Текст книги "Liar Liar"

Автор книги: M. J. Arlidge

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

112

‘I’m getting tired of this game. So either you answer me now, or I drag you out of here in cuffs.’

Helen didn’t like threatening people, but she had had her fill of Sharon Jackson’s lies and obfuscations. Sharon had finally confessed that her daughter had taken to doing her own laundry of late, wasting unnecessary amounts of fabric conditioner in washing a single hooded top and a pair of trousers. Add this to the number of newspaper cuttings Sanderson had found stored under her bed and the fact that Sharon couldn’t find a packet of matches she’d only bought last week and a clear picture was starting to emerge.

But Naomie’s motive remained unclear, which concerned Helen. Sharon Jackson insisted her daughter didn’t know any of the victims, but Helen could tell she was lying and was determined to find out why.

‘Don’t push me on this. I’m more than happy to do it, but it wouldn’t look too good in tomorrow’s newspapers.’

Sharon finally looked up at her.

‘Take a peek out of your front curtains, Sharon.’

Unnerved, Sharon did as instructed. Helen had heard the press trucks start to pull up outside a few minutes ago. She knew they’d be here within the hour, once Naomie’s name was released.

‘They won’t be going anywhere until this is over. So we have three choices. I can lead you out in front of them. I can leave here and let them loose on you. Or I can get a uniformed officer on the door, so there’s a chance you might get a moment’s peace. The choice is yours.’

Sharon sat down hard on the nearest armchair and ran her fingers through her long, lank hair. She seemed to be ageing in front of Helen, as if buried fears were now burrowing their way to the surface.

‘She’s never met Denise Roberts but she might know of her,’ she said finally and with great reluctance.

‘How?’

There was another long pause, and then:

‘Naomie’s father. His name’s Darren Betts. I was at school with him and we’ve been knocking around on and off for twenty years now.’

‘He’s your boyfriend?’

Sharon snorted, then said:

‘When he feels like it.’

‘He has other girlfriends?’

Sharon nodded.

‘Denise Roberts,’ Helen asked, suddenly making the connection. Callum Roberts had mentioned a ‘Darren’ too.

‘When he’s not here, Darren sometimes goes … there.’

Sharon Jackson said the last word with utter disdain, as if Roberts were shit on her shoe. Sanderson was sure Roberts probably felt the same way about her.

‘Is that what your row with Naomie was about?’

‘Guess so.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. We argued, that’s all.’

‘What happened, Sharon?’

‘She drove Darren away, didn’t she,’ Sharon responded, her tone suddenly plaintive and self-pitying. ‘She fusses around him, trying to get him to do stuff he doesn’t want to do, gets in his face, you know?’

‘What did you do?’

‘I shouted at her a bit.’

‘And?’

Sharon said nothing, staring at the floor.

‘AND?’

‘I gave her a bit of a slap, all right.’

‘You hit her?’

‘I shouldn’t have, but she’s just so fucking clingy … and sometimes I lose it. I hit her a bit –’

‘More than once? Did you beat her? Sharon, I’m asking you a question –’

‘Yes, I’ve told you. I took a belt to her, but I didn’t do any permanent harm. It’s no more than what I had done to me when I was a kid –’

‘And she knew this Denise Roberts, she knew that her father went there when he wasn’t here?’

‘Yes, she heard me and Darren talking about it. She’s not stupid.’

‘Jesus Christ. What about the other places? The Simms house in Millbrook or the Harris place in Shirley? Does he go there?’

Sharon suddenly laughed.

‘Are you crazy? Folk like that wouldn’t let him in the front door. He wouldn’t be knocking around in those parts of town.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Be sensible, will you?’

Helen didn’t like her tone, but let it go.

‘Do you have any other boyfriends?’

‘No.’

‘Sharon –’

‘I don’t, ok, I’m not like that. Darren … well, he’s all I’ve got. And I’ve only got him part-time.’

Her bitterness and loneliness shone through clearly now. Though Helen didn’t want to believe her – didn’t want to lose the connection between Naomie and her victims – what she said seemed genuine and made sense. The worlds inhabited by the various victims were all so different.

Helen stared at Sharon, her mind whirring. Then suddenly she said:

‘Is there anywhere else Darren goes? You said he had other girlfriends on the go.’

This time Sharon hesitated and Helen knew immediately that she’d hit a nerve.

‘I know this isn’t nice, but I need to know. It’s the last thing I’ll ask you.’

‘There’s one other girl that I know of. Lives over in St Denys.’

