Eeny Meeny (10 page)

30

Sandra Lawton. Age: 33. Stalker.

Helen scanned the file. Sandra Lawton was a romantic obsessive who when spurned turned nasty. She already had three convictions for putting a person in fear of violence by harassment. Safe to say her treatment didn’t seem to be working and her belief that smart, educated men in positions of authority secretly wanted to sleep with her was as strong as ever.

Helen scrolled on to the next one. Sandra was nuts, but she wasn’t violent.

Isobel Screed. Age: 18. Cyber stalker.
Again, Helen rejected her. This girl was a slip of a thing, who spent her life abusing soap actresses via text and Twitter. She threatened to cut their wombs out and so on, but by the looks of it never left her bedsit, so she could be ruled out. The classic cyber coward.

Alison Stedwell. Age: 37. Possession of an offensive weapon. ABH. Multiple harassment charges
. This was more promising. A serial, experienced offender who had attempted to fire a crossbow at a co-worker she’d been stalking, before she was arrested and later sectioned. She was out in the community again now, under supervision apparently, and hadn’t offended for several months. Was she capable of putting something like this together? Helen slumped in her chair. Who was she kidding? Alison might be a nasty piece of work, but she wasn’t exactly subtle in her techniques – her stalking was visible and deliberately so – nor was she a looker. Peter Brightston’s description of a raven-haired beauty could in no way apply to the gappy-toothed blob that stared back at Helen from the screen. Another one to scratch off the list.

She’d been using HOLMES2 for hours now, searching out every British female stalker convicted in the last ten years. But it was fruitless. The individual they were hunting was exceptional, a far cry from the clumsy stalkers Helen was looking at now. Their stalker must have shadowed her victims for weeks, so as to discover Amy and Sam’s propensity for hitching, as well as the ins and outs of Ben and Peter’s weekly trips to Bournemouth. To have plotted their abductions in ways that allowed them to be executed on remote roads, in areas with no mobile phone reception, was impressive. But also to find locations to hold them in where they wouldn’t be found or heard, where they could go slowly mad with hunger and terror, was something else. Such an individual wouldn’t be buried away in the bowels of HOLMES2, she would be a living legend already, the regular subject of police seminars and literature.

After the discovery about Ben’s car, Helen and Charlie had re-interviewed Amy, Peter and their families, searching for any evidence of stalking. Amy and Sam were easy-going types, not watchful in the slightest, who lived on a busy student campus. Nothing – or nobody – had stood out as odd. Peter Brightston said he would have noticed an attractive woman following him, but it sounded like empty bluster – he had had no reason to be suspicious or on his guard. Ben was a different kettle of fish; he had been by nature cautious and careful, but he was not around to ask any more and his fiancée insisted he hadn’t expressed any fears to her in the run-up to his abduction.

The one small break they did have came as a result of Ben’s car. The killer had had a very narrow window in which to punch a hole in Ben’s fuel tank. A matter of three to four hours at the most, as the group meeting at the Bournemouth office was shorter than usual that day. Ben usually parked in the office car park, but that was full because of a client lunch on site, so he’d parked in the NCP round the corner. Instinct told Helen that anything out of Ben’s normal routine could have posed his killer a problem and so was worth investigating. CCTV showed Ben and Peter parking on the fourth floor, not far from the lifts. They left and five minutes later a female figure in a lime-green puffa and white Kappa cap had walked past. Was she scouting the scene? Probably, because moments later a gloved hand suddenly appeared in front of the security camera, spray-painting out its view on the world. Helen had asked for the footage to be analysed, enhanced if possible, and had set Sanderson the task of checking CCTV footage from the vicinity of the NCP to work out the suspect’s route into the building, but for now they had to work with what they’d got. It wasn’t much, but it was a fleeting view of their killer and it seemed to confirm everything Amy and Peter had told them about her. Not least the fact that she was a she. There had been some in her team – Grounds and Bridges particularly – who’d questioned whether a woman was really behind all this. But they had their answer now.

