Pop Goes the Weasel (35 page)

It was past ten o’clock. They should both have left for work hours ago. But instead they lay there together, happy and warm in a post-coital glow, neither moving a muscle. After all the emotion and heartache of the last few hours it felt so good just to be quiet and still.

After Steve had delivered his ultimatum, Charlie’s initial instinct had been to kick back at him. She hated being boxed into a corner, forced to choose between being a mother or a copper. But even as she accused him of moving the goalposts, of breaking his word, she knew that the fight was going out of her. If it really was down to a choice of the job or him, then Steve would win every time. Charlie loved being a policewoman – it was all she’d ever wanted to be and she had paid a heavy price for that ambition. But she couldn’t imagine life without Steve and he was right. There
was
a hole in their life, the indelible shape of the baby Charlie had lost during her incarceration.

They had circled each other for hours, but eventually Charlie promised to leave her job. At that point Steve had cried. Charlie too. Before long they had ended up in bed, making love with a passion and urgency that surprised them both. They had eschewed contraception, a silent
acknowledgement that things had changed and there was no way back.

It felt so nice, so decadent, to be lying here with him. She had turned her phone off and pushed away thoughts of Helen and the team, who were no doubt wondering where she was. She would call Helen later and explain.

If she felt a spasm of guilt at the thought, more than a spasm, Charlie ignored it. She had made her decision.

Helen was sure Eileen Matthews would slam the door in her face, but for once luck was on her side. One of the twins answered the door and, on seeing Helen’s warrant card, let her straight in. As he ran upstairs to fetch his mother, Helen ran a rule over the living room. Everything she saw confirmed her suspicions.

Eileen Matthews marched into the room. She clearly had a speech prepared, but Helen wasn’t in the mood to be lectured.

‘Where’s Ella?’ Helen barked, nodding at the framed photos on the living room walls.

‘I’m sorry?’ Eileen retorted.

‘I see photos of you and Alan. Lots of photos of the twins. And Carrie – at her confirmation, her wedding, holding your first grandchild. But I don’t see
any
photos of Ella. You and your husband were very big on family. So I’ll ask you again – where’s Ella?’

It was as if she had just punched Eileen in the face. She was temporarily robbed of speech, her breathing short and unsteady. For a moment, Helen thought she might faint, but then finally she replied:

‘She’s dead.’

‘When?’ barked Helen, incredulous.

Another long pause. Then:

‘She’s dead to us.’

Helen shook her head, suddenly furious with this foolish, bigoted woman.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t have to answer these quest—’

‘You do and if you don’t start talking right now, I am going to drag you out of this house in cuffs. In front of your boys, in front your neighbours –’

‘Why are you doing this to us? Why are you making –’

‘Because I think Ella killed your husband.’

Eileen blinked back at Helen twice, then slowly collapsed onto the sofa. In that moment Helen knew that whatever else she’d concealed, Eileen had never even considered that her daughter might be involved in Alan’s murder.

‘I didn’t … is she even in Southampton?’ Eileen said eventually.

‘We believe she’s living in the Portswood area.’

Eileen nodded, though how much she was taking in was hard to say. A long, heavy silence followed, which was suddenly and inopportunely broken by the sound of Helen’s mobile ringing. Harwood. Helen rejected the call, then turned her phone off, before seating herself on the sofa next to Eileen.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Eileen said nothing, still in shock.

‘We can’t bring Alan back. But we can stop others dying. You can do that, Eileen, if you talk to me now.’

‘She was always the bad seed.’

Helen flinched at the phrase but said nothing.

‘She was a sweet girl when she was young, but when she was a teenager, she changed. She wouldn’t listen. Not to me. Not even to her father. She was rebellious, destructive, violent.’

‘Violent to whom?’

‘To her sister, her brothers, kids who were smaller than her.’

‘So what did you do about it?’

Silence.

‘What happened to her after these incidents?’ Helen continued.

‘She was disciplined.’

‘By whom?’

‘By Alan, of course,’ she replied, as if confused by the question.

‘Why not you?’

‘Because he’s my husband. The head of the family. I am his helpmeet and I support him in any way I can, but it’s his duty to correct us when we require it.’

‘ “Us”? He disciplined you too?’

‘Of course.’

