‘Could I have a word, Helen?’
It was said with a smile, but without warmth. This was a public summons in front of the team and was designed to send out a message. What that message was Helen wasn’t yet clear about.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,’ Harwood continued once they were in her office. ‘I know events are moving fast but I will not tolerate this breakdown in communication. Is that clear?’
‘Yes. Ma’am.’
‘This only works if every link in the chain is connected, right?’
Helen nodded but privately wanted to tell her to blow it out her arse.
‘So what’s been going on?’ Harwood continued.
Helen brought her up to speed with the developments in the hunt for Lyra Campbell, the work being done at the old cinema and the latest killing.
‘No body yet but we believe the victim is Simon Booker, former paratrooper and veteran of Afghanistan.’
‘A war hero. Bloody hell.’
Helen sensed it was the possible headlines that were upsetting Harwood, not the man’s fate. She concluded her briefing, then moved to excuse herself, but Harwood stopped her in her tracks.
‘I had lunch with the police commissioner today.’
Helen said nothing. Was this another front opening up?
‘He’s very worried. The investigation is already massively over budget. The cost of surveillance alone is huge and has yielded nothing. Then there’s the extra uniforms, the overtime, the auxiliary SOC team and the dogs, and to what end? What concrete progress have we made?’
‘It’s a tough investigation, Ma’am. She’s a clever and a resourceful kill—’
‘All we’ve had for our money is a slew of negative headlines, which is why the commissioner has asked for an internal review of the investigation.’
So this was a new front. Had he asked or had Harwood led him to it? Helen’s blood boiled, but she said nothing.
‘I know you have experience in this area and that the team are – by and large – loyal to you, but your methods are irregular and costly –’
‘With the greatest of respect, four people are dead –’
‘Three.’
‘That’s fucking semantics. We all know Booker’s dead.’
‘It may be semantics, Inspector, but it says so much about you. You rush to judgement. Right from the off you’ve wanted this to be about Helen Grace chasing another serial killer. That’s the only narrative you know, isn’t it? Well, I think it’s misguided, unprofessional and dangerous. We have budgets, protocols and targets that cannot be ridden over roughshod.’
‘And what’s your target, Ceri? Chief Super? Chief Constable? Police Commissioner?’
‘Watch your tongue, Inspector.’
‘I’ve met people like you before. Never do the work, but always on hand to take the glory.’
Harwood leaned back in her chair. She was clearly livid but refused to show it.
‘Tread very carefully, DI Grace. And consider this an official warning. You’re a gnat’s breath away from getting taken off this investigation. Bring her in or step aside. Is that clear?’
Helen left soon after. One thing was crystal clear. As long as Harwood was around, she was on borrowed time.
77
It was getting dark now, but that would only add atmosphere to the composition. The low light, the grainy image would help capture the feel Emilia was going for. By rights she should have asked for one of their regular snappers to come with her, but she knew how to operate a digital SLR as well as the next man and there was no way she was letting anybody else in on this story until she had the whole package.
Adrian Fielding had been remarkably helpful, once he’d realized Emilia would happily destroy his career if she didn’t get what she wanted. The file on Robert Stonehill began in undramatic fashion, a pitiful list of his recent minor misdemeanours, but got much more interesting once Emilia discovered he’d been adopted. There were scant details of his biological mother in the main file, but it was obvious enough that he’d been born in a prison hospital. As soon as she’d discovered this Emilia knew who he was – Helen Grace had only truly cared for one person – but being a good journalist she’d cross-referenced Robert’s age with the date of Marianne’s arrest. After that it was a short step to Marianne’s arrest sheet and the jigsaw was complete.
Emilia could barely keep her hand still as she raised the camera. The boy had been sent out to buy milk and was waiting impatiently in the queue. Snap, snap, snap. The detail wasn’t brilliant, but they looked snatched and dangerous. Emilia waited some more, watching as Robert paid. Now he was leaving the shop. Emilia raised the camera again. As if choreographed, he paused as he exited, casting his eyes up to the heavens as rain began to spit. The sodium glare from the street lamp caught his face, rendering him ghostly and unnatural. Snap, snap, snap. Then he pulled his hoody up and looked almost straight at her. He couldn’t see her hidden in the gloom but she could see him. Snap, snap, snap. The young man born of violence caught on the darkened streets wearing a hoody – the uniform of violent and disillusioned thugs the country over. Perfect.
Now that she had what she needed, Emilia was going to act. She should of course ring the editor of the Evening News, but there was no way she was going to do that. There was a contact she’d been cultivating at the Mail for just such an occasion. She had all she needed – if she was quick she could get it on the front page of tomorrow’s edition.
This was her ticket out. She had the price. She had the package. And she had her headline.
‘Son of a Monster.’
78
Helen was still chewing on her confrontation with Harwood when she arrived at the old cinema on Upton Street. Hugging the shadows, she slipped inside via the fire exit. The building was supposed to be up for sale soon, though who would want to buy it was beyond Helen. As soon as she stepped inside, she was assaulted by a rich aroma – the smell of years of rotting wood and decaying vermin. It made her gag and she quickly put her mask on. Gathering herself, she held on to the shaky rail and made her way downstairs.
