Eeny Meeny (16 page)

‘Shut this down. And not a word to anyone.’

Charlie nodded, so Helen got up and quietly, discreetly, went off to talk to her superior.

51

Her head was full of fog. She struggled to her feet groggily, then shivered. Her vision was still hazy, but she could smell the damp and the chill went straight through her. Where was she?

Slowly images pushed into her mind – but each one stabbed like the worst hangover pains and she had to sit down again. The floor was hard and unforgiving. She remembered the van, Cyn, Caroline … She looked at her watch and did a double-take. Had she really slept for over twenty-four hours?

The sound of retching made her look up. And there
was
Caroline. She’d just been sick and was now crying into her own vomit.

Get a grip. Wake up. But this wasn’t a dream. This was too weird to be made up. Had Cyn brought her here? Where
was
Cyn? Martina shouted out, but received only a dull echo in response. They were in some kind of cellar – a brick arched vault gloomily illuminated by an old lantern. Poky and rotting – the forgotten box room of some big house perhaps. It didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense.

The door was locked from the outside. Solid metal, but she beat against it nevertheless. She beat until her hands throbbed and her headache raged – she slunk back on to the ground defeated.

‘Caroline?’

She called out to her, but received no response. So she picked herself up and made her way over to her. Whatever was going on at least they were in it together. En route, Martina’s foot connected with something hard which went skittering across the floor. She cried out in pain, then realized that she was virtually standing on something else – a mobile phone.

Martina picked it up. It wasn’t hers and she didn’t think it was Caroline’s. She pressed a button and a lurid green glow illuminated the screen.
You have one new message
.

Instinctively, Martina pressed OK.

By this phone is a gun. It has one bullet in it. For Martina or for Caroline. Together you must decide who lives and who dies. Only through death will you be released. There is no victory without sacrifice.

And that was it. Martina’s eyes shot to the object she’d kicked across the room. A gun. It was a bloody gun.

‘Did you do this?’ she barked at Caroline. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’

But Caroline just whimpered and shook her head:

‘What do you mean? I don’t know
what
–’

At which point Martina threw the phone at her.

‘That.’

Nervously, Caroline picked up the phone. Her hands shook as she read the message. Then the phone dropped out of her hand, clattering to the floor and she hung her head on her chest and sobbed. Martina felt sickened – she obviously knew nothing.

Martina could see her breath frosting in front of her. Would it get colder in this tomb? Would they freeze to death before anyone found them?

Her life wasn’t meant to end like this. She’d been through too much to die in this dank hole.

Slowly in the fractured gloom, Martina’s eyes came to rest on the gun.

52

She was being watched.

A Transit van had been parked in the same spot for days now. But there was no sign of any activity around it. It had a plumber’s logo on the side, but there were never any plumbers in evidence and, besides, she’d looked up the company name online – it didn’t exist. She’d had to do this on her new smartphone as the police still had her computer.

Hannah Mickery scrutinized the van from between a crack in the curtains. Were they looking at her right now through the tinted glass, taking photos? Or was she just being paranoid?

There were so many people in the house during the search, it was hard to keep tabs on them all. Would they have had time to bug the place? After they’d gone, Hannah had checked every possible hidey-hole. She’d found nothing. Perhaps it was all a bit too Cold War for run-of-the-mill plod.

But it pays to be cautious when there is so much at stake.

By now that snotty cow Grace would have pillaged her computer. She probably should have given them the password, but why not make them work a little harder for it? Anyway, by now they would know. It would be hard to pass it off as professional interest or even apologize for it as macabre gawping. But did they have anything to charge her with? Of course not.

But she’d have to be careful. The stakes were high now and a single mistake could unravel everything. So much thought and planning had gone into this. It would be criminal to fuck it up now.

