The Truth Will Out (21 page)

Helen woke with a start, blinking her eyes open. She glanced at the clock and nestled back into the pillow. It was only five thirty.

Sleep continued to evade her. Too many disjointed images, too many thoughts merged together in her mind. But one theme continued - Jules, Naomi and Karen. Had Karen played a role in the murder? She couldn’t have been the female informant, her voice was too high pitched, almost mouse-like. But what about the call made from Naomi’s missing phone on the day after the murder, traced back to Roxten?

She turned onto her side restlessly and switched back to the interview with Karen. The fiddling of the ring, cutting into her finger. Was she hiding something? Karen’s record was clean. Was it dealing with the police that made her so agitated? Or was she frightened for her children? During her service, Helen had faced many cases where concerned parents laboured under the misapprehension that any slight brush with the law meant that custody of their own children would be called into question. In reality, removing children from their families only occurred in extreme circumstances and was a difficult and convoluted process involving social services experts. And from what Helen witnessed, Karen Paton was a good mother.

No, there was something else bothering her, something niggling beneath the surface. She decided to pay Karen Paton another visit. Just to set her mind at rest. It wouldn’t be out of place for the police to provide a welfare visit to Jules’ next of kin now, would it?

Chapter
Twenty-Three

The alarm bleeped at seven, waking Helen with a start. She leapt forward, slammed the snooze button and rested back on the pillow to calm her shallow breaths.

Her head thumped like the beats in Matthew’s music and she rubbed her hands up and down her face to ease the tension. After a night of shallow, evasive rest she could feel the warmth and comfort of deep sleep luring her.

Her mind flashed back to recent events: the searching of Eva’s house, the discovery of Jules’ body, the investigation wrapped up in a tidy pink ribbon by Dean’s team. She recalled his words, ‘Perhaps you are getting too close to this one?’ Then Jenkins, ‘It’s a good result, we need to move on.’

Daylight crept through the crack at the top of the curtains. Perhaps they were right. Maybe she had allowed herself to become too close. Certainly, the intervention of MOCT into the Spence case frustrated her. It reminded her of year eleven in secondary school: she’d spent months organising a charity fundraising concert and was taken sick with suspected meningitis days before the event, leaving a fellow pupil to take over. She’d hated sitting on the sideline, while someone else took the reins of her baby.

Helen stared at the ceiling, toying with following Jenkins’ advice and taking the day off. She could spend time with the boys. But Matthew was away, Robert had arranged to meet friends in town, and her mother had a lunch date with an old friend. Even Jo had said she was going to take advantage of a quiet house to catch up with work this morning. Left to her own devices she would brood around the house. No. She pushed Operation Aspen firmly out of her head. Today she’d go to the station and immerse herself in the review files.

***

Eva stared across the countryside. Soft mist danced on the edge of the field. The view was beautiful, the air clean. She inhaled deeply and held onto the breath, wanting to keep it forever.

She continued further down the road, past a field of sheep, another of cattle. A Land Rover rattled passed, then nothing. She paused beside a gateway and looked out into the distance. Just past the edge of the field there was a loch. She stared at it as Amy MacDonald’s ‘Mr Rock and Roll’ bounced into her ears from her iPod. Only last week they’d listened to it as they drove through France. Naomi and Eva. Together. Last week. A brief recollection of a former life filled her brain, warped by recent events.

She focused on the water. It looked inviting, reaching out for her. Naomi. Icy darkness cocooned her. A lump expanded in her throat. The water reached out again, calling to her.

Her life was a tangled mess. She stared at the loch. It would be so easy. In death the pain would be released. Easy. She suddenly remembered a documentary she’d watched on near death experiences a couple of years ago. The drowning victim’s voice spoke in her head, ‘Drowning isn’t easy, your body fights the water and chokes to death. It isn’t a pleasant feeling, not until the water engulfs you and, by then, you are practically unconscious.’ She shuddered, wondering if she was really brave enough to try.