Helen shut down HOLMES2 and headed out and round the corner to the Parrot and Two Chairmen pub. It was the station’s Christmas do today and despite the fact that Helen viewed the event as wholly inappropriate in the circumstances, she had to go. It wasn’t done for senior officers to duck it – crazy really as the last thing rank-and-file want when they’re letting their hair down is their bosses hanging around.

Helen saw her team and pushed her way through the crowd to find them. They were all uncomfortable at being off the case when there was still so much to do, but they were making the best of it. Mark especially was in good spirits, proudly sporting his slimline tonic like a trophy of sobriety. Still, he looked well on it – his lean face had more colour, his eyes more sparkle. He greeted Helen warmly and seemed keen to include her in the group banter about the nightmare of New Year, etc. He was laying it on a bit thick she thought and on more than one occasion Helen caught a knowing look from Charlie.

‘So who fancies a kiss under the mistletoe?’

Whittaker. He was a different man out of the office. Gone were the anxiety and politicking, replaced by an effortless bonhomie.

‘So many pretty girls, so little time,’ he said casting mock lascivious glances at the assembled females.

‘Been there, done that,’ Helen replied wryly. ‘I wouldn’t write home about it.’

‘Charlie, then,’ Whittaker continued. ‘Make my Christmas.’

Charlie blushed to her roots, unsure how to handle the humorous advances of a slightly tipsy Detective Superintendent.

‘She’s married, sir. Or as good as,’ Helen interjected.

‘I heard she was still living in sin, which must mean there’s a chance,’ Whittaker said unabashed.

‘I’d move on, sir. Plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘Pity. Still you’ve got to know when you’re beaten.’ His eyes settled on the young and attractive DC McAndrew.

‘If you’re desperate, I’d happily oblige,’ Mark threw in. Helen laughed, as did the others, but Whittaker wasn’t amused. He’d never seemed that keen on his male officers – it was the women that interested him.

‘Think I’ll pass. If you’ll excuse me …’

And he headed off to find others to molest. The conversation resumed, DC Sanderson asking everyone where they were spending Christmas. Helen took this as her cue to leave.

She was surprised to find she’d been in the pub for well over an hour. It had actually been quite refreshing – a moment for her brain to shut down – but now as she walked back to the station through the cold night air, her mind was once more full of the case. She wanted to follow up the benzodiazepine link. Where was the killer getting her supply? Could that be a route to her?

Helen returned to the empty incident room and once more continued her hunt for the killer who would not be caught.

31

Her fury was reaching fever pitch and she wanted to scream until her lungs burst. The last few days had been terrifying and confusing for Anna, but her mother’s refusal to talk to her now was making everything a million times worse.

When Ella had put the bag on her head, Anna’s first thought was that she would suffocate – she was unable to move her head at all and if her airways were covered then she would die a slow, inexorable death. But luckily the bag was loose-fitting and made of some kind of natural fibre, so she could breathe. Reprieved, she’d listened, straining to hear what was happening. Were they being robbed? Was her mother being murdered? But there was nothing, no sound at all apart from the front door being closed and the sound of the grille going on. Was it Ella going? Her mother going? Please, God, don’t leave me here alone like this, Anna prayed. But no one had answered her prayers and so she’d sat there, a little girl all alone, swathed in an awful darkness.

She sat like that for hours, then suddenly a blinding light as the bag was pulled off her head. She closed her eyes in pain, then slowly opened them, struggling to acclimatize to her freedom. Whilst she’d been sitting there she’d been imagining all sorts of horrible scenarios – the flat turned over, her mother murdered – but as she looked around now, everything seemed relatively … normal. Nothing had been taken and it was once more just her and her mother in the flat. At first Anna was relieved, waiting for Marie to explain that the mad woman had stolen some stuff and gone and that they were ok again. But her mother said nothing. Anna grunted and gasped for attention, whilst her eyes swivelled in their sockets, desperately trying to make eye contact. But Marie wouldn’t look at her. Why not? What had happened to make her too ashamed to look at her own daughter?

