Pop Goes the Weasel: DI Helen Grace 2 (Dci Helen Grace 2)

by M. J. Arlidge

  Helen shot a look at the clock. It was past half nine now, surely her time was almost up. Yet Helen felt she was onto something, as if the jigsaw puzzle were trying to assemble itself in front of her. She had to keep going and hope against hope that she would not be found. Her phone started buzzing, but she ignored it. No time for distractions now.

  The hood. Focus on the hood. The one distinguishing feature of the first murder. Angel might have wanted to conceal her identity in case the victim escaped or she might have done it because … she didn’t want to look her victim in the eye, when she carried out the mutilation. Was she scared of him? Scared her nerve would fail her? Did she know him?

  The hood wasn’t used to suffocate him and wasn’t employed in the later murders, so what made her first victim unique? Did he have some kind of power over her? Why was Alan Matthews special? He was a hypocritical, corrupt sexual deviant with an interest in evangelical religion and a passion for beating his family …

  An echo of a memory. Something calling to Helen. Suddenly she was tossing the files aside, looking for the surveillance file that DC Fortune and his team had assembled on the Matthews family. There was a mass of mundane details, time logs, all of which might help, but Helen discarded them for the photos from the funeral. Helen had been there, for God’s sake – had the answer been under her nose all along?

  Photos of the cortège leaving the house, of the mourners arriving, of the family departing the church. All of them inviting the same question. There was Eileen, being supported by her elder daughter, Carrie. And there were the twins, smart in the dark suits. But where was Ella? When he was alive, Alan Matthews had made great play of being a father of four, the fertile paterfamilias of a close-knit, disciplined and devout family, so where was his younger daughter? Why hadn’t she turned up at the funeral? And, more importantly, why had the family never mentioned her – during police interviews, during the funeral orations. Why had Ella been airbrushed out of the family?

  As that thought landed, another punched through. The heart. All the other hearts had been delivered to places of work, but not Alan Matthews’ heart. That was delivered to the family home. Surely that had to be significant?

  Helen’s phone started buzzing again. She was about to reject it – expecting it to be an irate Harwood – but she recognized the number and answered it instead.

  ‘DI Grace.’

  ‘Hi, boss, it’s me,’ DC Sanderson replied. ‘I’m at the university’s admissions office and I think I may have something for you. I was going through the list of students who dropped out of their studies this year, looking particularly at female medical students. One name came up.’

  ‘Ella Matthews?’

  ‘Ella Matthews,’ Sanderson confirmed, surprised by her boss’s prescience. ‘She was a good student for the first year, then went badly off the rails. Late work, turning up to classes drunk or stoned, aggressive behaviour to other students. Her welfare officer suspected she may have resorted to prostitution because she had no money coming in from family. She was a mess. Six months ago she vanished.’

  ‘Good work, stay on it. Find her friends, tutors, anybody who can give us more information on where she liked to go, where she felt safe, where she bought her drugs, anything. She’s our number one suspect – leave no stone unturned.’

  Sanderson rang off. Helen knew she had no right to issue orders but now they were finally onto something, she was damned if she was going to let Harwood mess it up. This case still felt like hers and Helen wasn’t prepared to give it up yet. Bagging up the files, Helen hurried from the room.

  Her time was limited, but Helen knew there was one person who could reveal the truth. And she was on her way to see her now.

  104

  It was past ten o’clock. They should both have left for work hours ago. But instead they lay there together, happy and warm in a post-coital glow, neither moving a muscle. After all the emotion and heartache of the last few hours it felt so good just to be quiet and still.

  After Steve had delivered his ultimatum, Charlie’s initial instinct had been to kick back at him. She hated being boxed into a corner, forced to choose between being a mother or a copper. But even as she accused him of moving the goalposts, of breaking his word, she knew that the fight was going out of her. If it really was down to a choice of the job or him, then Steve would win every time. Charlie loved being a policewoman – it was all she’d ever wanted to be and she had paid a heavy price for that ambition. But she couldn’t imagine life without Steve and he was right. There was a hole in their life, the indelible shape of the baby Charlie had lost during her incarceration.

  They had circled each other for hours, but eventually Charlie promised to leave her job. At that point Steve had cried. Charlie too. Before long they had ended up in bed, making love with a passion and urgency that surprised them both. They had eschewed contraception, a silent acknowledgement that things had changed and there was no way back.

  It felt so nice, so decadent, to be lying here with him. She had turned her phone off and pushed away thoughts of Helen and the team, who were no doubt wondering where she was. She would call Helen later and explain.

  If she felt a spasm of guilt at the thought, more than a spasm, Charlie ignored it. She had made her decision.

  105

  Helen was sure Eileen Matthews would slam the door in her face, but for once luck was on her side. One of the twins answered the door and, on seeing Helen’s warrant card, let her straight in. As he ran upstairs to fetch his mother, Helen ran a rule over the living room. Everything she saw confirmed her suspicions.

