The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit)

by Gyland, Henriette

  The relief was short-lived.

  Letitia’s goon brought the cord around her throat again, this time without her hands acting as a buffer and almost lifted her bodily in the air with the force of it.

  Her fingernails clawed at the cord, her feet scrambled for a foothold on the concrete floor, and her eyes squeaked and popped in their sockets. Her heart hammered wildly against her chest, beating out a last panic-stricken message.

  I don’t want to die.

  Jason parked his minivan along a side road and whipped out his phone. The GPS tracker still showed Helen to be at his father’s warehouse. Holding his phone, he headed down the small business park, conscious of how the squeak from his trainers echoed in the still night air, bouncing back from the hard surfaces. The business park was lit by a few street lamps and with enough distance between them to create shadowy pockets of darkness.

  He’d helped out here one summer when he was in his teens, and his father’s unit was exactly where he remembered it, at the end of a lane with a razor-wire topped fence behind. A perfect trap, he thought, and walked a little faster.

  Two cars were parked at the end of the lane. One of them had a dent in the front left bumper. It wasn’t one of his father’s cars, he noticed immediately, although it was a similar shape and size. Easy to understand Helen’s mistake. A sense of relief spread in his chest, followed by anger that the swine who ran Fay over was probably inside the building right now.

  His heart raced. If Helen and Charlie were inside the lock-up unit, they would be trapped. Whitehouse had told him to stay outside, which made sense – they were trained police officers, they had armed response units at their disposal and all that – but he couldn’t just wait here and do nothing.

  Instead he crept around the back and tried the door. It was locked, and no light spilled out from the windows high up on the wall.

  Odd, he thought. The tracker definitely stopped in this area. So where were they?

  As he debated with himself whether he should wait for Whitehouse or try to break in, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air. But the sound didn’t come from inside his father’s lock-up. Confused, he ran back to the lane and noticed the light coming from the unit opposite. All hesitation gone, he bolted around to the back of the other building, startling a man on his knees in the weeds.

  ‘Don’t …’ the guy croaked, but Jason hardly heard him. Instead he slammed through a door with broken glass, tore past an empty back office, and in seconds took in the scene below. Charlie in a pool of blood, and Helen clawing at a ligature around her neck, a beefy guy with a manic grin on his face.

  The blood rushed to his ears in a great whoosh, adrenaline surged through him, and with a roar he leapt over the banister and torpedoed the man from the side. The goon toppled sideways into a stack of boxes, and in a haze of rage Jason threw himself down of top of him, attacking him with fists, knees and teeth.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Helen crawl out of the way, clutching her throat, then a fist connected with his cheekbone, and his whole head rang from the impact.

  As he recovered, the goon made to punch him in the stomach, but he parried left and received a glancing blow in his side instead. Having put all his weight behind it, the other man lost his balance, and Jason launched himself at him again knocking him into a shelf of kitchen equipment. Crockery scattered and broke, and plastic flowers from an upended box on the top shelf rained down over them.

  The bloke was stronger and larger than Jason, and no matter how hard he fought, even with fury on his side, he found himself being driven back again and again. With a bellow of frustration he head-butted him. The goon stumbled backwards into a wall of boxes stacked high, and the whole pile crashed down on him. Jason grabbed a saucepan, and when the other man emerged again, Jason brought it down on his head with a sickening thud. He did not get up again.

  ‘Jason …’

  He swung around at the sound of Helen’s voice, saw her focus had shifted to the last person in the warehouse. He turned, saw the hand coming out of a bag, the matt-black gun, the flash of light accompanied by a bone-crunching crack, felt as if someone had shoved him in the chest. Puzzled he took in the spray of red droplets and the stain on his white T-shirt, before a searing pain registered.

  ‘Jason!’ Helen screamed.

  He stumbled backwards as fire and ice spread through his limbs, blocking out everything but the horror on her face and the agony. He gasped, a long drawn-out sound which echoed in his own ears, and felt his legs give way under him.

  The abrupt silence was Helen’s undoing.

