Love Me Not: DI Helen Grace 7 (formerly titled Follow My Leader) (Detective Inspector Helen Grace)

by M. J. Arlidge

  Helen had seen this hatred at first hand in her sister, Marianne. Her older sister had endured horrific, sustained abuse from their father. She had suffered in silence, ashamed to speak up, but determined to absorb the pain and humiliation, so that her little sister didn’t have to suffer. In the end the burden had proved too much for Marianne and she had snapped, killing their mother and father. Daisy was experiencing something similar, meting out appalling violence to those closest to home. Helen didn’t condone it, but she understood it. It’s the injuries inflicted by your own flesh and blood that cut the deepest.

  Both Marianne and Daisy had been robbed of a proper childhood. They had become world-weary and battle-scarred, unable to countenance the possibility of hope, and instead of growing into normal young adults had transformed into angels of vengeance. The parallels for Helen were all too clear now and she chided herself bitterly for not having seen them earlier.

  The road opened up now as Helen hit the top of Hayling Island, and she accelerated once more. Rain was beginning to fall, rendering the surface slick and reducing the visibility. Raindrops streaked across Helen’s visor, catching the sodium glow of the lights that illuminated the road, producing strange and fantastical effects as they did so. As she drove down the dark road, Helen thought she saw figures in front of her, faces she recognized. The butchered girls from Holloway, Ella Matthews lying dead on that grimy bed, Ethan Harris spread-eagled on the train tracks, but hovering above all of them was Marianne. Always Marianne staring directly at Helen, with that curious, enigmatic smile.

  Helen clamped her eyes shut for a second, desperate to shrug off these ghoulish visions. She had a job to do, a family to save. Reducing her speed, she tried to slow her heart rate, to get a grip. She had to stay focused.

  The visions started to recede. The rain continued to pour down, but Helen powered on, energized and alive. It was a race to the finish now.

  113

  20.22

  She shivered and pulled her dressing gown tightly around her. The master bedroom was always cold, because of the ill-fitting windows and dodgy radiators, but tonight it seemed particularly perishing. Was that really the case, she wondered, or was her mind playing tricks on her? Was it the howling wind outside that was sending temperatures plummeting? Or was it the news on the radio that had chilled her to the bone?

  Karen Anderson sat on her bed, surrounded by a terrible silence. She always listened to the radio as she got ready for bed – she seldom had time during the day – but tonight she had turned it off in horror, stunned by what she was hearing. She had been aware of her phone buzzing in her bag as the afternoon wore on, but she’d had enough on her plate finishing work, picking up the twins and trying to get them to do their homework before bed, so hadn’t bothered picking up. It was only as she was eating her own dinner that she fished out her phone and realized that the calls were actually from a number of different friends. Their slightly awkward phone messages made it clear why they were trying to get hold of her so urgently.

  There must be lots of Daisy Andersons. That’s what Karen had told herself, having deleted the final message. It could be anyone, it didn’t have to be her daughter. But the fact that the shootings had taken place in Southampton was unnerving, so Karen had quickly googled the incident. Details were still scant – the police playing their cards close to their chest – so, in frustration, Karen had shut down her computer and switched on the radio instead. The local BBC station seemed to have abandoned normal programming to focus all their attention on this sudden and unexpected calamity and, as Karen listened, more details started to emerge. Daisy Anderson was a local girl, who’d until recently attended Meadow Hall Secondary School and who lived with her father on a farm near the River Hamble.

  Karen had listened in astonishment. The reporters seemed to be suggesting that the farm’s owner had been one of Daisy’s victims. Surely that wasn’t possible? Michael had doted on Daisy and Daisy on him, to the exclusion of everyone else. Surely she wouldn’t have attacked him?

  Her first instinct had been to grab her mobile and call him. He hadn’t changed his phone number as far as she knew, so … But then she’d chickened out. She hadn’t picked up the phone to him in years and it somehow seemed wrong to be calling him now purely because she had heard some disturbing reports on the radio. It seemed ghoulish and unpleasant, so she had turned the phone off, fearful of the journalists who would inevitably be calling soon, opting to listen to the terrible news on the radio instead.

  Her daughter was wanted by the police. Daisy was a fugitive. Still Karen couldn’t compute it. She knew Daisy had been in trouble before, had committed various minor misdemeanours, but nothing like this. In the matter of a few hours, she had become famous. No, she had become infamous …

  Karen had snapped off the radio, preferring to sit in silence on the edge of her bed. The twins were asleep, which was something, but still Karen knew she would have to tell them something when they woke up in the morning. But how do you explain to two eight-year-olds that their estranged half-sister had just murdered six people in cold blood? How on earth do you put that into words? How she wished Bryan was here now. It was bloody typical that he should be away just when she needed him most …

  Suddenly Karen jumped out of her skin. There was a noise coming from downstairs. A horrible repetitive, insistent noise. Crossing quickly to the landing, she listened intently. There it was again – someone was beating on the front door, demanding to be let in. Tiptoeing a few stairs down, she cast a wary eye at the door. The upper part was frosted glass and through it, she could just make out a shadowy figure, beating, beating, beating on it …

  Her first thought was to turn and run. To call the police and lock herself and the kids in the bathroom. But something now made her pause. The figure behind the door seemed too tall, too imposing, to be Daisy. She had had an accomplice but he had apparently been shot and killed.

