The Doll's House: DI Helen Grace 3

by M. J. Arlidge

  Helen approached her bike – she didn’t know where she was going, but she just wanted to be away from here, away from the scene of her latest mistake. But as she unlocked her helmet, she saw it. In her side mirror, a figure approaching her fast. He had come from the shadows, had the element of surprise and was nearly upon her. Without hesitation, she spun round, swinging her helmet in a fast, decisive arc. The man raised his hands, but too late – the helmet connecting forcefully with his head. He reeled backwards and, dropping the helmet, Helen was on him in a flash, forcing him down to the pavement. She raised her clenched fist and brought it down in a rabbit punch to the neck.

  But her blow lost its impact, her arm slowing on its downward trajectory as she recognized her assailant.

  Jake.

  Her blow glanced off his neck and he now raised his hands to his face to fend off further attack. A deep cut over his left eye was already bleeding heavily.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jake. What the hell are you doing? I could have killed you.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ he countered angrily, pushing her off and clambering unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here? Creeping up on me like that?’

  ‘Were you with him?’

  And suddenly it all made sense.

  ‘Dear God – have you been following me?’

  Jake stared at her, defiant, but he didn’t deny it.

  ‘How long have you –’

  ‘Nearly a week.’

  Helen hung her head. Had she had a sense that someone was following her? Yes, that car on the return from Northampton. She had dismissed this and other vague inklings of alarm. She never gave them much credence – she knew how to take care of herself – and she never expected it to be Jake. Hadn’t they come to an arrangement?

  ‘Do you love him?’ Jake asked, shattering her illusions.

  ‘For God’s sake, Jake, it’s nothing like th—’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Go to Hell,’ Helen spat back, turning and climbing on her bike.

  ‘Please don’t go. We need to talk.’

  Helen paused for a second, then slipped on her helmet.

  ‘There’s nothing more to say.’

  She climbed on her bike and sped off, Jake growing smaller and smaller in her mirrors. Right now if he vanished all together she wouldn’t have cared. This evening had proved one thing and one thing alone. Her life was one massive, bad joke. And the gods would never tire of laughing at her.

  104

  She slid the laptop out of the case and placed it carefully on the kitchen table. She was alone now – the house felt crushingly silent – but even so she hesitated. Was it weakness to give in? Or was it just acknowledging a basic truth?

  Tim had left an hour ago. He had said his piece and gone. Events were moving so quickly now and despite the endless chats that would have to take place – the window dressing of a marriage break-up – she could tell already that Tim had made up his mind. There would be no way back from this. He didn’t love her any more. It seemed strange to think such a bald, nasty thought, but that didn’t stop it being true. He had found someone who made him joyful and happy. That was no longer the case with his wife.

  Strangely, Ceri didn’t want to fight for him. Not because she didn’t love him – she did and the thought of being a discarded wife stung bitterly – but because she had always shied away from a losing battle. Why prolong the agony? She chided herself for such resignation – wasn’t it the done thing for a betrayed wife to fight for her man – but suddenly she didn’t seem to have the energy or will. What was happening to her?

  She crossed to the fridge and poured herself a glass of water. Her emotions were all over the place today – deep misery mixed with a strange sense of anticipation – and she wanted a moment to gather herself. She seemed to be constantly on the point of either laughing or crying today. Pulling herself together, she walked back to the kitchen table and sat down.

  She pressed the ‘On’ button and the laptop buzzed into life. Immediately a dialogue box popped up, asking for the master password. Ceri’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. It was bad enough having Helen’s laptop here – ‘borrowed’ from her contact in Anti-Corruption – but it was much worse still to actually access her private files.

  Helen had provided her with all her password protection information, so with a little shiver of transgression Ceri typed in the master password. Immediately, Helen’s desktop opened up in front of her. She clicked on the first file and was confronted by another box, demanding an encryption code. Harwood dutifully entered it and the file came up on the screen. But it was of little interest – just a contacts sheet. Shaking her head, Harwood persevered, opening and closing files, entering more and more passwords, slowly delving deeper and deeper into Helen’s system.