  Her body went into spasms. Lights flickered in her head. Her jaw locked. A groan rose behind her swollen tongue. Helpless against the oncoming seizure, Helen watched Letitia advancing on her.

  ‘I meant what I said earlier,’ she said. ‘I hate having to do this, but the company means more to me than anything. There’s no other way.’ She pointed the pistol at Helen, then lowered it for a moment and looked at her with amusement. ‘Or maybe I should just let the seizure take you. On second thought, that would be leaving things too much to chance.’

  ‘Ngnh.’ Helen tried to move, to get to safety before blacking out, but her body wasn’t cooperating, and the lucidity of her brain was narrowing down to a single point.

  Letitia raised the pistol again. ‘You’ve been nothing but trouble since you set foot in the country. Well, it’s coming to an end now.’

  Helen shook, and involuntarily her fingers twisted themselves into claws, useless like the rest of her body. Letitia would pull the trigger, and she would die. Like Charlie, who’d been stabbed by a cheap screwdriver, or like Jason, who lay lifeless on a pyre of plastic flowers. And Mimi, whose blood had coated the windscreen of her car in an all too real imitation of a Jackson Pollock.

  Letitia had destroyed everyone she loved.

  Her disabled body convulsed with rage and despair. Her eyes fell on the statue. Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles. Within an inch’s reach of her foot lay the piece of wood she’d used to prop it up. Struggling against the hardest obstacle of all, her failing brain, Helen willed herself into action. A single message from her mind to her foot bypassed the seizure, and she kicked the piece of wood away.

  Ancient stone ground against modern concrete, and Ganesh wobbled on his base, teetered and toppled forward, crushing Letitia beneath him.

  Horrified, she watched her aunt lifting her head in one last act of defiance. Blood bubbled from her twisted mouth. ‘You …’ she breathed before her head dropped back to the floor with a final flump.

  Then Helen entered the realm of oblivion.

  She woke to a reception of flashing blue lights and a clamouring of noise, and found herself looking up into the friendly face of DI Karen Whitehouse.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said the detective. She smiled and stroked Helen’s hair.

  She was on the floor with a recovery blanket around her. The warehouse was packed with ambulance staff shouting orders and bringing equipment. A vague sense that something dreadful had happened stole over her.

  ‘Jason!’ she moaned.

  Whitehouse took her hand. ‘He …’

  Helen gasped for breath, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the world. Choking and crying, she tried to get up but her spine was rubbery and detached from the rest of her. A strong arm was around her, supporting her, someone, Whitehouse maybe, was talking to her but the words made no sense.

  ‘… is here. Jason’s here.’

  The arm was Jason’s. She flopped against his shoulder and gave herself up to his embrace, weeping and yelling, tears streaming, letting out all her anger and fear of the past twenty years, pounding his chest.

  Jason simply held her.

  Finally her tears subsided, but her chest continued to heave with greedy hiccups.

  ‘She shot you,’ she whispered.

  ‘In the shoulder.’

  ‘I saw you die.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I’m still her
e.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘It bloody hurts, but I’m still here, and I’m not going to leave you.’ He kissed her again.

  ‘Your arm …’

  He glanced at his arm which a paramedic had put in a make-shift sling. ‘Will heal.’

  ‘And Charlie?’

  He held her close, wincing as he did so. ‘Helen, my love, she’s pretty bad. They’re taking her off to hospital now, but you have to prepare yourself for—’

  ‘No! I won’t hear it!’

  ‘Okay, okay. We’ll make her better. No matter what happens, we’ll be there. We’re not giving up without a fight. Charlie wouldn’t, so we’re not going to either.’ Cradling her in his good arm, he hugged her close. ‘We’ll make it better,’ he repeated.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want us to knock you out?’ asked the doctor. ‘We’ll need to dig into your arm to get the bullet out.’

  Jason leaned back on the bed in the treatment room and shook his head. ‘Just a local, please.’

  He and Helen had ridden in the same ambulance to the nearest Accident & Emergency hospital and she’d filled him in on quite a lot, but they’d been separated on arrival. She’d been whisked away to be treated in whichever way an epileptic was treated – he had no idea what they were doing to her right now – and he was in a small treatment room worrying himself sick. For her and for Charlie.

