Mercy Killing (6 page)

‘Oh Dave,’ she said. ‘Stupid of me. Of course it’s you. I’m glad you’re with him. I can’t make head nor tail of what he’s on about. What’s
happened?’

‘Your brother’s very upset about all you’ve been going through, Mills, that’s all.’

‘Oh, he told you?’ She missed the absence of a cord on the end of the phone to twirl around her fingers. Something to occupy her spare hand would have distracted her from the
embarrassment of someone else now knowing her business. Worst of all was that that someone was David Lyle, her brother’s best friend, a man she had spent years nurturing a crush on until she
met Clive.

‘Is there anyone who doesn’t know about the fool I’ve made of myself and more importantly the danger I’ve put my children in?’

She heard him let out a slow breath.

‘Do you want me to get a taxi over?’ he asked. ‘We’ve both been drinking so I can’t drive. I can be there in about twenty minutes.’

She thought of Dave, tall, muscular, reliable, handsome. There was little doubt that the worst thing she could do right now was to ask a man to her house so late on a Friday night. She
didn’t like the idea of being alone again after the companionship she’d shared with Albie, but look how badly that had gone. If nothing else, Millie recognized the peril of feeling more
vulnerable and desperate than she ever had. She couldn’t afford to make another mistake.

Albie was the first man to show any interest in her after her husband’s death, and in truth, the first man she had looked at twice. Even now, she wasn’t entirely sure why she had
given Albie so much as a second look. Clive had been everything that Albie wasn’t.

Perhaps that was the reason, or maybe it was because he’d seemed so unlikely to be a threat to her or to leave her for someone else. She couldn’t bear the thought of more heartache.
He might even have been grateful that a younger woman was paying him attention, especially one who already had a family and responsibilities. She saw so clearly now that this was why he’d
picked her out of the crowd – she had children.

‘I think you should stay and look after Ian,’ Millie answered. ‘He sounds as though he’s in no fit state to be left alone.’

She bit her lip, desperate for company, but the need to keep her children safer than she had so far managed outweighed her own desire for someone to talk to.

‘Well, if you’re sure?’ he said, oblivious to the fact that she was shaking her head at the answer she was about to give.

‘Positive. Stay with Ian, but, Dave—’

‘What is it?’

‘He hasn’t gone and done anything stupid, has he?’

‘Don’t worry about him. Where he goes, I go. The two of us will look after you, Sian and Max. Get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.’

She listened to the sound of the disconnected tone and gazed at the phone’s display in the gloom.

In some ways, it would have been better if Dave hadn’t been with her brother. Ian often did impetuous and thoughtless things but they were usually on a small scale. The only reason he had
taken off to Crete was because Dave had booked him the flight and driven him to the airport. It had always been the same throughout their childhood: every ridiculous and reckless thing the two of
them had ever undertaken had Dave behind it.

The worst worry of all was that, on the day Millie married Clive, Dave had told her that he would always look out for her and be there if she needed him. At the time, it had given her a tiny
thrill to know that someone who had meant so much to her was on her side. He had repeated his promise to her on the day that Clive had died, too.

His words were so vivid that even now she could remember them.

‘If anyone ever harms you, I’ll come for them.’

Even as Harry Powell slowed his car and turned off the headlights, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. It was one thing to go out on enquiries – usually met by
whispers of, ‘Doesn’t he know he’s the DI and supposed to stay indoors?’ – but it was another to take himself off in the middle of the night and meet up with people
who didn’t always stay on the right side of the law.

He sat in his car, engine idling, and wondered, not for the first time, if the back of an out-of-town industrial estate was really the best place for him to meet anyone, let alone two people he
despised.

A couple of minutes went by until he saw car headlights bouncing their way along the rutted, potholed tarmac of the track that led from the main road to the rear of the wholesaler’s.

He fought the urge to drive away but knew that the enquiry was a necessary evil. He would do almost anything to detect a murder.

This crossed a line.