‘What’s her name?’

There was another long pause, then, as Sharon debated how to respond:

‘What’s her name, Sharon?’

‘Her name is Mandy Blayne.’

113

She had been in the bathroom for over twenty minutes now. Was she having a bath? The lights were all off downstairs and she’d drawn the bathroom curtains, so it seemed a safe assumption. Normally it would be better to wait until she’d definitely gone to bed, but there was no time for that now and this seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

Crossing the road quickly, the hooded figure pushed the side gate open and made its way towards the back of the house. There was no hesitation – the house had been recced a number of times and there was one obvious entry point. The French doors that opened on to the garden were old and flimsy, made of decrepit wood and glass. Mandy liked her gardening and often left the doors open. Today they were closed and locked, but it was still only a couple of moments’ work to put an elbow through one of the panes and release the latch from the other side.

Stepping inside, the hooded figure paused. Upstairs, music played on the radio – a cheesy power ballad designed to uplift and inspire – and accompanying it was the distinct sound of someone bathing, water splashing on plastic as Mandy Blayne tried to wash away her mediocrity. If she were clever Mandy would stay in the bath once she smelt the fire, but even that wouldn’t save her – she would just be cooked alive rather than burnt to death.

Teasing open the understairs cupboard, the figure bent down to examine the contents. It was depressingly empty – like Mandy’s life – but there were a few wooden garden chairs that would do the job. Dragging them together into a pile, the figure pulled a bottle of paraffin from a side pocket and emptied the whole contents over the wood. No point in caution or finesse now.

Retrieving the pack of Marlboro Gold, the figure removed a single cigarette and bound it to the pack with a pink rubber band. Moments later, the matches were out. The match head was soon poised against the rough side of the box, ready for ignition, when suddenly the landline rang out, shrill and loud. Startled, the figure dropped the match and in bending down to retrieve it succeeded in spilling the entire contents of the box on to the floor.

‘Shit.’

The phone continued to ring and for a moment the intruder stood stock still, straining to hear if Mandy would leave the bath to answer it. The volume of the radio was suddenly turned down, as the phone rang on. The figure tensed, turning its body in the direction of the back of the house, ready to run if need be. Still the phone rang on – it must have been twenty-five, possibly thirty rings already. Someone was clearly very keen to get hold of Mandy.

Then suddenly the ringing stopped. The figure could hear its own breathing, could feel the blood pounding in its ears. Backing out now was unthinkable – Blayne had it coming to her – but there was no virtue in getting caught either. What would Mandy do now? It felt as if the whole enterprise had come down to this moment. Would Mandy mess everything up by coming down the stairs? Or would the stupid whore stay put?

The music rose in volume again and now the figure didn’t hesitate, grabbing at the matches. They were wet and sticky, clinging doggedly to the floor that was now saturated with paraffin. It was hard to get any purchase on them with gloves, so throwing caution to the wind, the figure pulled the gloves off and picked up a match. Even now, though, the match seemed determined to resist, falling to the floor once more from the figure’s unsteady hand.

Now Mandy’s mobile started ringing, urgent and insistent. It was on the hall table not five feet away. Would this finally pique Mandy’s curiosity? There was no point hanging around to find out so, snatching up the match, the figure dragged it down the side of the box. It flared up impressively, thanks to its soaking in paraffin, and the figure suddenly found itself laughing – with relief as much as joy. Seconds later, the match hit the pile of chairs and instantly they were consumed by flames. This had been an amateur performance, a travesty of all the careful planning and preparation – the Marlboro pack tossed in casually as an afterthought – but the job had finally been done.

RIP Mandy Blayne.

114

How do you sum up a life?

It was a question Thomas Simms had asked himself repeatedly as he’d made plans for the girls’ funeral. When you’re deep in shock and assaulted by grief, how do you find the right way to pay tribute to someone – to two people – whom you loved more than life itself? It was an impossible task, but it had to be done – the thought of drying up while making the funeral oration was too horrific for words.

For a long time the answer had eluded him. There were so many amazing things he could say about Karen and Alice, but each time he gathered their many virtues – the many happy memories – together, he was crippled by his sense of loss, unable to think or say anything that wasn’t steeped in bitterness and regret. And nobody wanted to hear that.