  She was now accessing the most hidden material, the inner workings of Helen’s mind and soul. She drank in her detailed journal of her time stalking, then befriending, Robert Stonehill. She read the many emails she had sent to him, desperately trying to locate him. And deeper still, she found the real pay dirt. A diary Helen had kept on and off since she first started in the Force, chronicling her pride in her uniform, the feeling of security and power the job gave her, as well as her deep doubts about herself, as her career progressed.

  It was late now, but Ceri read on, drinking in Helen’s confessions of anger, self-loathing and recrimination that nestled amidst the moments of happiness and optimism. Helen really was cursed, Ceri thought, despite all her success, driven by a desire to expel demons that forever eluded her. All those years in that flat, in the care homes, had left her raw and bruised. It gave Ceri no little satisfaction to realize that some of these wounds would never fully heal.

  She sat in darkness, her glass of water untouched, and clicked on to the next page. She was careless of all around her, hooked in now to her examination of Helen Grace. Her exchange with Tim was already long forgotten and for a moment it was as if he didn’t even exist.

  105

  It’s hard to be inconspicuous, when you are the size of a small whale. This was one very good reason why heavily pregnant officers tended to find themselves assigned to desk jobs.

  It was early morning and the inhabitants of Georges Avenue were slowly surfacing. Curtains were being drawn, cups of tea drained, and the early birds were now climbing into their cars and vans, occasionally shooting a quizzical look at the pregnant stranger leaning against the lamp post.

  Charlie suddenly felt tired and foolish. They only had one car and even though Steve wasn’t using it today, Charlie had avoided it. Steve loved that car and kept meticulous care of it. He wasn’t a controlling person, but he would nevertheless have noticed the spike in miles on the clock that a journey to and from Northampton would have caused. So she had taken a cab, then a train, then another cab – eventually being deposited in a Northamptonshire village with nothing to do but wait. It had cost her money, her feet ached and a headache was brewing and yet … she had felt compelled to come here. Unwittingly she had played a part in a conspiracy that might yet claim Helen’s scalp. If there was a chance that she could now influence proceedings, Charlie had to seize it.

  She heard the front door shut and looked up. DI Tom Marsh paused as he walked to his car, turning back to wave to his wife who now appeared in the front window. Charlie found herself marching towards him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ DI Marsh looked at her quizzically. ‘Have you come to see Rose?’

  ‘No, Tom, I’ve come to see you.’

  Suddenly Marsh looked less certain. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie could see his wife watching on from the front window. She wondered what romantic crimes Marsh had been guilty of previously and whether this could be used to her advantage. Being confronted by an angry pregnant woman wouldn’t look good to his wife – or his neighbours.

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t know who you are and I’ve got to get to work,’ he said, attempting to brush past her. But C
harlie caught hold of his arm firmly, stopping him in his tracks.

  ‘You don’t know me, but I am a police officer and a friend of DI Grace.’

  Charlie was pleased to see the colour fading from Marsh’s face.

  ‘You have played your part in a nasty little conspiracy and I’m happy to fill your wife in on your role – she looks pretty intrigued already – but I guess that would involve you confessing how much you were paid by them. Does she know you take bribes?’

  Marsh shot an anxious look to his wife. Her face asked a thousand questions and Charlie was amused to see sweat breaking out on Marsh’s forehead.

  ‘But I’ll spare you that indignity if you tell me when and where Harwood first contacted you. If you can give me that and corroborate it in writing –’

  ‘Harwood? I don’t know any Harwood.’

  ‘Come off it, Tom. I know she contacted you, warned you Helen would find you, asked you to record –’

  ‘I never met with a woman,’ Marsh interrupted. The front door was now opening and Marsh shot another anxious glance towards it.

  ‘Then who? Who told you to record your conversation?’

