Pop Goes the Weasel (25 page)

The car slipped quietly along the street, shadowing her. Charlie had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed it at first. But there was no doubt that she was being followed. The car was keeping its distance but also keeping pace – did they want to know where she was going or were they just waiting for the right moment to pounce?

Suddenly the car sped up, roaring past her before mounting the pavement and coming to an abrupt halt. Now the door swung open. Charlie’s hand immediately reached for her baton.

‘Have you missed me?’

Sandra McEwan, aka Lady Macbeth. An unwelcome reminder of past mistakes.

‘I’ll take that as a “yes”. Sometimes it’s so hard to put your feelings into words, isn’t it? Oh, excuse the amateur dramatics,’ McEwan continued, nodding to the car slewed across the pavement. ‘Sometimes the boy gets overexcited.’

‘Get it off the pavement now and be on your way.’

‘By all means,’ McEwan replied, nodding at her lover to move the car. ‘Though I was rather hoping you’d come with us.’

‘Dogging’s
not really my thing, Sandra. We’ll have to take a rain check.’

‘Very funny, Constable. Or is it Sergeant these days?’

Charlie said nothing, refusing to give her the satisfaction.

‘Either way, I would have thought you’d be interested in meeting the lowlife who killed Alexia Louszko.’

As she spoke, she opened the back door of the car and gestured to the empty interior.

‘I’ll happily give you a ride, if you can spare the time?’

Charlie acquiesced and before long they were speeding out of the city. Charlie had no fears for her own safety – Sandra McEwan was too smart to target coppers and she certainly wouldn’t abduct them on a busy street full of witnesses – but nevertheless Charlie wondered what game they were playing. She questioned Sandra en route, but her enquiries were met with stony silence. Clearly they were going to have to play it Sandra’s way today.

The car rattle-bumped to a stop on a desolate patch of wasteland overlooking Southampton Water. It had been bought by a foreign property company, but they had run into planning trouble and two years on the ground remained unbroken. It had since become a mecca for fly-tippers and was now liberally decorated with building waste, burnt-out cars and chemical drums.

Sandra opened the door and gestured Charlie out. Irritated, Charlie acquiesced.

‘Where
is he then?’

‘Over there.’

Sandra pointed to a burnt-out Vauxhall not fifty yards away.

‘Shall we?’

Charlie hurried towards the vehicle. She now knew exactly what she would find and wanted to get it over with. Sure enough, nestled in the boot of the car was the brutalized body of a young man – one of the Campbells’ thugs no doubt.

‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ Sandra said, without an ounce of pity in her voice. ‘Some kids found him like this and told me. My first thought was to call the police.’

‘I’m sure.’

The man was lying in exactly the same position as Alexia had been when she was found. His face had been caved in and his hands and feet removed in identical fashion too. This was tit-for-tat killing, a message to the Campbells that their aggression would be met head on. An eye for an eye.

‘Your SOC team will find a hammer in his inside coat pocket. Word on the street is that it’s the hammer that killed Alexia. I’m sure your forensics will confirm that for you. Sad to see a man like that, but then perhaps there’s a natural justice in it, eh?’

Charlie snorted and shook her head in disbelief. She had no doubt that McEwan would have been present
when the man was tortured and killed, conducting operations with gleeful malice.

‘I’d say that was case closed, wouldn’t you?’

Smiling, she headed back to her car, leaving Charlie alone with a faceless corpse for company and a very bitter taste in her mouth.

Helen was on her way back to Southampton Central when she got the call. She could feel her phone buzzing and swerved her bike into a bus lane in order to answer it. She had expected it to be Charlie with an update. For a moment she even thought it might be news of a positive sighting of Lyra. But it was Robert.

She had been summoned back to Southampton Central by Harwood, but she didn’t hesitate now, speeding round the ring road, then north towards Aldershot. Harwood could wait. In less than hour, she was walking through the atrium of Wellington Avenue police station. She had met a good handful of the CID officers based here at various Hampshire Police conferences and one of them – DI Amanda Hopkins – greeted her now.