An image of her mother pushed into her mind. She would be devastated, not least because Eva hadn’t come to her for help in her hour of need. Eva would be losing her pain, but passing on a new desperation and anxiety, one that would glue itself to a parent’s heart for the rest of their life.

She threw her head back, stared at the hazy blue sky. The truth was she was too cowardly to try. The weight of her mother’s anxiety weighed too heavily on her shoulders. She ached to contact her. But Eva’s mother hadn’t taken her own mobile on holiday and her stepfather never switched his on. It was only for emergencies…

As she glanced down, something on her finger glinted in the sunlight. Her engagement ring. She recalled how the proprietor of the guest house from the evening before had glanced at it when she enquired about a room. The knowing look she gave when Eva said she needed to take a few days away, to use up holiday at work. A young woman travelling around on her own - must be a relationship break-up.

The importance people placed on that ring finger interested Eva. She had been engaged to Nick for six months before he’d finished it. She kept wearing the ring, but mostly because it offered her safety. On a night out, men would notice and give her a wide berth. And if she saw someone interesting, well, she could always remove it.

She glanced back across the water. She thought of Nick. The bad boy that caught her eye, the one she’d flunked university for on the promise of an engagement ring and a life of excitement. Nick that left her soon after. Although ludicrous, part of her still harboured feelings for him. When she dropped out of university she’d overheard her parents talking in the kitchen. Her stepfather had said, ‘The only way Eva will learn to make the right decisions is to experience the consequences.’ Trouble was, she never seemed to make the right decision.

After university, she secured a sales job in insurance. It seemed fun at first, but very soon the boredom set in. She rented a house with a loser of a boyfriend who dumped her, forcing her to move to a smaller flat and take in a lodger to cover the rent. Even the lodger, a student from Hampton University called Nicole, didn’t hang around. She shuddered. This was never how she saw her life evolving.

A low flying plane droned overhead. She held a hand up to shield her eyes and watched it, listening to the sounds of the purring engine as it disappeared into the tufts of cloud. The emptiness it left behind flushed her brain injecting clarity of thought. She needed to rejoin the land of the living.

Instinctively, Eva placed her hand in her jacket pocket and foraged around. Her heart sank. Her mobile was back at the guest house. She’d bought a new charger in Glasgow and charged it overnight. But having been switched off for so long, she had taken to leaving it behind - in stark contrast to her previous life where she carried it everywhere with her, accessed her emails, Facebook, the internet, sent endless texts. It was time to pick up the threads of her previous life and mend them. She turned on her heels and hurried back in the direction of the guest house.

***

Helen arrived at the station just after eight and felt her heart drop at the sight that greeted her. Parked diagonally opposite was George Sawford lifting his briefcase and coat out of the boot.

Last November, on her first murder investigation with the homicide squad, Jenkins had suggested that Sawford be brought in to assist and share the wealth of knowledge he’d gained through managing serious criminal cases over the past nine years. Helen didn’t doubt his competence. What concerned her intensely was his agenda. Nicknamed ‘Celebrity Cop’, Sawford played golf with most of the chiefs he worked with, entertained local councillors and MPs. His political persona was more important to him than the jobs he worked on, or the colleagues he worked alongside. Getting a result was all that mattered.

Fortunately, his visit was brief. Helen had located the killer within a day of his arrival. Although he appeared outwardly pleased, his tight mannerisms had betrayed his true feelings. He didn’t like to be beaten to the finishing line.

Her mind raced. The last she heard, Sawford was on secondment with Police Professional Standards Unit. What was he doing here?

He shut the boot and turned to face her. “Helen!” He closed the short gap between them in seconds. A whiff of musky aftershave brushed the air around her.

“George.” She lifted her head in acknowledgement and shook his proffered hand. His fox-like face creased into a smile. He was probably the only male officer in the station smaller than her. “So, what brings you to Hampton?”

“Just checking in on my team,” he said. He juggled his overcoat, as it fought to slip down his arm.

Helen creased her forehead. “I thought you were with PPSU?”

“Oh, short term,” he said, waving his arm dismissively. “Just on secondment to examine a particular case whilst Bellows was on paternity leave.”