  No one had mentioned Charlie at all.

  He winced as the triage nurse removed the temporary sling holding his injured arm in a position across his chest. The painkiller the paramedics had given him at the warehouse was wearing off.

  ‘Aww, shit!’ he groaned when the nurse cut open the sleeve of his jumper. She sent him an apologetic smile and gave him an injection near the wound. Immediately he felt a spreading numbness in his arm and began to relax. Turning his head away, he allowed the doctor to do her thing. She worked efficiently, barking curt orders to the nurse, and it wasn’t long before he heard the clunk of metal in a dish.

  ‘There, we’ll just get you cleaned up now,’ said the doctor cheerfully. ‘Then I’d recommend we give you a sedative.’

  ‘What happened to the woman I came in with? Her name’s Helen.’ He wanted to ask about Charlie too, but didn’t for fear of getting an answer he didn’t want to hear.

  The doctor smiled. ‘I’ll find out for you, shall I. Won’t be long.’

  She left the room in a swish of her white coat, her stethoscope dangling like an avant-garde necklace, and Jason let the nurse bandage his arm.

  ‘You were lucky,’ she said. Her dark almond-shaped eyes regarded him thoughtfully. ‘A bit further down and to your right, it would’ve gone into your heart.’

  ‘I know. Lucky is my middle name.’

  The doctor returned, and behind her was Helen, pale and shaky, but otherwise in one piece. Jason heaved a quiet sigh of relief.

  ‘Here she is. I’ll leave you to it. Other patients, et cetera.’

  The nurse followed the doctor out, saying she’d be back in a moment, and it was then Jason noticed a raised welt across Helen’s throat. He swallowed hard. He’d come so close to losing … No, he wouldn’t think of that now. Instead he held out his good arm, and she slid into the one-armed embrace without a word. They’d both been very lucky.

  He sent her a questioning look. ‘Charlie?’

  She shook her head. ‘Her liver is ruptured, and the trauma … it’s proving too much for her. They’re not sure if she’ll live.’ Her voice was hoarse.

  ‘No.’ Burying his face in her hair, he clenched his good fist and screwed up his eyes to hold back the tears. ‘No!’

  She clung to him with no hang-ups about her own tears. He held her close, stroking her hair, her shoulders, her cheek, and tried to soothe her with reassuring words. Helen had been deprived of so much in her life, and despite the shock that they might lose Charlie too, a gaping hole in his chest, he wasn’t fooling himself into believing he knew how that felt. Not by a long shot.

  Instead he gave her what he knew she needed, his strength, realising only now that he’d always had plenty of it.

  Eventually her sobbing subsided, and she pulled away. Her lips trembled as she met his eyes directly. ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘It is. I kept digging and digging, just wouldn’t let it go.’

  ‘Look, Charlie was …’ He paused, pulled up short by his own use of the past tense. God, it hurt so damned much he almost lost the thread of what he wanted to say. ‘She’s unstoppable. Once she has the bit between her teeth, well, forget it. She thrives on risks, on doing crazy stuff. Not thinking before she acts.’

  ‘I could’ve said no.’

  ‘She’d have done it anyway. With or without you.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, wiping her nose and her eyes.

  ‘That’s the Charlie we love. The one we’ll remember.’ He gestured for her to come closer, but she stayed out of his reach.

  ‘You haven’t told me how you found us.’ Something in her voice – suspicion? – made him sit up and take notice. She’d accepted his comfort, but he should have known this wasn’t synonymous with complete trust.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to help you,’ he said. ‘I felt like that from the moment you moved in, but I never got the whole picture with you. One way or the other you would sidestep me. So, I broke every single one of my own rules and started prying. I even downloaded a GPS tracker on your phone. That’s how I knew where you were.’

  ‘You what?’

  He sighed. ‘I realise this is where I’m supposed to say I’m sorry, but you know what, I’m not. If I hadn’t done that, you’d be dead.’ And so would Charlie, he thought, and could see Helen was thinking the same. Charlie might still die.