The Crown Cinema had been popular with families in the 1970s. It was a traditional picture palace, right down to the galleried theatre seating and heavy velvet curtains that concealed the screen. At least, it had been in its heyday. Its owners had gone bust during the recession in the 1980s and subsequent attempts to resurrect it had fallen foul of the out-of-town multiplexes and the arthouse cinema down by the waterfront. Now the main auditorium was a travesty of its former glory, a fractured mess of torn-up seats and building rubble.
The SOC team were grouped in a corner near the screen. The levels of activity and excitement meant progress. Helen hurried over. The phone call she’d received just after her confrontation with Harwood had been the one small piece of good news she’d had all day. She wanted to see it with her own eyes before she got carried away.
The SOC team parted as she approached. There he was. He was still mostly buried in the rubble, but enough had been lifted off to reveal the top of his head and a raised arm. The fingers on the exposed arm pointed upwards in accusing fashion. The skin, though covered in dust, was dark and suggested the victim was mixed race. But that wasn’t what really interested Helen. More important still was the fact that he only had four fingers, the one having been removed some years earlier by the look of the historic wound.
They didn’t know much about Anton Gardiner – his parentage, his early life – but they did know that he had had his ring finger cut off in a tit-for-tat gang punishment ten years earlier. Was he the trigger for Lyra’s killing spree? Was he the cause of all this? Helen shivered as she looked at his mutilated corpse, a pulse of excitement flowing through her. Was Anton’s ravaged hand finally pointing them in the right direction?
79
It was cold and dark and she was losing patience. It was getting harder and harder to find room to breathe. The police presence was huge all over the city now and she�
�d had to be exceedingly cautious, walking the streets in tracksuit bottoms and a hoody, as if out for a late-night jog. Once she’d found a secluded patch down by the Western Docks, she’d stripped off to reveal a short skirt and stockings. A tight top exposed her generous frame, with a short fur jacket the icing on the cake. Despite the frustration and stress of the evening, she felt good as she unveiled herself. Now all she had to do was stand and wait for the dirty dogs to come to her.
Twenty minutes later, a lone figure came into view. He was slightly unsteady on his feet and was muttering a song in a foreign tongue. A sailor, probably a Polish one, she thought. Angel’s heart started to beat faster. Sailors were dirty, unhygienic and coarse, but they always had money when on shore leave and they usually came pretty quickly, having been starved of sex for so long.
The man paused when he spotted her. Casting around to check he was alone, he sauntered over. He was surprisingly pretty – twenty-five at the most with a slender face and female lips. He was drunk to be sure, but not unattractive. Angel was surprised he had to pay for it.
‘How much?’ His accent was thick.
‘What do you want?’
‘Everything,’ he replied.
‘Hundred pounds.’
He nodded.
‘Let’s go.’
And with that he sealed his fate.
Angel walked ahead, leading him through a maze of cargo containers to a small supervisors’ yard. It was here that cargo was supposed to be checked and logged but in truth it was where a fair portion of the imported goods mysteriously disappeared, only to reappear on the black market. It would be deserted tonight – they hadn’t had a delivery all week.
As she led him to his death, Angel fought to suppress a laugh. Her whole body was shaking with adrenalin and excitement. Would she ever kick this habit? Surely not when it felt so good. This was the best bit. The calm before the storm. She loved the pregnant deception of it all.
They were now alone in the darkened yard. Taking a deep breath, she turned.
‘So shall we get started, honey?’
His right fist collided with her jaw, sending her crashing into the container behind her. Stunned, she raised her hands to defend herself, but the blows kept coming. She pushed him away, but the next blow nearly took her head off and she fell heavily to the floor.
What was happening? She tried to scramble to her feet, but he was already on top of her. Instinctively she lashed out. She had dealt with violent punters before, but always with the help of Mace – she had never engaged in hand-to-hand combat like this.
Now he was pinning her down, his strong hands encircling her throat. Squeezing harder, harder, harder. She rammed her fingers into his left eyeball, but he jerked his head away, out of her reach. She could see the blood pumping through a vein on his neck and she slashed at it with her fractured nails. Surely he would release his grip if he started to bleed out? It wasn’t meant to be like this. She wasn’t meant to die in this miserable place.
She fought for all she was worth. She fought for her life. But it was too little too late and after only a few seconds the lights went out.
80
Tony was relieved to see that Nicola was asleep. It was late, but she often struggled to get to sleep. Tony knew that had she been awake, had those deep blue eyes looked up at him as he entered, he would have confessed everything to her. He wouldn’t have been able to hold back, such were his feelings of confusion, exhilaration and shame. As it was, he just had to exchange a few stilted sentences with Violet – staring at the floor and claiming tiredness – before she went on her way and he was left alone with his wife.
