Pop Goes the Weasel: DI Helen Grace 2 (Dci Helen Grace 2) Read online

  Suddenly Violet found herself crossing the room. She laid her hand on Tony’s arm and, softening her tone, said:

  ‘Well, take care, Tony. Take care of yourself.’

  And for once, he seemed to understand. This was a difficult moment for both of them – a shift in the status quo away from intensive care to a more expansive life for Tony – and for once they were in accord.

  ‘You get on, Tony. Nicola and I will be fine here.’

  ‘Thank you, Violet.’

  Tony left the room to continue his preparations, leaving Violet alone with her daughter. Pulling her lipstick from her handbag, Violet applied it to Nicola’s lips. It cheered her momentarily, but inside her nerves were still jangling. She had a nasty feeling that forces beyond her control were gathering and preparing to shake her world.

  38

  As the team congregated in the briefing room, Helen tried to gather her thoughts. She’d never felt so isolated on an investigation before. Charlie was keen to prove herself by nailing McEwan for the murders and Harwood seemed intent on backing her. Her superior did not want to credit Helen’s growing conviction that they were dealing with a serial killer. Harwood was a politician, a protocol copper, and had never encountered this sort of individual before. Helen, because of her history and her training, had. Which is why she had to take the lead, to focus the team’s investigation where it mattered.

  ‘Let’s assume for now,’ Helen began, ‘that our killer is a prostitute, murdering men who pay for sex. This is not something that’s happened by accident – there’s no evidence they tried to rape her or that there was a struggle – so she deliberately lured these men to out-of-the-way places and then killed them. This is something that’s been brewing inside her, that she’s been planning. There’s nothing to suggest that she works in a team, so we are looking for a highly disturbed, highly dangerous individual who’s probably been the victim of violence or rape, who may have a history of mental health problems and who clearly has a violent hatred of men. We should check out the hospitals, drop-in clinics, refuges, hostels, and see if anyone’s presented there in the last twelve months who fits the bill. Also let’s go through HOLMES2 to see if there are any unsolved rapes or sexual assaults recently. Something must have set her off. However prone to violence she is, something must have triggered this terrible rage. Check also for crimes that she may have committed – assaults, stabbings that may have been her flexing her muscles before she decided to kill. DC Sanderson, can you run this, please?’

  ‘On it, boss.’

  ‘So who are we looking for?’ Helen continued. ‘She obviously knows her way around the scene – Empress Road, Eling Great Marsh – so she’s probably been an active prostitute recently. Her misspellings of both the word “Evill” and the Matthewses’ postal address suggest she may be ill-educated, even dyslexic, but she is clearly not stupid. She leaves virtually no trace wherever she goes – forensics pulled a black hair from Reid’s car, but it is synthetic, probably from a wig – and she possesses plenty of courage. She walked in and out of Zenith Solutions without anyone noticing anything about her. To risk capture in that way suggests that she is a woman on a mission. Someone with a point to prove.’

  Silence from the team, as Helen’s words sank in.

  ‘So our prime focus is current or recent prostitutes. We should check out every rung on the ladder – high-class prostitutes, student escorts, illegals, the junkies giving it away at the docks – but with special focus on the lower end of the market. Matthews’ and Reid’s tastes seem to have been for the grubbier, nastier, cheaper girls. We need to cover the whole city, but I’m going to focus most of our manpower in the north. Bevois Valley, Portswood, Highfield, Hampton Park. Our killer picks up her clients in areas not covered by CCTV, but we have managed to track Matthews’ and Reid’s cars via traffic cameras. It looks like she picked up Matthews on the Empress Road and Reid somewhere near the Common. She’s probably picking these places because they are close to home, because she knows them, because they are “safe”. So let’s not rule anything out, but my guess is that she lives or works in the north of the city. DC McAndrew will lead our efforts in this area.’

  ‘I’ve got a team assembled, boss,’ DC McAndrew responded, ‘and we’ve broken down the area into sectors. We’ll be onto it this afternoon.’

  ‘The next question is why did she choose Matthews and Reid? Were they picked at random or deliberately selected? The killer might have seen Matthews around and learned his habits and peccadilloes. But Reid was much younger and appears to have been relatively new to the scene. If he was selected deliberately, it would have to have been done by more subtle means. They were both family men, which could be an important link, but they moved in very different circles and were at very different stages of their family lives – Matthews had four kids of teen age and up, Reid had one baby daughter.’

  ‘They must have found her online. These days if you want a blowjob, you just Google it, right?’ chipped in DC Sanderson to muted chuckles.

  ‘Probably, so let’s check out Reid’s and Matthews’ digital footprint. DC Grounds, perhaps you could coordinate? Let’s find out if these guys were deliberately targeted or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everybody clear?’

  Helen was on her feet, marching back into the incident room. She was filled with energy and determination – a real sense of purpose. But as she crossed the office floor, she suddenly stopped dead, her newfound optimism dissipating in an instant. Somebody had left the TV on mute, the set playing silently to itself in the corner, but now Helen hurriedly grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. It was the lunchtime news bulletin on BBC South. Graham Wilson, the regular anchor, was conducting an in-depth interview. And his studio guest today was Eileen Matthews.