  ‘What about DI Whitehouse?’

  He smiled. She didn’t miss a trick. ‘I spilled your bag on accident, but I admit I did open the notebook that fell out. When I found her card, I made a note of the number and called her when I realised you were at my father’s warehouse. Except it turned out to be the wrong warehouse. Said I thought you were in trouble. She told me to wait. Then I heard screaming …’

  He rubbed his brow with his good hand as the memory of the scene at the warehouse came back to him. ‘Christ! What possessed the two of you? Snooping around like that when you must’ve known what you were up against? Why didn’t you come to me?’

  ‘Because of your father.’

  ‘I’m not my father. I’m me.’

  ‘I thought he was involved,’ she said.

  This was the part Jason had been dreading. ‘He was, to a degree.’

  He told her what he’d learned from Trevor, that his father had been there the morning Mimi was killed, and also what he’d learned from Lucy about his father’s involvement with the auction house. To his relief she moved closer and put her head on his good shoulder, but he could tell she wasn’t entirely happy with the way he’d gone about things.

  ‘You should’ve told me this before,’ she said.

  ‘Really? Is that what you would’ve done if it was your father?’

  He felt her breath on his neck as she sighed. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ he said. ‘If you could hand me my jacket from that chair over there.’

  Puzzled, she reached for his jacket which the paramedics had removed when they put his arm in the sling, and handed it to him. He dug inside and pulled out the paper knife he’d taken from his father’s desk.

  Helen gasped when he handed it to her. ‘Is this …?’

  ‘I think so. My father had it in his office. Trevor thought he might have been carrying something when he returned to the car after his meeting that morning. He was certainly covering something up, including his hands. Dad assured Trevor that he didn’t have anything to do with the murder, and now with what we know about your aunt, he was clearly telling the truth.’

  ‘Then why did he take the knife?’
r />   ‘I don’t know, but you can be damn sure I’ll ask him when I see him!’

  ‘Ask me what?’ said a voice from the door.

  The heat left the room as Moody stepped inside. Although he wasn’t a big man – shorter than Jason – he seemed to take up all the available space, and involuntarily Helen snapped for air before it got sucked up. Jason’s jaw went tight. The only one at ease was Moody.

  ‘Came as soon as I heard. What happened, son?’

  ‘I got shot, in the shoulder. No need for you to worry.’

  Helen heard the challenge in Jason’s words, as if he was almost pleased to be shocking his father. It worked. The colour left Moody’s face.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My aunt,’ said Helen, and also derived a certain grim satisfaction when he paled even further.

  Only then did Moody look at her. ‘I might’ve known. Trouble seems to follow you wherever you go, Miss Stephens. I thought I told you to stay away from my son.’

  ‘Dad, leave it out.’

  Moody ignored him. ‘Hard of hearing, are we?’

  ‘No, I just like to make my own decisions,’ Helen replied.

  ‘It’s not yours to make. You’re nobody.’

  ‘Shut up, Dad! Helen …’

  Suddenly the age-old anger welled up in her. People were always telling her what she could or couldn’t do, and she didn’t give a shit about Moody, or that he was Jason’s father – he had no right. What had happened to Charlie was still raw, for both her and Jason, but Jason seemed to have overlooked something she hadn’t, that Fay might not have gone to prison if the knife had been found, and Moody had testified.

  ‘How dare you to tell me what to do!’ Her voice shook with rage, and her hand trembled as she showed him the paper knife she was holding. ‘This knife was used to kill my mother. Jason took it from your office.’

  ‘There’s no evidence of that. Forensics …’

  ‘I’m not talking about bloody forensics! I’m talking about you, being there. You must’ve known that my mother’s murder was so much more complex than a jealousy drama, but you were quite happy letting an innocent person go to prison for it. And now you come over all concerned for your son’s welfare. Hah! It’s nothing to do with concern and everything to do with control. As it always was.’ Her breath was coming in ragged bursts, and she faced Moody across the narrow bed. ‘You and my aunt were two of a kind, and you have no right to call me a nobody when I’m so much more than you!’