  ‘He said he was called DI Latham, but I never believed him. I’d recognize him again if I saw him though. Tall black guy with a South Coast accent.’

  ‘A tall black guy?’

  ‘You heard me,’ Marsh spat back, turning to face his concerned wife.

  ‘What’s going on, Tom?’ Rose Marsh said, her eyes fixed on Charlie and her bump.

  ‘Sorry to have bothered you. I can’t raise anyone at number eighty, wondered if you knew when they might be back?’

  Charlie smiled an awkward thanks and walked off, not caring much if her lie had been believed. A little domestic trouble was the least Marsh deserved. As she pulled out her mobile to ring for a cab, Charlie’s mind was already spooling forward to what she had to do next.

  It was time for a one-to-one with Lloyd Fortune.

  106

  The two men sat in silence, breakfast laid out in front of them. Lloyd always made breakfast for his father – tea, soft-boiled eggs, brown toast, day after day – and often he was comforted by the regularity of this routine. Today, however, he was on edge.

  He had hardly slept last night. And the night before had been little better. Ever since his exchange with Ceri Harwood at her house, he’d been gripped by a deep feeling of unease. The fact that she had propositioned him sexually was bad enough, but this was just the foreplay to something infinitely more serious and alarming. Rock-solid Ceri Harwood, who had insisted that only good would come of him participating in her scheme to remove the ‘cancer’ of Helen Grace from Southampton Central, was now rocking, personal traumas and professional disappointments colliding in a perfect storm. What a fool he’d been to take her at her word. But she had seemed so sure and as she spoke the road had seemed to open up in front of Lloyd. Taking Helen’s place, he would have been the youngest DI Hampshire Police had ever had – finally he would be able to look his dad in the eye.

  He looked up from his untouched breakfast to find Caleb staring at him.

  ‘Are you frightened of me, son?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Lloyd replied eagerly, but his response sounded unconvincing.

  ‘Then why won’t you talk to me?’

  Lloyd looked down at his plate. There were a million answers to this. Fear of being judged. Fear of not being good enough. Fear that he might not be loved. But how could he say any of this to his dad?

  ‘You’ve been chewing on this work problem for days now. Tell me about it. Perhaps I can help.’

  ‘Dad … ’

  ‘Please, son. I don’t like to see my favourite child unhappy.’

  Lloyd could feel himself blushing – with embarrassment and shame. It wasn’t right for a parent to talk about favourite children and it made his feelings of guilt ten times worse.

  ‘I’m worried I’ve let you down.’

  ‘You’ve never done that. I may not always show it and I know I push you, but –’

  ‘I’ve betrayed you and betrayed myself.’

  The bitterness in his voice was loud and clear. Caleb said nothing, eyeing his son warily, his face full of misgivings.

  ‘I’ve acted unprofessionally … illegally. In pursuit of a higher rank, more prestige. But … I’ve done the wrong thing, Dad. Sacrificed someone else to serve my own ends.’

  There it was – out in the open.

  ‘What I did runs contrary to everything you ever taught me … everything I ever wanted to be. And now I can’t look at you.’

  Lloyd continued to stare at his plate, expecting admonishment. But to his surprise he felt his father’s rough hand, lifting his chin. He found himself looking into his dad’s weathered face and saw kindness there, not judgement.

  ‘Who did you do it for, son? For me? Or for yourself?’

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ Lloyd replied truthfully. Instantly, he saw a wave of – what was it? Shame? Regret? – pass across his father’s face.

  ‘Then if you want to blame anyone, blame me,’ Caleb said softly.

  ‘This isn’t your doing. It’s down to me.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s me. I’ve always pushed you so hard. I wanted you to be a better man than I was.’

  To his shame, Lloyd felt his eyes fill with tears.

  ‘What do you mean? You’re the best man I know.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Caleb’s voice shook as he said this. But was it anger or something else making it shake?

  ‘I know you have always looked up to me, Lloyd,’ he continued slowly, ‘and I love you for that. But I have only been hard on you, expected so much of you, because of what I was.’

