M. Arlidge - Pop Goes the Weasel

‘A sailor. Probably foreign. Probably unmarried. An odd choice for her.’ Helen spoke out loud, as she surveyed the strange tattoos on the body of the corpse.

‘Perhaps victims are getting harder to find.’

‘But still she can’t stop,’ Helen replied. It was a sobering thought.

Charlie nodded but said nothing. The body was partially clothed and Helen examined it more closely now. Presumably Angel had been disturbed by the encounter and had been unable to go to town on her victim in the usual way. His chest looked like it had been hacked at – there was none of her usual precision here. Just a frenzy of brutality.

‘What have you got for me?’ Helen asked the chief SOC officer.

‘Deep laceration to the face. Virtually stabbed him through the eye. Death would have been instantaneous.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Looks like he was involved in some kind of sexual activity tonight. He’s got traces of semen on his penis and his hips are heavily bruised. Which suggests the sex was violent, possibly even rape.’

Unbidden, Helen felt a flash of sympathy for Angel. Even after all these years, nothing affected Helen like sex crimes and she only ever felt pity for the victims, however degraded they were. The aftermath of rape is like a slow death, a cancer eating away at you from the inside, unwilling to let you go, unwilling to let you live. Angel was unhinged, mad even, but an attack such as this would have plunged her further into the abyss.

She would be heavily bruised, perhaps badly injured too. Would she retreat from the world now and be lost from them for good? Or would she go out in one last blaze of glory?

The rain fell steadily and hard. It was attacking the city, not cleansing it, bouncing up off the pavement in angry bursts. Deep puddles were forming, blocking her path, but she didn’t hesitate, marching straight through them. Water seeped into her trainers, soaking her aching feet, but she didn’t stop. If she hesitated, she would lose her nerve and turn back.

She was frozen to the bone, her head pounding, her body screaming as the shock began to wear off. She was sure that she stood out like a sore thumb and quickened her pace. The faster she walked, the less she limped. She had a hoody on and a baseball cap too, but still an observant passer-by would clock the heavy bruising around her eyes and nose. She had a cover story ready, but she didn’t really trust herself to speak. So she marched on.

Eventually the building came into view. Instinctively she hesitated – through fear? Shame? Love? – then hurried towards it. She had no idea what to expect, but she knew that this was the right thing to do.

The place looked drab but friendly. She hammered on the door and waited, casting around to see if anyone was watching. But there was no one. She was alone.

No answer. She hammered again. For God’s sake, every second made this worse.

This time she heard footsteps. She stepped away from the door, bracing herself for what was to come.

The door slowly opened and a stout, matronly figure emerged. She looked at the hooded figure and paused.

‘May I help you?’ Her tone was polite but cautious. ‘I’m Wendy Jennings. Have you come to visit someone?’

In response, the woman pulled back her hood and removed her cap. Wendy Jennings gasped.

‘Dear God. Come inside, you poor girl. You need to have that looked at.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Come on now. Don’t be afraid.’

‘I don’t want anything for me.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘This.’

She unzipped her coat and brought out the soft bundle that had been hidden inside. Wendy looked down at the slumbering baby, swaddled in a warm blanket, and realized what was being offered to her.

‘Take it, for God’s sake,’ the woman hissed.

But now Wendy Jennings was drawing back.

‘Listen, dear, I can see you’re in trouble but we can’t take your baby just like that.’

‘Why not? This is a children’s home, isn’t it?’

‘Yes of course, but -’

‘Please don’t make me beg.’

Wendy Jennings flinched at the tone. There was real distress there but anger too.

‘I can’t care for her any more,’ the woman continued.

‘I see that and I understand, I really do, but there are ways of doing these things. Procedures we have to follow. The first thing we have to do is call the social services.’

‘No social services.’

‘Let me call an ambulance then. Get you seen to and then we can talk about your baby.’

It was a trap. Had to be. She had hoped she would find someone good here, someone she could trust, but there was nothing for her here. She turned on her heel.

‘Where are you going?’ Wendy shouted. ‘Stay, please, and let’s talk about it.’

But she didn’t respond.

‘I mean you no harm.’

‘Like fuck you don’t.’

She hesitated, then turning took a big step forward and spat in Wendy Jennings’s face.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

She marched off down the street without looking back, her baby clutched to her chest. Tears streamed down her face – fat, hopeless tears of impotence and rage.

Her last chance had gone. Her last shot at redemption.

Now there was only death.

It was hopeless. The police had moved the press pack back, reminded them of their responsibilities, but as soon as they departed, it started up again. The hammering on the door, the questions through the letterbox. A few had tried their hand round the back, clambering over the garden fence and rattling the back door. Peering in through the conservatory window like ghouls.

Robert and his parents now lived in perpetual darkness on the first floor. At first they thought they would be out of sight up here, but then they saw a photographer hanging out of a first-floor window across the road and they’d pulled the curtains firmly shut. Now they behaved like creatures of the night, huddling in the dark, eating food from tins and packets – existing rather than living.

At first, Robert had steered clear of the internet, didn’t want to go there. But when it’s your only window on the world, it’s hard to hold out. And once on it, he couldn’t resist. The national papers had gone to town, bringing Marianne the bogey woman back to life in all her glory. He didn’t want his parents to see, knew it would hurt them, so locked away in his bedroom he read and read. Climbing inside his mother. He was surprised to feel a modicum of sympathy for her – she had clearly suffered terrible abuse and neglect – but her crimes made for grim reading. She had obviously been intelligent – more intelligent than him? – but not intelligent enough to pull herself back from the brink. Her life had ended in disgusting and depressing fashion. According to the National Enquirer website, the bullet had penetrated her heart and she had bled to death in her sister’s arms. In the aftermath, Helen’s life had been exposed and now it was his turn. Every failed exam, every minor indiscretion, every brush with the law had been seized on by the press. They wanted to portray him as a loser, a drifter, violent, a chip off the old block. A bad seed. He had been so enraged by the character assassination visited on himself and his parents that when Helen Grace texted him with a message of support, he’d replied tersely and unpleasantly. Maybe the journalists could intercept their messages or maybe not. He didn’t care.

Something had to be done. That much was clear. His parents were suffering terribly, unable to talk to or see their friends, tainted by association with him. Robert knew he had to draw the pack off, give them something else to think about. He owed that to the couple who had raised him since birth.