‘He’s holed up in interview room one. We offered him a brief or to call his mum but … well, he won’t speak to anyone but you.’

It was said in a friendly manner but was an appeal for information.

‘I’m a friend of the family.’

‘The Stonehills?’

‘Yup,’ Helen lied. ‘What sort of state is he in?’

‘Shaken
up. A few superficial injuries but he’s basically ok. I’ve got the other two in cells. We’ve already interviewed them – they are all blaming each other, so …’

‘I’ll see what I can get out of him. Thanks, Amanda.’

Robert was slumped on a plastic chair. He looked in a bad way – as if he had slightly imploded – with numerous scratches on his face. His right arm was in a sling. He stirred on seeing Helen, sitting up straight.

‘I got this for you,’ Helen said, placing a can of Pepsi on the table. ‘Shall I open it?’

He nodded, so Helen obliged. Grabbing it with his good hand, Robert drank it down in one go. His hand shook as he did so.

‘So are you going to tell me what happened?’

He nodded, but said nothing.

‘I can try and help you,’ Helen continued, ‘but I need to know –’

‘They jumped me.’

‘Who?’

‘Davey. And Mark.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wouldn’t run with them any more.’

‘You told them you weren’t interested.’

‘They said I was yellow. They thought I was going to grass on them.’

‘Were you?’

‘No. I just wanted out.’

‘So
what happened?’

‘I told them to do without me. That I wanted to be left alone. They weren’t happy. They left, but then they came back. Threatening me. Telling me they’d cut me.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I fought back. I wasn’t going to be pushed around.’

‘What with?’

There was a long pause, then:

‘Knife.’

‘Sorry?’

‘A knife. I keep one on me –’

‘For God’s sake, Robert. That’s how you get killed.’

‘Saved my life tonight though, didn’t it?’ he spat back, unrepentant.

‘Maybe.’

He lapsed into silence.

‘So let me get this straight. They attacked you first.’

‘For sure.’

‘And you fought back?’

He nodded again.

‘Did you injure them?’

‘Got Davey a bit on the arm. Nothing bad.’

‘Ok. Well, we can probably make that one play, but you’re going to have to cough to carrying the knife. Nothing to be done about that. I can probably get you out of here and back home, if I promise to stand for you.’

Robert looked up, surprised.

‘But I’m going to need you to promise me that you
won’t carry again. You get caught with a knife a second time and I won’t be able to help you.’

‘Course.’

‘Do we have a deal?’

He nodded.

‘Right, let me talk to them. We’ll leave Davey to stew for a bit, shall we?’ Helen replied, a smile creeping through. To her surprise, Robert smiled back, the first time she’d ever seen him do so.

She was nearly at the door when he spoke.

‘Why are you doing this?’

Helen paused. She considered her answer.

‘Because I want to help you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you deserve better than this.’

‘Why? You’re a copper. I’m a thief. You should bang me up.’

Helen hesitated. Her hand was on the door handle. Would it be safer to turn it and go? Say nothing?

‘Are you my mother?’

The question hit her like a sledgehammer. It was unexpected, painful and rendered her speechless.

‘My real mother, I mean?’

Helen took a breath.

‘No, no, I’m not. But I knew her.’

He was looking at her intently.

‘I’ve never met anyone who knew her before.’

Helen was glad she wasn’t looking at him. Tears had
suddenly sprung to her eyes. How much of his life had he spent wondering about his birth mother?

‘How did you know her? Were you a friend or … ?’

Helen hesitated. Then:

‘I’m her sister.’

Robert said nothing for a second, stunned by Helen’s confession.

‘You’re … you’re my aunt?’

‘Yes, I am.’

Another long silence as Robert took this in.

‘Why didn’t you come and see me sooner?’

His question cut like a knife.

