“There are lots of good DCs out there. Choose one of them. I’ll have a full team and Charlie can go to Portsmouth, Bournemouth, wherever. A change of scene might do her good.”
“I know it’s hard for you and I do understand, but Charlie’s got just as much right to be here as you. Work with her—she’s a good policewoman.”
Helen swallowed down her knee-jerk response—getting abducted by Marianne hadn’t been Charlie’s finest hour—and considered her next move. Detective Superintendent Ceri Harwood had replaced the disgraced Michael Whittaker and was already making her presence felt. She was a different sort of station chief to Whittaker—where he had been irascible, aggressive but often good-humored, she was smooth, a born communicator and largely humorless. Tall, elegant and handsome, she was known to be a safe pair of hands and had excelled wherever she’d been stationed. She seemed to be popular, but Helen found it hard to get any purchase on her, not just because they had so little in common—Harwood was married with kids—but because they had no history. Whittaker had been at Southampton a long time and had always regarded Helen as his protégée, helping her to rise through the ranks. There was no such indulgence from Harwood. She generally didn’t stay anywhere too long and was not the kind to have favorites anyway. Her forte was keeping things nice and steady. Helen knew this was why she’d been drafted in here. A disgraced detective superintendent, a DI who’d shot and killed the prime suspect, a DS who’d killed himself to save his colleague from starvation—it was a sorry mess, and predictably the press had gone to town on it. Emilia Garanita at theSouthampton Evening Newshad fed off it for weeks, as had the national press. It was never likely in these circumstances that Helen was going to be promoted into Whittaker’s vacant shoes. She had been allowed to keep her job, which the police commissioner had apparently felt was more than generous. Helen knew all this and she understood it, but it still made her blood boil. These peopleknewwhat she’d had to do. They knew she’d killed her own sister to stop the killings and yet they still treated her like a naughty schoolgirl.
“Let me talk to her at least,” Helen resumed. “If I feel we can work together, then maybe we can fi—”
“Helen, I really do want us to be friends,” Harwood interrupted deftly, “and it’s a little early in our relationship for me to be issuing you an order, so I am going to ask you nicely to step back from this one. I know there are issues that you and Charlie have to resolve—I know that you were close to DS Fuller—but you have to see the bigger picture. The man on the street thinks you and Charlie areheroesfor stopping Marianne. Rightly so, in my view, and I don’t want to do anything to undermine that perception. We could have suspended, transferred or dismissed either of you in the aftermath of the shooting, but that wouldn’t have been right. Nor would it be right now to split up this successful team just when Charlie’s ready to return to work—it would send out completely the wrong message. No, the best thing to do is to welcome Charlie back, applaud you both for what you did together and let you get on with your jobs.”
Helen knew there was no point fighting this one any further. In her artfully worded way, Harwood had reminded Helen just how close shehadcome to dismissal. During the public inquiry that followed the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s initial investigation into Marianne’s shooting, there had been many who’d called for her to be stripped of her badge. For acting alone in her pursuit of Marianne, for deliberately misleading fellow officers, for shooting a suspect without issuing a formal warning—the list went on and on. They could have killed her career if they’d wanted to—and she was surprised and grateful that they hadn’t—but she knew she was only back on probation. Her “charges” were still on file. From now on, she would have to choose her battles carefully.
Helen relented as gracefully as she could and left Harwood’s office. She knew she was being unfair to Charlie, that she should be more supportive, but the truth was that she didn’t want to see Charlie again. It would be like standing in front of Mark Fuller. Or Marianne. And for all her strength over the last few months, Helen couldn’t face that.
•••
Heading back to the Major Incident Team, Helen immediately picked up on the buzz of excitement. It was early morning, but already the place was busier than usual. The team had been waiting for her, and DC Lloyd Fortune hurried over to bring her up to speed.
“You’re needed down at Empress Road, ma’am.”
Helen was already picking up her coat.
“What is it?”
“A murder—called in by one of the local junkies about an hour ago. Uniform have been in, but I think you’d better take a look at it.”
Already Helen’s nerves were jangling. There was something in the DC’s voice that she hadn’t heard since Marianne.
Fear.
8
Eschewing her bike, Helen drove to the scene with DS Tony Bridges. She liked him—he was a diligent, committed copper whom she had come to trust. Whoever replaced Mark as the new DS was always going to have to work hard to win the team round, but Tony had managed it. He’d played it very straight, never ducking the awkwardness of appearing to profit from Mark’s death. His humility and sensitivity had raised him in everyone’s estimation, and he now inhabited the role pretty comfortably.
