West saw her pallor now for what it was and was stunned. This wasn’t going at all as he had planned. ‘So why start Offer? Some last ditch attempt at retribution?’
She looked at him now without smiling and then looked down at her clenched hands. ‘You make it sound wrong, Sergeant West. Pathetic, even. But, you know, when I sat in the hospital with Evanna, day in and day out for almost a week, I would have loved for someone to come and sit with me, not to speak, just to be there. When I came here to live, I thought of that time and decided to start this volunteer group. There are many people who have time to spare, and many who would benefit from that time.’
West had one of his light-bulb moments. ‘And when you become unwell, there will be someone there to hold your hand?’
She pshawed the idea but West knew he had hit the nail right on the head.
He decided to let it go. ‘What about this payment you mentioned, then?’
She looked at him, confused. ‘Payment?’
‘You said there was always someone who pays.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I remember.’
Her eyes closed for a moment and West saw that her eyelids were translucent. He wondered how long she had been given.
As if she read his mind, she opened her eyes and caught his gaze. ‘My time is measured in weeks, maybe only days. When I started Offer, I thought I would do a little advertising, get a few people on board and it would run itself.’ She stopped, her breathing rapid and shallow.
‘But it didn’t?’ West said, guessing.
She shook her head. ‘I go for the first meeting for each new intake of volunteers, say hello, make a little motivating speech. But as you can see, it is difficult for me now. There is morphine for when the pain becomes unbearable. I keep it here, inject it myself when the pain becomes too impossible. There will come a time when I will not be able, when I will need help even to do that but, for now, it is ok. But, I will admit, it is getting more difficult.
‘Some of the volunteers have left, more are talking about leaving. My second-in-command, as she calls herself, asked if I could come and give another rousing, motivational speech. Last night. In the community hall. So of course, I felt obliged. Payment, Sergeant West.’
‘Did it work?’ he asked, curious.
She smiled. ‘Heather seemed to think it helped. But a woman I expected to see didn’t come, a young woman who, she assured me, was more motivated after helping out at the school explosion. Heather said she had rung to say she couldn’t come. It was disappointing.’
West’s attention was caught by her reference to the school. She’d referred to the incident as an explosion He filed the fact away for future examination. But for the moment he was curious about something else. ‘Are you referring to Kelly Johnson?
Viveka Larsson nodded. ‘I noticed her at her induction evening. She had such a sad smile; I thought it must have a story attached. Heather...Heather Goodbody, you know her?’ At West’s nod she continued, ‘She told me about her husband and the scandal. It explained the sad smile. I was sorry not to have met her again.’
West nodded, he put Kelly forcibly out of his head and then got to the crunch. He could hear the background shuffle of his men at work, the sounds had got nearer. They must be almost finished. ‘This making retribution was important to you then?’
She shrugged, nodded. ‘It’s little to do. Perhaps it will be my legacy. Far better perhaps than the memories of Tarjous.’
West saw his opportunity. ‘But it wasn’t doing too well, was it? There was no real need for this group and volunteers were leaving. There would be nobody to sit with you at the end. No legacy. Until you began to create the need and engineered some incidents to show your group in a good light. Offer riding to the rescue every time.
‘Just one little mistake when Gerard Roberts died but never mind, carry on and create a bit more mayhem for Offer to sort out. Ensure the survival of your legacy.’
Viveka Larsson rose with an element of difficulty, her face a mask of outrage, eyes glinting. ‘Are you absolutely mad?’
And for the first time since arriving, West realised her English was as good as his, perhaps in her careful enunciation and precise diction, it was better. You certainly wouldn’t say she spoke ‘funny’. He’d known really as soon as he opened the door. She was too short, too slight to be the woman in the CCTV footage from Bang Bangs! She was dressed in a Kaftan that enveloped her but it hung on a frame that was disease-thin. She could have padded herself up, he supposed, but the hand, the arm that had reached out for young Jake was strong, firm. Not the hand and arm that extended like pipe-cleaners from the sleeves of her Kaftan.
