Evil Impulse

by Leigh Russell

‘I’m not going home,’ Zoe cried out, springing to her feet. ‘If you take me back there, I’ll run away again. I don’t want to go back.’

  The policewomen were surprisingly nice about it, and she heard them reassuring Laura’s mother that they would only need a statement from her about what had happened, and there would be no further action taken.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Laura’s mother kept repeating, pale and agitated. ‘This was all my daughter’s doing, and she’s barely thirteen. She didn’t know what she was doing.’

  ‘I didn’t want her staying here for so long,’ Laura muttered. ‘I kept telling her to go home but she wouldn’t.’

  At last they left the house, and Zoe sat in the back of the police car, twisting her knitted hat in her lap and staring miserably out of the window. It should have been exciting driving away in a police car, but she was too worried about the future to enjoy the ride.

  ‘What will happen to me now?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re taking you to the police station so that we can ask you a few questions,’ the policewoman who was sitting in the back of the car with her explained.

  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  ‘Of course not. You haven’t committed any crime. We just want to find out what you want to happen, and whether you can be reconciled with your parents. Then you can go home.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to go home to my parents’ house?’

  The policewoman smiled gently at her. ‘That’s what we want to discuss with you. Don’t worry. No one’s going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. We just need to work out what’s the best way forward for you.’

  It all sounded very reasonable, and when they arrived at the police station, Zoe was offered tea or orange juice and chocolate biscuits which the policewoman told her were reserved for special visitors.

  ‘What’s so special about me?’ Zoe asked.

  She wondered why everyone was being so nice to her.

  The policewoman smiled. ‘You haven’t broken the law, which makes you our guest.’

  ‘Does that mean I can go whenever I want?’

  The woman didn’t answer her question, telling her instead that they just wanted to talk to her. After that, Zoe was questioned by another woman, this one a social worker, but the nice policewoman stayed with her, at her request. It was tiring and after a while it grew boring. They kept on asking her why she had run away from home.

  ‘I hate my parents,’ was all she would say.

  At last the woman left the room and returned with Zoe’s parents. Her mother burst into tears and flung her arms around Zoe who promptly began to cry too, and her father put his arms around them both, with tears in his eyes. Zoe sobbed, unable to recall exactly what had prompted her to leave home, but then she remembered how her parents argued all the time, and she drew back from them and wiped her eyes.

  ‘I’ll come home,’ she said, ‘but only if you promise to stop shouting at each other all the time.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the policewoman and the social worker exchange a glance, and wondered if she should have been more discreet about the arguments at home. Turning to her parents, she saw that far from being angry with her, they looked frightened. An unexpected sense of strength coursed through her, because in some way she understood that she could exert power over her parents. From now on, they would have to behave nicely or she would run away again, only next time she would go straight to the police and tell them everything. With a sigh, she agreed to go home with them. Having been keen to bring this about, the social worker seemed to change her tune. Now she looked concerned.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want, Zoe?’ she asked. ‘You can stay here for a while and think about it. There’s no pressure to decide straightaway.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Would you like your parents to leave the room so we can talk?’

  But Zoe was tired, and she was fed up with the interrogation. She wanted to go home, have supper, and watch television, not sit endlessly answering stupid questions.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said. ‘I’m sure. That’s what I want.’

  As her parents turned to leave, the nice policewoman held out the knitted hat Zoe had been wearing. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘this is yours.’

  Zoe shook her head. ‘I don’t want it,’ she replied. ‘You can keep it.’ And she hurried out of the room after her parents.

  45

  There was a general mood of relief at the team meeting once it was announced that Zoe had been found and reunited with her parents. At least that potential tragedy had ended well, and they all hoped that Zoe would settle down from now on. It wasn’t altogether clear why she had left home in the first place, but given her readiness to return, the consensus was that she had probably run off in a teenage strop and been too bloody-minded to swallow her pride and go back.

  ‘She probably had some tests at school,’ one of the older constables suggested.

  ‘Is that what you used to do then? Run away from school when you had a test? Afraid of being put in the dunce’s corner?’ one of his colleagues teased him.

  The officers who had been occupied searching for Zoe were now free to join the team working on the double murder investigation, although a small increase in man power wasn’t likely to move them forward when what they really wanted was a new lead. Returning to their desks, Geraldine and Ariadne discussed Harry’s reaction to losing his jacket.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit odd that he didn’t go back into the shop and ask if they had seen anything, or even whether it had any CCTV camera covering the street outside?’ Ariadne asked. ‘He seems to have just gone off without any attempt to find out if anyone had noticed someone near his bike.’

  ‘I don’t know if he noticed it had gone until he arrived at work and went to put it on,’ Geraldine replied.

