M. Arlidge - Pop Goes the Weasel

She had removed the case files from the incident room and holed herself up in a damp interview room that was generally avoided. All through the night she had been going over the vast cache of documents in the numerous files, trying to see through the mass of details to the important connections. Working backwards from the most recent, messiest murder, she had been searching for correlations and parallels, hunting for pointers to why Angel had been driven to kill and what she’d do next. Did these men have any connection to the student world? Had they used an escort service that recruited a ‘better’ sort of woman? What had set her off? Who was she angry with? Questions, questions, questions.

As sunrise came and went without progress, Helen had gone back to first principles. Who was Angel and what had precipitated this killing spree? What was the spark that lit the fire?

Opening the Alan Matthews case file, she re-read the details for the umpteenth time. She was so tired now that the words swam in front of her. Throwing down another slug of cold coffee, she turned to the pictures from the crime scene instead. She had seen them numerous times, but they still made her feel nauseous – the bloated torso opened up for all to see.

For all to see. The phrase buzzed round her mind, as she took in Alan Matthews’ corpse. Suddenly her eyes zeroed in on the hood, which had been placed carefully over his head before death. Helen had always dismissed this as Angel’s security – an attempt by a nascent killer to hide her identity in case it all went wrong and the victim escaped. But what if it signified something else? She had taken her time on the others – she had abused them, then split them open with a steady hand, enjoying herself. The DIY thoracotomy, as Jim Grieves had put it, carried out on Alan Matthews was more ragged, more brutal. Was this because she was an amateur or was something else at play? Was she nervous?

Helen shot a look at the clock. It was past half nine now, surely her time was almost up. Yet Helen felt she was onto something, as if the jigsaw puzzle were trying to assemble itself in front of her. She had to keep going and hope against hope that she would not be found. Her phone started buzzing, but she ignored it. No time for distractions now.

The hood. Focus on the hood. The one distinguishing feature of the first murder. Angel might have wanted to conceal her identity in case the victim escaped or she might have done it because… she didn’t want to look her victim in the eye, when she carried out the mutilation. Was she scared of him? Scared her nerve would fail her? Did she know him?

The hood wasn’t used to suffocate him and wasn’t employed in the later murders, so what made her first victim unique? Did he have some kind of power over her? Why was Alan Matthews special? He was a hypocritical, corrupt sexual deviant with an interest in evangelical religion and a passion for beating his family…

An echo of a memory. Something calling to Helen. Suddenly she was tossing the files aside, looking for the surveillance file that DC Fortune and his team had assembled on the Matthews family. There was a mass of mundane details, time logs, all of which might help, but Helen discarded them for the photos from the funeral. Helen had been there, for God’s sake – had the answer been under her nose all along?

Photos of the cortège leaving the house, of the mourners arriving, of the family departing the church. All of them inviting the same question. There was Eileen, being supported by her elder daughter, Carrie. And there were the twins, smart in the dark suits. But where was Ella? When he was alive, Alan Matthews had made great play of being a father of four, the fertile paterfamilias of a close-knit, disciplined and devout family, so where was his younger daughter? Why hadn’t she turned up at the funeral? And, more importantly, why had the family never mentioned her – during police interviews, during the funeral orations. Why had Ella been airbrushed out of the family?

As that thought landed, another punched through. The heart. All the other hearts had been delivered to places of work, but not Alan Matthews’ heart. That was delivered to the family home. Surely that had to be significant?

Helen’s phone started buzzing again. She was about to reject it – expecting it to be an irate Harwood – but she recognized the number and answered it instead.

‘DI Grace.’

‘Hi, boss, it’s me,’ DC Sanderson replied. ‘I’m at the university’s admissions office and I think I may have something for you. I was going through the list of students who dropped out of their studies this year, looking particularly at female medical students. One name came up.’

‘Ella Matthews?’

‘Ella Matthews,’ Sanderson confirmed, surprised by her boss’s prescience. ‘She was a good student for the first year, then went badly off the rails. Late work, turning up to classes drunk or stoned, aggressive behaviour to other students. Her welfare officer suspected she may have resorted to prostitution because she had no money coming in from family. She was a mess. Six months ago she vanished.’

‘Good work, stay on it. Find her friends, tutors, anybody who can give us more information on where she liked to go, where she felt safe, where she bought her drugs, anything. She’s our number one suspect – leave no stone unturned.’

Sanderson rang off. Helen knew she had no right to issue orders but now they were finally onto something, she was damned if she was going to let Harwood mess it up. This case still felt like hers and Helen wasn’t prepared to give it up yet. Bagging up the files, Helen hurried from the room.

Her time was limited, but Helen knew there was one person who could reveal the truth. And she was on her way to see her now.

It was past ten o’clock. They should both have left for work hours ago. But instead they lay there together, happy and warm in a post-coital glow, neither moving a muscle. After all the emotion and heartache of the last few hours it felt so good just to be quiet and still.

After Steve had delivered his ultimatum, Charlie’s initial instinct had been to kick back at him. She hated being boxed into a corner, forced to choose between being a mother or a copper. But even as she accused him of moving the goalposts, of breaking his word, she knew that the fight was going out of her. If it really was down to a choice of the job or him, then Steve would win every time. Charlie loved being a policewoman – it was all she’d ever wanted to be and she had paid a heavy price for that ambition. But she couldn’t imagine life without Steve and he was right. There was a hole in their life, the indelible shape of the baby Charlie had lost during her incarceration.

They had circled each other for hours, but eventually Charlie promised to leave her job. At that point Steve had cried. Charlie too. Before long they had ended up in bed, making love with a passion and urgency that surprised them both. They had eschewed contraception, a silent acknowledgement that things had changed and there was no way back.

It felt so nice, so decadent, to be lying here with him. She had turned her phone off and pushed away thoughts of Helen and the team, who were no doubt wondering where she was. She would call Helen later and explain.

If she felt a spasm of guilt at the thought, more than a spasm, Charlie ignored it. She had made her decision.

Helen was sure Eileen Matthews would slam the door in her face, but for once luck was on her side. One of the twins answered the door and, on seeing Helen’s warrant card, let her straight in. As he ran upstairs to fetch his mother, Helen ran a rule over the living room. Everything she saw confirmed her suspicions.