Tony had never been unfaithful before and he still loved Nicola. Loved her even more if that was possible, now that he had the shame of his infidelity weighing on his conscience. He didn’t want to hurt her – he’d never wanted to hurt her – and they had always told each other everything. But what was he going to say to her now?
The truth was that he was still buzzing. He and Melissa had made love twice more before he eventually left. The plod on the door looked at the thick file under his arm and seemed to buy that he had been diligently taking Melissa’s testimony all the while. Tony felt another pulse of shame; not only had he betrayed Nicola, he had betrayed his colleagues too. He had always been a good copper, where had this sudden fall from grace come from?
He knew where. Of course he did. He’d tried for so long to tell himself that his life with Nicola was the norm. That it was ok. He often told enquiring friends that he had married for life and that if these were the cards that they’d been dealt, then that was fine by him. But it wasn’t and never had been. Not because he wanted more, but because Nicola had been so much more.
She had opened up everything for him. Whereas he came from a family of nomadic low achievers, she came from a family that was successful, cultured and driven. Whatever she did – whether in work or play – she did with utter determination, a will to succeed and a real sense of fun. And he missed her. He really, really missed her. Romantically she was impulsive and surprising, sexually she had been imaginative and mischievous, and emotionally she was always so giving. She could give him nothing of that now, and though he berated himself for thinking she was turning into his friend, that was the bitter truth of it. She would never be a burden, but she might be something less than his wife.
This, he had always thought, was the real betrayal. But what about Melissa then? This was something new, something dangerous. It was crazy but he already had feelings for her. It couldn’t be love because he’d only just met her, but it felt like something similar. Having been starved of love and affection for so long, he was now overdosing on it.
And he didn’t want to stop.
81
Helen stood stock still, barely able to breathe.
The first signs of trouble had come with repeated calls to Helen’s mobile from Southampton Central’s media liaison unit, flagging repeated attempts by the Mail to get access to Helen. Then the same again from Hampshire Police HQ and this time it was the editor of the Mail who had called. There was confusion all round – media liaison had assumed it was to do with their current investigation into the killings in Southampton, but actually they wanted to talk to Helen about someone called Robert Stonehill.
At the first mention of his name, Helen had switched off her phone and raced back to the nick. Once there she had demanded sight of tomorrow’s front pages. Most led on the ongoing hostage crisis in Algeria, but the Mail had gone for something different. ‘Son of a Monster’ splashed across the front page and beneath it a grainy, sinister-looking picture of Robert, shot from a distance on a long lens. Marianne’s police mugshot leered out underneath – the details of her crimes rehashed with relish.
Dropping the paper, Helen sprinted from the media suite, racing down the stairs and out to her bike. As she raced to the outskirts of the city, one question kept swirling round and round her head. How? How had they found out? Emilia must be involved somehow but Helen hadn’t told anyone about Robert, so unless he had … No, it didn’t make any sense. When had Emilia suddenly become omniscient, able to penetrate the most secret chambers of Helen’s life?
All she wanted to do was find Robert and comfort him. Protect him. But as she approached Cole Avenue, she could already see the press pack assembling. A TV crew had just pulled up and there was a growing crowd of hacks ringing the doorbell, demanding an interview. Helen’s first instinct was to barrel through them to find Robert, but wisdom prevailed and she stayed where she was. Her presence would only inflame the story and the Stonehill family had enough to deal with already.
How could she help him? How could she stop the shit storm that she had brought crashing down on this innocent young man? This was her fault and she cursed herself bitterly for her weakness in ever contacting Robert. He had been happy. He had been ignorant. And now this.
In trying to save him, she had damned him.
82
She was splayed out
on the ground, lifeless and pliable, her arms snaking out across the ground in capitulation. She was his now and he took his fill. He didn’t bother to wear a condom. In a few hours he would be on his way to Angola aboard the PZR Slazak. By the time they found her, he would be long gone. He always made good use of his shore leave and this time had been no exception.
It had taken him a while to gather himself after he’d strangled her. It always did. The adrenalin raged through him – his heart beating as if it were going to burst – and stars danced in front of his eyes. He was breathless and exhausted even in his triumph. The cuts on his face stung sharply and his senses were supercharged – every drip of water sounded like an approaching footstep, every blast of wind like a shrieking woman. But there was no one else here. It was just him and his prey.
She was just like all the others. Sinful, dirty and cheap. How many had he killed now? Seven? Eight? And how many had fought back – really fought back? None. This one had been tougher than most but like all the others she knew. She knew that she was fallen – that she had given away any chance of salvation thanks to her own depravity – and that’s why they were happy when he relieved them of their suffering. Did they know or care that they were going straight to Hell?
He shuddered to a finish. Closing his eyes, he savoured the moment. The tension that had been building up within him week upon week was already starting to dissipate. Soon he would feel that all-pervading calm that was so rare but so precious to him.
He opened his eyes, hoping to indulge himself with one last look at her bloodless face. But as soon as he did so, he froze.
Pop Goes the Weasel: DI Helen Grace 2 (Dci Helen Grace 2) Page 19