Pop Goes the Weasel (15 page)

DC Rebecca McAndrew had only been on the hunt for a few hours, but already she felt tarnished and dispirited. She and her team had hit the high-end brothels first. They were far busier than she remembered. The recession had driven more and more women into the sex industry and the sudden influx of prostitutes from Poland and Bulgaria had further flooded the market. Competition was up, which meant that prices had come down. It was an increasingly cut-throat business.

Next they’d moved on to the student campuses and the picture was depressingly similar here. Every girl they talked to knew of at least one fellow student who’d turned to prostitution to fund her studies. It was more and more a feature of everyday life as grants were cut and students struggled to pay their way through the many years of study. But the anecdotal tales of alcohol dependency and self-harming suggested this new phenomenon was not without its cost.

Now Sanderson and her team were in the Claymore drop-in centre, a free healthcare service run by a combination of NHS workers and generous-hearted volunteers. Anyone could turn up here and receive free treatment but
it was in a grotty part of town, the queues were long and you always had to keep one eye on your possessions, so it generally attracted the drunk and the desperate. Many of the centre’s clients were young prostitutes – girls with infections, girls who’d been beaten up and needed stitches, girls who had young babies and simply couldn’t cope. It was hard not to be moved by the awful situations they found themselves in.

Rebecca McAndrew often cursed the long hours that came with her job – she had been single for over two years now, partly because of the night work – but she realized the sacrifices she’d made were nothing compared to those made by the women who worked at Claymore. Despite being exhausted, despite being painfully short of resources, they worked tirelessly to help keep these girls together, without ever judging them or losing their tempers. They were modern saints – not that they were ever acknowledged as such.

As the team interviewed and questioned, a paradox struck Rebecca forcefully. In a world where it seemed harder and harder to find meaningful connections with other people – love, marriage, family – it had never been easier to find paid companionship. The world was in the doldrums, the country still in the grip of recession, but one thing was clear.

Southampton was awash with sex.

The streets were dark and so was Charlie’s mood. After her bollocking by Helen, her first instinct had been to hand in her warrant card and run home. But something had stopped her and she was relieved now, ashamed of her thin skin. What had she been expecting? Helen didn’t want her back and Charlie had played straight into her hands, allowing her enthusiasm to compromise her investigation into Sandra McEwan.

She burned with shame – what had happened to the talented cop she used to be? – and that shame drove her on now. Having failed in her first attempt to unmask Alexia’s killer, Charlie had gone back to basics, hitting the streets in search of information. Perhaps by talking to the street girls who seemed to be at the heart of McEwan’s war with the Campbells, she could dig up a lead. Schoolchildren were wandering home; it was only a little after 4 p.m., but already darkness was beginning to descend. That creeping, suffocating gloom that winter does so well. Charlie’s spirits dropped a notch further.

The prostitutes who hung about the port were happy enough to take a look at Charlie’s photo once they realized she wasn’t going to bust them. Their memories were
hazy, but one long-serving girl eventually pointed Charlie in the direction of the Liberty Hotel, a filthy and dilapidated place that rented rooms by the hour rather than by the day. Charlie had visited it before and her heart sank at having to return. It was a place full of loneliness and despair.

She pressed the buzzer. Once, twice, three times before eventually the door opened a crack. She shoved her warrant card in the face of the Polish thug who ‘greeted’ her. Snarling, he let her inside, turning his back on her as he stalked up the stairs. Charlie knew he’d be little help – his job was to see all but say nothing – so Charlie focused her attention on the working girls who appeared with impressive regularity from behind the many closed doors. The building was a tall terraced house, set over four floors. It was astonishing to consider exactly how much copulation took place here every night. Used condoms littered the floor.

Charlie was talking to a girl named Denise, who was seventeen at best. She and her boyfriend had a drug habit and clearly it was up to Denise to earn the money for both of them to indulge. Why do these girls value themselves so cheaply? This was the bottom end of the market – the more expensive girls plied their trade in the north of the city. Down by the docks you were expected to do anything for a few pounds, however painful or unpleasant.

A lot of coppers treated prostitutes like dirt, but Charlie always found herself wanting to help them. She was
already manoeuvring to get Denise away from her parasitic bloke, guiding her in the direction of a refuge she knew, when suddenly all hell broke loose.

A scream. Long, loud and desperate. Then the thundering of feet charging downstairs, doors being slammed, pandemonium. Charlie was on her feet and racing up the stairs. As she turned the corner, she collided head on with a terrified prostitute. It knocked the wind out of her temporarily, but still the screaming went on, so Charlie dragged herself onward, past more worried faces, forcing the breath back into her lungs as she mounted the stairs. As she reached the top landing, she was surprised to find that she had blood on her shirt.

The screaming was coming from the last door on the right. Removing her baton from its holster, she extended it, ready to fight. But as soon as she entered the room, she knew that she wouldn’t be needing it. The battle had already been fought and lost. In the corner of the room, a teenage prostitute was screaming incessantly, frozen by shock. Nearby on the blood-saturated bed was a man. His chest had been ripped open, revealing his pulsating heart to the open air.

