Mark raised his eyes to meet hers.
“Of course I do.”
“Good. Then let’s get on with it. Team briefing in five minutes.”
And with that she resumed her work. Mark left her office, wrong-footed but relieved. Helen Grace never failed to surprise him.
18
Biking home to her city center flat, Helen replayed the conversation with Mark in her head. Had she been too hard? Too soft? Was she repeating mistakes she’d made before? She was still chewing on it when she shut her front door behind her. Slipping the chain on, she headed straight for the shower. She’d been up for forty-eight hours straight and she needed to feel clean again.
She faced forward, the water pummeling her neck and breasts, before she turned round. The steaming hot water struck her back and immediately pain coursed through her body. It was agony at first, but slowly the stinging subsided and Helen once more felt calm.
Toweling herself down, she walked back into the bedroom. Now dry, she dropped the towel to the floor and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She was an attractive sight naked, but few had seen her like this. Cautious of intimacy and wary of the inevitable questions, her encounters had mostly been casual and short-lived. Not that the men had cared—by and large they had seemed extremely pleased to find a woman who would go to bed with them and didn’t hang around afterward.
Opening her wardrobe, Helen eschewed the rows of jeans and shirts in favor of sweatpants and top—she was due at a Box Combat class later and there seemed little point in changing twice. She paused briefly to take in the police uniforms, neatly preserved in pristine suit bags, that she used to wear when she was on the beat. Those days had been the making of her. The first day she tied her hair back, strapped on the stab vest and hit the streets was one of the happiest of her life. For the first time ever she felt she belonged. That she mattered. She reveled in the way it changed how she looked and felt—the sexless anonymity of the uniform allied to the security and strength it provided. It was like a disguise, but one that everyone recognized and appreciated. There was a small part of her that longed to be back there, but she was too ambitious and restless to have remained a rookie PC—police constable—for long.
Leaving nostalgia behind, she made herself a cup of tea and headed into the lounge. It was a large, spartan room. Not much in the way of pictures on the walls, no magazines left lying around. Neat and tidy, with everything in its place.
Helen selected a book and started to read. The bookshelves groaned with books. Books on criminal behavior, serial offending, a history of Quantico—all of them well thumbed. She didn’t really do fiction—Helen didn’t believe in happy endings—but she did prize knowledge. As she thumbed through a favorite tome on criminal psychology, she lit a cigarette. She’d tried to quit many times but had always relented, so now she’d given up trying. She could endure the self-censure for the rush it still gave her. Everyone has a dirty habit or two, she told herself.
Suddenly Mark popped up into her head. Had her words had the desired effect or was he in the Unicorn right now, drowning his sorrows? His dirty habit could cost him his job or even his life—she profoundly hoped he could pull himself back from the brink. She didn’t want to lose him.
Helen tried to concentrate on her book, but she read the words without taking in their meaning and soon had to double back to pick up the thread of the logic. She had never been good at being idle—it was one of the reasons she worked so hard. Helen drew harder on her cigarette—she could feel those familiar unpleasant feelings creeping up on her again. Stubbing out her cigarette, she dumped the book on the coffee table, grabbed her gym bag and ran down to her bike. Perhaps she would call in on the incident room en route to the gym—maybe something had turned up. Either way, she would keep herself busy for a couple of hours and that way the darkness would not win.
19
I can’t remember when I first saw my father hit my mother. I don’t really remember things I see anyway. It’s sounds I remember most clearly. The sound of a fist on a face. Of a body crashing into the kitchen table. A skull hitting a wall. Whimpering. Shouting. The endless abuse.
You never become inured to it. But you come to expect it. And each time it happens you get a little bit angrier. And feel a little more helpless.
She never fought back. That’s what pissed me off. She just took it. Like she deserved it. Is that what she really thought? Whatever—if she wasn’t going to fight him, I was. The next time he started on her, I’d get involved.
I didn’t have to wait long. My dad’s best mate Johnno died from a heroin overdose and after the funeral my dad drank for thirty-six hours nonstop. When my mum tried to get him to stop, he head-butted her—broke her bloody nose. I wasn’t having that. So I kicked the stupid tosser in the balls.
He broke my arm, knocked my front teeth out and choked the life out of me with his belt. I really thought he was going to kill me.
A therapist once suggested that this was the root cause of my inability to form meaningful relationships with men. I just nodded, but really I wanted to spit in her eye.
20
Is it possible to die of fear? Peter hadn’t moved in hours.
“Peter?”
Still nothing—hope sprang up in Ben’s heart. Perhaps his heart had given out, overwhelmed by theatrical self-pity. Yes, that’s what it was. And wouldn’t it be great? The perfect solution. Survival of the fittest.
Ben immediately felt black. Wishing someone dead. Pitiful to even think of it, given what he’d been through. And anyway, even if hewasdead, would it count? Would he be released? He hadn’t killed him after all.
Ben’s thoughts strayed back to his abductor. He hadn’t recognized her—she was striking with those long black tresses and plump pink lips—so why had she chosen them? Was this some sick reality TV joke? Would someone jump out soon and reveal the gun to be full of blanks? The tone of her voice on the phone suggested otherwise. She wanted blood.
Ben started to cry. There had been so much bloodshed in his life already that it seemed the ultimate cruelty to end his days like this.
***
Now. Why not? Just to see if Peter is dead or not. He looks dead, so where would be the harm?
“Peter?... Peter?”
