Absent Light (29 page)

In the meantime, the police would start looking. The obvious choice would be lock-ups, garages, boarded up hostels, ravaged dwellings, but in the Birmingham area. It would never cross their mind to start looking in the West Country, and there was no likelihood that they could come up with a more accurate location without a disclosure of more information. To nail their man, the police needed another call. She wondered if she could trick Lee into making it, but feared he was too cunning. Besides, the consequences of winding him up and him turning nasty made her shudder.

If only he'd written a blackmail note, she chafed inside. So much could be detected from the written word, the level of intelligence, the type of individual, his psychological make-up, his weak spot, a pressure point,
him
. And what did she know about her crazy half-brother? That he was cruel and manipulative. That he had no qualms about administering violence, sexual or otherwise. That he lacked empathy with his victims. That he was utterly ruthless. The Park Lane Boys had taught him well. Wait, she thought, frowning. Either Blackie was wrong, or he was lying. He'd painted a picture of a man not up to it, a loser. Stratton said the same.
He was out of his league, wasn't up to the job
. So both Blackie and Stratton were in agreement. Yet the picture they presented didn't square with the sadist holding them.

She smiled, felt the laughter bubble up inside her. Is this what happens to you when you tip over the edge and lose it, she thought crazily? Do you literally become a gibbering idiot? Here she was in this hellhole of a prison and she was giggling her head off. It was ridiculous, embarrassing, but it seemed so funny, hilarious: Lee, her half-brother,
the loser,
had pulled the wool over all their eyes. He'd run rings around the lot of them, she gasped. He'd…

She peered through the darkness at the girl, her mirth dissipating. She could feel the girl's suffering. She could touch it. If they ever got out of here alive, she thought gauntly, there would still be horrors ahead.

Helen put her bound hands to her face and ground her thumbs into her forehead. She felt a special responsibility for the girl. She wanted to make the difference. To keep her safe. To give her a future. It was important to her. No, it was vital. Beyond reason. The girl was the light. In saving the girl, she might also save a part of herself. She might not. But that didn't matter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

S
HE THOUGHT IT COULDN
'
T
get any worse. She'd stopped feeling hungry, stopped being cold, stopped smelling death, stopped everything. Her clothes hung like shrouds on her. Every movement took effort. Even rolling over. She hadn't thought of dying like this, life fading away.

They'd been fed with stale biscuits though she couldn't remember when. They were both spending a lot of time asleep. Her dreams were laced with nightmares in which she uttered silent screams. When awake, either her mind was seized by febrile confusion or slow delirium. Each time she stirred from painful slumbers, she believed it would be her last. She wanted it.

The darkness was more inert. She felt steeped in it. In a more lucid moment, she tried to play on the sibling connection. Stupid.

“I could help you,” she said.

The light was on. It hurt her eyes. He was sitting on the top step, swigging from a bottle of beer. She couldn't remember the last time he'd offered her a drink. Her throat was tight so she guessed it was quite a long time ago.

His eyes were like slits. The knot of muscles in his jaw pulsed. His expression radiated hate.

“I mean it,” she said fervently. “I'm all you have. We're family.”

He didn't respond. She thought she saw a smile chase across his shiny lips, but she couldn't be certain.

“You let us go, turn yourself in, and I'll speak up for you, explain why you're doing this.”

“What's to explain?”

“About your past, the way you were treated, the disappointments.” Her mind was racing again. She didn't think she was making much sense.

“You know nothing, bitch.”

“I know enough,” she said, hating the pleading sound of her voice. “It would be viewed as a mitigating factor by the courts.”

“Bollocks,” he snorted. “All they'd do is bang me up in a loony-bin for the rest of me life. No thanks.” He took another swig.

“All right, all right,” she said, as if he'd worn her down on a deal. “Then what?”

He came down the steps, walked straight up to her, crouched down so his pale face was level with hers, so she could see the wetness of his lips, the chill in his eyes. “We're going to have some fun,” he said, rubbing the inside of her thigh with his gloved palm. “All of us,” he said, looking over towards the girl. “Then I'm going to kill you.”

The girl's crying had long subsided.

“Helen.”

“Yes, honey.”

“You said you'd done something wrong.”

“Did I?” Must have done, she thought vaguely.

“You remember, when you first got here. You talked about something so big you couldn't put it right.”

Helen stirred, sat up. Yes, she remembered. How could she forget?

“What did you do?” the girl asked.

Helen exhaled a deep breath. “It's difficult, complicated. It's not easily explained.” She knew she was fudging but how could she tell this girl, of all people?

“Doesn't matter.”

Helen registered the huge sound of disappointment. The girl was offering to hear her confession, maybe her last confession, and she'd refused her.

