‘Thank you.’ She took a few steps and looked out into the potholed car park lined with police cars and her phone rang. ‘Bernard.’ She listened and smiled as he reeled off his information.
‘What is it, Harte?’ Briggs asked.
Everyone in the room waited in silence for her to break the news. ‘The foetus, Holly’s baby, we have a DNA lead, on the father’s side. Officers in Cardiff have arrested a woman for driving under the influence and she is a twenty-five per cent match, which means she could be a grandparent or aunt of the baby’s father. Problem is, we don’t know her name as yet. She’s apparently so drunk they’re letting her sleep it off for a while. She was also caught in a stolen car. The owner pulled up to post a letter and she drove off in the car. They’re going to keep disturbing her to see if she can talk. As soon as they have anything, they’re going to message back. Her mugshot is on its way. Let’s hope she bears some resemblance to one of our suspects.’
A slight cheer filtered through the room. It was the biggest breakthrough they’d had. All they had to do was check out her family tree to work out who they needed to bring in.
Gina kept hitting refresh on the computer screen next to the boards but the photo still hadn’t arrived. She glanced up at Holly and Francesca’s photos. Her fingers tingled with excitement. The email pinged up from Cardiff Police.
Everyone crowded around and waited for the photo to load. Seconds later, they had a mugshot of their drunk driver. A short, round-faced woman with greasy hair. She had one eye open and the other half shut and her nose was a sore shade of pink with a couple of scabs around the edge.
‘She doesn’t look like anyone we know.’ Jacob slumped back over to his chair and fell into it.
‘I guess we’ll just have to wait until she’s sobered up a bit.’ Gina grabbed her notebook and popped it into her laptop bag. ‘Anything else?’
A low hum of noes filled the room.
‘I’m going to be working from home. If anything comes in from the press releases, call me any time, whatever the hour. I’ll go through everything we have on the system again and again until I find something.’
She took one last glance at the woman in the photo and tilted her head. She couldn’t see a resemblance to anyone she knew. She tilted her head the other way. The shape of the woman’s chin seemed familiar. She looked away. It was just a chin. Any familiarity she thought she may have seen had now long gone. She stared for a further second and zipped her bag up.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Gina threw her keys onto the kitchen table. Ebony jumped through the cat flap and began rubbing her head against Gina’s black trousers, depositing hair all over them. She bent down and lifted the cat up, stroking her before kissing her on the head. She put the cat on the table and pushed a sachet of food into the cat bowl, before heading to the living room and booting her laptop up. She had come home to work in comfort, not to take the rest of the night off.
She tried Hannah again but the phone kept going to voicemail. It was no good, she was going to have to call Nanny Hetty, her ex-husband’s mother. Her daughter had been there when they last spoke. She pressed the number and waited.
‘Hello,’ came the gruff voice on the other end, a voice that sent a shiver through her.
‘Hetty, it’s Gina.’ She swallowed and wiped a bead of sweat from her brow.
‘I know who you are. What the hell do you want? How you’ve got the nerve to call here after all that you’ve done.’ The woman coughed as one would expect when she smoked about eighty a day.
‘I need to know if Hannah’s there.’
The sounds of Gracie playing made Gina smile. At least Gracie was okay. Hetty had many faults but she knew that her granddaughter would be safe with the woman. It was Gina she hated. ‘I’m surprised you had the nerve to call after what your lovely colleague did to my Stephen last year. You tried to set him up. Told him to shut up or the planted evidence would come out. I may be a thick-looking old boot but I know more than I make out. You’re nothing but a devious bitch.’
Hetty was right. The secret that Gina was now keeping for Briggs had consequences and Hetty’s hatred of her was one of them. Stephen’s withdrawal from making her life a misery was another, which she was thankful of. There was no way she’d ever admit a thing. Briggs’s secret was as safe with her as hers was with him. That’s the way it would be, for life.
‘Hetty, this is ridiculous. I’m worried about Hannah. Is she there?’
‘Have it your way, but we know what you’re like. We know.’ She paused. ‘Hannah isn’t here. She left after you woke us all up with your call and said she was going back to the B&B as the settee was hurting her back. I want to spend time with Gracie, not like you, so I said she should go out and enjoy herself for the remains of her stay.’
A tear filled Gina’s eye. That had stung. She loved spending time with Gracie but she had a job, a demanding job that she loved. Hetty was retired.
‘You were always selfish, even when our Terry were alive. You didn’t even care when he died. I saw you drinking at his funeral, that emotionless face. I tell you something and it plays on my mind. I saw my boy come back on many an occasion after a skinful and not once did he fall down – not over a step or down any stairs. Anyway, snowflake, you get back to your duties. Go back to work while I look after this beautiful little girl.’ Hetty slammed the phone down.
Gina’s heart hummed as the pace picked up. Soon it was booming, threatening to burst through her ribs. Pain seared across her chest and she gasped for breath. She tried to scream but a burst of sobs escaped as she slipped to the floor, pulling the door handle off a cupboard as she dropped. Her wedding night flashed through her mind as her vision peppered. The light of the kitchen being replaced by that of her mind’s eye. Terry’s hands gripping her neck as he forced himself on her. The pleasure in his eyes as he gripped harder. The main light of their bedroom was still on and so was her dress, the cheap thing she’d bought from the high street. From that moment, he owned her.
She opened her eyes to Ebony’s meows. She breathed in and out until she’d regained control. The tremor in her fingers reached all the way to her elbows as she breathed in the air around her. The pains subsided but her stomach churned. Ebony forced her head under her arm so she stroked her gently until the shaking went. She threw the door handle across the kitchen floor, scaring Ebony out of the cat flap. ‘I’m sorry,’ she called out. She hadn’t meant to scare her furry companion away.Pull yourself together, Harte.
She staggered to a stand, a wash of weakness set in her muscles and bones. Yawning, she’d love nothing more than to go to bed and ruminate over her conversation with Hetty. The woman had been right. She knew both of her sons better than Gina would ever know Hannah and she understood deep down that something more than a stumble on the stairs had happened to Terry. Gina would never tell her how she held back on calling for that ambulance as he took his dying breath. She’d never tell Hetty about all the times she thought she’d die at his hands while he was alive. That was her bit of control. She knew the truth about everything, Hetty knew nothing. That was her ultimate win. It was her only win.
Leading with her weary legs, she flopped onto the settee and grabbed her laptop. She scrolled through the case files methodically.
She’d stared at the photo of the drunk driver who shared DNA with their murdered woman’s baby. She couldn’t pinpoint the familiarity even though she’d been through all the suspect photos. She checked her watch – it was almost eleven and she had to be back at the station for five to prepare for the search of Robin Dawkins’s flat. It was going to be another long day. She opened the files containing Holly Long’s bank statements and reread all the notes that had been made beside them.
Her phone rang and she grabbed it. ‘Any news?’
