by Emmy Ellis
Like she ever could.
Zach cleared his throat. “Do you fancy a drink later then, now everything’s sorted? Or sort of sorted.”
He raised his eyebrows and appeared so worried about her answer; she didn’t have the heart to turn him down. And she wanted this—had wanted it long before she’d started seeing Marshall, if she were honest, but Zach had been with Kirsty back then, so Helena had kept her feelings to herself until Zach had dropped hints about his relationship with Kirsty going down the pan, him saying he’d be finishing it soon. And he’d done that, keeping a respectable emotional distance from Helena yet flirting a little to let her know he was available to her. She hadn’t dared believe what she’d been hearing, so until yesterday hadn’t let herself hope they could be together.
And here they were, discussing their first date, except it hadn’t been laid out as a date. A meet-up in a pub under the guise of colleagues getting together, that was what it sounded like to her.
“That’d be nice.” She had to get any crossed wires laid out straight in nice neat rows so she knew where she stood. “A date, is it?”
“Of course,” Zach said on a laugh. “What else did you think it was?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hey, I might even spring for dinner. You don’t even have to go Dutch.”
She smiled. “The Blue Pigeon near my place? They do lovely food. I ate there last night with Andy.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” She rushed on, so he didn’t think anything weird was going on. “We’re working through some kinks in our partnership.”
“Um, I don’t want to know about that sort of thing. Kinks.” He winked when she gasped and swatted his leg. “I’m joking. I know what you meant. Will eight o’clock do you?”
“Yes, that’s fine. I’ll meet you there. So…” She had to change the subject before her fluttering stomach had her being sick from excitement. “Emma Walker. Clearly, it’s someone who has a grudge against the sisters—we’ve already arranged for Suzie and her family to be placed elsewhere until we find who did this, and Jacob, the brother, has also been relocated, just in case. They’re in flats next door to each other so they can support one another—ground floor, which isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing. As for Emma…” Helena sighed, remembering the state of the woman, and she batted the thought away of whether she’d been in immense pain or had been knocked unconscious before she’d been killed. Helena could only hope for the latter. “She’s in the bath. She’s been sliced from just under her breasts down to her belly button. There’s a tulip sticking out of the mess of her stomach.”
Helena’s eyes watered, but she wasn’t going to knuckle the tears away. Zach reached out a hand and took one of hers. The touch was a comfort but also dangerous. It took her mind right off Emma and straight to other things—things she shouldn’t be thinking while at work. If she wasn’t careful, Zach could derail her determination on the job, have her head spinning until she couldn’t think straight.
He seemed to sense that was the case and drew his hand away, resting it on his lap.
“Roses on the gardening gloves, a tulip with Emma…” he said.
Helena could have kicked herself. “You’re right.” Then, as if she wanted to soothe the sting of not noticing that for herself, she said, “It might be nothing, though.”
“But it might be everything. Listen, I know you don’t like talking about Uthway, but look at what he did. Those clues he left were so obscure, yet once you found out what they meant, they made sense. Maybe Suzie and…Jacob, is it? Maybe they’ll understand the significance.”
“There’s something off about the nails—specifically nail polish,” she said.
“You’re telling me…”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll talk about that in a minute. Carry on.”
Helena wanted to know now, damn it, but did as he’d asked. “I’d intended to question Emma about it again today after I’d spoken to Jacob, but that’s off the table. She’s dead, and I can’t speak to Jacob until later once I’ve finished here. But you’re right. If it’s a family thing, they might know.”
“You’ll get to the bottom of it. You always do.” Zach blew out a breath, and the faint scent of his aftershave wafted over.
It did mad things to her.
“Suppose we’d better go in then,” she said. “Before we do, though, tell me what you meant. Have you done Callie’s PM yet?”
He nodded. “This morning. I was about to write up my report and email it to you when the call came in to come here. Definite strangulation. Bruises came out overnight, mainly on the torso, the belly area, as though she’d taken a few punches there. Fingerprints on the arms, where someone perhaps gripped her. And…um…I found things inside her.”
Helena’s stomach lurched for an entirely different reason this time. She closed her eyes for a moment, dreading what she was about to hear. Had Callie been drugged? Was her liver pickled, her kidneys damaged? “Go on.”
“A bottle of red nail varnish in her mouth and an artificial red rose—just the flower—in her vagina.”
“What?” She stared at him, mouth hanging open. She hadn’t expected… What had she expected? Was that the only reason Callie had been sewn up, to keep those items inside? Helena’s first instinct that it showed Callie was now kept quiet forever and could no longer have sex might be defunct. “Bloody hell…”
“I know. A first for me. This is the most deranged thing I’ve had on my table since the Uthway case. I thought bodies being carved with ancient symbols bad enough, but this feels like it’s a different level somehow. More personal.”
“I agree. Someone in that family has got to know the significance. I’ll have to push Suzie and Jacob—or maybe Robbie, Suzie’s husband, knows something.” She sighed out through pursed lips. “You should know…Emma’s been sewn up as well.”
“Then my guess is there will be items inside her, too.”