  Eileen Matthews marched into the room. She clearly had a speech prepared, but Helen wasn’t in the mood to be lectured.

  ‘Where’s Ella?’ Helen barked, nodding at the framed photos on the living room walls.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Eileen retorted.

  ‘I see photos of you and Alan. Lots of photos of the twins. And Carrie – at her confirmation, her wedding, holding your first grandchild. But I don’t see any photos of Ella. You and your husband were very big on family. So I’ll ask you again – where’s Ella?’

  It was as if she had just punched Eileen in the face. She was temporarily robbed of speech, her breathing short and unsteady. For a moment, Helen thought she might faint, but then finally she replied:

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘When?’ barked Helen, incredulous.

  Another long pause. Then:

  ‘She’s dead to us.’

  Helen shook her head, suddenly furious with this foolish, bigoted woman.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer these quest—’

  ‘You do and if you don’t start talking right now, I am going to drag you out of this house in cuffs. In front of your boys, in front your neighbours –’

  ‘Why are you doing this to us? Why are you making –’

  ‘Because I think Ella killed your husband.’

  Eileen blinked back at Helen twice, then slowly collapsed onto the sofa. In that moment Helen knew that whatever else she’d concealed, Eileen had never even considered that her daughter might be involved in Alan’s murder.

  ‘I didn’t … is she even in Southampton?’ Eileen said eventually.

  ‘We believe she’s living in the Portswood area.’

  Eileen nodded, though how much she was taking in was hard to say. A long, heavy silence followed, which was suddenly and inopportunely broken by the sound of Helen’s mobile ringing. Harwood. Helen rejected the call, then turned her phone off, before seating herself on the sofa next to Eileen.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Eileen said nothing, still in shock.

  ‘We can’t bring Alan back. But we can stop others dying. You can do that, Eileen, if you talk to me now.’

  ‘She was always the bad seed.’

  Helen flinched at the phrase but said nothing.

  ‘She was a sweet girl when she was young, but when she was a teenager, she changed.
She wouldn’t listen. Not to me. Not even to her father. She was rebellious, destructive, violent.’

  ‘Violent to whom?’

  ‘To her sister, her brothers, kids who were smaller than her.’

  ‘So what did you do about it?’

  Silence.

  ‘What happened to her after these incidents?’ Helen continued.

  ‘She was disciplined.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By Alan, of course,’ she replied, as if confused by the question.

  ‘Why not you?’

  ‘Because he’s my husband. The head of the family. I am his helpmeet and I support him in any way I can, but it’s his duty to correct us when we require it.’

  ‘ “Us”? He disciplined you too?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Eileen replied defiantly. ‘I know the modern world frowns on physical punishment but we and the other members of our church have always believed that beatings are necessary if people are to learn –’

  ‘And is that what Ella received – beatings?’

  ‘To begin with. But she wouldn’t learn. When she was a teenager she would get into fights, go with boys, take drink –’

  ‘And what happened to her then?’

  ‘Then Alan disciplined her more firmly.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning he hit her. With my blessing. And if she still refused to be contrite, Alan took her down to the cellar.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He’d make sure she learned her lesson.’

  Helen shook her head, stunned by what she was hearing.

  ‘You may shake your head,’ Eileen suddenly erupted, ‘but I have three healthy, obedient children who know right from wrong, because of their upbringing. Because we brought them up to respect their father and through him –’

  ‘Did Alan enjoy punishing his children?’

  ‘He never shied away from his duty.’

  ‘Answer the fucking question.’

  Eileen paused, stunned by Helen’s sudden outburst.

  ‘Did your husband enjoy punishing his children?’

  ‘He never complained about having to do it.’

  ‘And did he enjoy beating you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t about “enjoyment” –’

  ‘Did he ever go too far? With you?’

  ‘I … don’t –’

  ‘Was there a time when you asked him to stop and he wouldn’t?’

  Eileen hung her head and said nothing.

  ‘Show me the cellar.’

  Eileen resisted at first, but the fight was going out of her, and a couple of minutes later she and Helen were standing in the freezing-cold room. It was desolate and dark, four walls of rough brick, almost entirely empty except for a stacking chair in the middle and a locked plastic crate in the corner. Helen shivered, but it wasn’t the cold making her shake.

  ‘What’s the chair for?’

  Eileen hesitated and then said:

  ‘Alan would secure Ella to the chair.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With handcuffs, round her ankles and her wrists. Then he’d use a whip or a chain from the box.’

  ‘Beat some sense into her?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  ‘You have to understand what she was like. She wouldn’t obey him. Wouldn’t listen. So sometimes he had to use other methods as well.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Eileen thought for a moment.

  ‘It would depend on what she’d done. If she’d blasphemed, then he would make her eat excrement. If she had stolen, he would fill her mouth with coins and make her swallow them. If she’d been with boys, he … he would beat her between her legs to make sure she wouldn’t do it again –’

  ‘He tortured her?’ Helen roared.

  ‘He corrected her,’ Eileen retorted. ‘You don’t understand, she was wild. Ungovernable.’