  Helen burned with anger and frustration as she raced to the Matthews residence. Eileen was desperate with grief – Helen understood that – but her direct intervention into the investigation risked sabotaging everything. Eileen had made up her mind that Alan was not involved with prostitutes and, convinced that the police were barking up the wrong tree, had decided to instigate her own hunt for her husband’s killer. ‘Please help me find the man who did this to Alan’ was a phrase she had repeated several times during the interview. Man, man, man. Five minutes of lunchtime TV had now set the public hunting for a killer that didn’t exist.

  Eileen had only just returned home from the TV studio when Helen arrived. She was visibly drained by the experience of talking publicly about her husband’s death and wanted to shut the door on Helen, but Helen was too enraged to allow that. It didn’t take long for hostilities to start.

  ‘You should have consulted us first, Eileen, something like this could really set our investigation back.’

  ‘I didn’t consult you because I knew what you’d say.’

  Eileen was utterly unrepentant. Helen had to work hard to control her temper.

  ‘I know you’ve had to deal with so much in the past few days that you feel overwhelmed with pain and grief, that you’re desperate for some answers, but this isn’t the way to go about it. If you want justice for yourself, for your children, you must let us take the lead.’

  ‘And let you blacken Alan’s name? Drag this family through the gutter?’

  ‘I can’t hide the truth from you Eileen, however painful it might be. Your husband used prostitutes and I’m convinced that that was why he died. His killer was a woman – we’re ninety-nine per cent certain of that – and anything that directs the public’s attention elsewhere risks allowing her to strike again. People need to be vigilant and we have to give them the right information in order to be so. Do you see?’

  ‘Strike again?’

  For once Eileen’s tone was less strident. Helen paused, uncertain how much to share.

  ‘A young man was murdered last night. We believe the same person is responsible for both murders.’

  Eileen stared at her.

  ‘He was found in
an area used by prostitutes …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘I won’t have you continue with this … this campaign of slander. Alan was a good man. A devout man. I know he wasn’t always healthy … he had certain infections but many of those can be contracted at the swimming baths. Alan was a keen swimmer –’

  ‘For God’s sake, Eileen, he had gonorrhoea. You can’t get that from swimming.’

  ‘NO! It’s his bloody funeral tomorrow and you come here with these lies … NO! NO! NO!’

  Eileen shouted at the top of her voice, silencing Helen. Then the tears came. Helen felt a riot of emotions – sympathy, fury, disbelief. In the heavy silence that followed, she cast her eyes around the room, taking in the family photos that seemed to confirm Eileen’s vision of Alan. He was the very image of the upstanding paterfamilias, playing football with his boys, standing proudly next to daughter Carrie at her graduation, leading the church choir, toasting his bride at their wedding all those years ago. But it was all propaganda.

  ‘Eileen, you have to work with us on this. You need to understand the bigger picture. Otherwise innocent people will die. Do you understand?’

  Eileen didn’t look up but her sobbing subsided a little.

  ‘I don’t mean to cause you pain but you have to face the truth. Alan’s internet history showed he had an active interest in both pornography and prostitutes. Unless someone else – you or the boys – used that computer, then it can only be Alan who was accessing those sites.’

  Eileen had previously told them that Alan didn’t let anybody else into his study, let alone use his desktop, so Helen knew this one would land.

  ‘These sites weren’t accessed by accident. They were in his bookmarks … We have also done some investigation into his financial affairs.’

  Eileen was quiet now.

  ‘There was an account he administered that contained money to pay for church repairs. Two years ago, it had a balance of several thousand pounds. Most of it’s gone now, taken out in £200 chunks over the last eighteen months. But no work has been carried out at your church. I sent one of my officers down there, he spoke to the minister. We know Alan wasn’t a big earner and it looks very much like he was using church money to fund his activities.’

  Helen continued, softening her tone.

  ‘I know you feel utterly lost right now, but the only way for you and your family to find your way through this … nightmare is to look the reality of it dead in the eye. You won’t believe this, but I know what you’re going through. I have experienced awful things, endured terrible pain, and burying your head in the sand is the worst thing you can do. For your girls, for your boys, for yourself, you need to take on board what I’m saying. See Alan for what he was – good and bad – and deal with it. Your church may well want to instigate financial investigations of their own and I’m sure we will have more questions for you. Fighting us is not the way to get through this. You need to help us and we will help you in return.’

  Eileen finally looked up.

  ‘I want to catch Alan’s killer,’ Helen continued. ‘More than anything else I want to catch Alan’s killer and give you the answers you need. But I can’t do that if you’re fighting me, Eileen. So please work with me.’

  Helen’s entreaty was sincere and heartfelt. There was a long pause, then finally Eileen looked up.

  ‘I pity you, Inspector.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I pity you because you have no faith.’

  She hurried from the room without looking back. Helen watched her go. Her anger had dissipated and now she just felt pity. Eileen had believed absolutely in Alan and would never truly come to terms with the fact that her mentor, her rock, was in fact a man of straw.