  ‘You worked every day to provide for us. Broke your health, your body –’

  ‘It wasn’t work that broke me,’ he replied, silencing Lloyd. ‘It wasn’t work.’

  ‘Then what?’ Lloyd asked, suddenly uncertain and unnerved.

  There was a long silence, then:

  ‘I’ve never told a soul this. Not even your late mother,’ he eventually went on. ‘But I was a thief.’

  Lloyd stared at him in disbelief. He knew what the words meant but still they didn’t make any sense.

  ‘In those days, when you worked at the docks, you had to belong. To a team. To a gang.’

  Lloyd stared at him, wondering what was coming next.

  ‘I chose the latter, lifting a little stock here, a little stock there, as they passed through my area. I handed the goods on and got extra money in return. I needed the money for you all, but that doesn’t mean I don’t regret it. That time my back was broken. I didn’t fall. It was a punishment beating by a rival gang. I did what I had to to survive and if I was hard on you, it’s because I wanted you to be so much more than me. Do you understand?’

  Lloyd nodded but his emotions lagged behind his brain. He didn’t know what to think or feel.

  ‘And I’ve hated myself for lying to you and your mother. Even your layabout brother and sister. But try to understand … sometimes you find you’ve gone too far down one road and there’s no way back. So don’t judge yourself by my standards. You’re ten times the man I’ll ever be.’

  Now there were tears in Caleb’s eyes. Lloyd wept too, without embarrassment, holding on to his father’s arm. He cried for the lies he’d been told, for the feelings of inadequacy he’d felt for so many years. But mostly he cried because of his stupidity, knowing now that he had sacrificed his career in the worship of a false god.

  107

  Helen could feel Sanderson’s eyes crawling all over her, searching for any hint of instability or violence. They were sitting opposite Andrew Simpson once more and, although nothing had been said out loud, Helen knew her junior officer was alive to the danger of another explosion from Helen. She didn’t blame Sanderson for this. After a sleepless night, Helen looked even more exhausted and on edge than she had the night before. No wonder her colleague looked nervous.
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br />   Simpson was impassive as usual, though he appeared much more strained than before. He kept rubbing his face with his hand and massaging his temples: he appeared stressed, unhappy – he looked like he was in pain.

  ‘So do you want the good news or the bad news, Andrew?’

  Simpson looked at Helen warily, unsure what game she had elected to play this morning.

  ‘The good news for you is that our POLSA teams have searched every inch of your properties and found no sign of Ruby Sprackling. The bad news is they have found enough evidence of illegal surveillance and pornographic file-sharing to make the CPS very excited indeed.’

  Did Helen see the lawyer’s grim smile wobble a little? She hoped so.

  ‘So the bottom line is that they will begin drawing up charges this afternoon, unless I can give them a compelling reason not to do so.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Finally the lawyer spoke.

  ‘Meaning cooperation. I want to go over every file, every video, every detail of these girls’ lives with you. I want chapter and verse on their activities, as well as yours. Obviously you don’t have to decide right this minute. You’ll need to confer with your legal tea—’

  ‘Ok.’ It was said quietly but firmly.

  ‘Louder, please, Mr Simpson. For the tape.’

  ‘Ok, I’ll cooperate,’ he said, wearily. Helen was pleased to see his defiance ebbing away. Perhaps a night in the cells had had the desired effect after all. She turned to Sanderson and gave her the nod to begin. Her junior had also had a sleepless night but had spent it more profitably, poring over the details of Simpson’s decade of snooping and stalking.

  ‘Do you like novelty, Mr Simpson? Or are you a creature of habit?’

  Simpson looked at Sanderson quizzically, before finally replying:

  ‘Both I suppose.’

  ‘But when it comes to the girls?’

  ‘Novelty I suppose.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I get bored.’

  ‘Of seeing the same girls?’

  He shrugged, but didn’t deny it.