The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) (42 page)

Letitia cocked her head sideways, pretending to listen. ‘They must have the wrong address. I don’t hear any sirens.’

‘They’ll be here.’

It was all bluff, and Charlie couldn’t quite hide it. She hadn’t e-mailed the files to anyone except herself. No one was coming. As for Helen, her anger was greater than her fear. Finally she may have found the person responsible for her mother’s death. The sense of betrayal rose like a sour taste in her throat, and she swallowed it back to stop herself from being sick.

‘Why?’ she asked, a bitter note in her voice. ‘You had it all. Money, respect, a company on its way to mega success. With a bit of careful politics you could’ve had it your way. Why jeopardise it? Why kill my mother?’

‘Kill your mother? What makes you say that?’

‘The shopping bag, with the elephant on.’

‘So I have one of her bags. What of it?’

‘It proves you had her killed. That bag was on the back seat, with me. I remember it like it was yesterday. You took it.’

Letitia’s voice went from cool to icy. ‘It proves nothing. You were a child, and no one mentioned a bag disappearing. Who’d believe you now?’

Helen’s cheeks flamed, and she recalled her humiliation in Wilcox’s office.

‘You’ve been a thorn in my side ever since you came back,’ said Letitia. ‘First sticking your nose into my business, then wrapping Mother around your little finger so she’d bequeath you her shares.’

‘I know why you killed her,’ said Helen. ‘She was passionate about the company, just like you, but you were going to ruin it, and she couldn’t let that happen.’

‘My father,’ Letitia snapped suddenly, ‘worked his fingers to the bone to build up the company. Before my parents met, he started from nothing and was nearly crushed by some of the big auction houses several times. When he died, my mother worked
her
fingers to the bone.’

‘I know all that. What did that have to do with my mother?’

‘She wanted control. Full control.’ Letitia sent Helen a pitying look. ‘She wanted to get rid of me and teamed up with one of our shareholders, passing him information about … my side business, that he could use against me.’

‘Moody.’

Letitia smiled nastily. ‘There was something poisonous about Mimi. Everything she touched just shrivelled up and died. I wasn’t going to let her do that, to me or the business which my father – and my mother – gave their life’s blood to preserve.’

It took a moment for Letitia’s words to sink in. Her mother hadn’t been a whistle-blower after all. There were no noble motives. Instead she had been just as greedy as the rest of them. The disillusionment settled like a stone in Helen’s stomach.

‘It was necessary. I’m sorry if you thought your mother was a saint, but there it is.’ Letitia shrugged. ‘I knew this crazy woman – this Fay Cooper – had been stalking Mimi. I wanted to make it look like she did it. When one of my
associates
told me your mother had another meeting planned with Moody, my man broke into Fay’s house and stole a very recognisable knife, then used that.’

‘And what about me?’

‘Well, what person in her right mind brings a child to a secret meeting? You should’ve been at home, with a babysitter or something. When he spotted you in the back, the useless moron panicked and left the bloodied knife instead of putting it back at Fay’s house as he was supposed to. It was pure luck Fay was there at the time and was convicted, that your condition made you so unreliable.’

Condition.
Despite being a murdering bitch, at least Letitia didn’t make Helen feel like a freak. If she could only keep her talking …

Then what? No one was going to come. Charlie was bluffing, and Helen suspected Letitia knew that.

Even so, it might give her a chance to think of what to do.

‘If your hit man used Fay’s knife, why did you steal my mother’s?’

‘Your mother’s what?’

‘Knife. They were identical, part of a set. Ruth said she found it in the packaging hall. Said you knew it was one of four.’

‘I didn’t steal Mimi’s knife. When I heard it was missing, I worried the police would start looking beyond Fay Cooper, but in the end it didn’t matter. I never knew what happened to the other knife. If Ruth says she found it in the packaging hall, she’s probably lying to cover having stolen it herself, but then again, my sister is good at that.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Letitia shrugged again. ‘Up to you. I’ve lost count of the number of times Ruth has reinvented the past. She’s probably told you some cock and bull story of why she won’t agree to a post-mortem on Mother. One might wonder why.’