The car pulled up next to him. As he looked across to his right, he was aware of a movement to his left. A dark figure appeared at the passenger window and tugged at the door handle. Harry had
had the foresight to lock the doors. He also had his personal protective equipment, complete with PAVA spray and ASP, under his seat. He glanced across at the face at the window, hesitating for
only a second before reaching for the button to let the glass drop a few centimetres so he could be heard by the crouching individual, desperate to be let inside his car.

‘Didn’t have you down for the nervous type, Harry,’ said the man, mouth now to the gap between the pane and door frame.

‘You’re such a slippery bastard, Greg, I wasn’t sure if I was about to be mugged.’

‘Are you going to let me in?’

Harry jerked his thumb in the direction of the VW Golf. ‘What about her? I assume it’s your trusty sidekick Martha Lipton.’

‘She’ll join us in a second. That’s if you ever open the door.’

Against his better judgement, Harry unlocked the doors and watched Greg Webster as he nodded towards the car and gave a thumbs-up to the driver.

He waited for him to get inside, and tried not to think of his acceptance of Webster’s company, or the idea of Martha Lipton climbing onto the back seat. He was grateful he’d brought
a police car and not his own. It would be bad enough being in the same space as the two of them, never mind having to drive his family around on the same upholstery.

‘Well then,’ said Greg. ‘It’s been a while.’

Harry nodded slowly, reminding himself that he might need the help of these two and he was the one who’d initiated the contact.

He watched the woman as she got out of the car, the interior light briefly showing off her curves. Her tight leggings and sky-blue jumper were snug against her slim body. The fact that Martha
was one of the most attractive women he had ever set eyes on made the situation all the more miserable. Harry gave an involuntary shudder of shame.

‘You getting a chill there, old man?’ laughed Greg.

‘It’s the cold air you two bring with you.’ He kept his eyes facing in front as he heard the sound of the car door behind him opening and its soft click shut.

He felt a hand touch him on the left shoulder, out of the corner of his eye glimpsed long painted fingernails and the sparkle of a diamond ring.

‘Good to see you, Harry,’ said Martha.

The fingers squeezed his shoulder. He kept his breathing calm, fought the urge to get out of the car and walk away from what he was about to do.

‘Martha.’ He nodded, confident of his attempt at measured congeniality.

She removed her hand and snuggled back against the seat. ‘Before Greg got your call, I said to him I knew it wouldn’t be long before our old friend, Detective Inspector Powell, was
on the blower, wanting a favour and to know everything we know about Albert Woodville.’

Harry’s hand went up to the rear-view mirror. He adjusted it so he could watch her face, unlined, beautiful, cold. ‘I didn’t say anything about Albert Woodville. I just said I
wanted to meet up.’

She laughed and looked out of the window into the gloom. ‘Except it was on the news that a man was murdered, the TV showed the block of flats where it happened, and we know that Woodville
was a paedophile, on the register, visited regularly by your lot.’

‘You’d know all about that,’ said Harry.

She shot forward in her seat, an action so quick her breath was on the side of his face before he could react.

‘Don’t fucking come it, Harry. You want our help or not?’

It was Greg’s turn to speak up. ‘It was you who contacted us. I never thought I’d see the day that you sought out the Volunteer Army.’

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘The Volunteer Army. That’s what you’re calling yourselves, is it? Aren’t you worried that people will confuse you with the
Salvation Army and wonder where the brass band is at Christmas?’

‘Your piss-taking is all very well,’ said Martha, ‘but we’ve got better places to be on a Friday night than sitting here in a police car at the back of Wholesale King,
being asked to grass up a murderer.’

The sound of the door opening behind him forced Harry to turn round and face Martha straight on. She was not only the brightest of the pair by far, but for reasons that he had never fully
grasped, she was the one in charge. She might have been the one who had driven them to the meeting point, but it had been Greg who had been sent out into the cold November night to sneak around the
industrial estate on foot, creeping through the shadows to appear at Harry’s window as her car pulled up, checking out the enemy in the dead of night.

One day, he would find out exactly what hold she had over Greg. The important thing for now was that Harry had something on Martha, and it was probably the only reason they were all huddled
inside the ageing Skoda with over one hundred thousand miles on the clock.