  ‘So it could have fallen off anywhere,’ Ariadne replied. ‘It wasn’t necessarily stolen. Someone could have found it.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Geraldine agreed. ‘The VIIDO team has checked, and it’s not clear if the jacket was on the back of the bike before Harry reached the shop, and not there when he left. But if it did fall off, it would have been somewhere close to the newsagent’s, and there’s no sign of it. A team went out looking and asking around and couldn’t find any sign of it anywhere else.’

  The unreality continued for Geraldine, when it turned out that there had been little development in the case in the twenty-four hours since her arrest. Somehow, sitting in a cell for what had felt like weeks, she had expected at least the hi-vis jacket to have been found while she was away, if not the murderer himself. With a sigh she settled down to read all the reports that had been logged over the past twenty-four hours, but nothing helpful had been uncovered. When she went home at the end of the day, all she wanted was to be alone to think about what had happened to her, but Ian was there, sitting in the living room, waiting for her.

  ‘Geraldine, are you angry with me?’ he asked, seeing the expression on her face when she caught sight of him. ‘I was hoping, now you’re out, that we could go back to how we were before everything went wrong.’

  ‘You haven’t told me how you got me out.’

  Her ferocity seemed to take him aback. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Ian. I was behind bars facing a serious drugs charge and then, all at once, I was released without a word of explanation. It was you, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’

  She was nearly shouting with a rage she had been suppressing for days.

  Ian hesitated. ‘Shall we go and sit down and discuss this sensibly?’

  ‘How can there possibly be a sensible explanation for what you did?’ she snapped.

  Ian glared back. ‘What makes you assume your release had anything to do with me? Think about it, they held you for twenty-four hours without any evidence to convi
ct you and at the end of it they let you go because they still couldn’t prove you were guilty.’

  ‘They found all the “evidence” they needed in my flat.’

  ‘But they had no proof you put it there. They must have believed your story about the criminal gang who were angry because they failed to blackmail you. Geraldine, you’ve done nothing wrong and they were misled into accusing you, but they were only doing their job. Now, let’s put this behind us and get back to our life together.’

  Geraldine wanted to fall into Ian’s arms and agree with everything he said, but the suspicion nagged at her that he had done some kind of deal to free her. He could have forced Helena to give a statement to the anti-corruption unit, proving Geraldine had only been in contact with the drug dealer in London to save Helena herself from having to see him. If that was the case, he might have put Helena’s life in danger.

  ‘I’ll listen to you once I’ve had a chance to speak to Helena,’ she said. ‘Until then, I’d like you to go back to your own flat. It’ll just be for tonight. I’ll go and see her tomorrow, and arrange to move her somewhere she won’t be found.’

  Ian gave her a look of such desperation she was afraid her suspicion was right. He had betrayed her and gone to see Helena.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s wrong,’ he said. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘I just want to see that my sister’s all right.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’

  ‘Just for tonight, Ian. Please, go. I really want to be alone.’

  46

  Geraldine caught the first train to London the next morning, arriving at King’s Cross at ten. From there it was under an hour on the tube to Helena’s flat in Hackney. Filled with dread, she walked to the block where Helena was living and rang the bell. There was no answer. She rang again and this time she heard footsteps approaching. The door opened and Geraldine’s relief evaporated. A stranger was staring at her, a tall skinny woman with greying hair and a sallow complexion.

  ‘What do you want?’ the woman asked, puffing on a cigarette as she spoke.

  ‘Where’s Helena?’

  ‘Who the fuck’s Helena?’

  ‘Helena Blake. She lives here.’

  Geraldine turned to the card scrawled beside the bell and was dismayed to see that Helena’s name had been removed.

  ‘Nah.’ The woman dragged on her cigarette. ‘This is my place. I haven’t put my name up yet, but I’m not Helena.’

  ‘I know you’re not Helena,’ Geraldine snapped, fear making her irate. ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘I just moved in today. About an hour ago as it happens. So whoever you’re looking for, you just missed her.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The place is a shit house. Still,’ she went on more cheerfully, ‘beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve lived in worse, though I’m sure I can’t remember when.’

  ‘Do you know where the previous resident has gone?’

  ‘Back to the gutter she crawled out of, I expect. You have to see the state of this place to believe it.’

  ‘Did she leave any forwarding address?’ Geraldine asked desperately, although she knew there wouldn’t be one.

  If Helena had moved out without telling Geraldine, it could only be for one of two reasons. Either she needed to disappear without trace because her former associates had been threatening to kill her, or else she had been relocated in secret by the police.

  ‘Did she leave any message for her sister? For Geraldine?’

  She knew any such hope was vain. If Helena had needed to vanish in a hurry, she wouldn’t have left any messages.

  ‘Nah. I never set eyes on her.’