His relationship with Helen was more complex. Not just because of her feelings for Mark, but because Bridges had been there when Helen had pulled the trigger on her sister. He had seen it all—Marianne collapsing to the floor, Helen’s futile attempts to revive her. Tony had seen his boss at her most naked and vulnerable—and that would always be a source of discomfort between them. On the other hand, Tony’s testimony to the IPCC, during which he had insisted that Helen had no option but to shoot Marianne—had gone a long way toward saving her from demotion or dismissal. Helen had thanked him at the time, but the debt she owed him would never be mentioned again. You had to forget it and move on; otherwise the chain of command would be compromised. For all intents and purposes they now operated as any normal DI and DS would, but in truth they would always have a bond forged in battle.
They sped past the hospital, blue lights flashing, before cutting down a narrow side street and onto the Empress Road industrial estate. It wasn’t hard to see where they were headed. The entrance to the derelict house was taped off and already a gaggle of curious onlookers was idling by it. Helen hustled her way through, warrant card raised, Tony following behind her. A quick word with uniform while they suited up, and then they were in.
Helen took the stairs two at a time. Whatever you’ve been through, you never get inured to violence. Helen didn’t like the looks on the faces of the attending uniforms—as if their eyes had been brutally opened—and she wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
The small front bedroom was busy with the Scene of Crime Team, and Helen immediately asked them to take a break so she and Tony could get a clear view of the victim. You steel yourself on these occasions, swallowing down your disgust in advance; otherwise you’d never be able to take it in, to form valuable first impressions. The victim was male, white, probably in his late forties or early fifties. He was naked and there was no sign of any clothes or possessions. His arms and legs were tied tight to the iron bedstead with what looked like nylon climbing cord and he had some sort of hood over his head. It hadn’t been designed for the purpose—it looked like the kind of felt bag you get with expensive shoes or luxury gifts—but it was there for a reason. Was it to suffocate him? Or conceal his identity? Either way, it was devastatingly clear that this wasn’t what had killed him.
His upper torso had been split up the middle from his belly button to his throat, then forcibly peeled back to reveal his internal organs. Or what remained of them. Helen swallowed hard, as she realized that at least one of his organs had been removed. She turned to Tony—he was ashen and staring at the bloody pit that had once been this man’s chest. The victim had not just been killed; he had been destroyed. Helen fought to suppress a spike of panic. Taking a pen from her pocket, she crouched over the victim, gently lifting the rim of the hood to get a look at the man’s face.
Mercifully it was untouched and looked oddly peaceful, despite the blank eyes that stared hopelessly at the interior of the bag. Helen didn’t recognize him; she removed her pen, letting the fabric fall back into position. Returning her attention to the body, she took in the stained eiderdown, the congealing pool of blood on the floor, the path to the door. The man’s injuries looked recent—less than a day old—so if there were traces of the killer to be found here, they would be fresh. But there was nothing—nothing obvious at least.
Padding round the bed, she stepped over a dead pigeon and walked to the far side of the room. There was one window, which was boarded up. It had been that way for some time by the look of the rusty nails. An abandoned house in a forgotten part of Southampton, with no accessible windows—it was the perfect spot to kill someone. Was he tortured first? That was what was concerning Helen. The victim’s injuries were so unusual, so extensive, that it seemed clear someone was making a point here. Or worse, simply enjoying himself. What had driven them to do this? What hadpossessedthem?
That would have to wait. The most important thing now was to give the victim a name, to let him recover a modicum of his dignity. Helen called Forensics back in. It was time to take the photos and set the investigation in motion.
It was time to find out who this poor man was.
9
It was business as usual in the Matthews household. The porridge bowls had been emptied and cleaned, school bags were lined up in the hall and the twins were putting on their school uniforms. Their mother, Eileen, chided them as she always did—it was amazing how long these boys could spin out getting dressed. When they were little they’d loved the status that their smart school uniforms had bestowed upon them and they’d hurried to put them on, desperate to appear as grown-up and important as their elder sisters. But now that the girls had left home and the twins were teenagers, they viewed the whole thing as an awful drag, delaying the inevitable for as long as possible. If their father was around, they’d snap to it, but when it was just Eileen, they took the mickey—it was only by threatening to stop their pocket money that she got them to do anything these days.
“Five minutes, boys. Five minutes and wemustbe out of the house.”
Time was ticking by. The register would soon be called at Kingswood Secondary, the independent school that the boys attended, and it wouldn’t do to be late. The school was very hot on discipline, sending terse letters to parents they perceived to be tardy or lax. Eileen lived in fear of these missives, despite the fact that she had never received one. As a result, the morning routine was rigidly mapped out, and usually they would have been out of the door by now, but today she was at sixes and sevens. Her chivvying of the boys was more out of habit than conviction this morning.
