.’

  “Finn will be here with back-up in fifteen minutes.” I show them on the map where the warehouse is. My instincts are shouting at me. Go home. Get out of here. This place is a death trap. I ignore the voice in my head, and turn on the receiver for the bug that Troy has hidden on his person.

  “Are we nearly there, Gaz?” Troy’s voice comes through loud and clear. I turn the volume down a notch.

  “Just a couple of minutes, mate.” The car falls silent for a moment. “Right this is it. I guess that’s where they’re holding Emma. Do you want me to come in with you?”

  “Nah, you’d better not. Keep an eye out for Becky and that lot though.”

  “They know what they’re doing, mate. It’ll be fine.” Gaz sounds as though he might be reassuring himself as much as his friend, but Troy buys it.

  “Cheers.”

  We hear the car door shut a few seconds later, and Troy’s heavy boots on the tarmac. The sound of the back door into the warehouse brings on another wave of sickness for me. I frown and grit my teeth. This is not the time for memories.

  “Hello, Troy.” Penny’s voice comes through clearly on the receiver.

  “Where’s my Emma?”

  “Nigel’s got her safe, just a little way from here.”

  Panic seizes me for a moment, and I glance round swiftly. We’re on a residential road, on a drive concealed by bushes. The owner of the house and drive is Wendy’s youngest son, and I’ve already messaged him with a warning not to come out and ask questions. He knows me of old, and can be trusted to do as he’s asked. This is as safe a location as it could be in the circumstances.

  Will reaches over and opens the glove box. He extracts a woolly hat and a false beard. half a minute later, he looks totally different.

  “I’m just going to wander out on the road and have a recce. I won’t do anything else, I promise,” he whispers.

  Meanwhile, the conversation in the warehouse is continuing.

  “Why would you do this?” Troy sounds horrified; shocked and sick that the sweet, pretty photographer has been involved in abducting his daughter. “Did you kill Linda?”

  “Of course I did. Got in a few kicks first, too. And I killed your stupid parents. Did you know they told me off for walking past your house when we were growing up?”

  “How did you know me then? I didn’t think we’d met until you started photographing me and the band a few months back.”

  “Same school, Troy. I was two years below you. I loved you then, you know. I’d have done anything for you. But you were too stupid to see it. Then when you went to college, I’d skive school and come to see you. You never even noticed me.”

  “I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I waited for you to see me. Then you met that bloody bitch and married her. I tried to get over you, but something changed inside me. When I started working at the paper, and got to see you doing gigs, it felt like a second chance. But you still ignored me.”

  “There were a lot of photographers. How was I to know you were any different? I didn’t recognise you from school.”

  There’s a click and a crackle. “You’d better bring her in here, Nigel.” A moment’s silence follows.

  Will returns to the car and pulls off the beard and hat. “No sign of any man with a little kid in a car. They must be waiting somewhere else.”

  “Okay. I’m going to get closer to the warehouse. I’ll do up my coat, and no one will pay any attention to me.” I have a dark blue parka that looks the same as hundreds of thousands up and down the country. Completely undistinctive, but with usefully big pockets. “Joanna, you’d better take this.” I hand her the receiver. “If things get really sticky, call Finn. Do not come and rescue anyone yourselves. Penny is clearly an obsessed lunatic. That makes her dangerous. She’s just admitted to killing three people who got in her way.”

  It’s early twilight, so I can still see my way clearly, but it’s harder to see distinct features of other pedestrians. There are a few people around – innocent commuters or residents taking a shortcut through the area, or walking to the shops. I walk through the alleyway that leads to the industrial street housing the warehouse. My legs are shaking and I have to take some deep breaths to ease the palpitations in my chest. I pause at the end of the alleyway.

  The warehouse is actually the building on my right, separated from me by a fence and a lot of greenery, but there’s no way in from here. I will need to walk across in front of it, in full view, or dodge between the fence and corrugated metal wall, fighting my way through the undergrowth. That seems to be the best option. I feel in my coat pocket for the sharp scissors that I brought with me. Going into a situation completely unarmed is always foolish, but this time my armoury will have a practical benefit too. I creep round to my right, and immediately dive into the gap. There’s space to squeeze through for about fifteen feet. The twilight is definitely helpful now, as no one would think to look for me here. A cut here, and a snip there, allows me to get to the end of the building, parallel to the alley. Then a slight gap opens up. I know there’s a back door just along from here. It was my undoing last time I was here. Hopefully, this time it will be my saviour.

  I try the doorknob, but to no avail. From my other pocket, I extract a wire, and cautiously and silently insert it into the lock. The lock clicks, and I tentatively open the door. It leads me into an empty corridor, but I can hear voices emerging from an area beyond an internal door. My palms are sweaty as I edge closer.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I am finally here, in front of him, and he’s in my power. I have his child. She’s on the way here with my accomplice.