Anna started to cry once more. She was only fourteen – she didn’t know what this was all about. Yet her mother didn’t look up or try and comfort her. Instead she left the room. It was three, maybe four days since Ella had arrived and in that time her mother hadn’t said one meaningful thing to her. She’d read to her, taken her to the toilet, urged her to sleep but she hadn’t
talked
to her. Anna had never felt so unloved. And so utterly in the dark. She had always been a burden, Anna knew that, and had always loved her mother unreservedly for the patience, love and tenderness she showed her. But she hated her now. Hated her with all her heart for the cruelty she was inflicting on her.

She had gone beyond starving. Her stomach cramped constantly, she was light-headed, her mouth was so dry she could taste blood in it. But her mother refused to give her any food. Why? And why wasn’t she feeding herself? What the hell was going on!

A sound from the hall. A terrible battering and screaming. Fists pounding, her mother wailing. Suddenly Marie was back in the room. She marched straight past Anna, looking crazed and ragged.

She was opening the window. Because they were in a tower block, the windows were hinged in the middle and only opened a bit so you couldn’t throw yourself out – a smart move given the desperation of the inhabitants. But you could get a bit of a breeze on your face if that was what you wanted.

Now Marie was shouting, begging for help. Yelling for someone – anyone – to come and rescue them. And it was then that Anna knew. They were prisoners. That’s what her mother wasn’t telling her. Ella had locked them in, imprisoned them. They were trapped.

This was why her mother was shouting at the night. Hoping against hope that someone would pass by and hear her. That someone would care. But Anna knew from experience not to count on the kindness of strangers. As her mother slumped to the floor defeated, Marie finally realized that they were entombed in their own home.

32

Should they cancel Christmas? It had been Sarah’s first question to Peter once she’d got him home from hospital. She didn’t ask about his health – she could see he was making slow but steady progress – nor did she want to talk about what had happened. Nobody wanted to talk about
that
. But she did want to know what to do about Christmas. Would Peter like to have it at theirs as normal, with the usual assortment of cousins and parents? A kind of life-goes-on, we’re-glad-you’re-alive Christmas. Or did they want to acknowledge that life had suddenly become very dark and that there was no cause for celebration?

In the end, they’d decided to carry on as normal. Every fibre of Peter’s being wanted to avoid friends and relatives. He couldn’t stand their solicitous cooing and the unasked questions that filled their heads. But the thought of being alone with Sarah at Christmas was even more terrifying. Every second he was left alone was a second in which dark thoughts and darker memories could start to proliferate. He must keep his mind occupied, focus on the good things, even if it was all so much hypocrisy, tedium and anxiety.

At first, he’d been tempted to hate his wife. She was clearly at sea, unsure how to handle her killer husband. She couldn’t compute what had happened, so fluttered around doing a million small things to show that she cared – all of which were entirely pointless. And yet as the days passed, Peter realized that he loved her for all her small kindnesses and because she clearly didn’t
blame
him for what had happened. He managed a smile when he realized she had banned crackers this year. She had no clear idea what had happened in that hellhole, but she felt instinctively that her husband would not like loud bangs this year. She was right and for that – and many other things – Peter was grateful.

The gang turned up as usual and my God they were jolly. They skipped past the uniformed policemen guarding the front door as if they weren’t there, positively oozing Christmas cheer in a way that was both manic and forced. Lots of booze was given and received as if everyone had collectively decided they needed a stiff drink. The presents just kept on coming as if a moment’s pause in proceedings might prove fatal. The piles of unwrapped gifts grew until they threatened to take over the room.

Suddenly Peter felt claustrophobic. He got up abruptly and slipped from the room. Heading into the kitchen he tried to unlock the back door, but was all fingers and thumbs. Cursing, he eventually managed it and then strode out into the freezing garden. The cool air soothed him and he decided to have a cigarette. Since returning from hospital he’d resumed the habit he’d kicked several years ago and of course no one had dared comment. A small victory.

Suddenly Ash was beside him. His eldest nephew.

‘Needed a break. Don’t suppose I could bum one of those off you, could I?’ he said, gesturing towards Peter’s cigarettes.