Little Boy Blue

by M. J. Arlidge

  She had reached the thirteenth floor now. Gripping the beer bottle firmly, she dropped her pace, taking the stairs two at a time in giant, silent strides. If he was going to come for her, it would be now. But she wasn’t going to walk into his trap tamely.

  There was nowhere for him to hide now, so Helen burst into the room, her arm raised to protect herself. The floorboards protested and a cloud of dust flew up, but no attack came, so Helen moved on to the next room, expecting to be thrown backward with a savage blow at any minute.

  Still nothing. Then suddenly there was a noise. At the other side of the building—what was it? A crash? Someone putting his weight in the wrong place? Helen bounded forward. She was sprinting as if her life depended upon it, eating up the yards to the far wall, and suddenly she burst out into a large open space. A penthouse apartment that was never built, it was now a vast receptacle for dead birds and drugs detritus. Other than that, it was empty—save for the door to the fire escape that lolled open.

  Helen raced over to it. Pushing out into the fresh air, she came to an abrupt halt. The fire escape on which she now stood was old and rusty and could potentially give way at any moment—suddenly her impulsive bravery seemed foolhardy in the extreme.

  Taking a step back, she looked through the grille to the steps below. The metal staircase zigzagged down the building and Helen scrutinized it for signs of movement. But all was still, apart from a few startled pigeons and the fire escape door moving back and forth in the wind.

  Suddenly a thought occurred to Helen, and mounting the fire escape, she climbed to the top floor. This was the only remaining place her voyeur could be hiding. But it was as deserted as the rest of the shell.

  Crouching down, Helen breathed out, trying to slow her heartbeat. Despite her endeavors she had been left empty-handed. There was no one here. She had been so sure—had seen the figure so clearly. She couldn’t have imagined it all.

  Could she?

  90

  “I don’t think we have a choice. We have to charge her.”

  Charlie’s tone was flinty and unyielding. Despite the failure of Samantha to confess, she seemed determined to nail her for the brutal double murder.

  “If we don’t, we’ve got at best another twenty-four hours and I don’t think that’s enough. She’s too confident of herself—we need more time to wear her down.”

  “You really want to dive in again, after what happened last time?” Sanderson replied, as coolly as she could. “We have got to be sure.”

  “She was the last person to visit Paine on the night he died.”

  “That we know of.”

  “And she’s never once protested her innocence, despite numerous opportunities to do so.”

  “Nor has she confessed. So what have we actually got?”

  Helen watched her two deputies debate the evidence. It was still early and she was exhausted and irritable after her nighttime excursions. She hadn’t slept a wink last night, replaying what she’d seen over and over to see if she could have been mistaken. Her defenses were up and every tiny noise had seemed so ominous that in the end she’d given up trying altogether and headed into the office. She knew that today would be crucial for the investigation, so when Sanderson and Charlie arrived, she called them both into her office.

  She had thought about apologizing to both of them for her recent behavior, but the events of last night still hung heavy on her mind and with the clock ticking on Samantha’s custody, there was no time to waste. So they’d pressed on with the case, just about managing to ignore the tensions bubbling beneath the surface. Helen would have to force the pair of them to work together if necessary, as they were both good officers whose recent misdemeanors were mostly a product of her own fractured focus.

  “What have we got on the credit cards?” Helen asked suddenly, interrupting the debate.

  “The Zentai suit and hog ties that killed Paine were bought with a different credit card to the one used to buy Elder’s wet sheets,” Sanderson replied.

  “Have we cross-referenced the stores and Web sites that the two different cloned cards were used in? To see who might have stolen the details?”

  “Yes, but it’s already a massively long list. The supermarkets, Boots, W. H. Smith, Amazon, PayPal, iTunes …”

  “Can we link either of the cloned cards to Samantha? We know that as Michael Parker she had form for this kind of thing.”

  “Nothing on her home computer, phones or devices. And we didn’t find any cards at her flat.”

  “Does she work anywhere other than the bar?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  “What about the deliveries of the bondage items themselves?” Helen said, turning to Charlie.

  “As with Elder, the BDSM stuff was delivered by courier to a vacant address. A domestic property awaiting new tenants.”

  “Get on to the estate agents that rent them out. See if there’s any connection between the different properties and a particular agency.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “What about the boot print?” Helen continued. “Meredith said the print she found at Paine’s was a size six. Parker is a size seven, but that doesn’t necessarily rule her out.”

  “There was loads of stuff in the flat geared toward sizing down, corsets, heels—,” Charlie responded.

  “Trying to make herself as petite as possible.”

  “Exactly. But no sign of any boot or shoe that fits.”

  Helen nodded, but her frustration was clear.

  “We’ve got the tread pattern,” Sanderson interjected. “It’s quite unusual, so we’ll chase down which outlets sell it.”

  “Good. We’re not letting Samantha believe she’s anything other than our number one suspect and we exhaust every avenue, up to the last minute, to link her to these murders. Understood?”