  How much can I make him suffer? Should I make him suffer any further? I want him to be mine. Even now, after all this, I am still in love with him. My heart beats faster because he’s near, and my edges soften a little as I see his distress. I am weakening.

  But memories flood in. The times I was near him and he ignored me. When I saw him with HER, and his besotted behaviour made me sick. That should have been me.

  I need to decide what I want.

  Chapter Forty

  A door opens in the distance. I hear crying. Then Troy’s voice.

  “Emma love, it’s going to be fine. Daddy’s here.”

  “Why should it be fine? I have some demands you haven’t heard yet. You need to obey me, or she
’ll die.” Penny’s voice is harsh. Maybe a little anxious. I can work with that if I must.

  I’m able to suppress my reaction to being back here by focusing on the case in hand. That is, until there’s a sound like a gun firing outside. It’s most likely a car backfiring, but its effect is dramatic. With my heart beating out of my chest, a thundering in my ears, an inability to swallow and legs that won’t support me, I sink to the floor and wrap my arms around my knees. Penny and Troy are still speaking, but my brain won’t process the sounds. My ability to do my job has deserted me.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been like this, but suddenly the back door opens softly. I’m exposed here, so I look up. I’m unable to do much more, but relief floods through me when I see Joanna and Will walk in. She rushes to my side, while he goes to the door and listens through the crack.

  “What happened out there?” I try to whisper but my mouth is so dry, only a hoarse croak emerges.

  “There’s some drugs thing going on down the road. We heard the gunfire just as we were emerging from the alley. Will saw a body on the ground, but we didn’t linger. We came straight here.” Joanna whispers directly into my ear. The voices from the other room are testament to the thinness of the walls.

  I’m still unable to take much in. The trauma from my previous horrific experience in this place is now vivid, and taking over my whole body. Joanna is still crouching down next to me, and rests a hand on my shoulder.

  “They’ve got the little girl in there. Will is going in. He’ll try to diffuse the situation. If he fails, I’ll join him, but I think we need to play it by ear now.” What she means is that I’m now useless, so our previous planning has fallen apart, but I’m too distraught to argue with her.

  “Sure. Will, be careful. Penny at least is likely to have a knife of some sort. She admitted to having killed Linda, and Troy’s parents.” Pulling myself together enough to whisper this information to my friends takes immense effort, but it focusses my mind slightly, and I feel the panic recede just a notch. So when Will opens the door into the main area, I’m alert enough to listen again. Joanna squeezes my hand, but I sense her anxiety now that her son is in there.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Penny’s voice from the other side of the wall is sharp and angry. “You’re part of White Knight, aren’t you? Why aren’t you investigating my stalker?” She laughs, but it chills me more than her anger.

  “Which stalker is that, Penny? Is that the one from your imagination, or were you the one doing the stalking?”

  “Aren’t you the clever-clogs! I needed to find out more about Troy’s whereabouts. I figured you’d be less likely to suspect me if I was a victim too. I got quite a bit of useful information from you lot.”

  “Maybe you’re less clever than you think you are.” Will sounds cool and calculating. “If you hadn’t raised your profile, we might never have thought of you. The unobtrusive photographer of bands. The paparazzi. Why should we suspect? But no. You thought a double-bluff would work. So here we all are.”

  “You’re only here because I gave Troy instructions on where to find me. You didn’t work it out for yourself.”

  “No? So how did we find out that you’d murdered your ex-housemates in Huddersfield? A neat mixture of revenge against them and another ‘blind’ so we wouldn’t suspect you.”

  The momentary silence suggests Will’s hit a nerve. There’s a slight scuffle, then…

  “No, you don’t, you bastard. You’re not spoiling my plans. We’re evenly matched, but I bet me and Nigel could take out you and Troy easily enough. Nigel’s been desperate for years to get his own back on Troy. Stupid git told me all about it over drinks last year; how Troy pinched his girl out from under his nose. I knew then that Nigel would help me.”

  I glance at Joanna. My courage has been slowly returning to me throughout this conversation, and it’s time for us to go in and destroy Penny’s misconception.

  Joanna opens the door and enters first. I send up a quick prayer for my weakness to not return, then follow her in.

  “Seriously? What the hell are you lot doing here?” Penny looks disgusted at first glance, but I see a glint of fear in her eyes.

  “We’re here to make sure justice is done.” I’m pleased with how calm my voice sounds. Inside, I’m quivering like a jellyfish. “Nigel, let go of Emma and let her go to her dad.”

  Nigel looks over at Penny, but before he has a chance to argue Will is behind him, wrests the knife from his grip, and has him in a headlock.

  Troy seems suddenly released from stasis as the immediate danger to his daughter is removed, and he runs to her and lifts her into his arms. I signal to him to take her out of here and back to Gaz’s car, and press a few buttons on my phone.