But now, as Thomas pushed his son up the church aisle in a wheelchair, he suddenly knew what he would say. There was one thing that had struck him with real force this morning as he’d straightened his son’s tie and wiped the tears from his freckled face. And that was that Karen and Alice, though gone, would live on – through Luke. They all had the same colouring and shared many of the same mannerisms. His hazel eyes were identical to Alice’s and when he laughed his nose crinkled up – that was pure Karen. They had similar beliefs and shared the same daft sense of humour – many was the time they had all been reduced to hysterics by the Airplane movies. They were so similar in so many ways and Thomas was surprised at how much comfort that now gave him.

He felt himself start to smile, then immediately swallowed it back down. People wouldn’t understand and he couldn’t be bothered to explain himself to disapproving relatives. But the feeling was real and Thomas clung to it now as he prepared himself for the most difficult two hours of his life.

‘Dad?’

Thomas looked down to find Luke’s eyes fixed on him.

‘Can you hear that?’

Thomas had been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard a thing. But he knew instantly what his son was referring to. Even above the sombre tones of the organ, loud sirens could now be heard. One, two, three emergency vehicles, maybe more, racing past the church on their way somewhere fast.

‘Do you think it’s … ?’ Luke began.

‘No, son. It’s probably just a false alarm. Nothing to do with us, so don’t worry.’

Thomas was determined that his son would not be ruled by fear. There were still many questions to be answered, many painful discoveries to make perhaps, but he refused to let his son spend his life jumping at shadows. Someone had tried to destroy his family and they had failed – Luke’s happiness and confidence would be Thomas’s riposte to the person who had tried to break them. Though his son was still working his way through his injuries, both mental and physical, it was Thomas’s job to see that he made it out the other side in one piece. As he pushed Luke to his place next to the front-row pews, Thomas knew that this was it for him now – his job was to guide his son safely through the next few years until he could stand on his own two feet. And that, Thomas reflected, was something that he shared with Karen. Had she been in his shoes, she would have done exactly the same.

115

She jumped from plank to plank, enjoying the simple pleasure of the game. When she’d been little, she’d played it with other truants, pretending that if you misjudged your jump and landed on the stones that separated the railway sleepers, then you’d fall through the tracks and straight down to Hell.

Later, when Naomie was older, the game had taken a more sinister turn. She would walk the railway track alone, challenging a train to appear in front of her. To alleviate her boredom she would set herself challenges, determining to walk to a certain point on the track, regardless of whether a train appeared or not. No train ever did, so she’d never had the chance to test her courage, to see whether she would have held her nerve. But she always thought she would’ve seen it through, if the cards had fallen that way.

But now things were going her way and suddenly she felt the vibrations on the tracks and, moments later, the unmistakable growl of a train approaching. It was like she could do no wrong at the moment and she laughed out loud – had she summoned the train? Was the world finally dancing to her tune? This was nonsense of course but it was a nice fantasy to indulge in. She paused to listen, revelling in the slow but steady growth in volume, as the train hastened towards her.

Now it was coming into view, arcing round the curved track a hundred feet ahead, before straightening up to charge directly at her. Still she didn’t move. She felt in control of the situation, as if the train were just a character in her movie. Her feet were glued to the tracks as they had been so many times before. But she felt no fear now, only exhilaration and joy.

A sharp blast of the train’s horn made her look up. The driver had spotted her and was sounding his horn frantically. She made no attempt to move, so now he applied the emergency brake, metal colliding with metal in a hideous scream. But it was too little, too late. Naomie had chosen her spot well and there was no way he would be able to stop in time.

So many times she’d dreamt of this moment, had seen her own destruction in a shattering explosion of blood and bone. Whenever the world was black and her bruises smarted, she had longed for this moment. But things were different now so even as the train careered towards her, as the driver repeatedly gestured to her to move, she simply smiled, raised her middle finger and stepped out of the way of the screeching train, before calmly walking away.

Things were different now. Now she had something to live for.

116

‘They’ll be here in five minutes. What do you want to do?’

Sanderson’s voice was as tense as her expression. Following Sharon Jackson’s tipoff, she and Helen had raced over to Mandy Blayne’s house, gaining a head start on the emergency services. Helen had called them in as a precaution, but as reports of a house fire in St Denys began to filter through via police radio, it became clear to both of them that they had been too slow to stop Naomie’s latest attack.

Helen paused, before responding to Sanderson’s question. Mandy’s house was ablaze and there was no sign of its unfortunate owner. Smoke billowed out of the windows on both floors, but more so on the lower level suggesting the fire had not fully taken hold yet. Was Mandy even in there? Helen couldn’t be sure, but Naomie hadn’t put a foot wrong so far, so they had to assume the worst. Waiting for the emergency services to arrive was the sensible thing to do, but the whole house might have gone up by then, by which point any chance of rescuing Mandy would have passed.

