Hard Girls (22 page)

Oh God, the thought of them together was torture to her. Kate felt sick with the thought of it, even though she knew that there was nothing she could do about it. Pat had replaced her with a younger model, it wasn’t exactly something new where men were concerned, she just had not thought he was capable of doing that to her. The urge to go around to his house and have it out with him was strong, she felt almost murderous with hurt and betrayal. She wanted to smash his face in, really hurt him. She wanted to ask him if he had let that girl into the bed they had shared for so many years. She wanted to demand if he knew how much he had hurt her, how he had destroyed her with his actions. But she couldn’t bring herself to do something like that. She had her pride and, at this moment in time, that was about all she had going for her. There was no way she would compromise that. It was literally all she had left.

As she poured herself another coffee the phone rang, and Kate answered it with trepidation. She felt as if she was living in a nightmare, and it grieved her that it was a nightmare of her own making.

Flora O’Brien was a very pretty girl. She was very aggressive, but her fine features and angelic demeanour belied her true nature. Everyone liked her, although no one really knew her. She was a transient from Newcastle on Tyne and she came from a family where her mother was a lunatic who had systematically fallen for men who impregnated her and consequently left her quick smart, and her brothers were both off the scale where mental ability was concerned. Flora had left as soon as she was sooner rather than laterN do you thinkyable. Both her brothers were like their mother, small-minded, mentally incapable, and without the sense to get away from their mother’s overbearing and lying nature. Flora had learned to look after herself, and she made a point of doing just that.

So when she opened the door of the flat she worked out of three days a week, she was not expecting the sight that was awaiting her. Seeing poor Sandy like that was a real blow, she had liked the girl, admired her. She had no real care for her as such though; like the other members of her family, it would always be about just her and her life, and what she wanted.

So, instead of phoning for the police there and then, or at least phoning someone involved in the flat’s ownership, and who thereby had given her a place to work from, she cleared the place of anything connected to her then walked out and locked the door behind her. It was not until hours later that Flora had felt the need to let on that her friend and colleague was lying there, all alone. She finally phoned the news in to Jennifer James from a pay phone at the Watford Gap. She had told Jennifer the news and put the phone down before she could be questioned. After having a coffee and a quick wee, she was already making her way to pastures new.

Flora felt no kinship, no affiliation with young Sandy. Why would she? After all, as her mother had taught them all at a very young age, no one mattered unless they could be used in some way.

She had a new name and a new date of birth by the time she arrived in Liverpool, and she had forgotten the scene of her friend’s death before she hit the M1. She was already looking forward to the future, and had no intention of revisiting the past. She was sorry for Sandy, but at the same time she was not about to let her misfortune rub off on her.

‘You’re telling me that this was an anonymous call?’

Annie nodded. ‘Well, not that anonymous. Jennifer said it was definitely the girl who should have worked the next shift. I’ve run her though the computers and she’s got more aliases than a bank-robber’s driver. The sad fact is that if she had phoned an ambulance, the girl might have survived. According to the coroner, Sandy would still have been alive when the girl was due in to work. She left her to die basically. The perp would not have been gone long, and the girl could have saved her. Though looking at the body, who would want to be left looking like that?’

Kate nodded. The girl’s eyes had been burned away, but her throat had been left untouched. It seemed this girl had been treated differently to the others. She had been tortured, but not to the extent of the previous victims. Her hair had been cut off, her breasts slashed but, other than her eyes, she had not been burned as severely as the other girls. There was no mutilation of the genitals. She had been slowly blinded. The only explanation was that the killer had been disturbed. If Sandy Compton had been given emergency treatment, she would have survived. She might have been able to give them something, anything that could have helped them find out who was responsible for all this destruction, all this hate.

‘Fuck that cow, I don’t care what it takes, I want her found and I want her charged. She could have saved this girl’s life. And Sandy might have seen the bastard responsible. Fuck her, fuck her to hell and let’s see how she feels when we lock her up. Jennifer knows who she is, let’s put her on the fucking national news as a person of interest.’