‘You must be mad,’ she said, her voice shriller, ‘there can be no justification for this treatment. I assumed it was to do with your discovery of my past. That you were ensuring I was not running some kind of brothel here. But this...’
Luckily for West, she appeared lost for words. ‘I’m sorry Ms Larsson. We are just following the leads we have. Acting on information we have gathered. It is not our intention to upset or discommode you but we are obliged to follow these leads.’
Viveka Larsson, her strength already ebbing, sat. She said something quietly in what West assumed was Swedish, or maybe Finnish. He didn’t understand the words but the tone was clearly not complimentary. She switched back to English. ‘So these things you look for, they will prove I am guilty?’
‘If we find what we’re looking for, we’ll take it away to be examined and see if it matches our information. Only if it matches will it be classified as evidence and be used in any subsequent trial.’ If it came to that. Looking down at this frail woman he didn’t think she would be around for any trial that could take at least a year, if not more, to go to court. He continued, ‘If we don’t find what we’re looking for, we will keep investigating. If we find it and there isn’t a match we will keep looking but probably in a different direction.’
‘This all seems very irregular. It seems to be, to be...what you call it,’ she clicked her fingers, and then she said with a smile, ‘a fishing trip.’
‘Exercise,’ West corrected automatically and she nodded her head and repeated the phrase.
‘A fishing exercise. Am I right?’
West, suffering from a rapid change of mind, was more blunt than usual, ‘Absolutely not, that’s not the way we operate.’ Seeing her pallor, he relented. ‘Ms Larsson, we have two concrete things we are looking for. Both of these are itemised on the warrant.’
A few minutes later, the search was finished and they had nothing. They took her fingerprints because they had the warrant to do so, but they all knew they were wasting their time. Viveka Larsson may not be innocent but she was certainly innocent of any wrong-doing in Foxrock.
And as West headed back to the station, he realised, once again, he didn’t have a clue where to go next.
34
Kelly didn’t know long she had been held captive. She’d tried banging on the walls but, using hands or her soft shoes, she knew it wasn’t making much of an impact. There wasn’t any point in banging on the walls into the house; whoever was out there was responsible. So she concentrated her banging on the party-wall with next door, knowing it was pretty futile since it was probably the wall under their stairs. But maybe, just maybe, they had done as many do and converted it into a downstairs loo and maybe someone would go to use it, hear the banging and call to investigate.
Ok, it was a slim chance, but she didn’t have many choices.
Her ears pricked up when she heard a rustling, dragging sound from outside. And then that Heather’s irritating whisper, ‘I’ve brought more food. Move back against the wall; keep your face to it. Remember, I have a Taser and won’t hesitate to use it.’
She didn’t have a choice. She stood and moved to the wall, heard the slide of a bolt, the rattle of a key in the lock and then the creak of the door. The room became less dark, light coming from the hallway. Natural or artificial? It was impossible to say wi
th her nose almost touching the wall. Desperate to find out something, even if it were only the time of day, she risked moving her head, just a little, straining her eyes to see what she could.
Nothing but shades of grey and black. But then...there at the very edge of her vision she saw the blurry outline of Heather, bent over. Oh my God, bent over. An opportunity? She couldn’t let it pass, couldn’t continue being a victim. In a fleeting second, she made a choice and turned, adrenaline pumping for fight or flight. But that second, fleeting or not, was too long.
Heather straightened, a hand shot out, and then all Kelly felt was pain, the worst wasp sting, an elephant-sized wasp sting. Every muscle went into spasm, and she fell, banging her head on the sloped ceiling as she went down, that pain quickly lost in the first. She was gone before urine spread in a puddle, the pungent smell coalescing with the metallic smell of blood that trickled from the wound on her head. She was well gone before the door was closed and locked and blocked.
Kelly retreated to an area deep inside. A place visited before. The sanctuary of victims.
