Текст книги "The Doll's House"

Автор книги: M. J. Arlidge

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

64

Sanderson was on to her the minute Helen entered the incident room. Moments later, they were camped in Helen’s office with the blinds down and the door firmly shut.

‘Sorry for the amateur dramatics,’ Sanderson said in reference to the closed blinds. ‘But I thought you ought to see this.’

She passed a file across the table, which contained four sheets of paper – all of them with a woman’s photo attached to the top right-hand corner.

‘I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours going over the local missing person’s registers and liaising with the relevant agencies. And it’s thrown up four possibles.’

Helen kept her expression neutral, but she didn’t like the sound of that number.

‘They all have the right look – dark hair, blue eyes – all live alone, are low-income and have been missing for some time. Two of them – Anna Styles and Debby Meeks – seem to have vanished completely, no communication of any kind. The other two – Roisin Murphy and Isobel Lansley – send the occasional text or tweet.’

‘How occasional?’

‘Not very often, but always at virtually identical times.’

‘Before their mobile signal goes off again?’

‘Exactly,’ Sanderson replied nodding, her expression sombre now.

‘Do the timings of the communications tally with those “sent” by Ruby and Pippa?’

‘Yes. They’re a perfect match.’

Helen looked at their pictures – Roisin was a single mum, studded with piercings, rough around the edges, but with stunning aquamarine eyes, while Isobel was a very different kettle of fish. Her eyes were equally striking, but they were hidden behind a long black fringe. Isobel’s gaze was sidelong, as if she was unkeen to be photographed at all. Helen exhaled long and hard, suddenly struck by the fact that she might already be looking at the faces of two corpses.

She was on her feet now and marching to the door.

‘I’ll take full responsibility for pursuing this line of investigation,’ she said over her shoulder. There was no time to wait, no time for indecision, and Helen knew exactly what had to be done.

65

He was already sitting on the bed when she awoke. Ruby sat upright with a start, freaked out to find him staring at her.

‘You’ve had a rough night,’ he said sympathetically.

He was right. Ruby had spent a sleepless night, kept awake by hope, but also by fear. Her captor’s obvious desire for her still haunted her waking thoughts.

‘I was cold,’ she lied, pulling the sheets up around her.

‘I’ll get you some extra blankets,’ he continued, ‘and I will try and pick up those books for you today.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied, earning a smile in response. ‘If you were feeling kind, there are a couple of other things you could get for me too,’ Ruby went on, as casually as she could.

Immediately, a frown passed across his face. Was he suspicious? Did he sniff trouble? Keeping her expression as meek as possible, Ruby continued. ‘I would really like some make-up. I would love a hairbrush, some lipstick, some eyelash curlers and, if you don’t mind buying it, some nail polish.’

He looked at her, saying nothing.

‘I just want to look nice for you. And I think I deserve it, don’t you?’

Another long, painful pause, then he finally broke into a broad smile.

‘Were you nervous about asking for these things?’

Ruby looked at her shoes, fearful her expression would betray her.

‘There’s no need to be. I don’t mind it when you’re assertive. It’s more like the old you.’

He rose at this point.

‘I’ll get those things for you. You’ll … you’ll look pretty as a picture.’

With that, he departed. As soon as he’d gone, Ruby sank back down on the bed. It had cost her her last remaining ounce of composure to play her part, but it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. She had expected more suspicion, more resistance, but actually he had played right into her hands.

The first phase of her plan was complete.

66

‘This is fucking out of order and I will not stand for it.’

Ceri Harwood seldom swore. It was strangely enjoyable, watching her superior lose her cool and Helen privately resolved to provoke her more often.

‘DI Grace knows the chain of command,’ the incandescent Harwood continued. ‘She knows she should have come to me first.’

Chief Constable Stephen Fisher nodded, before turning his attention to Helen.

‘Would you care to explain to me why you didn’t, DI Grace?’

Because Harwood would have told me to go jump in a lake, Helen thought, but swallowed that down. Her decision to go direct to Harwood’s superior was deliberate – a calculated gamble.

‘Detective Superintendent Harwood and I have already had this discussion and she’s made her feelings clear –’

‘So why are we having it again?’ Fisher interrupted.

‘Because the situation has changed,’ Helen replied. ‘Further investigation –’

‘Investigation that was not authorized,’ Harwood interrupted.

‘Further investigation has revealed a number of potential victims,’ Helen continued. ‘I have always believed that Pippa’s killer had the potential to be a serial offender and the evidence now points that way.’

‘Evidence?’ Harwood queried, witheringly.