Annie nodded in agreement. She also wanted to find the person who had walked sooner rather than laterN do you thinky away from this girl when she had needed her most. She had still been alive, God love her. If only that bitch had phoned an ambulance, they could have saved her, and they would have had someone who had come through something fucking horrendous, but they would have still been alive, still breathing. They might even have been given a clue of some kind. Instead, she had left this girl to die alone and in fucking agony.

Kate had always liked the fact that the working girls stood together, they might fight and argue, but the bottom line was always the same. They stood by each other and they protected one another because
they
would want someone to protect them if the need arose. Sandy Compton had been alive, but unable to move at all. She would have been aware of what was happening to her, and aware that her friend had left her to die alone. It was
that
which was bothering Kate so much. Even if she had thought the girl was already dead, it made no difference to Kate. She should have wanted that girl to have some kind of help.

Flora O’Brien, or whatever her name was, would be on her shit-list for as long as it took to track the bastard down. Though she had a feeling that if Jennifer got to her first, there wouldn’t be much left for her to put away. Jennifer was as angry as she was and also assailed by guilt.

Mariska Compton was staring at Kate and Annie as if they had just both grown new heads before her very eyes. She was visibly shaking, the denial of their words was not something she believed with all her heart, but it was also because she felt they were tainting her daughter’s memory. Her beautiful daughter who she had known, deep inside, was not as successful in her interior design business as she had liked everyone to believe. Mariska’s real fear was the neighbours finding out, her friends knowing that her daughter had been murdered by a serial killer. Not just any serial killer, but one who targeted whores. She was already wondering how her husband would react to the news, she was already relishing his humiliation.

‘This is outrageous. It’s a mistake, my daughter would never do something so heinous. It’s a case of mistaken identity.’

Kate’s heart went out to this woman, she understood how hard it must be to hear something like that about your child.

‘Please, Mrs Compton, we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t a hundred per cent sure that this was your daughter.’

Mariska looked at the two women. She would normally have just started on her daily drinking. She should have been nice and numb by now, but she had needed to drive to the bank, and her biggest fear was to be pulled over for drunk driving. So every Friday she made a conscious effort to stay off the drink until she had done her chores. But if ever she needed an alcoholic drink, today was that day. She knew that this would never be something they could live down.

How could Sandy have done this to her? How could that girl have left this mess for her to clear up? She had never interfered in her daughter’s life, she had never wanted to. The girl had no real meaning to her as such. She had tolerated her all her life, just as she had tolerated Sandy’s father. She remembered all the times she had bragged about her daughter’s career, and now it seemed her career had been just like everything else about her, a bloody lie.

‘Could you leave, please? If that
is
my daughter, I would ask you to make sure that it’s known that we had turned our back on her. Disowned her. I had a feeling she was lying to us, and you have proved my point. Now, if you don3"> 
 
 

ft come to b d’t mind . . .’ She waved her arm in a gesture of dismissal.

‘Your daughter has been murdered. You do understand that, Mrs Compton?’

‘I said, would you please leave? Don’t make me throw you out because I am quite capable of doing just that.’

Kate was nonplussed at the woman’s vehemence, she realised there and then that Mariska Compton was not so much bothered by her daughter’s murder, but more interested in how it might affect
her
. What kind of mother would feel like that? She had guessed the woman had a drink problem from the moment they had entered the house. All the signs were there, and Kate knew how to read them. The empty vodka bottle beside the bin. The nervousness of a woman who has not yet had a few drinks that morning to take off the edge. The shaking of the hands as she lit her cigarettes, but the real decider had been the smell of her breath. Drunks could never really disguise the smell of their own destruction. It was an odour so toxic it could be noticed from three feet away. It was an acrid, disgusting aroma that all the toothpaste and mints in the world were eventually unable to mask.

