Pop Goes the Weasel (14 page)

Violet Robinson viewed her son-in-law with suspicion. She never doubted his love for Nicola, but she doubted his dedication. He was a man, and men were careless of the details and prone to take short cuts. Nicola was certainly comfortable at home and her basic needs were always catered for by Tony or by Anna if he was working, but Nicola was more than
basic
. She was a beautiful, intelligent and spirited young woman. Like her mother, Nicola had always taken great pride in her appearance, never leaving the house without make-up on, careful to ensure that not a hair was out of place. Too often Violet had had to take matters into her own hands, distressed by her daughter’s pallor, by the stray hairs, by the lack of make-up. Tony didn’t really know what to do in this area and Anna, well, Anna was a plain girl who clearly felt it was what you were like on the inside that mattered.

‘How long will you be gone for?’ she asked Tony.

They were standing together in the living room, out of earshot of Nicola’s bedroom.

‘I won’t be
gone
,’ Tony replied, choosing his words and tone carefully. ‘I will be here during the day – probably more than usual in fact – it’s just the nights. Anna has said
she’s happy to do the lion’s share of the night work, but if there’s any way you could –’

‘I’ve already said I’ll help, Tony. I’m happy to do it. Best to have family round her.’

Tony nodded and smiled, but Violet could tell he didn’t agree. He liked Anna better than her and if Anna was up to doing seven nights straight, no doubt he would have paid her to do that, rather than corralling his mother-in-law to help.

‘How long will this … night work go on for?’

‘Not long, I hope.’

Another evasive answer.

‘Well, I’m happy to help for as long as is necessary, but you know how I feel about it. I hate the idea of Nicola waking up and finding a stranger at her bedside.’

Violet’s voice faltered, her underlying sense of loss suddenly ambushing her. Tony nodded sympathetically, but would never engage on this point. Had he given up on Nicola? Violet strongly suspected he had. Did he have other women? Violet suddenly wasn’t sure and it hurt her.

‘Is it dangerous? What you’re doing?’

A longer pause this time, and then an unnecessarily long reassurance. So it
was
dangerous. Was she being unfair, hating him for being so cavalier? He was a policeman and had a job to do – she understood that. But couldn’t he have got moved off the front line to something safer? What if something happened to him? Violet’s own husband – useless bastard that he was – had
scarpered years ago. He was now living with his second wife and three children in Maidstone and never visited them. If anything happened to Tony, it would just be Nicola and Violet, locked together, waiting and hoping.

Suddenly Violet found herself crossing the room. She laid her hand on Tony’s arm and, softening her tone, said:

‘Well, take care, Tony. Take care of yourself.’

And for once, he seemed to understand. This was a difficult moment for both of them – a shift in the status quo away from intensive care to a more expansive life for Tony – and for once they were in accord.

‘You get on, Tony. Nicola and I will be fine here.’

‘Thank you, Violet.’

Tony left the room to continue his preparations, leaving Violet alone with her daughter. Pulling her lipstick from her handbag, Violet applied it to Nicola’s lips. It cheered her momentarily, but inside her nerves were still jangling. She had a nasty feeling that forces beyond her control were gathering and preparing to shake her world.

As the team congregated in the briefing room, Helen tried to gather her thoughts. She’d never felt so isolated on an investigation before. Charlie was keen to prove herself by nailing McEwan for the murders and Harwood seemed intent on backing her. Her superior did not want to credit Helen’s growing conviction that they were dealing with a serial killer. Harwood was a politician, a protocol copper, and had never encountered this sort of individual before. Helen, because of her history and her training, had. Which is why she had to take the lead, to focus the team’s investigation where it mattered.

‘Let’s assume for now,’ Helen began, ‘that our killer
is
a prostitute, murdering men who pay for sex. This is not something that’s happened by accident – there’s no evidence they tried to rape her or that there was a struggle – so she deliberately lured these men to out-of-the-way places and then killed them. This is something that’s been brewing inside her, that she’s been planning. There’s nothing to suggest that she works in a team, so we are looking for a highly disturbed, highly dangerous individual who’s probably been the victim of violence or rape, who may have a history of mental health problems and who clearly has a
violent hatred of men. We should check out the hospitals, drop-in clinics, refuges, hostels, and see if anyone’s presented there in the last twelve months who fits the bill. Also let’s go through HOLMES2 to see if there are any unsolved rapes or sexual assaults recently. Something must have set her off. However prone to violence she is, something must have triggered this terrible rage. Check also for crimes that
she
may have committed – assaults, stabbings that may have been her flexing her muscles before she decided to kill. DC Sanderson, can you run this, please?’