  ‘She was traumatized. Traumatized by your bully of a husband. Why didn’t you intervene, for God’s sake?’

  Eileen could no longer look Helen in the eye. For all her conviction, without her husband present, nothing seemed certain any more. Helen continued in a more emollient tone:

  ‘Why her and not the others?’

  ‘Because they did as they were asked.’

  ‘Ella – how old was she when she got married?’

  ‘Sixteen. She finished her schooling, then married a good man.’

  ‘From the church?’

  Eileen nodded again.

  ‘How old was her husband? When they married?’ Helen continued.

  ‘Forty-two.’

  Eileen suddenly looked up, as if searching for Helen’s disapproval.

  ‘Young girls need discipline –’

  ‘So you said,’ Helen interrupted firmly.

  A heavy silence followed. This room had been so full of misery, so full of vitriol, hatred and abuse. How powerless must the young girl have felt down here alone with her bully of a father, whilst he abused her physically and verbally. It conjured up images of her own childhood long since buried, which Helen pushed away forcefully now.

  The twins were getting restless, calling down to their mother. Eileen turned to go, but Helen caught her arm, stopping her in her tracks.

  ‘Why did she leave?’

  ‘Because she was lost.’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t give up school and marry a guy old enough to be her father?’

  Eileen shrugged, resentful now of Helen’s presence and the judgement it brought.

  ‘She wanted to study, didn’t she? She wanted to be a doctor. In spite of everything that had happened to her, she wanted to help people?’

  ‘It was the school’s fault. They put ideas in girls’ heads. We knew it would end in tears and it did.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Helen responded.

  ‘She walked out on us. Disobeyed her father, said she would find her own ways to fund her “studies”. We all knew what that meant.’

  There was almost a bitter glee in Eileen’s voice now.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She took to prostitution. Took money from strangers who …’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Because she told us. When she came home with a bastard child in her belly.’

  Helen breathed out, the full tragedy of Ella’s life slowly taking shape in front of her.

  ‘Whose was it?’

  ‘She didn’t know,’ Eileen replied, but now the glee had vanished from her voice.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She … she had got herself into trouble. A group of men who’d … who’d tricked her into going to their flat.’

  ‘And raped her?’

  Suddenly Eileen was crying, her head hanging low, her shoulders shaking gently. For all the dogma, perhaps there was still a mother in there somewhere.

  ‘Eileen?’

  ‘Yes. They … they kept her there for two days.’

  Helen closed her eyes. She wanted to flee from the horror of Ella’s ordeal but the images forced themselves into her brain.

  ‘Afterwards they said they’d slit her throat if she told anyone,’ Eileen continued, falteringly.

  ‘And she came home when she discovered she was pregnant?’

  Eileen nodded.

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Alan turned her away. What else could he do?’

  She looked up imploringly, as if begging Helen to understand. Helen wanted to shout and scream at her, but swallowed down her rage.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Six months ago.’

  ‘And after that she was airbrushed out of the family?’

  Eileen nodded.

  ‘Before that, Alan had told people she was working overseas … for a medical charity. But afterwards, he told everyone she was dead.’

  ‘And the photos?’ Helen asked, hoping against hope for a recen
t picture of their killer.

  Eileen paused, before once more looking up at Helen with tears in her eyes.

  ‘He burnt every single one.’

  106

  Helen sprinted to her bike, switching her phone back on as she ran. Seven voicemail messages. They would all be from Harwood but Helen didn’t have time for that now. She dialled Sanderson instead.

  It rang and rang. Then:

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sanderson, it’s me. Can you talk?’

  There was a momentary pause, then:

  ‘Oh hi, Mum, give me one second.’

  Clever girl. There was a longer pause, then the sound of the fire door swinging open and shut.

  ‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ Sanderson resumed in a hushed voice. ‘Harwood is going nuts looking for you.’

  ‘I know and I feel bad asking for one more favour, but … I need you to find Carrie Matthews. Find out what she knows about her sister’s movements and see if you can get a photo from her. If she hasn’t got one, try the University. Alan Matthews destroyed all their photos of her after she turned up pregnant following a gang rape. Ella Matthews is our killer – I’m a hundred per cent certain of that. The priority for you and the team now must be to bring her in before she kills again.’

  ‘On it. I’ll call you when I have news.’

  Climbing the stairs to Jake’s flat, Helen felt a mixture of panic and relief. Relief at seeing him, but also anxiety at the darkness rising within her. Strong as she was there were always moments when it took her. The world was full of viciousness and sometimes she was thrust right back to a time when she was the world’s punch bag, when she and her sister had taken the sins of the world upon their shoulders. She was jumpy now, unable to contain the panic spiking inside her, the feeling that any minute, she would be back there in that room.

  Jake wanted to hold her, but she wouldn’t let him. She chained herself up without being asked and told him to get on with it. She knew she was being rude and aggressive, but she needed this badly.

  ‘Now.’

  Jake hesitated.

  ‘Please.’