That was exactly what Ruth had done, but Helen wasn’t going to give Letitia the satisfaction of having guessed that.

Instead she said, ‘What about these statues? What’s that all about?’

‘You ask a lot of questions. They were a miscalculation, to be frank. Too recognisable, as your friend pointed out. I’ll have to sell them behind closed doors. Should fetch about twenty-five grand each, after Mr Singh here has taken his cut.’

‘To line your own pockets.’ It was the first time since her empty threats that Charlie has spoken up.

Letitia looked genuinely affronted. ‘Only some of it. Although sometimes what we sell is sold as copies, in certain circles our reputation –
my
reputation – helps generate twice as much business as we’d otherwise have had. There’s a lot of people out there who are happy to sell their valuables in a less conventional way. Ransome’s was a cottage industry when I took over, and look at it now. Because I bend the rules, we generate millions.’ For a moment pride gleamed in her eyes, then turned cold once again as she stared at Helen. ‘I need your shares,’ she said.

‘Even if I die, Ruth says you can’t afford to buy them.’

‘Well, Ruth is wrong. She doesn’t know I’ve been profiting off the books.’ Letitia gave a short laugh and fished a hand mirror and a lipstick out of her handbag, then began applying lipstick. ‘It’s a pity you can’t be part of it all. We’d have made a good team. And you’d have been useful, especially now that you’ve shacked up with Moody’s son.’

Helen’s eyes widened.

‘Didn’t think I knew, did you?’ I know when everyone in that house of yours comes and goes. It was easy enough for Pete here to wait for the right moment. Trouble is, he hit the wrong person.’

‘It was you? That ran over Fay?’ Charlie’s scowl was fearsome. ‘You fucking bitch!’

Before Helen could stop her, she charged at Letitia with the screwdriver raised. Quick as lightening the chauffeur caught Charlie’s arm, wrenched it behind her back and upwards, snapping the bones. Charlie screamed as he pulled the screwdriver from her paralysed fingers and drove it deep inside her back, then pushed her to the ground. She landed with a groan, a plea in her terrified eyes, then her head dropped to one side, and she lay still. Slowly a dark red stain fanned out from under her body.

Too shocked by this sudden show of deadly violence, Helen could only stare from Charlie to Letitia, then back again. Up till now she’d believed – foolishly – that Letitia would let them go, instead of facing up to the inevitable, that she was going to die.

Mr Singh was the first to react. ‘Fuck!’ he croaked. Covering his mouth with his hand, he fumbled his way up the stairs and could be heard retching outside.

Even Letitia looked a little queasy, her lips quivering beneath the fresh coat of lipstick. ‘You brought this on yourself. If only you’d let it be.’

Enraged, Helen launched herself at the chauffeur, catching him in the stomach. She managed to unbalance him, then he regained his footing and tossed her aside like a rag doll. He pulled a length of nylon cord out of his jacket pocket and swung it over her head. Instinctively she brought her hands up, and they caught under the cord. Gasping and gagging for breath, she felt it digging into her palms, the pain immense.

Letitia’s eyes met hers for a moment. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,’ she said, and turned away.

The chauffeur loosened the cord, and Helen fell forward on her elbows, sending shooting pains up her arms. Red spots danced before her eyes as she gulped for air in short, sharp bursts.

The relief was short-lived.

Letitia’s goon brought the cord around her throat again, this time without her hands acting as a buffer and almost lifted her bodily in the air with the force of it.

Her fingernails clawed at the cord, her feet scrambled for a foothold on the concrete floor, and her eyes squeaked and popped in their sockets. Her heart hammered wildly against her chest, beating out a last panic-stricken message.

I don’t want to die.

Jason parked his minivan along a side road and whipped out his phone. The GPS tracker still showed Helen to be at his father’s warehouse. Holding his phone, he headed down the small business park, conscious of how the squeak from his trainers echoed in the still night air, bouncing back from the hard surfaces. The business park was lit by a few street lamps and with enough distance between them to create shadowy pockets of darkness.

He’d helped out here one summer when he was in his teens, and his father’s unit was exactly where he remembered it, at the end of a lane with a razor-wire topped fence behind. A perfect trap, he thought, and walked a little faster.