  It was Bryan. It had to be Bryan. He had presumably heard the news and hurried home. Perhaps he’d been calling her, but stupid fool that she was, she’d turned the phone off. Yes, that’s who it was …

  Without hesitating any longer, Karen ran down the remaining stairs, flinging open the door. But it wasn’t Bryan. Nor was it Daisy.

  It was a tall woman in biking leathers.

  114

  20.29

  ‘Are you sure, Karen? Are you absolutely sure?’

  Helen and Karen were huddled together in the kitchen, talking in hushed tones so as not to disturb the boys upstairs.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I think I’d notice if someone had sprayed graffiti all over my house …’

  Her voice was sharp, fear making her jumpy, so a breathless Helen softened her tone.

  ‘No graffiti at all? Not on your car, at your place of work, Bryan’s office –’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘And you haven’t received any abusive messages or seen anyone loitering nearby?’

  ‘No, we would have called the police if we’d experienced anything like that –’

  ‘And you’ve had no contact with Daisy of late?’

  ‘None at all,’ Karen responded, a little shamefacedly.

  Helen exhaled and tried to fathom this unexpected development. As soon as Karen had let her in, she’d conducted a tour of the house, checking each room in turn. But Karen’s room was clear, as were the spare room, the bathroom, the boys’ room … The twins were sleeping peacefully and, like Karen, were completely unharmed.

  ‘Ok, I want you to stay put. Don’t answer the door unless you know it’s me, not even to your husband. I’m going to do a circuit of the grounds. After that, I’ll want to get you and the boys away from here. A protection unit will be assigned to you until Daisy is apprehended. Do you understand?’

  Karen nodded mutely.

  ‘Good, now go upstairs and wait for me there.’

  Karen obliged, so Helen made for the front door, pulling her mobile phone from her pocket. Her mind
was turning, trying to work out what she’d missed. All the evidence had pointed in Karen’s direction – it wasn’t possible that she had got the wrong target again.

  Was it?

  115

  20.32

  McAndrew hovered over him, imploring him to work faster. As soon as she had received Helen’s call, she had raced to the tech suite. This was affectionately known to McAndrew and her colleagues as the ‘locker room’ because it was full of men and had a distinctive odour, but it was the place to be if you wanted to open up someone’s digital footprint.

  Most of the evidence from the farm was back at Southampton Central. It had taken the boys a little while to crack the password protection on Daisy’s laptop, but now they were in – sifting her personal files, her internet history and her social media legacy, guided by an impatient DC McAndrew.

  ‘Ignore all the stuff about the British Army, racist groups, the Probation Service. Focus on recent emails, recent searches …’

  ‘Shout when you want me to stop,’ the data operator replied, pulling up Daisy’s internet browser and flicking through her searches in reverse chronological order.

  Sites relating to home-made explosives, becoming a mercenary and mass shootings in America sprang up, as did internet news site articles on the murder of Jo Cox and the trial of Anders Brevik. Nestling in among these were more mundane searches, detailing commuter routes to and from Ashurst and the opening hours for Sansom’s pharmacy.

  ‘That’s about ten days’ worth. Do you want me to continue?’

  ‘What about a Tor browser? Something she could access the dark web with?’

  ‘Nothing like that. It’s all pretty basic stuff on here.’

  ‘Does she follow anyone on Twitter?’

  ‘Nobody interesting. No one who’s a realistic target anyway.’

  ‘What about Facebook?’

  ‘No. She’s posted a few times, but that was months ago and anyway she has no friends, so nobody read it.’

  ‘What about her email?’

  They trawled through a few weeks of emails, but Daisy didn’t really use email and most of the messages in her Inbox were spam. Frustrated, McAndrew stared at the screen, willing it to give her something – anything. If they were wrong about Daisy Anderson’s choice of target, then she felt sure that her laptop held important clues. It was the only expensive item she owned and she used it pretty much every day.

  ‘What about searches?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘We’ve been through her web search –’

  ‘I mean her Facebook searches.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t got any friends, so I don’t see –’

  ‘Have a look anyway.’

  Shrugging, the operator opened Facebook.

  ‘As you can see, her page doesn’t have much on it, so …’

  He pulled up the search box.

  ‘Type in Karen Anderson.’

  The operator obliged, but had only got so far as ‘Kar’ when the box auto-suggested ‘Karen Anderson’. McAndrew held her breath as the profile picture of Karen Anderson’s Facebook page appeared. It was a holiday snap of Karen, Bryan and the boys smiling at the camera.

  ‘It won’t let us get beyond the profile page as Daisy wasn’t a Facebook friend of Karen’s,’ the operator added.

  ‘Can we tell how often she’s searched for this profile page?’

  ‘Sure, give me a couple of minutes,’ he replied, typing once more.