Kate knew it well, as did Annie. It was something you became familiar with from early on in your career in the police force. Drinkers came from all sections of society, it wasn’t just the poor, the underclass who turned to alcohol to relieve their problems. It was something that cut a swathe through all sections of society. It was legal, and that was its allure. No one took a second look at someone buying alcohol, it was socially acceptable. Everyone liked a drink and no one would look askance at anyone purchasing it in a supermarket or off-licence. Yet it was the cause of more deaths, and more criminal offences, than drugs.

Looking at this woman, smelling her addiction and seeing her looking down on her own child made Kate want to slap her face. She hated that drink was the reason this woman had no interest in her child. The pubs were now open all day, the supermarkets sold drink so cheaply it was available to school children in their lunch hour. They bought drinks that were flavoured by oranges, cranberries and melons. They were brightly coloured bottles of alcohol that were like drinking lemonade. Oh, Kate hated drugs, but she hated excessive use of alcohol more. There were so many young men doing life because of strong lager and a brief argument resulting in a violent fight. Young men who, without the drink, would have walked away from the argument in the first place. But who bothered to take the makers of the alcohol to task? No one. The government came up with more and more taxes so that publicans were unable to give their customers a reasonably priced pint. Pubs that had once been the centre of a community were now outpriced by the Chancellor. And for what? Just so the supermarkets could corner the cheap booze market. Could make sure that people drank at home instead of being with friends, with people who would have looked out for them.

Now, looking at this sad excuse for a woman, for a mother, Kate knew that, as drunk as this bitch might be in her daily life, she would never be drunk enough to accept her daughter’s lifestyle. Even though she was now dead as a fucking doornail.

She got up to leave with Annie in tow; they were both shocked by the woman’s complete disregard for her daughter’s death. At the front door, Kate turned to the woman and said sadly, ‘Do you know something, Mrs Compton? Whatever your daughter might have been, she had one thing going for her. She wasn’t
you
. Like all drunks, nothing really means anything to you, all you think about is yourself. I have a feeling that was good enoughcconsultanty probably what sent her on the game in the first place. I bet she lived her life around your drinking, knew you had no interest in her at all unless it suited you, unless it was something you could brag about to people who meant fuck-all. I bet she helped you into bed, cleaned up after you, pretended that everything was normal to her friends, and lived the lie you have forced on her. Now she is dead, so you go and have another drink, I’m sure you need one now even more than usual.’

Kate could still hear the woman cursing them as they walked down the well-kept drive, but she didn’t care. She saw all sorts in her job, but the hypocrites were always the ones that made her see red. The worst thing of all was that Mariska Compton had not even asked about her daughter’s demise, if she had been in pain. She had not even cared enough to wonder, or even think to ask in passing, exactly how her daughter had wound up dead. That told Kate this was a woman who was so well versed in the drink that she had forgotten how to care for anyone else but herself.

As they drove away from the large, prosperous house, Kate was tempted to see that Mrs Compton was followed and watched until she was done for drink driving, dangerous driving or driving without due care and attention.
Anything
that could make her life a misery. It was the least she could do for the girl who had died so slowly, so horribly, and who had died without anyone to really mourn her passing. It was that, more than anything that got to Kate. Whatever that poor girl was, whatever she had become, she was still that woman’s own flesh and blood. She deserved so much better from the woman who had given birth to her. She had at least warranted a few tears.

It never ceased to amaze Kate how people treated other people, how selfish and greedy so many turned out to be. Well, God paid back debts without money, and she knew that was true. God always saw a way to make people understand their mistakes, and she relied on that knowledge to keep her sane. Her old mum had said that scum floated to the surface, but that it eventually sunk without trace. Kate had always laughed at her mum’s Irish wisdom, her old Irish sayings. Now though, years later, she felt that there was an element of truth in them. She hoped that she was right, because after today she wanted Sandy Compton’s mother to one day realise just what she had turned her back on.