‘Roisin Murphy and Isobel Lansley. Two young women with the same look, the same profile, who’ve been missing for over a year and who text and tweet at the same times of day and the same locations as Ruby and formerly Pippa. The geography doesn’t make sense – the New Forest, then Southampton city centre, then Brighton, then Hastings – their movements are so random and unlikely that the only explanation is that someone is deliberately trying to throw the young women’s families off the scent. Furthermore, what are the odds that four unconnected girls would be travelling around in the same seemingly random pattern?’

‘So you want to go back to the beach?’ Fisher interrupted decisively.

‘Yes. That’s the only deposition site we know of and serial murderers are creatures of habit. It’s a discreet, out-of-the-way location, which regularly washes away surface evidence, footprints and so on. It’s perfect for his purposes and he’d be a fool not to use it again.’

‘He? You keep referring to “he”. Who is he? You sound like you know him?’

‘We don’t have anything concrete so far –’

‘But still you want us to close a public beach, exhaust our resources digging up great swathes of it and create an unholy storm of public concern and negative publicity in the process. All because of your gut instinct.’

‘Because of the pattern of his offending. There is almost zero chance he won’t have attempted to abduct more victims in between Pippa and Ruby – and Roisin and Isobel fit the bill perfectly.’

‘We need more time, Stephen,’ Harwood countered, now turning to her superior. ‘Let’s investigate the circumstances of the girls’ disappearance and then see –’

‘It’s already been done,’ Helen returned aggressively. ‘Roisin had a one-year-old baby when she went missing. She tweeted saying she couldn’t handle being a mum any more and it’s true she had struggled at times, but her family are totally convinced that she would never have willingly abandoned her baby boy. They’ve spent the last two years searching for her. They’ve used the police, missing persons, local charities. They even hired a private detective – none of the “leads” provided by her tweeting check out. She simply hasn’t been seen anywhere since she went missing over two years ago.’

‘Even so, the investigations of a local family are no substitute for proper police work,’ Harwood fired back. ‘Let us pursue this line of investigation in a measured, methodical way and see if any of these “hunches” bear fruit. Rushing headlong into a major search operation only risks making us look very foolish indeed.’

Both women had finished now. Fisher regarded them, weighing up his options. Harwood had been his appointment and it had worked out well for him. Which is why Helen was surprised when he said:

‘You’ve got one day on the beach, Helen. Make the most of it.’

67

The girl in Boots shoved his purchases into a plastic bag and took his cash without once looking up. While he’d been walking round the shop he’d felt a sudden pulse of fear – would people look askance at a guy with a basket full of make-up? The local paper was still going to town on the Pippa Briers story, urging its readers to keep their eyes peeled for any suspicious activity that might lead them to her killer. They’d even gone as far as publishing a detailed offender ‘profile’, describing his likely race, background, body language and psychology. It was all rubbish of course, but some of their lucky guesses had made him uneasy. So he’d prepared a detailed cover story – even slipping a scratched old ring on to his fourth finger to make him look like a solid husband and father – but in the event these precautions had proved utterly unnecessary. Like most young people, the shop girl was only interested in herself – lazily picking up her smart phone the minute she had finished serving him.

The sight of the girl checking her messages reminded him of an important task he had overlooked. Usually he would have caught a train or bus somewhere before work – he’d had Bournemouth in mind this time – to carry out a swift round of texting and tweeting before returning to Southampton on the same train. It was a good way to throw people off the scent, without taking too much time out of his working day.

But having made a detour to Boots on an extended lunch break, he wouldn’t have time for that today. So seeking out a quiet spot on the Common, he began to send the customary messages. In days gone by he’d enjoyed this guilty pleasure – climbing inside these girls’ identities and speaking for them – but yet again he felt tense doing it. He was taking a risk tweeting so near his place of work, no question about it, and it robbed the little routine of its pleasure.

‘Funny how life keeps kicking you when yr already on the floor. Gettin used to it,’ he tweeted from Roisin’s phone. He was always careful to factor in the misspellings and abbreviations which these girls were so fond of. Roisin had always been a bit of a Jeremiah, would think herself into dark holes, so it was definitely in character for her to be bleating about life’s unfairness. He added a few more cynical thoughts, sent a couple of texts, then turned her phone off and slipped it back in his bag.

The sound of conversation made him look up. Two mums were jabbering loudly as they pushed their strollers along. Startled, he slunk back deeper into the undergrowth. He waited until they were long gone, before pulling Ruby’s phone from his bag. He did the necessaries, but his mood failed to lift. He couldn’t escape the feeling that significant things were happening – things over which he had no control. Previously he had kept these girls alive safe in the knowledge that no one was even aware they were dead. He had revelled in this freedom and total lack of suspicion. But the discovery of Pippa Briers’ body had changed everything. Now a major murder investigation was under way, led by DI Helen Grace. For the first time in his short life, he now understood what it felt like to be hunted.