“Fuck.” She slammed her head back on the seat. “Come on. I’ll go inside with you for a bit, then I need to get on. Andy will be wondering where I am. I left him guarding the bathroom door. I wanted her kept safe, for someone to be there with her, not just left like that…” Her eyes itched. She nodded at the windscreen. “Uniforms are here. House-to-house enquiries—let’s hope something comes to light and the neighbours weren’t all in bed. I assume it happened during the night. The heating was on when I went in, so it might cock up your time of death estimate.”
“I’ll get a general idea. Did she seem in rigor?”
“Hard to tell—and that wasn’t a pun. I was too busy taking in the state of her. And the duck.”
“The duck?”
“Yes, she has a yellow rubber duck on her legs.”
“What the actual fuck?”
“I know. It’ll mean something, I just don’t know what at the minute.”
Zach sighed. “Let’s go in.”
They left the car, and while Zach put his whites on then went inside, Helena chatted to the officers who’d arrived. She reminded them what types of questions to ask the residents, feeling a bitch for doing so when they were already well-versed, but wanting them to understand how important it was to get the right answers. “Make sure you grill them well—as you probably know, this is the second murder, but what you might not know is they’re sisters. We need to find this wanker in case the killer is after the other two siblings as well.”
Regardless of the fact that Suzie and Jacob were in safe houses, the murderer might have been hanging around and watched them being escorted there. Although officers would have done their best to get the family to safety without being spotted or tailed, sometimes it didn’t work that way.
Mistakes happened.
She left the uniforms to it, put on fresh gloves and blue booties, and entered the house. The smell of Emma’s blood and guts hit her straight away, and it seemed stronger than when she’d first arrived—maybe because the scent clu
ng to the insides of her nostrils now and the bathroom door was open. She turned the heating off at the temperature dial, asking the female constable outside the door to note down the time Helena had done it. A click came from the boiler upstairs, and she climbed the steps and stood in the bathroom doorway.
“I’m going out for some fresh air,” Andy said.
“I don’t blame you.”
He tromped away.
Someone had put a transparent plastic sheet on the floor, and Zach knelt beside the bath. He had a packaged thermometer in his gloved hands, opening it. Helena turned away while he used it. The sight of him inserting it into Emma’s backside wasn’t something she wanted embedded in her memory.
“Give or take an hour or two, what with the heating being on, I’d say she died after midnight, three a.m. at the latest,” Zach said. “You can look now.”
Helena did, her sight landing on that rubber duck with blood spatter on its orange beak. Her guts churned, and she took a deep breath through her mouth in an attempt to calm her racing heart.
“Do you want me to check what’s in her mouth and down below now?” he asked.
“Go on then, so long as you’re happy to do it.”
“I’m never happy to do anything like that.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I do. Right then…”
He took a pair of clippers out of his black bag and snipped at the rainbow thread on Emma’s lips.
Helena turned and waved at a SOCO in the main bedroom. “Can we have a couple of evidence bags here, please.”
“I’ll get them,” Tom said, poking his head around the doorframe.
“Ooh, I didn’t know you were in there. Hello,” she said.
“All right?”
“Okay, considering.”
“Grim, this,” Tom said, coming to stand beside her.
Zach held out the multi-coloured thread, and Tom stepped forward, opened a bag, and Zach dropped the cotton inside. While Tom sealed the bag and wrote on it, Helena gave Emma her attention.
“Rigor is almost gone, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble,” Zach said. He prised the mouth open and peered inside.
Something black and round rested between Emma’s teeth. Zach used grips to take hold of it and pulled it out. A bottle of pink nail varnish—the black circle was the top of the lid.
“Christ,” Helena said. “Another bag, please, Tom.” She frowned hard. “What the hell does it mean?” She didn’t expect an answer; it just helped saying it out loud.
“Right, now we’ll see what else we have,” Zach said.
Tom went off to get another bag while Zach clipped at the thread between Emma’s legs.
“Get two,” Helena called to Tom. “That duck is pissing me off, staring at me like that.”
Tom brushed past her and went into the bathroom, popping the offending item into a bag. He stood to the left and wrote in the white boxes with a Sharpie.
Zach held out the second thread, and Tom took it. Helena looked at the floor while Zach parted her legs. Some things were just too harrowing to see. This poor woman had been alive and well yesterday, distraught over her sister’s death, and now, here they all were, standing over her. She’d become evidence, nothing more, a shell, something they inspected to work out who’d killed her. She wasn’t Emma Walker who’d once laughed and sang and cried and got angry.
It was sickening, what these bodies were reduced to.
“Err, it’s not a flower,” Zach said.
Helena snapped her head up. “Maybe the tulip in her stomach is all we’re going to get in the flower department. Actually, Tom, can you get rid of that as well? The tulip, I mean.”
“I’ll just go and get a bigger bag.” He left the room.
“Dare I ask what’s in there?” Helena needed to know, but it didn’t mean she wanted to. Jesus, this was all so…so hideous.
Zach eased the item out. He held it up with a large pair of tongs.
Helena’s legs almost gave out. She couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. Blinking, she focused on what it was, but the main thing that bothered her was why it had been placed inside her. What did it mean?
“I don’t get this at all,” she whispered.