Helen pondered inwardly how the PPSU would have suited him. Even though they shared the same rank, he would love to think that he was working on cases that were far too important to share with the likes of her.

“Anyway, now I’m with MOCT.”

She managed to quash her surprise before it showed. He didn’t seem a likely boss for Dean. “Oh, I hadn’t realised.”

“Yes, been with them since the middle of January. Acting Superintendent. Come down to congratulate them on their result. Wonderful news.”

Their result. “Mmm.”

“Quite surprising. All happened rather quickly from what I’ve heard?” He extended his free arm towards the door, gesturing she walk with him. Right now, she wanted to move in the opposite direction, yet approaching the station anyway, she was out of options. “I understand you played a part.”

Helen fought to keep her composure and said nothing.

They reached the door and he paused, holding it open for her. “Perhaps you’d fill me in?”

She glanced across at him as she passed through the entrance, wondering what he was up to. Previous experience in working with Sawford combined with anecdotes from colleagues had taught her a valuable lesson: he played games and pulled peoples’ strings as if they were a puppet, always with his own agenda. Well, she wasn’t going to be played. “I think your inspector is better versed to do that since he’s taken over the case file.”

Sawford didn’t react although Helen was convinced she saw the glimmer of a smile tickle his lips. They climbed the stairs together. “Interesting, though,” Sawford said thoughtfully as they reached the corridor. The warmth of the building had produced a ruddiness in his cheeks. “And with the ballistics news linking the gun with the Stratton case, it all seems very tight.”

Helen stopped in her tracks. “Pardon?”

George turned back to face her. “I didn’t realise you hadn’t heard. The results just came through. The gun used in the Stratton shooting shared the same characteristics as that in the Naomi Spence murder.”

Her jaw tightened. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

“I’m sure your team will fill you in.”

They reached the second floor. George stopped. “Good to see you, Helen.” He twisted on his heels and pulled open the door that led to the MOCT suite.

Helen stared into the empty air behind him, feet fixed to the spot. Leon Stratton’s shooting was one of her unsolved murders. How could this discovery not have reached her?

Just as the door was about to close, a hand wrapped around the edge. Sawford’s face appeared above it. “Helen, just one question, how do you find DI Fitzpatrick?”

The question, out of the blue as it was, knocked her sideways. Was this something to do with her previous affair with Dean? Was he aware of it? If so, how many others were? Or, was he questioning Dean’s detective skills, his judgement?

She decided to play it safe. “Well, it’s only been a couple of days, George. You’ll need to judge that one for yourself.”

He nodded and disappeared. Helen stared at the door. It seemed like an odd question. But, as she trudged up the stairs to the incident room, the investigation and the cold cases swamped her mind, pushing any questions about their relationship to a far corner.

The incident room was quiet on her approach. Most of her team had taken advantage of a Saturday off, the urgency of a homicide investigation now passed. Only Pemberton and Dark were present. He hovered over a map of Roxten on the far wall. She tapped away at her keyboard. Having delivered the news to Naomi’s parents yesterday, no doubt she was putting the finishing touches to her family liaison officer’s report for Dean’s team.

Dark looked up briefly as she entered. Pleasantries exchanged, Pemberton turned to face her.

“I understand we’ve had some more news?” Helen said.

“You’ve heard about the ballistics results then.”

“Sawford told me on the stairs. When did we find out?”

“Them, or us?”

Helen felt frustration clawing its way back in. “What are you talking about?”

“Dean’s team knew yesterday,” he said. “I found out on the grapevine this morning.”

Helen looked at him, incredulous. She wasn’t only being pushed aside on the Spence murder, but on the cold cases too. What was Dean up to? Seeking brownie points? She knew that MOCT funding would be reviewed shortly. Maybe he thought if he could gather results like this, there was a better chance of securing it. But on her patch? How could he?

Once again, she had let down her wall and let him in. And once again she had regretted it.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Molly, the guest house landlady, was kneeling in the hallway, tidying the information leaflets when Eva opened the front door.