‘Of course?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Eileen replied defiantly. ‘I know the modern world frowns on physical punishment but we and
the other members of our church have always believed that beatings are necessary if people are to learn –’

‘And is that what Ella received – beatings?’

‘To begin with. But she
wouldn’t
learn. When she was a teenager she would get into fights, go with boys, take drink –’

‘And what happened to her then?’

‘Then Alan disciplined her more firmly.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning he hit her. With my blessing. And if she still refused to be contrite, Alan took her down to the cellar.’

‘And then?’

‘He’d make sure she learned her lesson.’

Helen shook her head, stunned by what she was hearing.

‘You may shake your head,’ Eileen suddenly erupted, ‘but I have three healthy, obedient children who know right from wrong,
because
of their upbringing. Because we brought them up to respect their father and through him –’

‘Did Alan enjoy punishing his children?’

‘He never shied away from his duty.’

‘Answer the fucking question.’

Eileen paused, stunned by Helen’s sudden outburst.

‘Did your husband enjoy punishing his children?’

‘He never complained about having to do it.’

‘And did he enjoy beating you?’

‘I don’t know. It wasn’t about “enjoyment” –’

‘Did he ever go too far? With you?’

‘I … don’t –’

‘Was there a time when you asked him to stop and he wouldn’t?’

Eileen hung her head and said nothing.

‘Show me the cellar.’

Eileen resisted at first, but the fight was going out of her, and a couple of minutes later she and Helen were standing in the freezing-cold room. It was desolate and dark, four walls of rough brick, almost entirely empty except for a stacking chair in the middle and a locked plastic crate in the corner. Helen shivered, but it wasn’t the cold making her shake.

‘What’s the chair for?’

Eileen hesitated and then said:

‘Alan would secure Ella to the chair.’

‘How?’

‘With handcuffs, round her ankles and her wrists. Then he’d use a whip or a chain from the box.’

‘Beat some sense into her?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Sometimes?’

‘You have to understand what she was like. She wouldn’t obey him. Wouldn’t listen. So
sometimes
he had to use other methods as well.’

‘Such as?’

Eileen thought for a moment.

‘It would depend on what she’d done. If she’d blasphemed, then he would make her eat excrement. If she had stolen, he would fill her mouth with coins and make her swallow them. If she’d been with boys, he … he would beat her between her legs to make sure she wouldn’t do it again –’

‘He tortured her?’ Helen roared.

‘He corrected her,’ Eileen retorted. ‘You don’t understand, she was wild. Ungovernable.’

‘She was
traumatized
. Traumatized by your bully of a husband. Why didn’t you intervene, for God’s sake?’

Eileen could no longer look Helen in the eye. For all her conviction, without her husband present, nothing seemed certain any more. Helen continued in a more emollient tone:

‘Why her and not the others?’

‘Because they did as they were asked.’

‘Ella – how old was she when she got married?’

‘Sixteen. She finished her schooling, then married a good man.’

‘From the church?’

Eileen nodded again.

‘How old was her husband? When they married?’ Helen continued.

‘Forty-two.’

Eileen suddenly looked up, as if searching for Helen’s disapproval.

‘Young girls need discipline –’

‘So you said,’ Helen interrupted firmly.

A heavy silence followed. This room had been so full of misery, so full of vitriol, hatred and abuse. How powerless must the young girl have felt down here alone with her bully of a father, whilst he abused her physically and verbally. It conjured up images of her own childhood long since buried, which Helen pushed away forcefully now.

The twins were getting restless, calling down to their mother. Eileen turned to go, but Helen caught her arm, stopping her in her tracks.

‘Why did she leave?’

‘Because she was lost.’

‘Because she wouldn’t give up school and marry a guy old enough to be her father?’

Eileen shrugged, resentful now of Helen’s presence and the judgement it brought.

‘She wanted to study, didn’t she? She wanted to be a doctor. In spite of everything that had happened to her, she wanted to help people?’

‘It was the school’s fault. They put ideas in girls’ heads. We knew it would end in tears and it did.’

‘What do you mean?’ Helen responded.

‘She walked out on us. Disobeyed her father, said she would find her own ways to fund her “studies”. We all knew what that meant.’

There was almost a bitter glee in Eileen’s voice now.

‘What happened to her?’