“Me neither.”
Helena couldn’t stop staring at it. “Why would anyone put a man’s electric shaver inside somebody?”
“I have no clue,” Zach said. “And that’s something you’re going to need to find out.”
Chapter Twelve
Emma shared a bath with Callie most nights, but Callie wasn’t well and had gone to bed early, so Emma had jumped in after Suzie and enjoyed a splash about by herself. She still played ‘witches’, where they pretended to be old crones, using the soap to cast a spell over all the bubbles until they vanished. The water turned milk-white, and Mum always griped about how the bar of soap went down so quickly, week after week, and who the hell was using it that much for it to disappear so fast?
The door was ajar—Mum said they weren’t old enough to shut it or lock it yet. Emma would have to get out soon. She was turning into a prune. It’d be Jacob’s turn in a bit, and he always had clean water, then Dad usually got in afterwards. Mum preferred a shower, and she had that later, just before bed once the water heater had done its job and warmed another tankful.
Emma rested back, gripping the silver handholds either side so she could float and pretend she was swimming. Soap scum created a ring at water level, and she’d have to remember to give it a wipe with the flannel once she’d finished.
She closed her eyes, and something nudged her leg. She peeked. The yellow rubber duck bobbed along, hovering over her legs. Callie usually played with it—Emma was too old for that sort of thing now. Or that was what she told her friends anyway.
Letting her eyes shut again, she imagined she was in the sea, sand under the water and not the pebbles round here that hurt her feet every time they went down to the beach for a picnic some Saturdays. Something touched her leg for a second time, and she smiled, thinking the duck was coasting along again. Whatever it was moved up her thigh and pressed between her legs, and her heart pattered a little; she sensed something was wrong.
She snapped her eyes open, and he was there, looming over the bath, although he was on his knees. His hand was where it shouldn’t be, and she opened her mouth to say so, but he lifted a finger to his lips. He was tall and brawny, and he scared her, always did, but Mum and Dad said he was just a tad brusque and to take no notice, he didn’t mean any harm.
Then he told her if she didn’t keep this a secret, he’d kill her family, and her, so she nodded and let him do what he wanted, shaking all the while, not daring to make a noise as she cried.
“Next time I’ll leave you a pink tulip outside your bedroom door,” he said. “Men do that, see, give women flowers. And the next day, after our sessions, you’ll put pink nail polish on, just so I know you’re telling me you’ll keep our secret. Every time you see your flower, I’ll visit you.”
Emma thought of the forget-me-nots she’d seen beside the doorjamb last week. Were they for Suzie or Callie? Suzie, she decided, because she’d been wearing purple nail varnish recently.
It was all so confusing and wrong, but he said it was right, it was what they should be doing, so she supposed, if Suzie was allowing it, then Emma would, too.
Afterwards, when he’d gone, she got out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel, lost inside her head, the memory of what he’d done and said swarming into her mind and eddying, much like the water going down the plughole.
Jacob came in, and she jumped.
“Get out of the way so I can have a bath,” he said.
Emma scuttled to the bedroom, and Suzie asked what was wrong.
“Nothing,” Emma said. She didn’t want anyone to die, and he was so mean, she believed he’d do it. Kill. Take away everyone she loved.
She got into bed, thinking she hadn’t cleaned the scum, and Jacob would say something about it at
the breakfast table in the morning.
After a few years, the brawny one handed her Dad’s electric razor and told her to shave off her just-growing hair down below. He said he didn’t like it, and if he ever caught her with any, he’d rip it out with his bare hands.
Emma obeyed.
For a while.
Chapter Thirteen
In the car on the way to the safe house flats, Helena couldn’t get the sight of Emma out of her head. The image of her in the bath seemed stuck there, hovering, with no intention of buggering off anytime soon. While she’d be able to get the stench of death out of her nose and could carry on as if she’d never smelled it—until another ravaged corpse came her way—the same couldn’t be said for memories. They lingered, fucked you up if you let them. She should know. Uthway’s face floated in her dreams most nights. It even crept into day-to-day life, him seeming to appear in crowds or as extras on TV—the random man at the bar in Eastenders nursing a pint or a market trader out in The Square. “Roll up, roll up!” Except the only rolling up Uthway did was putting bodies inside rugs and throwing them off the cliff.
He’d never go away, that one. He’d always be there, infecting her mind, a poison that infiltrated.
“That was a sodding rotten experience,” Andy said. “Whoever this is, they’re sick in the damn noggin.”
“Going round your head, too, is it?” she asked, turning a corner and checking her rearview in case the killer had been hanging about outside Emma’s and had it in mind to follow them. She wouldn’t put it past the deranged shitbag to be watching them, revelling in what he’d done.
“It’s hard not to think about it,” Andy said, scrubbing a hand down his face. He sounded tired, worn out from the investigation already.
I know the feeling.
“It goes without saying, but we need to catch this fucker pretty sharpish,” she said, swallowing a lump in her throat. The damn thing hurt.
“Easier said than done—we have no leads,” Andy said. “When I went outside for a bit of air, I asked one of the uniforms how house-to-house was going, and can you believe out of the ones questioned, no one saw or heard anything?”