by Emmy Ellis
Winter spluttered. “Ah, so John’s elusive killer has finally come a cropper.”
“Seems so. Forensics will match her to the hair left on Irene Roberts’ pillow, the fingerprints on the beside cabinet, and that of the DNA left in my father’s house, I’m sure.” She paused, then rushed on to get away from the subject of Lisa. “There are three more victims. Their skins are sewn onto some sort of body frame.”
“Good Lord. So the case is far from over then.”
“No. Lots of loose ends to tie up. Like who the unidentified woman really is, who the other three are—Ordsall, or we assume it’s her, made them look like mannequins.”
“This is like something out of a horror show.” Winter cleared his throat. “I suggest you get off home and start afresh in the morning. I assume Gilbert’s there?”
“Yes.”
“Then let him deal with the bodies. Your job now is to find out who those poor people are and inform their families.” One family member has already been informed…me. “Yes. Plenty of digging to do. We can’t knock off just yet. We need to go and see Irene’s son. I can’t go home with the killer caught, knowing he’s still worrying.”
“You’re a good sort, Tracy.”
I’m bloody well not, I assure you.
“Thanks. Well, goodnight,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”
“You will. Thanks for closing this so fast. I knew it was the right decision bringing you in to head the squad.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere. Night, sir.”
“Tarra.”
She swiped her mobile screen then turned to Damon, shoving the phone in her pocket. “Can you remember where Mr Roberts lives?”
He opened his eyes and dug out his notebook, looked it up, and plugged the address in the satnav. “Home after we’ve been to him, or shall we nip to a restaurant and eat out, celebrate?”
“Eating out it is. I’m bloody starving, and we deserve this.”
Do we ever.
Tracy started the engine, and as she was about to drive away, Gilbert caught her attention. He was speaking to Newson at the door and glanced in her direction.
She got out of the car and called from the pavement, “Everything all right?”
“Thank goodness you haven’t left yet,” Gilbert said. “There’s something you need to see. SOCO found a few bits and bobs.”
“Fucking hell…” she muttered then poked her head inside the car. “The restaurant will have to wait a bit longer. Come on.”
Tracy and Damon trudged back into the house, and a SOCO beckoned her into the living room.
“What have you got for me?” Tracy asked.
The officer pointed to the coffee table. Picture albums were spread out on top. “Found them in that cabinet there,” he said. “As well as a birth certificate for a female—a Christine Ordsall—there’s a driver’s licence for a Chris Ordsall, but with a photo of a man on it. Now, we all know there are dodgy licences about, so that’s no surprise, but why have two? What I mean is, there’s a licence for a Christine Ordsall found in her handbag, but with the picture of a woman on it.”
Tracy, thankful she still had her whites on, grabbed a spare glove the SOCO held out, put it on, then picked up the first album. She turned the pages and studied the photos. From a baby to around four years old, the child was a girl, then they switched to the girl wearing boy’s clothing. As the albums progressed through the years, it continued to be a boy.
“Duel personality?” Tracy said, more to herself than Damon or the SOCO.
“But her mother would have to have allowed her to dress this way”—Damon hovered a finger over an image of a lad—“and not being funny, back then, it wasn’t looked upon kindly to want to change your identity as a child, or even an adult. It’s only really been accepted lately.”
“So Chrissy’s mother forced her to be a boy? If so, why did she do that after age four or so?”
“Something we need to find out.”
“You’re telling me. This is such a bloody weird case.” She placed the album down then crouched to inspect the male licence. “You can see it’s her if you look closely. Same eyes.”
“I’d say it was her brother, but I know from the checks the team did on the nurses, Ordsall was an only child. Her mother is deceased.”
“Oh fuck…” Tracy’s guts knotted.
“What?” Damon frowned.
Tracy put the licence down and swiped up one of the albums. She flicked to a certain page. “See her?” She jabbed a finger at a woman beside the boy.
“Yes…”
“Remind you of anyone?” She cocked her head.
“No…”
“Downstairs? Mannequin?”
“Jesus Christ!” Damon blinked several times.
“I think we’ll find out one of them is Ordsall’s mother.”
Damon blew out a long breath. “What the hell?”
“Indeed.” She smiled at the SOCO. “We’ll be off now. I gather this evidence will be at the station by the morning?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Brilliant. Thanks.”
She headed back outside, and once at the car, she remembered the woman in Cowdell’s house. Taking off her whites and slinging them into the car, she waited for Damon to do the same, then said, “We need to arrest that poor woman in there.” She jerked her thumb behind her.
“Shit.”
“Yep, shit. We’ll do that, call another officer out to take Newson’s place at Ordsall’s door, and leave Newson and Pringle to take her in and book her. We’ll interview her in the morning. She deserves a night’s sleep. Got to be self-defence, surely.”
“I’d have thought so, but who knows what the courts will decide.” Damon shrugged. “Let’s get it over with, then go and see Mr Roberts.”