‘On it, boss.’

‘So who are we looking for?’ Helen continued. ‘She obviously knows her way around the scene – Empress Road, Eling Great Marsh – so she’s probably been an active prostitute recently. Her misspellings of both the word “Evill” and the Matthewses’ postal address suggest she may be ill-educated, even dyslexic, but she is clearly not stupid. She leaves virtually no trace wherever she goes – forensics pulled a black hair from Reid’s car, but it is synthetic, probably from a wig – and she possesses plenty of courage. She walked in and out of Zenith Solutions without anyone noticing anything about her. To risk capture in that way suggests that she is a woman on a mission. Someone with a point to prove.’

Silence from the team, as Helen’s words sank in.

‘So our prime focus is current or recent prostitutes. We should check out every rung on the ladder – high-class
prostitutes, student escorts, illegals, the junkies giving it away at the docks – but with special focus on the lower end of the market. Matthews’ and Reid’s tastes seem to have been for the grubbier, nastier, cheaper girls. We need to cover the whole city, but I’m going to focus most of our manpower in the north. Bevois Valley, Portswood, Highfield, Hampton Park. Our killer picks up her clients in areas not covered by CCTV, but we have managed to track Matthews’ and Reid’s cars via traffic cameras. It looks like she picked up Matthews on the Empress Road and Reid somewhere near the Common. She’s probably picking these places because they are close to home, because she knows them, because they are “safe”. So let’s not rule anything out, but my guess is that she lives or works in the north of the city. DC McAndrew will lead our efforts in this area.’

‘I’ve got a team assembled, boss,’ DC McAndrew responded, ‘and we’ve broken down the area into sectors. We’ll be onto it this afternoon.’

‘The next question is why did she choose Matthews and Reid? Were they picked at random or deliberately selected? The killer might have seen Matthews around and learned his habits and peccadilloes. But Reid was much younger and appears to have been relatively new to the scene. If he
was
selected deliberately, it would have to have been done by more subtle means. They were both family men, which could be an important link, but they moved in very different circles and were at very different
stages of their family lives – Matthews had four kids of teen age and up, Reid had one baby daughter.’

‘They must have found her online. These days if you want a blowjob, you just Google it, right?’ chipped in DC Sanderson to muted chuckles.

‘Probably, so let’s check out Reid’s and Matthews’ digital footprint. DC Grounds, perhaps you could coordinate? Let’s find out if these guys were deliberately targeted or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everybody clear?’

Helen was on her feet, marching back into the incident room. She was filled with energy and determination – a real sense of purpose. But as she crossed the office floor, she suddenly stopped dead, her newfound optimism dissipating in an instant. Somebody had left the TV on mute, the set playing silently to itself in the corner, but now Helen hurriedly grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. It was the lunchtime news bulletin on BBC South. Graham Wilson, the regular anchor, was conducting an in-depth interview. And his studio guest today was Eileen Matthews.

Helen burned with anger and frustration as she raced to the Matthews residence. Eileen was desperate with grief – Helen understood that – but her direct intervention into the investigation risked sabotaging everything. Eileen had made up her mind that Alan was not involved with prostitutes and, convinced that the police were barking up the wrong
tree, had decided to instigate her own hunt for her husband’s killer. ‘Please help me find the man who did this to Alan’ was a phrase she had repeated several times during the interview. Man, man, man. Five minutes of lunchtime TV had now set the public hunting for a killer that didn’t exist.

Eileen had only just returned home from the TV studio when Helen arrived. She was visibly drained by the experience of talking publicly about her husband’s death and wanted to shut the door on Helen, but Helen was too enraged to allow that. It didn’t take long for hostilities to start.