  Sanderson and Charlie nodded and left. Helen picked up the phone to dial Meredith Walker, but as she did so, DC Reid knocked on the door. Replacing the cradle, Helen beckoned him in. Reid approached, clutching a DVD. He handed it to Helen without a word, clearly worried about being the bearer of bad news.

  Helen slipped the DVD into her laptop and the screen filled with a CCTV feed.

  “What is this?”

  “CCTV taken from a street near the Eastern Docks. One of the night watchmen down there saw someone matching Parker’s description, so we checked it out.”

  Reid reached over and fast-forwarded the footage, before eventually pressing play. Helen leaned in, looking closely at the date and time stamp.

  “This is the night Max Paine was killed?”

  “Correct.”

  The camera gave a decent view of the dockside and Helen now saw a woman walk into view. She paused the image. Slicked-down hair, a large, light-colored coat over a skintight suit—it was Samantha, all right. Helen resumed playing the footage and watched as the woman struck up a conversation with a man idling near a stationary van. Parker appeared to take the man’s hand and put it between her legs. Moments later, the two figures climbed into the back of the van.

  “The van doesn’t move for the next three hours. Then Parker exits. She doesn’t look in a very good state and gets out of there as quickly as she can.”

  Helen nodded, but her eye was already straying to the time stamp at the bottom of the screen, and she rewound the footage to the moment Parker got into the van with her bit of rough. The clock read 22:02.

  “How accurate is the time on this feed?”

  “To the second.”

  Helen breathed out, then suddenly stepped forward, kicking her office chair with all her might. It careered across the room, slamming into the wall before toppling over. Without bothering to offer an explanation, Helen walked out of the door and away across the incident room, dozens of pairs of eyes following her as she went.

  91

  “Not up to my usual standard. But pretty damn good in the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”

  Samantha offered her nails to Helen,
clearly pleased with the few cosmetics items she’d managed to source.

  “Very nice,” Helen told her, keeping her temper in check. It had taken the best part of twenty minutes to pull Samantha up from the cells, but the interval had done little to calm Helen. Jim Grieves had put Paine’s time of death as somewhere between ten thirty p.m. and six thirty a.m. the following morning. Notwithstanding the fact that Paine died slowly, Parker’s presence at the docks at ten p.m. meant it was more than likely that someone had visited Paine’s flat after her.

  “I want to keep myself looking my best. You never know what’s around the corner, do you?”

  Her tone was teasing and playful.

  “Absolutely. But I don’t want to string this out any more than we have to. I expect you’re anxious to get home.”

  Samantha shrugged, disappointed with Helen’s response. Was she expecting—hoping—for more aggression from Helen?

  “You’re right. It doesn’t do to leave my babies alone for too long.”

  “Quite.”

  Samantha’s dolls were in fact all in evidence bags at Meredith’s lab. Surely Samantha would have guessed that, so was this yet another game? Helen looked down at her file, leafing casually through the pages, saying nothing. She could see in her peripheral vision that Samantha was twitchy and ill at ease, as if this exchange was not going as she’d hoped.

  “I’d like to clarify a few details about your night with Max Paine.”

  “Of course.”

  “We talked a little about ‘the Phoenix’ last time.”

  “Got your juices flowing, did it?”

  “I want a little more detail about what you got up to specifically,” Helen demanded, ignoring Parker’s jibes.

  “A lady never tells.”

  “Was it straight S and M or something more exotic?”

  “The latter.”

  “Details, please.”

  “Restraint and suffocation. I want total control.”

  “And how do you achieve that?”

  “Force of personality.”

  “What about the restraints? Do you ever use hog ties, for example?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you ever used them frontways on? Securing the hands to the ankles so the back is bent forward?”

  “Yes, it’s more painful that way.”

  “Did you do that to Paine?” Helen said, looking Parker directly in the eye.

  “Yes,” she replied, refusing to be intimidated.

  “Did you use any other restraints?”

  “Tape, leather—I was very thorough. I wanted every inch of that boy to be covered.”

  “And can I ask what time you left Paine’s flat?”

  “I honestly can’t remember.”

  “Roughly.”

  “Around eleven, I suppose.”

  “And then you went home.”

  “As I’ve said before, yes.”

  Helen sat back in her chair. She had won this battle but lost the war and suddenly felt drained of energy. Her sincere vows to bring Jake’s killer to justice seemed a mockery now.

  “Why are you lying to me, Samantha?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You didn’t leave Paine’s flat at eleven—you left much earlier and headed straight down to the docks for some rough trade.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “We’ve got you on CCTV, so there’s no point lying. Is that how you got those bruises? Things get nasty in that van, did they?”

  “I was with Paine,” Samantha insisted.

  “Yes, but he was fine when you left him.”

  “I’ve told you what happened, how he died—”

  “You’ve recycled the details of Jake Elder’s death. Max Paine died in a Zentai suit, with his arms tied backward in hog ties. You tried hard, but you were wrong on pretty much every detail.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Did something similar happen at the Torture Rooms? Why were you leaving in such a state? Did someone reject you, push you away?”