Suddenly it all made sense. The reason Charlie had blood on her shirt was that she had collided with the killer as she fled the scene of her latest attack. Stunned, Charlie turned to run after her, then paused. The man was still alive.

Charlie had a split second to decide. She hurried over
to the man, pulling her coat off and clamping it to his chest in an effort to stem the blood loss. Cradling his head, she urged him to keep his eyes open, to talk to her. Charlie knew that the killer had such a good lead that she had probably got away and her best chance of IDing her was to prise some information out of her victim before he died.

‘Call an ambulance,’ she barked at the screaming girl, before returning her attention to the man. He coughed up a hunk of blood. The mist of it settled on Charlie’s face.

‘Can you tell me your name, love?’

The man gurgled but managed nothing.

‘The ambulance is on its way now, you’re going to be ok.’

His eyes were beginning to close.

‘Can you tell me who did this to you?’

The man opened his mouth. Charlie craned forward, putting her ear to his mouth to hear what he had to say.

‘Who attacked you? Can you give me her name?’

The man was struggling to breathe, but he was determined to say something.

‘Her name? Please tell me her name.’

But the man said nothing. All Charlie heard was the last breath escaping his body. The killer had got away and Charlie was left holding her latest victim.

Helen stalked the street outside the Liberty Hotel, her eyes raking the walls of the dilapidated terrace for CCTV cameras. They had had a lucky break – Charlie literally bumping into their killer – and as a result of her testimony and the crumbs gleaned from the Polish sex worker who’d disturbed the attack, they had their best description of the suspect so far. She was Caucasian, in her twenties probably and tall, taller than your average girl, with long, powerful legs. She wore dark clothes, probably leather, had a pale face and long black hair cut in a fringe. But no one had seen her face well enough to give more than generic descriptions. The guy who took the money from the girls clearly never dragged his attention away from the TV long enough to actually look at who went in and out of the building. The other working girls said she wasn’t a regular – a couple of them had crossed her path as she took her client upstairs, but she had kept her head down, didn’t meet their eyes and, besides, they had their own clients to attend to. It was infuriating to be so close and yet have so little. A grab from a CCTV camera could change everything, however, so Helen scoured the walls. It was an area where crime was rife so people often
employed extra security here, but her investigation revealed only one camera, poised above the entrance to a down-at-heel off licence. It hung limply, pointing at the wall, clearly the victim of vandalism. Was this work of children or had their killer disabled it? It would be of little use either way.

Heading back to the hotel entrance Helen spotted Charlie, who was now wearing a paper suit and a blanket. Her clothes had been taken away for forensic analysis and she was being looked after by a young WPC.

‘Would you like me to call Steve?’

Charlie looked up to see Helen standing over her.

‘Lloyd … DC Fortune’s already done it.’

‘Good. Go home, Charlie. You’ve had a big shock and you’ve done all you can. We’ll speak later.’

Charlie nodded, still taciturn with shock. Helen placed a comforting hand on her shoulder then moved on, impatient to see what the crime scene might offer them. Climbing the stairwell to the top floor, Helen paused to interrogate a group of forensic officers crowded round a partial footprint. The outline of a heel and toe was printed on the wooden board in blood.

‘Is it hers?’ Helen asked.

‘Well, it’s not Charlie’s, so …’

‘Can you get a size off it?’

The SOC officer nodded, so Helen moved on. These small details could be surprisingly significant. She was momentarily cheered but her good humour evaporated as
soon as she took in the crime scene. It was drenched in blood. The victim lay on the bed, his hands and legs still tied to the bedstead, his chest opened up like a tin can. His heart, which only thirty minutes ago had been pumping fit to burst, now lay still. Helen leaned over the body, taking care not to touch it. Focusing on the wound, she could see that the tissue around the heart was untouched. Clearly the killer had been disturbed before she could take her prize. Helen looked at the victim’s face – didn’t recognize him – then quickly looked away. It was contorted in agony.

She retreated to watch the forensic officers at work. In addition to the evidence garnered from the victim’s body, they would also be analysing a medium-sized Tupperware box that lay discarded on the floor. Was this what their killer put the hearts in? A Tupperware box. It was so common-or-garden, so domestic, it was almost funny. It could have been bought in a hundred stores in Southampton so they would have to hope that their killer had left some residue of her identity on it. Helen knew she couldn’t bank on it though – their killer had hardly put a foot wrong so far.

Taking in the crime scene, Helen’s mind was full of questions. Why this sudden change in MO? The killer had been so cautious thus far – why bring her latest victim to a place where she could be disturbed or, worse, identified? Was she getting careless? Or were the punters harder to isolate now? Had word got out about the danger? Were clients seeking safety in more public places? She had
brought him here during the day, when she knew there would be others around. Was he special in some way? Could she only get him at this time of day? It was a strange turn of events.

One thing that Helen was sure of was that the killer would now be rattled. She had been disturbed during the act and had fled empty-handed. Worse, she had run straight into a cop waving a warrant card and had only escaped through sheer good fortune. She must fear now that the police would have a good description of her and possibly forensic evidence too. Experience taught Helen that such a scare would make the killer react in one of two ways. Either she would vanish for good or she would step up her killing spree. Which option would she take?

Only time would tell.