Night was falling. It wouldn’t be long now. Could they monitor her mobile phone calls? If it was good enough for the
News of the World
, then …

She hoped they had been listening. It would make it easier for her. Easier to escape. Hannah felt a thrill of excitement – when the game hung in the balance, every move was thrilling.

53

Caroline clutched her knees to her chest to ward off the cold, but she couldn’t stop shivering. Was it the cold making her shake? Or fear? Caroline couldn’t tell any more. She had lost her grip on … everything. She had no idea if it was day or night. No real concept of how long they’d been incarcerated. She didn’t know what they’d done wrong or why they were here. She just knew that it was agony.

Her stomach ached for food, her throat was parched, her bones were chilled to their marrow. When she closed her eyes, strange shapes danced in the darkness – multi-coloured patterns that changed into butterflies, birds, rainbows even. She was starting to hallucinate. Was this her body shutting down? If she was lucky. Perhaps it was her mind unravelling, the beginning of a slow descent into paranoia and madness. Please, God, not that.

Initially they’d tried to keep their hunger at bay by eating ants. Caroline had had her period, her menstrual blood clotting on the floor in the far corner of the room. Its sticky sweetness had attracted insects and Martina and she had jostled with each other to hoover them up. A day or so back, she had bagged a cockroach, thrilling to its crunch as she crushed it in her mouth. But the food was gone now. All they were left with was the awful smell. The terrible cold. And the loneliness.

Was
anybody looking for them? Nobody would miss a couple of escorts. Martina kept herself to herself and had few if any friends. Caroline had a flatmate – a girl called Sharon who came from Macclesfield – but she wouldn’t call her a friend. Would she have been savvy enough to call the police or would she just have put an advert out for a new roomie? The latter probably – Sharon didn’t approve of what Caroline did for money and would have been glad of the opportunity to get rid of her. She was probably clearing out her room now. Bitch.

Martina had a sister, but were they close? Caroline had no idea. For the first time in years, she found herself missing her family. She’d had good reason to run away from home – though no one ever acknowledged that – but she regretted it bitterly now. Her mum was ineffectual but not nasty and her dad – well he wasn’t cut out to be a dad or a husband really – but he wouldn’t have wished her harm. Why hadn’t she got back in touch? Their sixtieth birthdays had come and gone, Christmases, Easters, there were plenty of opportunities to bridge the gap and effect a reconciliation, but she’d never made the effort. Would they have asked her to explain her midnight flit? Would they have been disgusted by the way she lived her life now?

Anger surged in her heart and Caroline knew exactly why she’d never got back in touch. Because she did blame them. For not noticing. For not protecting her. She was still furious at their neglect and that was why she was alone in the world. That was why there was no one looking for her now. Did she or Martina have anything – or anyone – to live for? How close was Martina to her sister? She felt like asking her but what was the point. It wasn’t a competition.

Was it?

54

Predictably Detective Superintendent Whittaker had not taken the news well.

‘What the fuck are you telling me? That a
cop
gave her this?’

The macabre nature of the killings had required an absolute information lockdown. The
Evening News
and a couple of the national newspapers had picked up on the spike in local deaths and were scratching around for more, but none had yet divined the unseen puppeteer orchestrating these terrible crimes. Forensics and other ancillary staff were unaware of the deadly ultimatum delivered to the victims. Access to that information – the phones, the interview footage and transcripts – had been kept very tight. Obviously Whittaker and Helen knew, as did Mark and Charlie and a couple of other core team officers, but that was pretty much it. So unless a data officer had been tipped off as to their content, or had stumbled on it accidentally, then they would have to look close to home to find the source of the leak. Whittaker didn’t beat about the bush. Every member of the team would have to be investigated for evidence of possible corruption or collusion. It must be done dispassionately and it must be done quickly.

Helen made quick progress. These days there were no interview tapes or mini-discs – all that obsolete stuff was long gone. The interview footage was now recorded straight on to a secure digital network. Once the interview was completed, the digital file was then encrypted and uploaded to their secure server. Stored recordings and transcriptions could only be accessed by approved users. There was only one source – the server – and anyone accessing it would leave a trace.