  Samantha hesitated too long, giving Helen her answer.

  “I thought so.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “You know, this is a first for me. I’ve never had a suspect who’s so keen to be charged with a double murder. You’ve been wasting my time, haven’t you, Samantha?”

  “You’ve got it wrong,” Samantha said, now visibly flustered.

  “No, you’ve got it wrong,” Helen said, rising. “We’re done here.”

  Helen stabbed off the tape and walked to the door, pausing as she opened it.

  “Good luck, Samantha.”

  Then, without waiting for a reply, she left.

  92

  It was midmorning and the Pound Shop was heaving. Beleaguered mums juggled maxi-packs of Monster Munch, while old-age pensioners scoured the shelves for bargains, keen to eke out their weekly budget a little further. It was an odd place to be plotting a murder.

  The tall, slender figure sailed through the crowds, amused by the sights on display. All these people were so bound up in their own lives, scrabbling in the bargain bins, ladling pick-and-mix into crumpled bags, that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them. What would they say if they knew? Would they be horrified? Or excited?

  The police were no better. Grace’s team had pulled in a messed-up she-male who might interest them for a while. But they were wide of the mark, and though Grace would presumably cotton on soon, she wouldn’t be in time to prevent the next death. It was only hours away and already those same feelings were rising. Excitement. Tension. Control. Release.

  This one would be a little bit different, though. It wouldn’t do to become predictable and now was the time to really give the police something to think about. Whereas the others had been works of art, this would be more down-to-earth, more homespun. This one would make them sit up and take note.

  The cashier was ringing through the basket, chatting amiably. In her own mindless way she was becoming an accessory to murder. This was probably the most exciting thing that would ever happen to her and yet she was totally unaware of it, believing that this was just another routine sale of mundane domestic items.

  But it was more than that. Much more than that. This was the beginning of the end.

  93

  “I need everything you’ve got.”

  Meredith Walker had been about to tuck into a well-earned sandwich when Helen Grace burst through the doors. Her colleague seemed angry and frustrated, and as Meredith was brought up to speed with developments, it wasn’t hard to see why. The pair of them were now shut away in Meredith’s office, reams of paper spread out on the desk in front of them.

  “Every last detail. The answer has to be here somewhere.”

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you?”

  “This guy’s not a ghost—he’s flesh and blood. He can’t just visit these scenes and leave no trace.”

  “I’ll admit it’s odd, but he has clearly been very careful. He wears a bodysuit, perhaps a mask, and never takes his gloves off. There are no prints on Paine’s thermostat, nothing on the door handles or on the Zentai suit, the hog ties—”

  “What about more circumstantial stuff? From the corridors, outside Paine’s flat, in the bins.”

  “We’re still sweeping, but any defense would have a field day with the possibilities of cross-contamination—”

  “I need something here.”

  “I understand that, but we can’t magic up the evidence.”

  “What about the Torture Rooms? What have we got there?”

  “Twenty-three different sources of DNA at the crime scene. I think your lot have been over these already.”

  “What else?”

  “We’ve got a number of DNA sources in close proximity to the corridor which we haven’t been able to match.”

  “What do you mean by ‘a number’?”

  Meredith lifted a file on her desk to reveal another, from which she now pulled a sheet of paper.


  “We have … a few beer bottles, a cigarette butt, a used condom, a glove. All of them containing DNA which we can’t match to anyone on file.”

  “He’s unlikely to have had sex—the MO doesn’t suggest it’s that sort of crime—but perhaps one of the others?”

  Meredith half nodded, half shrugged—she looked as unconvinced as Helen sounded. Helen rubbed her face with her hands and stared at the sheets of paper on the desk. So much data, such little progress.

  “Do you think we’ll catch him?” Helen said suddenly.

  “It’s early days, Helen.”

  “There’s always going to be one that gets away, though, isn’t there?”

  “He’ll make a mistake. They always do. And when he does, you’ll be waiting for him. I have every confidence in you.”

  Helen thanked Meredith, then headed off. She was grateful for her support, but the truth was that this case was so unusual and so puzzling that she was genuinely concerned about the outcome.

  For the first time in years, Helen was beginning to doubt herself.

  94

  “They haven’t got a bloody clue.”

  David Simons’s tone was withering.

  “They arrest someone, let him go. Arrest someone else, let her go …”

  Emilia nodded and let Simons rant. Like many in the BDSM community, he had had his hopes raised by the arrest of Michael Parker. News of Parker’s sudden release was therefore a kick in the teeth that had been met with a wave of anger. Many were confused, others scared, but none had the personal connection that Simons had. Which was why he was blowing a gasket now.

  “It’s incredibly frustrating,” Emilia said, when Simons eventually drew breath. “We all want to get justice for Jake and the investigation seems … unfocused at best. Which is why I wanted to talk to you.”

  Simons suddenly looked up, intrigued and surprised.

  “Forgive me for revisiting painful memories, but you said when we talked before that there was someone else in Jake’s life? A woman he had feelings for?”

  Simons stared at her, clearly unhappy to be reminded of this.