‘You should have consulted us first, Eileen, something like this could really set our investigation back.’

‘I didn’t consult you because I knew what you’d say.’

Eileen was utterly unrepentant. Helen had to work hard to control her temper.

‘I know you’ve had to deal with so much in the past few days that you feel overwhelmed with pain and grief, that you’re desperate for some answers, but this isn’t the way to go about it. If you want justice for yourself, for your children, you must let
us
take the lead.’

‘And let you blacken Alan’s name? Drag this family through the gutter?’

‘I can’t hide the truth from you Eileen, however painful it might be. Your husband used prostitutes and I’m convinced that that was why he died. His killer was a woman – we’re ninety-nine per cent certain of that – and anything that directs the public’s attention elsewhere risks
allowing her to strike again. People need to be vigilant and we have to give them the right information in order to be so. Do you see?’

‘Strike again?’

For once Eileen’s tone was less strident. Helen paused, uncertain how much to share.

‘A young man was murdered last night. We believe the same person is responsible for both murders.’

Eileen stared at her.

‘He was found in an area used by prostitutes …’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘I won’t have you continue with this … this campaign of slander. Alan was a good man. A devout man. I know he wasn’t always healthy … he had certain infections but many of those can be contracted at the swimming baths. Alan was a keen swimmer –’

‘For God’s sake, Eileen, he had gonorrhoea. You can’t get that from swimming.’

‘NO! It’s his bloody funeral tomorrow and you come here with these lies … NO! NO! NO!’

Eileen shouted at the top of her voice, silencing Helen. Then the tears came. Helen felt a riot of emotions – sympathy, fury, disbelief. In the heavy silence that followed, she cast her eyes around the room, taking in the family photos that seemed to confirm Eileen’s vision of Alan. He was the very image of the upstanding paterfamilias, playing football with his boys, standing proudly
next to daughter Carrie at her graduation, leading the church choir, toasting his bride at their wedding all those years ago. But it was all propaganda.

‘Eileen, you have to work with us on this. You need to understand the bigger picture. Otherwise innocent people will die. Do you understand?’

Eileen didn’t look up but her sobbing subsided a little.

‘I don’t mean to cause you pain but you have to face the truth. Alan’s internet history showed he had an active interest in both pornography and prostitutes. Unless someone else – you or the boys – used that computer, then it can only be Alan who was accessing those sites.’

Eileen had previously told them that Alan didn’t let anybody else into his study, let alone use his desktop, so Helen knew this one would land.

‘These sites weren’t accessed by accident. They were in his bookmarks … We have also done some investigation into his financial affairs.’

Eileen was quiet now.

‘There was an account he administered that contained money to pay for church repairs. Two years ago, it had a balance of several thousand pounds. Most of it’s gone now, taken out in £200 chunks over the last eighteen months. But no work has been carried out at your church. I sent one of my officers down there, he spoke to the minister. We know Alan wasn’t a big earner and it looks very much like he was using church money to fund his activities.’

Helen continued, softening her tone.

‘I
know you feel utterly lost right now, but the only way for you and your family to find your way through this … nightmare is to look the reality of it dead in the eye. You won’t believe this, but I know what you’re going through. I have experienced awful things, endured terrible pain, and burying your head in the sand is the worst thing you can do. For your girls, for your boys, for yourself, you need to take on board what I’m saying. See Alan for what he was – good and bad – and deal with it. Your church may well want to instigate financial investigations of their own and I’m sure we will have more questions for you. Fighting us is not the way to get through this. You need to help us and we will help you in return.’

Eileen finally looked up.

‘I want to catch Alan’s killer,’ Helen continued. ‘More than anything else I want to catch Alan’s killer and give you the answers you need. But I can’t do that if you’re fighting me, Eileen. So please work with me.’

Helen’s entreaty was sincere and heartfelt. There was a long pause, then finally Eileen looked up.

‘I pity you, Inspector.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I pity you because you have no
faith
.’

She hurried from the room without looking back. Helen watched her go. Her anger had dissipated and now she just felt pity. Eileen had believed absolutely in Alan and would never truly come to terms with the fact that her mentor, her rock, was in fact a man of straw.