‘Close the door, Martha,’ Harry said. ‘This is important. If someone’s going around killing paedophiles, it impacts on you too.’

They stared at each other for several seconds, Harry safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t get out of the car and drive off into the night, all the while willing her to tell him what she
knew.

‘OK,’ she said.

He let out a breath.

‘Despite your mickey taking,’ she said as he held up his hands, ‘we’re trying to make people feel as safe as they can about living with sex offenders around them, and we
want to work with the police.’

Martha gripped the back of the headrest of Harry’s seat. ‘We have meetings, open meetings, so anyone can see what it is we’re doing. We have a website and a newsletter, but
most of all, when we find someone online grooming children, we turn them in to the police. We’re not taking the law into our own hands, you know that. We’re trying to do our bit to
help.’

He mulled this over for a moment before he said, ‘You, Martha, I get why, in a twisted way, why you do it. What I don’t understand is your involvement, Greg.’

Harry turned to Greg as he spoke, catching him unawares. The look of complete adoration on his acne-marked face as he gazed at his fellow vigilante gave Harry some sort of insight into how
Martha Lipton had the ability to lead grown men astray.

‘Because it’s the right thing to do,’ said Greg, not taking his eyes off her.

‘Greg,’ she said, ‘why don’t you wait in our car for me?’

He opened his mouth to say something. Martha made a pre-emptive strike by thrusting the car keys at him.

He took them, glared at them for a moment and then threw a similar look in Harry’s direction before he got out of the police car and into the driver’s seat of the VW Golf.

‘Nice lad,’ said Harry when Greg was out of earshot. ‘You’ve got him well trained.’

‘You too,’ she replied. ‘Thought you might tell him then for a moment.’

‘What would be the fun in that? It wouldn’t give me any leverage, would it?’

‘No,’ she said, head on one side, ‘although it would move us off your area. I wouldn’t be able to stay in the gorgeous seaside town of East Rise if Greg knew the truth. I
think that you like having me around.’

‘I’m talking to you now simply because you may be able to help me, as much as it grieves me to say it. You have the ear of the part of the community I can’t always get to, and
as things currently stand, they trust you.’

She chewed her bottom lip.

‘I’ll pass back to you what I find out,’ she said, ‘on the condition that no one knows about my past.’

Harry sensed this was the end of the conversation for the time being, confirmed by Martha’s hand pushing open the door. A cold gust of air invaded the car. Up until this point, Harry
hadn’t noticed the raindrops hitting the window.

‘Do I have your guarantee on that?’ she said, one foot on the tarmac, the other still inside the Skoda.

‘Of course you do. And you’re right: as things currently stand, your band of merry men trust you. They find out the truth, we all lose.’

‘Oh great,’ said DC Tom Delayhoyde. ‘To finish our very long night at work off nicely, it’s teeming down.’

Sophia, sitting beside him in the driver’s seat of the unmarked Skoda, zipped up her jacket and peered through the windscreen.

‘My favourite,’ she said, ‘house-to-house enquiries in the rain, and only a stone’s throw away from the home of a murdered paedophile.’

She switched the engine off and scrambled behind her for her handbag and worn leather file.

No sooner had she turned off the wipers than the inside glass began to mist as the rain pelted down on the car.

‘Someone’s already calling at the flats in Pleasure Lane,’ said Tom. ‘That’s typical of my luck to get the houses with the big driveways along from the bloody crime
scene.’

‘Stop moaning,’ she said as she leafed through her paperwork to pluck a handful of forms and place them on top of all the others within the file.

‘I’ve got the house-to-house forms and the questionnaires ready so you don’t have to worry that your hair’ll get wet and make all that gel run down from your boyband
foppish hair to your pretty choirboy face and get in your eyes.’

‘And you won’t have to worry that the rain will wash out the dye in yours and show all of your grey.’

She turned sideways to face him as fully as the seats would allow.

‘Tom, can I ask you something?’

‘Yeah, Soph. At your age, I think you’re a natural brunette. Honest.’