* * * *
Frankie Roberts collapsed upon hearing the news his mother’s killer had been found. Tracy looked away from the sight of him sobbing on his grey living room carpet. Damon glanced at her, and she knew what he was thinking. While this man’s world had been ripped apart, theirs had been pasted back together. They had no right to feel elation in the face of such grief.
Mr Roberts’ wife crouched beside him, stroking his back and wailing in between telling him it would be okay, that at least the killer had been caught, that even though his mum was gone, there was some kind of justice in that her murderer would be put in prison.
Oh God…
“But it was a nurse,” Mr Roberts wrenched out, his voice deep, ravaged by despair. “Someone we trusted.” Up he got then, as though some force had propelled him to his feet. He paced, and it seemed anger was replacing the upset. “I spoke to her the morning Mum went missing, that Ordsall. She was nothing but kind to me. You would never know it was her. Fucking bitch.” He spat the last word out. “Okay, Mum was being awkward in her last couple of days, but is that really a reason to kill her?”
“No,” Tracy said. “We’ve yet to find out what her reasoning was.”
“Well, when you interview her, make sure she tells you,” he said. “I want to know exactly why she thought it was okay to take my mum away from us.”
Tracy looked at Damon—should we tell him Ordsall’s dead? He nodded.
She took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, Miss Ordsall is dead.”
“What?” Mr Roberts whipped his head to face her, his cheeks touched by the brush of fury.
“We arrived at the scene to find someone had stabbed her. There are other things to do with this case that we have yet to work out. It seems your mother wasn’t the first victim.” She wouldn’t ordinarily give out this kind of information yet, but it was bound to hit the news quickly, so she’d rather these two heard it from her first. “Why she did what she did, we don’t know, but we will.”
“She killed someone else?” Polly Roberts asked, her mouth quivering.
“Four others and Irene, and also a kidnap victim is in the scenario. I’m terribly sorry, but we have no other infor
mation about Miss Ordsall at the moment.” None I’m prepared to tell you, anyway.
Tracy and Damon stayed a while longer, then a child cried upstairs, and Polly rushed up to see to them.
“Do you feel you need Julie, the family liaison officer back?” Tracy asked Frankie. “We can arrange that for you if you think it will help.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I just want to be left alone. There’s a funeral to sort out once we can finally have Mum’s body moved from the hospital, and then there’s trying to live without her.” He sniffed. Tears fell again. “I don’t think I can do it.”
Thankfully, Polly returned, so Tracy took the chance to leave. After “I’m sorry for your loss” and “Goodbye”, Tracy and Damon got in the car.
“Still feel like going out to a restaurant after that?” she asked.
“No.”
“Me neither. Takeaway it is then.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tracy’s next appointment with Barrows wasn’t in the evening like before. Barrows had rung to offer a morning session—something about one of her more anxious clients needing to see her in Tracy’s slot—and Tracy had agreed so long as it was before work. She thought of Irene and wished the woman had seen a therapist herself so her life hadn’t been riddled with insecurities, rendering her housebound, unable to enjoy being alive.
Why Irene had died would come to light eventually. Or maybe it wouldn’t.
Seven in the bloody morning wasn’t an ideal time to be spilling your guts to your therapist, but if that was all that was on offer, she’d take it.
How times have changed. At one time I wouldn’t have entertained seeing a therapist again at all.
She waited outside Barrows’ door for a moment to gather her courage then knocked. Although Barrows was easy to get along with, a piece of piss to open herself up to, it was different now. Lisa was dead, so the dynamics had changed. Tracy’s perspective had changed. While she was on edge waiting for the forensics to come back on Lisa’s DNA matching the other evidence from the Collier case, plus her hair on Irene’s pillow, it wasn’t like she didn’t know it would be a positive match, but it was still prickling her nerves. Would she tell Barrows about it?
No. It’s an active case.
For the next hour, Tracy would talk about everything but Lisa.
“Come in!”
Tracy entered, pleased to see Barrows’ smiling face.
“How are you?” Barrows asked, walking over to the sofa with two cups of coffee.
Tracy closed the door. “Great!”
Barrows looked at her from beneath lowered lashes. “Really? Or are you just saying that?”
Tracy sat in the car and accepted a cup. “Really. Things have panned out since I last saw you.”
“To do with what you won’t talk to me about?” Barrows settled on the sofa.
“Yes, but it’s gone, the problem.” Or most of it has. “And I can move on now, so can Damon.”
“So with the problem gone, are you going to concentrate on Bitchy Tracy, as you called her in our last session? I mean, will we be working to get rid of her, too?”
“Yes.” A pause. “But not completely. I wouldn’t be me without a bit of acidity.”
“Just control her then? Learn when to say things and when not to?”
“And to think appropriate things. That’s my main issue. I judge too much. I pick up on things that really shouldn’t be important, but for some reason, they are.” She sipped some coffee. Not as nice as Winter’s, but it would do.
“Do you think you judge others because inside, you’re feeling you don’t measure up, so if you poke at them, it makes you forget your own downfalls?”
Tracy thought about that for a moment. “It might be. Explain more.”