68

The two women were virtually eyeball to eyeball, neither backing down. Sanderson didn’t normally do all-out assault, but she was too enraged to back down. DC Lucas clearly felt the same, snarling at Sanderson to ‘get back in her box’.

Sanderson could happily have swung for her colleague. It had been her idea to put the mobile phone companies on alert for any sign of the missing girls’ phone signals and now that this plan had paid off, she was buggered if she was going to stand aside and let DC Lucas run with it. The mobile signals had briefly sprung into life, somewhere on or near Southampton Common and the smart thing to do was to get down there as fast as possible, to canvass witnesses, source CCTV footage, search for any signs of their killer.

‘DS Fortune specifically left me in charge,’ Lucas was saying. ‘If anything significant came up while he was at the beach, I was to handle it.’

Sanderson was about to come back at her, but DC Lucas was not finished yet.

‘And every minute you spend arguing with me reduces the chances of us bagging this guy and bringing Ruby home safe and well. Do you understand, DC Sanderson?’

Lucas had enunciated the syllables of Sanderson’s name deliberately slowly – to underline her point. The eyes of the rest of the team were on her now and there was no way she could continue the fight, without looking irresponsible. With bad grace, she backed down and returned to her desk.

Ever since the investigation had widened to include Roisin Murphy and Isobel Lansley, Sanderson had been busy compiling dossiers on both women, climbing inside their lives to test Helen’s theory about their abduction. She had made good progress but she flicked through the pages listlessly now, still fizzing with anger over her confrontation with Lucas. She had never liked the humourless fast-tracker whose ambition was so ill-concealed, but now she was growing to loathe her. This sort of conflict was unnecessary and counter-productive. It risked turning the team against each other, which could only hamper the investigation. It was outrageous of Lucas to accuse her of risking lives, when she was the one whose ego could prove costly.

Sanderson returned to the task in hand, wrenching her mind away from crucifying Lucas to the important police work in front of her. She mustn’t compromise her own work through anger or bitterness – that wouldn’t be fair to Ruby or Pippa. So she continued to leaf through the files, diligently comparing the life of Roisin – a single mother of Anglo-Irish extraction who lived off benefits in a small flat in Brokenford – with that of Isobel Lansley, a student at Southampton University about whom they knew almost nothing. She had few friends, little money, no jobs or hobbies. All they did know about her was that she lived in a one-bed flat in –

Sanderson stopped in her tracks, her heart suddenly racing. Checking the details again, she skimmed back fast through Roisin’s growing file, searching for the relevant entry. And there it was. The discovery took Sanderson’s breath away.

Finally, they had the break they needed.

69

The three figures stood alone, whipped by the wind that roared in off the Solent. Helen was on one side of the trio, Harwood on the other, with an uncomfortable DS Fortune in between. The two women had hardly spoken to each other since arriving and the atmosphere was tense. Helen got the feeling that Lloyd would rather be anywhere else but here, but that was too bad. This was too important not to have her right-hand man by her side.

The beach had been deserted when they arrived, so securing it wasn’t hard. Given the brief window she’d been allowed, Helen had pulled out all the stops, dragging a dozen uniformed coppers off the beat, so that that the beach could be taped off swiftly and the necessary public notices erected. Nobody was swimming off this beach today.

A POLSA team had been scrambled from Kent Police, making it to Carsholt in under two hours – Helen had impressed upon them the urgency of the situation. They were now at work, the metal detectors, cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar scouring the broad expanse of sand for any signs of burial, deposition or human remains. The occasional bleep from the metal detectors was all Helen could hear above the wind.

The beach presented in a very different light from the last time Helen had been here. When they had found Pippa, the weather had been incongruously glorious, the sun beating down on the SOC officers as they’d completed their painstaking forensic work. Today the sun had disappeared behind looming grey clouds, hiding its warmth and cheer from the scene. Even the sea seemed to be getting in on the act, raging and crashing on the surf nearby.

DS Fortune sneaked a look at his watch.

‘How many hours of daylight do we have left?’ Helen asked him.

‘About seven,’ he replied quickly. His voice was clipped, infused with the anxiety of a man serving two masters.

‘Seven hours before we can bring this charade to an end,’ Harwood added. ‘Are you planning on staying down here all day, DI Grace? Or do you have some police work to do?’

