“So you kill me—then what? The whole of the force is out looking for you. They know your name, what you look like. They know you have a baby. Swampy downstairs knows I’m here, knows whoyouare, so you can’t stay. What are you going to do—go on the run with a baby?”
“She’s not coming with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what’ll happen to me, but it ends here for her. She’s been through enough.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Why do you think I got the fucking formula?” Ella shouted back. “I’ve got the pills. I was going to give them to her today. It could all have been so... right.”
“She’s just a tiny baby. For God’s sake, Ella, you’re better than that.”
“Stop saying my name. Ella isdead. The kid is going to join her and if I have to kill you to get to her, I bloody will.”
She took a step closer. She was only a foot away from Helen now. Helen tensed, expecting her to strike at any moment. Then:
“Do it then. I’ll make it easy for you.”
Helen bent down, placing Amelia on the bed.
“If you really want to kill her, I’ll make it easy for you. There she is. Do it.”
Surprised, Ella looked from Helen to her baby and then back again. The baby kicked out on the bed and—freed from Helen’s warm embrace—started to cry.
“GO ON!” Helen shouted suddenly.
Still Ella hesitated. Helen had been coiled tight, ready to spring if Ella made the slightest move toward the baby, but she didn’t. And in that moment, Helen knew she had an opportunity.
“Ella, listen to me. I know, okay? I know that you are in hell, that you feel the world is against you, that it’s full of vicious, violent men who want to hurt you. And you’re right. It is.”
Ella eyed her suspiciously, unsure if this was a trick. Helen took a deep breath and continued:
“I was raped when I was a kid. More than once. I was sixteen, trying to find my way out of care, but I made bad choices. And I paid. I’m still paying. So I know where you are right now. I know you believe there is no way back, but thereis.”
Ella paused, staring intently at Helen.
“You’re making shit up.”
“Would you look at me?” Helen replied, suddenly angry. “My bloody hands are shaking... I’ve never told a soul about this, not a single soul. Sodon’taccuse me of lying.”
Ella didn’t break her stare. Her hand gripped the knife tightly.
“I can’t pretend to know you,” Helen continued. “I don’t know what your dad did to you, what those men did to you, but Iknowthis doesn’t have to be the end. You can get through this. Whatever you’ve done, you did for a reason and when Amelia is older she will want you. She willneedyou. Please don’t abandon her, Ella, I beg you.”
For the first time, Ella dropped her gaze to her baby.
“I know you have goodness inside you. I know you can do the right thing by your little girl. So please, let me help you. For her sake.”
Helen reached out her hand. She knew in that moment that it all came down to this. Her last shot at redemption. Her final chance to save Ella.
115
They were floundering in the dark—hapless figures scrabbling for a foothold as the ground kept giving way beneath them. Racing back to the station, Charlie had taken the lead. Harwood might be the boss, but she had the operational experience and she refused to trust anyone else with this—there was too much at stake. But they were getting nowhere.
McAndrew had read Helen’s files twice already but had unearthed no clues as to Ella’s whereabouts. They had tried triangulating Helen’s mobile phone signal, only to find that her phone was turned off. It had last been used six hours ago, when she was at the nick, so would be no use to them now. Traffic cameras had picked Helen’s bike up speeding north, but then lost her as she left the city center. Where the hell was she? What had she seen that no one else had?
Charlie marched along the corridor, then down the stairs and out of the station. The team would continue to do their work as directed, but Charlie felt she needed to be out doing something. And as she neared her car, she slowed. A thought was forming, a past conversation coming back to her. Slowly an idea took hold and, electrified, she jumped in the car and roared off. Suddenly she knew exactly where to go.