“I used to work for the police,” Helen began. “I was a Scenes of Crime officer, a person who goes along to crime scenes and records what happened, gathers evidence, that kind of stuff,” she said, skating over the surface.

“What sort of crimes?”

“All sorts. You name it, I covered it.”

“So you saw dead people.”

“Sometimes.”

“Strange kind of job.”

“Yes.” She hadn't thought so at the time. Perhaps it wasn't such a noble calling, after all. Perhaps she'd been a bit touched in the head.

“And?” the girl pressed.

“I fell in love with a married man, a police officer. He was very ambitious and I admired that. I thought he was good for me, that we were good for each other.”

“What was his name?”

“Adam, Adam Roscoe.”

“Did he leave his wife?”

“No,” Helen said, feeling the strain in her voice. “I hoped he would, but it didn't happen.” Even if Rose Buchanan had never crossed her path, she suspected Adam had been as wedded to his wife as to his job.

“So what happened?”

Helen experienced a dreadful pain in her chest, a crushing sensation as if her heart were seizing up. “One of the cases I covered involved a serious sexual assault of a young girl. Adam put pressure on the girl to drop the charges.”

“That's terrible,” Siena gasped.

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“He believed that the girl wouldn't stand a chance in court. She'd spent most of her life in care and had a previous sexual history.”

“Then he was trying to save her,” Siena said reasonably, her voice lightening.

“No,” Helen said, uncompromisingly. “The truth was that the guy who'd assaulted the girl was Adam's informant, a nasty piece of work. Adam believed this man could infiltrate and help bring down a gang of vicious criminals. He didn't want his man arrested for what he considered to be a lesser crime. It would have wrecked everything.”

The silence was as long and crushing as the pain in her chest. Helen wasn't even sure the girl had heard.

“And you knew about it?” the girl said, at last.

“Yes.”

“And you said nothing?” There was an accusing note in her voice.

“No.”

And it wasn't because I bought into Adam's argument, or believed in the big picture, Helen thought, everything coming into sharp focus. It was simply because I was a fool for the man. I glimpsed his dream, recognised his ambition, understood his motives, which seemed of the noblest kind, and I believed he was like me. While he didn't engage in any of those things that truly corrupt officers do, she told herself stolidly, he
was
driven and he
was
ruthless, and he got it very wrong. If that made him a bad man, then she was, at least, as bad.

She looked back at the girl. “This man, the informer, later went on to assault another girl, only this time the bastard killed her.”

The girl called Siena offered no platitudes, no comforting words. How could she?

He was fired up.

Helen watched him, wondering if he was on speed or E, or something. He was striding around the cellar, bottle of beer in hand, throwing pills down his throat at an alarming rate. The girl looked absolutely terrified.

He seemed to want an audience, someone to play off, to appeal to, to grab a response from. This was probably the last time she'd have a chance to get through to him, Helen thought.

“People are going to start looking for us,” she said.

“So?”

“So we'll be found.”

“You'll be dead,” he grinned.

She stared right back at him. “It's not that easy to get rid of a body.” She let her eyes briefly travel in the direction of the flyblown pile in the corner. He eyeballed her back. There was something covert in his expression. Was this simply a family affair or was there more to it, she wondered? “Every contact leaves a trace,” she carried on remorselessly. “There's bits of you all over this house, the victim, this room, us. You don't even know it.”

“Spare me,” he grimaced.

“Where you going to bury us?” This was surreal. But she had to keep up the pressure, had to keep needling him, had to find a way to break through.

“Gonna give me lessons?” he grinned. “Now that would be a laugh.”

“I'm trying to help you see the pointlessness. Know the moors well, do you? Even graves yield clues: tyre tracks, foot impressions, DNA.” She was bluffing. In spite of massive leaps forward in technology, murderers still got away with it, still managed to escape without trace.

“Who's going to notice a couple of shallow graves?”

“You'd be surprised,” she said, cool.

“I can get rid of anything. I've learned, see.”

“If you've
learned
,” she said, goading him, “you'd know you're talking crap. Even if we're not found for months, the bones won't disappear. What did you have in mind, an acid bath?”

“Fire,” he shot back.

Difficult to investigate but not impossible, she thought. “Terrific, a fire on Dartmoor, what a spectacle. Police helicopters will be flying over before you've escaped the county.” This was pushing it. She didn't have a clue.

He gave her an alarmingly cold stare. “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Chase down people like me?”

“I didn't.”

“Didn't you?”

“No,” she said, feeling nervous.

“So how would you explain what you did?”

“Explain?”

“Your job.”

“I'm a photographer.”

“Not that one,” he snarled.

Oh God, so he did know, she thought. “I was a Mary Bloggs. I gathered evidence,” she stammered, her brain racing. Had she helped put her own half-brother away? No, that would be too much of a coincidence.

