M. Arlidge - Pop Goes the Weasel

‘What do you mean?’ Helen responded.

‘She walked out on us. Disobeyed her father, said she would find her own ways to fund her “studies”. We all knew what that meant.’

There was almost a bitter glee in Eileen’s voice now.

‘What happened to her?’

‘She took to prostitution. Took money from strangers who…’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because she told us. When she came home with a bastard child in her belly.’

Helen breathed out, the full tragedy of Ella’s life slowly taking shape in front of her.

‘Whose was it?’

‘She didn’t know,’ Eileen replied, but now the glee had vanished from her voice.

‘Why not?’

‘She… she had got herself into trouble. A group of men who’d… who’d tricked her into going to their flat.’

‘And raped her?’

Suddenly Eileen was crying, her head hanging low, her shoulders shaking gently. For all the dogma, perhaps there was still a mother in there somewhere.

‘Eileen?’

‘Yes. They… they kept her there for two days.’

Helen closed her eyes. She wanted to flee from the horror of Ella’s ordeal but the images forced themselves into her brain.

‘Afterwards they said they’d slit her throat if she told anyone,’ Eileen continued, falteringly.

‘And she came home when she discovered she was pregnant?’

Eileen nodded.

‘And what happened?’

‘Alan turned her away. What else could he do?’

She looked up imploringly, as if begging Helen to understand. Helen wanted to shout and scream at her, but swallowed down her rage.

‘When was this?’

‘Six months ago.’

‘And after that she was airbrushed out of the family?’

Eileen nodded.

‘Before that, Alan had told people she was working overseas… for a medical charity. But afterwards, he told everyone she was dead.’

‘And the photos?’ Helen asked, hoping against hope for a recent picture of their killer.

Eileen paused, before once more looking up at Helen with tears in her eyes.

‘He burnt every single one.’

Helen sprinted to her bike, switching her phone back on as she ran. Seven voicemail messages. They would all be from Harwood but Helen didn’t have time for that now. She dialled Sanderson instead.

It rang and rang. Then:

‘Hello?’

‘Sanderson, it’s me. Can you talk?’

There was a momentary pause, then:

‘Oh hi, Mum, give me one second.’

Clever girl. There was a longer pause, then the sound of the fire door swinging open and shut.

‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ Sanderson resumed in a hushed voice. ‘Harwood is going nuts looking for you.’

‘I know and I feel bad asking for one more favour, but… I need you to find Carrie Matthews. Find out what she knows about her sister’s movements and see if you can get a photo from her. If she hasn’t got one, try the University. Alan Matthews destroyed all their photos of her after she turned up pregnant following a gang rape. Ella Matthews is our killer – I’m a hundred per cent certain of that. The priority for you and the team now must be to bring her in before she kills again.’

‘On it. I’ll call you when I have news.’

Climbing the stairs to Jake’s flat, Helen felt a mixture of panic and relief. Relief at seeing him, but also anxiety at the darkness rising within her. Strong as she was there were always moments when it took her. The world was full of viciousness and sometimes she was thrust right back to a time when she was the world’s punch bag, when she and her sister had taken the sins of the world upon their shoulders. She was jumpy now, unable to contain the panic spiking inside her, the feeling that any minute, she would be back there in that room.

Jake wanted to hold her, but she wouldn’t let him. She chained herself up without being asked and told him to get on with it. She knew she was being rude and aggressive, but she needed this badly.

‘Now.’

Jake hesitated.

‘Please.’

Then he relented. Taking a medium-sized crop from his armoury, he raised his arm and brought it down firmly on her naked back.

‘Again.’

He raised it again. This time he wasn’t so reluctant – he could feel the charge flowing out of Helen’s body, as her anxiety escaped. He brought the crop down again, then again, his excitement rising as the rhythm of the beating took hold. Helen was moaning now, demanding more pain. Jake gave it to her… faster and faster.

Eventually the beating slowed as Helen relaxed and before long everything was calm once more.

Helen relished this moment of stillness. Her life had been so fraught, so out of control, but whatever happened now, she could always come here. Jake was still the fix she needed when she was ambushed by the darkness. She didn’t love him, but she needed him. Perhaps that was the first step on the road.

She was lucky. She had found someone. Ella hadn’t. She had been the plaything of men who enjoyed controlling and abusing women. First her father with his taste for violence, sadism and cruelty. Then a group of men who took pleasure from imprisoning and torturing a vulnerable young woman. She had been left brutalized and pregnant. A single woman bringing up a child of rape.

Unbidden, Robert popped into her brain. And alongside him, as always, thoughts of Marianne.

It is amazing how calm you are when you know the end is near. Since she had made her decision, Ella had felt elated. She giggled, sang songs to Amelia, behaved like a dizzy child. The rage still lurked within her, seeking a chance to escape and reassert itself, but this morning she didn’t need it.

She had lifted some smart baby clothes from Boots a few days earlier. She was pleased she had done so now. She wanted Amelia to be looking nice when they found her. Since she had delivered Amelia, alone and uncared for in this dirty flat, she had never known what to feel for her. She was the price of her sin, a present from her rapists, reminding her of the callousness of the world. Her first instinct had been to smother the screaming bundle. She had gone to do it, but… the girl looked just like her. Her attackers had been dark-skinned, with heavy stubble and black hair. Amelia was blonde, with a cute button nose.

Her next thought had been to ignore the baby, to punish it for its existence by deliberately starving it of food. But then she’d felt the milk seeping from her breasts and knew that something bigger than herself was at play here. So she’d fed the baby. Occasionally she would brush her nipple against the baby’s mouth, then withdraw it, goading the baby with its unfulfilled hunger. But after a while even that seemed cruel and stupid and she’d fed the baby willingly. She found she was happy when she breastfed, nourishing the small child, and for those brief moments when they were joined together, she could forget the other stuff, the violence, the hypocrisy, the rage. One day she realized that she didn’t want the baby to suffer, that she wanted to protect it. So when she went out at night, she slipped some Night Nurse into her formula. This kept her slumbering happily until her mother returned.

Sadness pulsed through her heart, but she shook it off. She was committed to this path, so no point having regrets. The pills were waiting for her in the kitchen. All she had to do was get some formula and then she would be ready.

There was no backing out now.