The interview footage had been viewed innumerable times as part of the enquiry and a long list of these viewings scrolled out as Helen delved into the search history. But on only three occasions had the actual footage been downloaded or burned on to disc or memory stick. And for two of those, Helen had been present – moreover, she still had the downloads in her possession. Which left one unauthorized download. It was impossible to cover your tracks with these things without destroying the whole server and there it was in black and white: ‘Weds 11th January 4.15 p.m.’

It was unlikely to have been the data officers as they were involved in industrial action that day, but perhaps that’s why the thief chose that day in particular. Whittaker was on leave, whilst Helen had been at the forensics lab all afternoon. The junior team officers had been doing house-to-house that day (Helen would have to double-check that), so that left two officers in the know who were in the building and had access to the secure server: Mark and Charlie.

Helen was kicking herself. She should have cancelled her dinner with Mark, feigned some excuse, but he’d caught her on the hop. She couldn’t back out of their dinner without offending him or acting in a way that would have aroused his suspicions, so she’d gone along with it. He’d joked with her about the effort he’d gone to to impress her, which is why they were now tucking into prawn bucatini in virtual silence. Helen was fully aware of Mark’s disappointment and awkwardness – his vision of a night of passionate lovemaking in tatters – but it was impossible to stop thinking about it. Unless Helen was completely off beam, it was probable that either Charlie or Mark had grossly betrayed the team and in the process opened up their investigation to an outsider. If a corrupt officer wanted money, they’d leak to the press. So this had to be something else. Blackmail. Sex. Or something more sinister.

Helen was torn in two. She wanted to be upfront with him but to do so would be to put her own neck on the line. This was now an internal investigation and if she shared information with a ‘suspect’ then she would be corrupt too. So she bit her tongue and made polite conversation.

They gave up on the meal quite quickly and moved into the living room. Helen wandered over to the mantelpiece. The pictures of the happy family and the ex-wife were long gone. All that remained were innumerable pictures of a little girl, with a cute blonde bob and a big smile.

‘That’s Elsie.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Seven. Lives with her mother. Not far away.’

But clearly too far away for Mark’s liking. Helen asked some more interested questions and Mark responded as only a proud parent can. A history of Elsie’s achievements and interests. Anecdotes about her idiosyncrasies and daftness. It was hard to listen to – his desolation at being apart from his daughter was so evident. A year back he was a successful copper, with a loving wife and a little angel who had eyes only for him. Now he’d lost everything to another man – his wife’s lover, Stephen. It was their affair which had ended the marriage and yet it was Mark who was out in the cold. He had been hurt – deeply, deeply hurt – by someone who had been cavalier about their marriage vows. She had ended up with the whole deal. He’d ended up with a rented flat and visits every other weekend.

Helen did her best to comfort him, but all the while a little voice inside her was telling her to leave. To get away from this guy who was obviously falling for her. Eventually, Mark calmed down. Thanking her for listening to his ramblings, he ran his hand across her cheek – a tender, wordless thank you. Then he tried to kiss her.

Helen found herself walking towards the front door. Mark ran after her, apologizing. As she opened the door to leave, he grabbed her arm, pulling her back. Helen spun away as if burned.

‘Please, Helen, if I’ve offended you …’ Mark stuttered.

‘Don’t beg, Mark. You’re better than that.’

‘I don’t understand what’s going on here.’

‘Nothing’s going on here.’

‘I thought that you and I … that we …’

‘You thought wrong. We had sex. That’s all.’

‘Am I being dumped?’

‘Don’t be so childish.’

‘Well, what then? I thought you liked me.’

Helen paused, trying to choose her words carefully.

‘Mark, I’m only going to say this once, so please listen. Do
not
fall in love with me, ok? I don’t want it and neither do you.’