‘I’ll stay as long as is necessary,’ Helen replied evenly. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself by squabbling with Harwood in front of a junior officer. ‘After all, we only have limited time.’

Harwood didn’t respond, so Helen took this as her cue, heading down to the water’s edge. Once there she turned, taking in the full panorama of Carsholt beach. Harwood and Fortune were chatting easily – more relaxed now Helen had left them – in sharp contrast to the men and women from Kent, who had worked out a grid and were now combing every inch of it.

Helen felt the tension within her rise as she watched their patient, diligent work.

Had she been too hasty in ordering the search? She had little credit with Chief Constable Fisher and even less with Harwood, so it would be hard now to ask for extra resources later in the investigation, if today’s search proved fruitless. For a moment, Helen berated herself for her characteristic impatience. It was like an obsession for her, the desire to chase down leads, to complete the story, to find out what had happened. Once you climbed inside an investigation of this magnitude and urgency, it was hard to wrench your mind from it, as you constantly checked and double-checked your assumptions to see if there was something you could be doing better or faster. Sleep was hard to come by and it was almost impossible to relax, but that was as it should be. You didn’t come into this line of work for an easy life – you did it because you wanted to make a difference.

Helen snapped out of her daydreaming, because one unit of the POLSA team had suddenly stopped. They weren’t combing any more, they were digging. Helen raced across the sand, making it to the quartet of officers, just before DS Fortune. The look on their faces said it all.

‘We’ve found something.’

70

Southampton Common looked bleak and sinister under the grey clouds. A suitable place for a killer to roam, DC Lucas thought to herself. She was new to Southampton and still didn’t know it well, so she’d brought as many uniformed officers as she could muster. Good, honest guys who knew every inch of this terrain and could be her guides.

Fanning out, they set about their task, stopping joggers, mums, businessmen, even council workers cutting the grass, asking them what they were up to and who they’d seen on the Common that morning. The vast majority were baffled by the questions, others were taciturn and suspicious, afraid of getting dragged into something that was nothing to do with them. It was an exhausting and potentially fruitless endeavour – so many people used the Common during the course of the working day. But he was here somewhere.

The mobile signals had sprung to life just under forty-five minutes ago. If Lucas hadn’t had to face down DC Sanderson, she would have been here even sooner, but she was still pleased by the speed of their response. She now had six CID officers in addition to herself and fifteen uniformed officers combing every inch of the Common. They might get lucky, they might not. But something in her waters told Lucas that they would be lucky today.

She had ventured off the beaten track now, walking away from the body of the search party into the denser undergrowth near the Wildlife Centre. It was oddly beautiful here, despite the grey sky that framed the woods. The trees were old with characterful hanging branches and thick foliage. And they were full of birds, who called to each other as Lucas picked a careful path deeper into the woods.

Crunch.

Lucas froze, her senses suddenly alert. She cast around her, but couldn’t see anything.

‘Police. Who’s there?’

Still nothing. A silence that seemed to go on for ever, then:

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Where was the sound coming from? She strained hard to hear, but, finding it impossible to locate the cause, made a snap decision and plunged through the foliage to her right.

Suddenly it happened. A figure bolted. The crunch, crunch had obviously been him creeping away, but now he was in full flight. Lucas was after him in a flash, sprinting over the forest floor and hurdling fallen logs in pursuit. Lucas had always been a good sprinter and she needed every ounce of her ability now, as the fugitive darted gracefully under branches and round bushes, intent on escape. He knew the forest far better than her, so while he seemed to glide unimpeded through the woods, Lucas was whipped by thorns and branches, scratching the skin from her face and arms. The trees were thinning now, however, and Lucas spotted her chance.

Cutting off the corner of the wood, she raised her speed a notch further. She was taking a calculated gamble that the man she was chasing would bear left on leaving the sanctuary of the wood, heading for the busy city centre rather than exposing himself to capture on the open ground of the Common.

Sprinting free of the woods, the man turned sharply left and sprinted for the park exit. Wham! Lucas took him down, wrapping her arms round his legs, bringing him down hard on the concrete pathway. She was swiftly up on her feet and pressing him hard up against the park noticeboard. He was already cuffed and compliant by the time the other officers arrived to assist.

Lucas’s pulse was racing, but her triumph was short-lived. The ‘man’ she was chasing turned out to be sixteen years old. A teenager with a taste for soft drugs and two decent-sized baggies of cannabis in his pocket. What he didn’t have, it soon became clear, was any mobile phones.

Cursing, Lucas turned him over to uniform and returned to the hunt. Another twenty minutes had passed and it was clear to her now that unless their killer had a pathological desire to be caught, he would be long gone.