“Fuckin' weird job for a woman. Messin' around with dead bodies, other people's blood and cum and shit. Get off on it, did you?”

What was the point, she thought? He wasn't going to listen to argument. She remembered that either Blackie or Stratton told her that Lee was involved in burglaries. He probably got careless, she thought, got nailed by some piece of evidence, further fuelling his grudge against the world. She hung her head, closed her eyes, and tried very hard to block him out. She sensed what it was like to be old, limbs creaking, body aching, skin shrivelling. But he kept on going.

“See, if it wasn't for people like you, I'd be carrying on normal, like.”

She didn't speak.

“Not so fuckin' clever, huh?”

She didn't say anything. She was too tired, too…

“I SAID NOT SO FUCKIN' CLEVER!” he screamed, smashing the bottle against the strut sending pieces of glass flying over her head.

“No,” she cried out in terror. “Not clever.” Her teeth were chattering. The girl wailed uncontrollably.

He smiled. “More like it. Got your attention.” He threw the rest of the broken bottle down on the floor. “Ever think how many times you've got someone banged up in some prison cell because you got off on potting shit and spunk. Ever think about it?” he said, rounding on her, grabbing hold of her collar, squeezing her throat.

“No,” she said, terrified.

“You even grassed up one of your own,” he said, spittle flying over her face. “I heard all about it. And you expect me to trust you,” he said, shaking her in disgust.

“Wasn't like that,” she said feebly. So the past had come back to haunt her, she thought.

“Never is,” he said coldly, letting her go. He went over to the steps, sat on the bottom. His eyes levelled with hers. “I'll tell you what it's like, you bitch. I was on a job, see, your neck of the woods, Bournville.”

My neck of the woods, she thought. Why not his? Then she tumbled to it. That's why he didn't have a Midlands accent.

“It's a long way from home, isn't it?” she said tentatively, trying to keep some sort of dialogue going.

He gave her an icy stare. “Never shit on your own doorstep has always been my motto. Besides, I know Birmingham pretty well.”

“Right,” she said, not quite understanding. It was reputed that a lot of villains fled to the West Country, was Lee one of them? He was talking again.

“Fuckin' big house, it was. Mirrors and marble everyfuckinwhere. Fancy safe in the office. Paintings on the wall. Lot of money. Disgusting how some people live,” he said, spitting on the floor.

“Got it all staked out, see. No dogs. Occupiers out of the country. Alarm was easy enough to dismantle. Did the homework, know what I mean?”

Helen nodded dutifully, glanced down and closed her eyes.

“Except someone fucked up,” he glowered. “I gets in, nice and easy, does what I'm paid to do, and I'm walking down the stairs when I hears a sound. It's coming from the other side of this door,” he said, cupping a hand to an ear, his eyes narrowing with excitement, “so I goes up to it, listens and I hears somethin'. Not sure what it is, see, breathin' or snorin' I thinks, which is a bit fuckin' worrying seeing as there's not supposed to be anyone there. Normally I'd have legged it, but it got me curious. Anyway, I goes in, and there's this girl sleepin'. Soundo, she was. Pretty little thing. Not much older than her,” he said, gesturing at the girl with his thumb. “So I thinks to meself, Ryan, must be your birthday.”

Helen's eyes popped open. Had she misheard?

“Ryan, my
boy
,” it sounded like
buy
. “Why waste a perfect opportunity? Besides, I'd got a hell of a hard-on,” he leered. “I was clever, see, sharp as a knife,” he said, wagging his finger. “Wasn't going to get copped, not for anyone. Nearly choked, she did, but it felt fuckin' brilliant. Dunnit in her mouth, see. Made her swallow. No mess, no evidence. Besides, I had insurance.”

“Insurance?” Helen said, mystified.

“Friends in high places. People prepared to cover me tracks.”

“You mean police?” she said, jagging with alarm.

He gave her a penetrating look. “The man you grassed up.”

The ground felt as if it had shifted beneath her feet. “Adam Roscoe,” she said querulously.

“I was on to a good little earner, but then some clever forensic fucker decided to check the door.”

The door to the girl's room, Helen thought. An alert SOCO would gamble on the offender listening for sounds of someone in the house. “You put your ear against the door.”

“Fuckers,” he cursed. “Got eight years, eight years of my life rotting away in a shit-hole because of people like you. And even Roscoe couldn't help me.”

People like me, she thought. She didn't feel much like a person any more. “But there's no database for ear-prints.” The last she heard it was being worked on and developed by a British woman in the field, a fingerprint specialist in her own right. “It wouldn't have been enough on its own,” she pointed out reasonably. “You must have left some other evidence.” Like bits of your DNA underneath the girl's fingernails, she thought grimly.