  39

  DC Rebecca McAndrew had only been on the hunt for a few hours, but already she felt tarnished and dispirited. She and her team had hit the high-end brothels first. They were far busier than she remembered. The recession had driven more and more women into the sex industry and the sudden influx of prostitutes from Poland and Bulgaria had further flooded the market. Competition was up, which meant that prices had come down. It was an increasingly cut-throat business.

  Next they’d moved on to the student campuses and the picture was depressingly similar here. Every girl they talked to knew of at least one fellow student who’d turned to prostitution to fund her studies. It was more and more a feature of everyday life as grants were cut and students struggled to pay their way through the many years of study. But the anecdotal tales of alcohol dependency and self-harming suggested this new phenomenon was not without its cost.

  Now Sanderson and her team were in the Claymore drop-in centre, a free healthcare service run by a combination of NHS workers and generous-hearted volunteers. Anyone could turn up here and receive free treatment but it was in a grotty part of town, the queues were long and you always had to keep one eye on your possessions, so it generally attracted the drunk and the desperate. Many of the centre’s clients were young prostitutes – girls with infections, girls who’d been beaten up and needed stitches, girls who had young babies and simply couldn’t cope. It was hard not to be moved by the awful situations they found themselves in.

  Rebecca McAndrew often cursed the long hours that came with her job – she had been single for over two years now, partly because of the night work – but she realized the sacrifices she’d made were nothing compared to those made by the women who worked at Claymore. Despite being exhausted, despite being painfully short of resources, they worked tirelessly to help keep these girls together, without ever judging them or losing their tempers. They were modern saints – not that they were ever acknowledged as such.

  As the team interviewed and questioned, a paradox struck Rebecca forcefully. In a world where it seemed harder and harder to find meaningful connections with other people – love, marriage, family – it had never been easier to find paid companionship. The world was in the doldrums, the country still in the grip of recession, but one thing was clear.

  Southampton was awash with sex.

  40

  The streets were dark and so was Charlie’s mood. After her bollocking by Helen, her first instinct had been to hand in her warrant card and run home. But something had stopped her and she was relieved now, ashamed of her thin skin. What had she been expecting? Helen didn’t want her back and Charlie had played straight into her hands, allowing her enthusiasm to compromise her investigation into Sandra McEwan.

  She burned with shame – what had happened to the talented cop she used to be? – and that shame drove her on now. Having failed in her first attempt to unmask Alexia’s killer, Charlie had gone back to basics, hitting the streets in search of information. Perhaps by talking to the street girls who seemed to be at the heart of McEwan’s war with the Campbells, she could dig up a lead. Schoolchildren were wandering home; it was only a little after 4 p.m., but already darkness was beginning to descend. That creeping, suffocating gloom that winter does so well. Charlie’s spirits dropped a notch further.

  The prostitutes who hung about the port were happy enough to take a look at Charlie’s photo once they realized she wasn’t going to bust them. Their memories were hazy, but one long-serving girl eventually pointed Charlie in the direction of the Liberty Hotel, a filthy and dilapidated place that rented rooms by the hour rather than by the day. Charlie had visited it before and her heart sank at having to return. It was a place full of loneliness and despair.

  She pressed the buzzer. Once, twice, three times before eventually the door opened a crack. She shoved her warrant card in the face of the Polish thug who ‘greeted’ her. Snarling, he let her inside, turning his back on her as he stalked up the stairs. Charlie knew he’d be little help – his job was to see all but say nothing – so Charlie focused her attention on the working girls who appeared with impressive regularity from behind the many closed doors. The building was a tall terraced house, set over four floors. It was aston
ishing to consider exactly how much copulation took place here every night. Used condoms littered the floor.

  Charlie was talking to a girl named Denise, who was seventeen at best. She and her boyfriend had a drug habit and clearly it was up to Denise to earn the money for both of them to indulge. Why do these girls value themselves so cheaply? This was the bottom end of the market – the more expensive girls plied their trade in the north of the city. Down by the docks you were expected to do anything for a few pounds, however painful or unpleasant.

  A lot of coppers treated prostitutes like dirt, but Charlie always found herself wanting to help them. She was already manoeuvring to get Denise away from her parasitic bloke, guiding her in the direction of a refuge she knew, when suddenly all hell broke loose.

  A scream. Long, loud and desperate. Then the thundering of feet charging downstairs, doors being slammed, pandemonium. Charlie was on her feet and racing up the stairs. As she turned the corner, she collided head on with a terrified prostitute. It knocked the wind out of her temporarily, but still the screaming went on, so Charlie dragged herself onward, past more worried faces, forcing the breath back into her lungs as she mounted the stairs. As she reached the top landing, she was surprised to find that she had blood on her shirt.

  The screaming was coming from the last door on the right. Removing her baton from its holster, she extended it, ready to fight. But as soon as she entered the room, she knew that she wouldn’t be needing it. The battle had already been fought and lost. In the corner of the room, a teenage prostitute was screaming incessantly, frozen by shock. Nearby on the blood-saturated bed was a man. His chest had been ripped open, revealing his pulsating heart to the open air.