Claiming asylum, she felt nothing more.
35
West swung into the station car-park so quickly he heard the tires squeal a complaint. He needed to calm down before he had to face Inspector Morrison.
He needed time.
He didn’t get it.
No sooner had he slammed the office door behind him than it opened and Mother Morrison was there, hopefully inquisitive. It must have been written on West’s face because the inspector’s face fell.
‘Please tell me you got something,’ he asked sharply, frown-lines cutting deeply.
West shook his head and sat heavily into his chair. ‘Nothing. We searched every inch of the apartment. No jotter to match to Gerard Robert’s note, even easier, no jotters at all. And the woman never cooks, doesn’t possess a grater. The only equipment she uses in her kitchen is the kettle.
‘Her explanation for leaving Finland, for closing Tarjous and starting Offer are believable. I’ll have her story checked, of course, but...’ He filled the inspector in on Viveka Larsson’s health prognosis, deciding he may as well make a clean breast of it while he was at it. Morrison could only get angry once after all.
It was enough. Inspector Morrison was steaming, almost incandescent with rage. ‘Are you telling me, Sergeant West that not only have we accused an innocent woman, the founder of a very helpful volunteer group, but we have accused a woman who is dying, who is trying to make restitution for any wrong choices she may have made.’
West looked at him. ‘I’m not sure you could classify running a very successful and lucrative brothel as a ‘wrong choice’ and there was no ‘may’ about it. She admits to it. Didn’t seem a bit fazed about it, actually.’ He held his hands up as the inspector started sputtering with rage. ‘I know. That’s not the point. And I’m sorry. It was apparent, fairly early that she wasn’t the woman we were looking for. Her build,’ he explained, ‘it just doesn’t fit with the footage we have. I know the footage is useless for identification purposes but what it does give is an idea of height and weight and Ms Larsson is a slight, petite woman. She doesn’t fit.’
‘So your whole idea that Offer was manipulating the situation for its own end has been blown out of the water? And we have nothing?’ Morrison grimaced. ‘The press are going to have a field day. And if you tell me they won’t know, you need your head examined.’
West wasn’t going to be so foolish. He knew there was no way the lid would stay on this particular pot. He knew the way it worked. No matter how discreet they had tried to be. Someone would know, and if someone knew that meant someone would sell. Where there was a juicy story and money to be made, there was always someone who would sell.
A juicy story, showing the Garda Siochana as insensitive bullies who accused a sick woman of nefarious crimes. Well, he could see the headlines now.
Three inches high and unforgiving.
He stood restlessly. His instincts may have been wrong about Viveka Larsson but there was still the connection between the cases and Offer. That can’t have been just a coincidence. He put that to the inspector who puffed his chest out and looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from under a stone, and a pretty grubby one at that.
‘Get me proof, Sergeant West. Something concrete I can take to the superintendent when he calls me in for a bollocking. As I have no doubt he will, when the shit hits the bloody fan.’ The inspector’s voice had risen incrementally, the final words heard by the rest of the team as they returned, having driven from the apartment at a more sedate pace than the sergeant.
They sat at desks trying to look busy, keeping eyes down, or anywhere else apart from the doorway, as the inspector turned and with anger in every step, left the office. A collective exhale of breath followed his departure, eyes immediately swivelling to where the sergeant stood. He shook his head at them and closed the door.
‘Sounds like the inspector isn’t too happy with us,’ Edwards said with the fine art of understatement.
‘So what now?’ Jarvis asked, standing and moving to the wall displaying all the information, not just on the murder but on all the suspicious Offer related incidents. ‘Maybe we weren’t right about the Larsson woman,’ he mused, ‘but if we don’t believe in coincidence there is too much linking these cases for it to be accidental. So if it isn’t Larsson, it has to be someone else. Doesn’t it?’ he added turning as West opened his door. ‘Maybe we were just looking at the wrong person? Just because Larsson founded it doesn’t mean she is the only one with a vested interest in keeping it going, does it?