  The door closed abruptly. After searching for her birth mother for years, Geraldine was not sure she had the energy to start all over again. In any case, when she had been looking for her mother, she had known the name of the woman she had wanted to trace and had found her address fairly easily. Only her own reluctance to meet the mother who had abandoned her at birth had kept her from going to see her straightaway. This was different. She had not discovered the existence of her twin sister until she had finally contacted her birth mother. Since their first meeting, the sisters’ relationship, rocky at first, had slowly developed as Helena came to trust Geraldine. Now they knew one another and Geraldine was distraught at the prospect of losing contact with the twin she had found as an adult. But she did not know the name Helena was now using. Without that, it was going to be difficult to know where to begin looking for her. She tried repeatedly to reach Helena on her phone, and was informed that the line was unavailable every time. Her twin seemed to have vanished without trace.

  Geraldine had not yet confessed to her adoptive sister, Celia, that she had discovered a twin sister who had been separated from her at birth. When Geraldine had first heard about Helena, Celia had been pregnant, and Geraldine had decided not to upset her by introducing her to Helena. The longer Geraldine had kept silent, the more difficult it had been to disclose the secret she had been keeping. Now, it seemed she might never need to tell Celia about Helena at all. Helena had vanished from Geraldine’s life, as though she had never existed.

  Thinking over the situation on her way back to King’s Cross, Geraldine concluded that it was unlikely that Helena would have been able to organise that without help. She had barely been able to cope with simple everyday survival when Geraldine was supporting her. Alone, she would be completely at sea in the world, and disappearing so completely required both money and expertise. Either her drug dealer associates had taken Helena somewhere very private and disposed of her, or else someone had assisted her in ensuring she could not be traced. In return for immunity and a new identity, Helena might have been persuaded to give a statement that Geraldine had played no part in the drug deal that had ended in her arrest in London.

  Geraldine had a shrewd idea who might have arranged that. If Ian was behind Helena’s disappearance, he would have succeeded in rescuing Geraldine from prison, but only at a great cost to her personally.

  Furious with Ian for interfering, she was impatient to confront him about Helena’s disappearance as soon as she could do so face to face. Disappointed as well as infuriated, she took the train back to York. Ian had no right to relocate her sister on his own initiative without first consulting her. She would find out from him where Helena had gone, and somehow find a way to make contact with her without compromising her safety. There was always a way. But as the train sped north, she wondered with a sickening feeling whether she would ever see her twin sister again. They had only just begun to communicate without Helena’s anger and Geraldine’s guilt undermining their attempts to understand each other. The thought that this could be the end of their embryonic relationship was devastating.

  It made no difference that there was no logical reason for Geraldine to feel any guilt. It was hardly her fault that she had been given up for adoption at birth, to be raised in a prosperous and caring family, leaving Helena struggling to survive with their dysfunctional mother. Now, just as they were beginning to establish friendly relations, Helena had been snatched away. Geraldine closed her eyes and tried to rest, but it was impossible. Helena’s troubled features haunted her mind and she wondered whether they had really lost each other again, this time for good.

  She did not call Ian. The conversation they needed to have was too important to conduct on the phone. She wanted to see his expression when she accused him of arranging Helena’s disappearance. If he lied about it, Geraldine would know. Even her feelings for Ian came second to her need to see her sister. She and Helena were identical twins. By an accident of birth they were closer than either of them could ever be with anyone else, and they had only relatively recently met for the first time. If Ian had indeed had a hand in coming between them, Geraldine was afraid she would never be able to forgive him for his unwanted intervention. He must be aware of the strength of her feelings
for Helena, but he had simply ignored her wishes and gone ahead with his plans to extract her from her cell. She wondered angrily if he expected her to be grateful to him. If he was involved in Helena’s disappearance, as she suspected, he would probably lie about it. If that was the case, how could she ever trust him again?

  Her anger against him had barely begun to form yet, but she did her best to keep it under control until she had confirmed what had happened. There was still a possibility that Helena had left of her own accord, and Ian knew nothing about it. Deep down she knew that wasn’t the case and that it was possible to hate someone she loved. However keen she was to exonerate Ian, she knew he was responsible for Helena’s disappearance.

  In the meantime, there was a murderer to pursue, perhaps even two if Angie and Leslie had been attacked by different killers. Geraldine’s problems would have to wait. However complicated and unsatisfactory her personal life might be, from now on she had to ignore anything that continually threatened to distract her from her job. Helena had disappeared in a miasma of uncertainty. The two bodies Geraldine had viewed at the mortuary were both horribly real. Their killers had to be found, at whatever personal cost to the members of the investigating team. Geraldine had no choice. She had to walk away from searching for her sister.

  47

  On Monday morning, Geraldine did her best to put Helena and Ian out of her mind and focus on the case. A team had been set up to question Harry’s colleagues at work, while other officers approached his neighbours to find out whether they had seen anything suspicious. So far every avenue had drawn a blank and they were casting around, waiting for new leads. There was nothing urgent for Geraldine to do. She knew murder investigations could take time, and there was no point in trying to rush things, but it was difficult for her to forget about her own troubles while there was nothing pressing to occupy her mind. The detective chief inspector was keen to find out more about Harry.

  ‘What was your impression of him, Geraldine?’