  Will doesn’t release Nigel even when Troy is gone.

  “Drop your knife if you don’t want your friend to suffer, Penny,” Joanna says calmly. “I don’t suppose I’ve mentioned it before, but my son is a master of martial arts. All those trips out on Saturday mornings and school nights appear to have been worth it.”

  “I don’t give a shit about Nigel. He was a convenient means to an end.” She dives at me with the knife, but my own judo skills have significantly improved since my student days, and I’m able to dodge the lethal weapon, duck under her guard, and have her arm twisted up behind her back before she takes another breath. The knife falls to the floor, and I kick it away from her.

  “You bloody bitch. Now what? You can’t arrest me. You’re not police any more.”

  “No, but we are.” Finn enters the room with a posse of armed and uniformed officers. “Well done, you three. I saw Troy and his little girl coming out and figured this was the time to come in. Then I saw your message, Becky. Thanks.”

  Arrests are swift and neat, and Penny and Nigel are taken into custody. One of Finn’s officers bags up the knives as evidence.

  I’m just calming down when a memory returns. Finn’s face in the aftermath half a year ago. His expression of relief is overlaid with fear. I didn’t make sense of it then, but there’s a click as pieces slot into place.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Finn betrayed me. As he approaches me now in that warehouse, I can see the shock in his eyes as he notices the shock in mine. He glances round. I follow his gaze and see Joanna talking quietly to Will in the corner as the police do their work. We have a moment or two of privacy. We really need hours, or maybe no time at all. What is there to say to a friend who puts your life in danger? Only one word.

  “Why?”

  His shoulders slump.

  “I’m so sorry, Becks. I was in such trouble. Gambling debts had got me into deep shit. They offered me a way out: to get you into that warehouse at that particular moment. Someone wanted you out of the way. I never found out why. Without them knowing it, though, I put precautions in place. I can’t describe how relieved I was when they worked, and you were still alive. I was gutted about Rachel; she wasn’t supposed to be involved, but at least it wasn’t you.” His voice shakes, and despite my horror at his revelations, I’m inclined to believe him.

  “Who made you that offer?” Perhaps there is more than one question I need to ask.

  “I don’t know. The letters came by post, with instructions on what to do, and what the consequences would be if I didn’t.”

  “So you were blackmailed, and you didn’t pursue the criminal who was threatening you?”

  “I wasn’t in my right mind. That whole period, from about a year earlier, I got caught up in addiction. I had problems with alcohol as well as gambling. And there was a bit of coke too. Seriously, I was a mess. After what happened to you, I took some time off. I said it was shock, but I went into rehab. I badly let you down. I’m so sorry.”

  “I need time to think about this. I’ll get back to you. Are you clean and dry now?”

  “Yeah. Sober, clean and gamble-free for fourteen weeks, three days and eight hours.” He puts a hand on my shoulder.

  There
are none of the usual flutterings. In contrast, my stomach clenches in something akin to hatred. I vow to myself to get past it somehow. But for now, there’s business to attend to. I grit my teeth. I don’t know if he senses my reaction, but he quickly drops his hand to his side.

  “So, I assume Penny and Nigel will be charged with the abduction of Troy’s daughter and possession of lethal weapons. What about the murder charges?”

  “I had a call from Ellie over in Huddersfield. She said you’d been to see her, and that you suspected Penny was more involved than she should be in the recent murder of her ex-housemates.”

  “Given the evidence, I think it’s a serious possibility.”

  “I agree. Same MO as Troy’s wife and parents,” Finn seems more relaxed now we’re back on neutral conversation, and my antipathy eases. “Anyway, well done for all your work on it. I have to admit, the forensics and our team hadn’t even considered Penny as a suspect.” His uneasiness returns slightly. “I hope we can continue to work together, Becks, despite what’s happened. I hope you can forgive me.”

  ***

  Forgiveness or otherwise needs to be shelved for the moment, as there are things to be done. The evening is progressing quickly, and I take to my phone for a minute to tell Matt and Cheryl that I’ll be back late, but that this case is almost over now.

  “Just loose ends to tie up now, but you know what that’s like, Matt.”

  “Sure. Are you okay? You sound a bit… I don’t know… maybe a bit traumatised.”

  “It’s been a tough day. I’ll tell you about it later, or depending what time I get home, tomorrow. Finn’s invited us to the station to fill him in on our findings, then to observe the interviews with the suspects.”

  Finn had obviously felt guilty for his previous actions, but I think his invitation sprang more from the need to fill in his knowledge gaps. Despite his shortcomings, he’s a practical soul.

  Will drives us to the police station. Unusually, we’re all quiet. Too much has happened, and too recently for us to celebrate, but after about ten minutes of quiet, I rouse myself to speak.