‘Ok,’ West said, crossing the room to join him. ‘If it wasn’t Viveka Larsson. Who the hell was it?’
They gathered in front of the wall, each of them thinking back over the last few days trying to pinpoint something that would indicate a direction to go. Edwards took a piece of information and started to read, quickly followed by Baxter and then Andrews. Silently, without discussion they moved back to their desks to deal with whatever had struck them as being important.
West didn’t interfere. He knew his team. Quick intelligent men, they’d look at everything. And if by chance two of them were looking at the same thing well, he would guarantee they were both looking from a different angle. And that’s where success lay. Looking into those different angles.
But at the end of the day, having looked into all those angles, they found nothing.
‘I double checked with Foley,’ Edwards said, sticking the information on the home-invasion back on the wall, ‘to make sure he’d done a search on both Mrs Lee’s daughter and the daughter’s husband. Just to check they didn’t need the old dear’s house sold to bail them out of difficulty, you know. But you know Declan; he’d already crossed every T.’
Andrews looked at him approvingly. ‘Always safer to check. You were lucky, it was Foley. He’s good. But it could have been Sergeant Clark.’
`There was a ripple of amusement. West tried to look severe but ruined in with a grin. ‘I’m sure Sergeant Clark has his strengths, Andrews.’
‘How to get out of doing as much as he can, you mean?’
The ripple became guffaws. They knew the truth of the matter only too well.
West just shook his head and let them have their moment of amusement. Wasn’t much else to laugh about today, he thought, remembering the inspector’s earlier criticism.
Putting that to the back of his head, he asked Edwards, ‘You don’t believe the cases are linked then. You think the home-invasion is a separate case?’
Edwards looked embarrassed. ‘No, sir. I was just ruling that aspect out. The possible, you know? You’ve always said, sarge, when you rule out the possible and are only left with the impossible, then the impossible is it.’
West nodded. He had said something along those lines many a time.
‘I was on the same wavelength,’ Jarvis said with a grin. ‘I double checked the school finances, made sure it wasn’t intended t
o be some kind of insurance claim. Perhaps planning a fire, rather than lots of smoke and noise. But there isn’t a problem. They’ve an extraordinarily healthy bank balance considering the times that are in it.’ He nodded at Edwards. ‘Another possible ruled out.’
‘A lot of ruling out,’ West commented. ‘All very well and good but did anyone rule anything in?’
Baxter shook his head. ‘Not me, I’m afraid. I did manage,’ he said and looked sideways at West, ‘to access Viveka Larsson’s medical records.’
West glanced at Andrews who shrugged. ‘I suppose we are already up shit’s creek,’ he said to Baxter, ‘what did you find out?’
‘Just what she told us. Her doctor registered here several months ago. She moved here the month after and registered with the hospital. She’s had several appointments. Most importantly, she had inpatient treatment over a few days this month. She was admitted on the Thursday was supposed to be let out on the Friday but due to complications she was kept in until Monday.’ He looked up from his notebook. ‘It was the weekend young Jake was taken.’
They’d known. But this information solidified the situation. Viveka Larsson wasn’t the instigator. But they were no nearer to knowing who was.
West ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Ok, we need to look at a group of people we haven’t looked at before. The rest of the Offer volunteers. Maybe that’s where the motive is. Maybe one of the volunteers has the need to keep it going.’
Andrews waved an A4 page. ‘I got the list of names from Sergeant Blunt.’ He smiled as he felt West look at him and turned with a wink, ‘We are starting to think so alike it’s scary.’
West gave a short laugh and shook his head. ‘How many?’
‘Twelve. If we’re going to go with our theory that it’s a woman then there are eight to look at. Some are more active than others. They’re all volunteers of course so some may have other employment that requires their time. Some are retired people, so says Blunt. We have the clearance forms for them all, of course. And none have criminal records. But…’
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