‘We’ve got to go in,’ Helen replied, already marching towards the back of the house. The front door was locked from the inside and Helen felt sure that Naomie would have entered the house from the rear, where her trespassing would go undetected. ‘But I’m going in alone. You wait here and –’

‘No chance,’ Sanderson replied firmly. She had let Helen go into a fire on her own before and the memory still haunted her. ‘If you’re going in, so am I.’

Helen nodded her assent – there was no time to argue now – and they marched round to the back door. As Helen expected, one of the panes had been broken and the open door lolled on his hinges. Helen hurried inside, Sanderson close behind. Immediately, they were assaulted by an intense heat and smothered by a cloud of thick smoke that made it impossible to see each other, let alone the geography of the room. Grabbing Sanderson before she lost sight of her completely, Helen dragged her junior officer back out of the house to safety.

‘What now?’ Sanderson barked through a coughing fit.

Helen was already casting her eyes over the back of the house for another means of entry. There was no shed, no sign of anything that might contain a ladder, so acting on instinct Helen grabbed a wheelie bin and rammed it up against the wall.

‘Climb on and give me a hand up,’ she said quickly.

Before she had finished her sentence, Sanderson was on top of it, holding out her hand to pull Helen up. Helen climbed up and pressing her heel into Sanderson’s interlinked hands made a sudden, upwards lunge for the first-floor windowsill. Her fingers scrambled up the rough brickwork and just as she felt her body begin to fall again after its swift ascent, she caught hold of the windowsill with three fingers of her left hand. She hung there for a moment, out of Sanderson’s reach now and suddenly exposed, before, swinging her body to the right, she managed to get some purchase with her other hand. Now the momentum was with her and, using her legs to push herself up the brickwork, she jammed first one elbow, then the other on to the narrow sill.

The window was a cheap double-glazed unit and Helen was relieved to see that the small ventilation window at the top was ajar. Manoeuvring her right knee on to the sill, Helen pushed upwards and, catching hold of the lip of the open window, hauled herself upright. Reaching down inside, she levered the main window open and seconds later she was crawling along the floor of what appeared to be the spare bedroom, keeping her head as low as possible and her eyes pointed down, moving in the thin layer of clear air underneath the blanket of smoke.

‘Mandy?’

Her shout was loud, but seemed to rebound off the dense smoke. There was no reply. Crawling out on to the landing, Helen made to move towards what she assumed was the master bedroom, then stopped in her tracks, her eyes drawn to another door which remained firmly shut. Instinct now guided her towards it and as she neared it she heard a strange noise from inside. Signs of life? It was the most unnatural, animalistic noise she had ever heard, but as she reached the door Helen realized that the sounds emanating from behind the door were human – a grotesque mixture of coughing, gasping and crying.

‘Mandy?’

Still no reply, so moving up into a crouched position, Helen covered her hand with her sleeve and forced the handle down. Pushing inside, she was relieved to see a young woman cowering in the bathtub in front of her.

She had made the right call in coming here, but their escape now depended on swift and decisive action. Helen was already beginning to feel light-headed as the smoke crept into her mouth and nose, despite her attempts to shield herself from its effects. It took her back to her last major case and a scene she’d rather forget.

‘Mandy, I’m a police officer. I’m here to help you, but we need to go now.’

The naked woman in the bathtub looked at her as if she was mad. She stared at Helen uncomprehendingly, stunned by this sudden apparition in her bathroom.

‘Mandy, please.’

Helen took another step towards her, offering her hand. But to Helen’s alarm, Mandy backed away, crouching down into the water, raising her arms to fight off her attacker. She was screaming now, high and keening, her whole body trapped in a suffocating panic that would be the death of her – and possibly Helen too.

Helen reached forward but was beaten back. Flicking Mandy’s flailing arm aside, Helen lunged for her now, but as she did so felt the woman’s teeth sinking into her arm. Withdrawing her arm sharply, she now feinted to the left, drawing Mandy’s defence that way, before slamming the open palm of her right hand on to her antagonist’s face.

The connection was hard and true and for a moment Mandy just blinked at Helen, rocked by the severity of the blow. Helen seized the moment, leaning in to grasp the woman under both arms.

‘If you want to live, Mandy, you need to come with me. But you need to do it quickly and you need to do it now.’

And with that she hauled the young woman up and out of the bath. Seconds later the pair stumbled back into the inferno, disappearing into the thick, black smoke.