‘She took to prostitution. Took money from strangers who …’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because she told us. When she came home with a bastard child in her belly.’

Helen breathed out, the full tragedy of Ella’s life slowly taking shape in front of her.

‘Whose was it?’

‘She didn’t know,’ Eileen replied, but now the glee had vanished from her voice.

‘Why not?’

‘She … she had got herself into trouble. A group of men who’d … who’d tricked her into going to their flat.’

‘And raped her?’

Suddenly Eileen was crying, her head hanging low, her shoulders shaking gently. For all the dogma, perhaps there was still a mother in there somewhere.

‘Eileen?’

‘Yes. They … they kept her there for two days.’

Helen closed her eyes. She wanted to flee from the horror of Ella’s ordeal but the images forced themselves into her brain.

‘Afterwards they said they’d slit her throat if she told anyone,’ Eileen continued, falteringly.

‘And she came home when she discovered she was pregnant?’

Eileen nodded.

‘And what happened?’

‘Alan turned her away. What else could he do?’

She looked up imploringly, as if begging Helen to understand. Helen wanted to shout and scream at her, but swallowed down her rage.

‘When was this?’

‘Six months ago.’

‘And after that she was airbrushed out of the family?’

Eileen nodded.

‘Before that, Alan had told people she was working overseas … for a medical charity. But afterwards, he told everyone she was dead.’

‘And the photos?’ Helen asked, hoping against hope for a recent picture of their killer.

Eileen paused, before once more looking up at Helen with tears in her eyes.

‘He burnt every single one.’

Helen sprinted to her bike, switching her phone back on as she ran. Seven voicemail messages. They would all be from Harwood but Helen didn’t have time for that now. She dialled Sanderson instead.

It rang and rang. Then:

‘Hello?’

‘Sanderson, it’s me. Can you talk?’

There was a momentary pause, then:

‘Oh hi, Mum, give me
one
second.’

Clever girl. There was a longer pause, then the sound of the fire door swinging open and shut.

‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ Sanderson resumed in a hushed voice. ‘Harwood is going nuts looking for you.’

‘I know and I feel bad asking for one more favour, but … I need you to find Carrie Matthews. Find out what she knows about her sister’s movements and see if you can get a photo from her. If she hasn’t got one, try the University. Alan Matthews destroyed all their photos of her after she turned up pregnant following a gang rape. Ella Matthews is our killer – I’m a hundred per cent
certain of that. The priority for you and the team now must be to bring her in before she kills again.’

‘On it. I’ll call you when I have news.’

Climbing the stairs to Jake’s flat, Helen felt a mixture of panic and relief. Relief at seeing him, but also anxiety at the darkness rising within her. Strong as she was there were always moments when it took her. The world was full of viciousness and sometimes she was thrust right back to a time when
she
was the world’s punch bag, when she and her sister had taken the sins of the world upon their shoulders. She was jumpy now, unable to contain the panic spiking inside her, the feeling that any minute, she would be back there in that room.

Jake wanted to hold her, but she wouldn’t let him. She chained herself up without being asked and told him to get on with it. She knew she was being rude and aggressive, but she needed this badly.

‘Now.’

Jake hesitated.

‘Please.’

Then he relented. Taking a medium-sized crop from his armoury, he raised his arm and brought it down firmly on her naked back.

‘Again.’

He raised it again. This time he wasn’t so reluctant – he could feel the charge flowing out of Helen’s body, as her
anxiety escaped. He brought the crop down again, then again, his excitement rising as the rhythm of the beating took hold. Helen was moaning now, demanding more pain. Jake gave it to her … faster and faster.

Eventually the beating slowed as Helen relaxed and before long everything was calm once more.

Helen relished this moment of stillness. Her life had been so fraught, so out of control, but whatever happened now, she could always come here. Jake was still the fix she needed when she was ambushed by the darkness. She didn’t love him, but she needed him. Perhaps that was the first step on the road.

She was lucky. She had found someone. Ella hadn’t. She had been the plaything of men who enjoyed controlling and abusing women. First her father with his taste for violence, sadism and cruelty. Then a group of men who took pleasure from imprisoning and torturing a vulnerable young woman. She had been left brutalized and pregnant. A single woman bringing up a child of rape.

Unbidden, Robert popped into her brain. And alongside him, as always, thoughts of Marianne.