‘I couldn’t. And I wouldn’t have been welcome. Your parents had carved out a good life for you – they wouldn’t have wanted me butting in, raking up old ground.’

‘I don’t have anything of my mother. I know she died when I was just a baby, but …’

He shrugged. He knew virtually nothing of Marianne and what he did know was a lie. Maybe it was better to keep it that way.

‘Well, maybe if we meet again, I can tell you more about her. I’d like to. Her life wasn’t always happy but you were the best thing in it.’

Suddenly the boy was crying. Years of questions, years of feeling incomplete, catching up with him. Helen was fighting tears too, but fortunately Robert had dropped his head, so her distress went unnoticed.

‘I’d like that,’ he said through tears.

‘Good,’
Helen replied, recovering her composure. ‘Let’s keep it between us for now. Until we know each other a little better, eh?’

Robert nodded, rubbing his eyes with his hands.

‘This isn’t the end, Robert. It’s the beginning.’

Thirty minutes later, Robert was in a cab heading home. Helen watched the cab go, then climbed on her bike. Despite the many problems that lay ahead, despite the many dark forces swirling around her, Helen felt exhilarated. Finally, she was beginning to atone.

In the aftermath of Marianne’s death, Helen had devoured every aspect of her sister’s life. Many would have buried the experience away, but Helen had wanted to climb inside Marianne’s mind, heart and soul. She wanted to fill in the gaps, find out exactly what had happened to her sister in prison and beyond. Find out if there was any truth in Marianne’s accusation that
she
was to blame for all those deaths.

So she had dredged up every document that had ever been written for or about her sister and on page three of Marianne’s custody file she stumbled upon the bombshell that had shaken Helen’s world – a sign that her sister still had the power to hurt her from beyond the grave. Helen was only thirteen at the time of Marianne’s arrest and she had been spirited away to a care home straight after her parents’ murder. She hadn’t attended her sister’s trial in person – her testimony had been pre-recorded – and she
was only told the verdict, nothing more. She hadn’t seen her sister’s swollen belly and Hampshire Social Services had kept mum about it, so it was only when skimming the medical assessment on her arrest sheet, expecting nothing more than the familiar bruises and scars, that Helen had discovered her sister was pregnant when arrested. Five months pregnant. Later DNA tests would prove that Marianne’s dad – the man she had murdered in cold blood – was the child’s father.

The baby had been taken away from Marianne minutes after delivery. Even now, after everything that had happened, that image still brought tears to Helen’s eyes. Her sister cuffed to a hospital bed, her baby forcibly taken from her after eighteen hours of labour. Did she fight them? Did she have the strength to resist? Helen knew instinctively that she would have. Despite the brutality of its conception, Marianne would have cared for that baby. She would have loved it fiercely, feeding off its innocence, but, of course, she was never given the chance. She was a killer, who received no sympathy from her captors. There was no humanity in the process, just judgement and retribution.

The baby had vanished into the care system and then to fostering, but Helen had diligently pursued Baby K through the reams of paper and bureaucracy until she’d traced him. He’d been adopted by a childless Jewish couple in Aldershot – who’d named him Robert Stonehill – and he was doing fine. He was rebellious,
lippy, frustrating – with scant qualifications to show for his years of schooling – but he was ok. He had a job, a solid home and two loving parents. In spite of the loveless nature of his birth, he had grown up nurtured and loved.

Robert had dodged his inheritance. And Helen knew that because of that she should have left him well alone. But her curiosity wouldn’t let her. She had attended Marianne’s funeral by herself, her killer and sole mourner, only to discover that she was not alone after all. Someone else had escaped the wreckage. So for Marianne’s sake, as much as her own, she would keep an eye on Robert. If she could help him in any way, she would.

Helen turned the ignition of her bike, revved the engine and roared off down the street. She was so caught up in the moment, so relieved, that for once she didn’t check her mirrors. Had she done so she would have realized that the same car that had followed her all the way from Southampton was now following her back.