Two cars were parked at the end of the lane. One of them had a dent in the front left bumper. It wasn’t one of his father’s cars, he noticed immediately, although it was a similar shape and size. Easy to understand Helen’s mistake. A sense of relief spread in his chest, followed by anger that the swine who ran Fay over was probably inside the building right now.

His heart raced. If Helen and Charlie were inside the lock-up unit, they would be trapped. Whitehouse had told him to stay outside, which made sense – they were trained police officers, they had armed response units at their disposal and all that – but he couldn’t just wait here and do nothing.

Instead he crept around the back and tried the door. It was locked, and no light spilled out from the windows high up on the wall.

Odd, he thought. The tracker definitely stopped in this area. So where were they?

As he debated with himself whether he should wait for Whitehouse or try to break in, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air. But the sound didn’t come from inside his father’s lock-up. Confused, he ran back to the lane and noticed the light coming from the unit opposite. All hesitation gone, he bolted around to the back of the other building, startling a man on his knees in the weeds.

‘Don’t …’ the guy croaked, but Jason hardly heard him. Instead he slammed through a door with broken glass, tore past an empty back office, and in seconds took in the scene below. Charlie in a pool of blood, and Helen clawing at a ligature around her neck, a beefy guy with a manic grin on his face.

The blood rushed to his ears in a great whoosh, adrenaline surged through him, and with a roar he leapt over the banister and torpedoed the man from the side. The goon toppled sideways into a stack of boxes, and in a haze of rage Jason threw himself down of top of him, attacking him with fists, knees and teeth.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Helen crawl out of the way, clutching her throat, then a fist connected with his cheekbone, and his whole head rang from the impact.

As he recovered, the goon made to punch him in the stomach, but he parried left and received a glancing blow in his side instead. Having put all his weight behind it, the other man lost his balance, and Jason launched himself at him again knocking him into a shelf of kitchen equipment. Crockery scattered and broke, and plastic flowers from an upended box on the top shelf rained down over them.

The bloke was stronger and larger than Jason, and no matter how hard he fought, even with fury on his side, he found himself being driven back again and again. With a bellow of frustration he head-butted him. The goon stumbled backwards into a wall of boxes stacked high, and the whole pile crashed down on him. Jason grabbed a saucepan, and when the other man emerged again, Jason brought it down on his head with a sickening thud. He did not get up again.

‘Jason …’

He swung around at the sound of Helen’s voice, saw her focus had shifted to the last person in the warehouse. He turned, saw the hand coming out of a bag, the matt-black gun, the flash of light accompanied by a bone-crunching crack, felt as if someone had shoved him in the chest. Puzzled he took in the spray of red droplets and the stain on his white T-shirt, before a searing pain registered.

‘Jason!’ Helen screamed.

He stumbled backwards as fire and ice spread through his limbs, blocking out everything but the horror on her face and the agony. He gasped, a long drawn-out sound which echoed in his own ears, and felt his legs give way under him.

The abrupt silence was Helen’s undoing.

Her body went into spasms. Lights flickered in her head. Her jaw locked. A groan rose behind her swollen tongue. Helpless against the oncoming seizure, Helen watched Letitia advancing on her.

‘I meant what I said earlier,’ she said. ‘I hate having to do this, but the company means more to me than anything. There’s no other way.’ She pointed the pistol at Helen, then lowered it for a moment and looked at her with amusement. ‘Or maybe I should just let the seizure take you. On second thought, that would be leaving things too much to chance.’

‘
Ngnh
.’ Helen tried to move, to get to safety before blacking out, but her body wasn’t cooperating, and the lucidity of her brain was narrowing down to a single point.

Letitia raised the pistol again. ‘You’ve been nothing but trouble since you set foot in the country. Well, it’s coming to an end now.’

Helen shook, and involuntarily her fingers twisted themselves into claws, useless like the rest of her body. Letitia would pull the trigger, and she would die. Like Charlie, who’d been stabbed by a cheap screwdriver, or like Jason, who lay lifeless on a pyre of plastic flowers. And Mimi, whose blood had coated the windscreen of her car in an all too real imitation of a Jackson Pollock.

Letitia had destroyed everyone she loved.