  McAndrew had her answer in less than one minute and it didn’t cheer her. Daisy had looked at Karen Anderson’s profile regularly – two or three times a week for the last few years. Karen was a keen Facebook user and had changed her profile picture regularly during that time. So even though Daisy couldn’t access her full page, over the years she had managed to immerse herself in the holiday snaps and personal pics of Karen and her new family – a family from which she was pointedly excluded.

  116

  20.37

  Karen stared at herself in the mirror. Following her interview with DI Grace, she had gone upstairs, double-and triple-checking the boys were ok, before returning to her bedroom. It was still freezing, so she had hurried into the sanctuary of her cosy, ensuite bathroom.

  This had always been her space. Bryan tended to use the family bathroom, leaving the ensuite to her. Their lives were so busy – they both worked and the kids were such a handful – that Karen always enjoyed retreating in here, to bathe, apply her lotions and potions, to have a bit of private time. Tonight, however, it afforded her no respite – looking at herself in the mirror she saw only an anxious, guilty woman staring back at her.

  Slipping off her dressing gown, she grasped the hot tap. Then she hesitated, her hand suddenly stilled. She was in her nightdress now, her arms and shoulders exposed, and her eyes immediately strayed to the tattoos that were an unpleasant reminder of the wildness of her youth. She had got together with Michael Anderson when she was a teenager – young, rebellious and desperate to be away from her parents. He had introduced her to drink and drugs and for a while they had lived hard … until Daisy came along. That had changed everything – it wasn’t planned and didn’t bring them any closer to each other – and had made the tattoos they’d had done together seem juvenile, even a bit obscene. Now these same tattoos made Karen feel sick – especially the one of the serpent devouring itself, which graced the underside of her forearm.

  As soon as DI Grace had mentioned the snake graffiti, Karen had wondered if this was the image she meant. She hadn’t pressed the police officer for details – she didn’t really want to know – but Daisy had loved that tattoo when she was a little girl. In fact, she’d wanted one just like it and had begged her mother to let her go to the tattoo parlour with her, but Karen had never sanctioned it.

  Was this all her fault then? Was the graffiti signature Daisy’s way of letting the world know that she was responsible? That six people had died because of her? She hadn’t seen Daisy, hadn’t spoken to her in over eight years and had little idea who – or what – she’d become. It seemed somehow impossible that the sweet little girl in pigtails had become a ruthless killer, but how would she know?

  Karen could feel her world shifting on its axis, the sins of the past finally catching up with her. She wasn’t scared for herself – DI Grace was doing a circuit of the house and they would soon be in protective custody – but she was worried for the boys. Their lives would be disrupted, their rose-tinted view of the world destroyed and they might even be in danger themselves – from a vengeful half-sister they had never met. The thought made Karen want to vomit. How could she have played her cards so badly? How could she have got life so wrong?

  Bending down, she turned on the tap. She felt dizzy and tired and, as the water slowly felt warmer to her touch, she scooped great handfuls of it on to her face, revelling in its soothing caress. For a moment she felt calmer, losing herself in the simple luxury of it, before reality intruded on her thoughts once more and she turned off the tap.

  Fumbling for a towel, she straightened up from the basin. Instantly, she froze. Looking in the mirror, she realized that she wasn’t the only person in the room. A figure was now standing directly behind her.

  The intruder was scrawny and shaven-headed with heavy bruising around a swollen, bloody nose. It took Karen a moment to see that it was a woman, a moment more to recognize the hazel eyes, the long eyelashes, the small dimple in her chin. It was Daisy, but not the daughter she remembered. The stick-thin wraith who was staring at her was somebody else altogether.

  She was like an image from her worst nightmare and when she finally spoke, Karen felt her heart stop.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  117

  20.41

  She stole through the darkness scanning the shadows for danger.

  Helen’s mind was still considering the strange turn of events, but she was determined not to rest until she was sure. She had checked the front of the house then, slipping down a side passage, had headed toward
s the rear of the property. The house had a large garden: the back fence was a hundred feet or so distant and the nearest neighbours were a fair distance away too. Normally this seclusion would have been attractive, but tonight, in the gloom, the property’s isolation made Helen shiver.

  Padding across the concrete, Helen rounded the corner of the house, hurrying towards the back door. It too was secure – locked and bolted from the inside – so she continued her circuit. But there was nothing alarming. No sign of Daisy, no hint of the serpent graffiti … just nothing. Exhaling sharply, Helen turned quickly, heading to the end of the garden. She hugged the boundary fence, searching for signs that it had been penetrated, but it too was intact. The back gate, though easily scalable, was padlocked shut.

  Helen walked back towards the house. There was nothing for it now but to wait for the cavalry, then return to base to set in train new searches for Daisy. But still Helen hesitated – she had been so convinced that Daisy would come here, it had seemed the logical conclusion of her campaign of violence. But was she mistaken? Had she simply projected her own feelings, her own emotions, on to someone else’s madness?

  The psychoanalysis would have to wait for another day. Shaking herself out of it, Helen started to jog, keen to be doing something useful. But as she got nearer the back of the house, she slowed down. Something was out of place. It took her a moment to work out what it was, but then she got it. One of the windows to the master bedroom was open – only a chink, but it was definitely open. It was a cold, wild night to be airing the room and Helen hurried closer, craning her neck upwards.