“Well, if you’re picking someone else apart, you’re not looking at yourself, are you. You don’t have to face who you are, what you look like, how you behave, because you’re too busy facing other people’s discrepancies.”
“Hmm. How can I be doing that subconsciously? Surely I should know that I want to concentrate on others rather than myself.”
“Maybe you don’t want to look at yourself too closely because you might find even more things you don’t like. You might find yourself lacking, and considering what you told me in our last session, you already blame yourself for far too much, so adding more to the pile… Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“Hmm.” Her fingers around the cup burned from the coffee. “So how do I stop?”
“Mindfulness.”
“Right…”
“I’ll teach you, don’t worry.”
For the remainder of the hour, Barrows explained how Tracy could switch her mindset. She left the office feeling great, with a goal in mind to get rid of all the Tracys she didn’t need to be anymore and just live as one or two. Or three.
Or maybe four.
* * * *
Tracy laughed with her team three weeks later in the incident room. Alastair had banged his head again the night before, this time sporting an egg-sized lump. He’d admitted he’d got the injury from using the doorframe as some kind of exercise equipment, giving his arms a workout by tugging himself up.
“Why don’t you join a gym if you insist on doing that sort of thing?” she asked. “Your poor head will thank you for it.”
“I can’t afford the gym,” he said.
“Then you’ll just have to suffer with a sore head.” Tracy smiled at his sad expression.
Her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at the name on the screen: WINTER. Frowning, she answered. “Yes, sir?”
“In my office, please.”
For some reason, her stomach somersaulted. She side-eyed the team to see if they were watching her, but everyone had turned back to their monitors and were hard at work trying to find out more about Ordsall and her childhood. She’d left school to be taught at home from an early age, so that tied in with how her mother had been able to make her dress as a boy—if that’s what had happened—but everything else was blank. No doctor’s records, nothing.
Barrows had suggested Ordsall had disassociated herself with her male persona, so when Chris had been killing, Chrissy had been totally unaware.
Flicking thoughts of Ordsall to the back of her mind, Tracy left the room and walked down the corridor towards Winter’s office. Nervous wasn’t the word. She tried to think of whether she’d done anything wrong during the case—stepped over boundaries or hadn’t followed protocol—but she’d been a good girl this time and hadn’t been up to any of her old antics where she encouraged Damon to hide her misdemeanours just so she could do things that weren’t strictly allowed. Like messing with a body before Kathy, the ME at their old station, had arrived. Tracy had taken the victim’s ID out of his pocket then replaced it, no one having a clue except for Damon. He’d told her he wasn’t comfortable covering for her, so she’d made a conscious effort to stop expecting him to.
Working with Barrows would ensure she stopped doing many things she shouldn’t do.
She knocked on Winter’s door.
“Come in.”
He didn’t sound stern, more like he was worried.
She went inside, closed the door, and remained in front of it. If she was about to get her arse handed to her on a plate, she preferred to be standing while he did it.
“Sir?”
“You might want to sit down for this, Tracy.” His expression darkened—lowered eyebrows, mouth downturned—and he pointed to the chair opposite his desk.
“Um, can I stand, please?” Her heartrate went crazy, and she fought for breath. Something was wrong here. Either she was in the shit and she had to grovel for an apology, or he was letting her go, closing the squad down.
Don’t think of the worst-case scenario. Be positive.
She thanked Barrows for that line of thought.
“No,” Winter said. “Sit.”
She did, legs shaking. “If I’ve done somethi
ng wrong, please just say so quickly, sir.”
“No, you’ve not done anything.”
She shuddered with relief. “So I’m here because…?”
“Tracy, we have the results back from forensics about the unidentified woman.”
Fuck.
She needed the toilet. To throw up or shit herself, she wasn’t sure. “Okay…” The word had come out shaky, and she hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“As you were probably expecting, the DNA matches that of the woman who lived with your father and the hair on the care home pillow.”
“Right…” Her pulse fluttered in her neck, and she imagined it ballooned so Winter could see it.
“As you’re involved, it’s best you don’t deal with anything relating to the woman or the Collier case, so there’s a couple of detectives from the city dealing with this. Considering the unidentified woman is still on their books as well as ours, I said it was fine for them to go ahead and try to find out who she is.”
“Sensible. I’d rather not have anything to do with her or what happened back then. I’m in therapy at the moment, at my own expense, to work through The Past, so being involved would be detrimental to what my therapist is trying to achieve with me.”
“Exactly.”
“So…?”
“The lead DI decided to compare the woman’s DNA with your father’s.”
Shit. Shitshitshit.
“Why?”
“Just to rule things out.”
“I see. And?”
“The results point to the woman being his daughter.”
I know, I know, I know…
“Pardon?” Keep up the façade. Poker face. Steady hands.
“You had a sister, Tracy.”
“I-I don’t understand.” I should have been an actor.
“She’s older than you. Were you aware of her existence?”
“What? Of course not.” More lies. “I grew up an only child.”
“Then we need to look into where she was for all those years.”
No! Please don’t do that…
“Christ. This is a bit much to take in,” she said. “Where could she have been?”
