by Neil White
Joe got some satisfaction from that, knowing that Proctor saw everything ahead as bleak.
Joe looked into the rear-view mirror. Helena was staring out of the side window, her bag on her lap. She’d been married to one of the worst serial killers in the history of the north, preying on teenage girls for years, and one of the victim’s turned out to be her own sister. Helena had a lot of things to work out for herself and Joe guessed it could take her some time.
‘Will you be all right?’ he said.
Helena looked forward and nodded, gave a faint smile. ‘I’ll be fine. I just want him to know that it’s goodbye.’
That sounded reasonable, although Joe was surprised that her anger wasn’t greater, as if she still bore some feelings for her sister’s killer.
Joe pulled into the car park opposite the smoked glass of the entrance and stayed silent as Helena got out to make the lonely walk. She was dressed smartly, as if she wanted Proctor to know just what he’d let go, in skirt and heels, her handbag now over her shoulder.
As they watched her, Sam said, ‘She must feel so cheated, knowing what he did. He’d been in her bed all these years, comforting her, when all the time he’d been the killer.’
‘Like we’ve found out, a grief-junkie,’ Joe said. ‘Helena must have been the biggest prize of all, someone he could watch every day.’
‘What I can’t understand is that he must have had some feelings for Helena,’ Sam said. ‘People like Mark Proctor don’t have feelings, not in the same way that we do, but he took Helena’s revenge. He persuaded Henry Mason to kill the teacher who’d been molesting her sister and then he killed Henry Mason himself, revenge for selling the car that killed her parents. That’s pretty smart. Perhaps it was his way of making amends for what he did.’
‘You’re being too kind,’ Joe said. ‘Something doesn’t fit well with me. The man killed in Worsley was meant to be him.’
‘The perfect distraction. There might be a reason why Proctor sent that man along, or perhaps it didn’t matter who was chosen, but you have to admit that his death makes you doubt Proctor’s part. What better defence can there be than to claim himself as the victim?’
‘I understand your case theory, but when I saw Proctor in court, he looked confused. There’s something we’re not getting, I’m sure of it.’
‘That’s just his arrogance,’ Sam said. ‘He assumed he was too clever for us and can’t work out how he got caught.’
‘Are you sure you’ve got enough?’
‘We got lucky. My hunch about the custody record was right: Henry Mason’s DNA is on the page where Proctor signed it the night he was arrested for stealing his own car back. For the first time, Proctor had panicked. He’d been caught in the act and it trapped him. The link with the IP address does the rest, because it shows that Proctor was in contact, luring Mason to his death, posing as vodkagirl. We have a motive, revenge for the death of Helena’s parents, and it’s enough to keep him inside for now, along with Carrie’s abduction.’
‘You must be the real hero, coming up with the DNA and IP stuff.’
‘It doesn’t feel like that,’ Sam said. ‘And we want more, because I want him to pay for everything. Yes, we’ve got the photographs and souvenirs but they don’t prove direct involvement in Ellie’s murder. His defence lawyer might squirm Proctor out of that.’
‘Perhaps if they find the bodies of the missing girls, there is nothing a defence lawyer can do,’ Joe said.
‘Yes, maybe.’
Joe frowned. ‘Something isn’t quite right, though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just don’t get that Proctor was being so gallant, getting revenge for his wife. He killed Adrianne. How could anyone be as cruel to Helena as that?’
‘Perhaps somewhere he saw it as redemption,’ Sam said.
‘It didn’t do Gerald any good.’
Sam didn’t answer that. When the police went to Gerald King’s house, they found him hanging from the same stair rail his wife had chosen, his daughter’s notebook on the floor beneath him, the last thing he’d held.
Sam watched Helena disappear into the prison entrance and asked, ‘How’s Carrie?’
‘They’re taking it slowly, but she’s a strong kid.’
‘And Melissa?’
Joe smiled. ‘Taking it even more slowly.’
‘But there’s still something to take?’
‘It’s weird that something good should come out of all of this.’
‘You think a lot about her.’
Joe didn’t reply. Sam’s smile told him that he didn’t need to.
Helena walked over to the table where Mark Proctor was sitting. She’d left her bag in the locker in the reception area and fought the urge to fold her arms across her chest self-consciously. She wanted this to be her swagger. This moment had been a long time coming. Other prisoners looked at her as she walked, wearing red bibs over grey sweatshirts, except those awaiting trial; they got to wear their own clothes. The bibs were still compulsory.
The room was comfortable, she hadn’t expected that. Blue carpets and chairs, the prisoners separated by small tables. There was a corner with playthings, so that the prisoners’ children could find some joy in the formality of the meeting. Prison guards stood around the edge of the room, with keys on silver chains looped onto their belts, their clip-on ties smart over pressed white shirts. She glanced up at the cameras mounted on each wall, looking for the passing of contraband. She doubted they would record sound; there’d be too much of it.
Proctor watched her all the way, a half-smile on his lips. When she sat down, he said, ‘Go on, get it out of the way. You hate me? There’s a queue for that.’
Helena put her knees together, her hands on them, poised. She tilted her head. ‘Is that why you think I’m here?’
‘Isn’t it? Or is it that you’re divorcing me? Fine. Get your solicitor to send a letter.’
She shook her head. ‘That isn’t why I’m here. I want to tell you things.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I hurt you? Yeah, well, these things happen. What do you want to know? How your baby sister cried and pissed herself as I squeezed the life out of her?’
Helena blinked and looked down, took in a breath to compose herself.
‘Are you miked up, hoping for a confession?’ he scoffed. ‘So predictable.’
Helena looked up again. ‘The confession is from me, you murdering prick.’
Proctor’s smile twitched. ‘What do you mean?’
She smiled, but it was thin and mean, her eyes glaring. She spoke quietly and slowly. ‘I’ve got four words for you, and I want you to remember them every morning you wake up in your cell, when you try to work out how it all went wrong for you.’
He cricked his neck.
She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. ‘I did it all.’
He went as if to say something, but stopped. He put his head back, confused. He leaned forward, his arms on the table. Helena leaned back. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It was all down to me,’ she said. ‘You need to know that.’
He frowned. After a few seconds, he said, ‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I’ve known about you for some time now. This was about payback.’ She raised her eyebrows as she spoke with a snarl. ‘Nice little Helena wouldn’t do that, would she? Sweet invisible insignificant docile servile little Helena? No, not her. That’s what they’ll think.’
Proctor folded his arms, his jaw set.
‘I found your box,’ she said, spitting the words out. ‘Did you think I could watch you disappear to my father’s workshop and not wonder what you were doing? There were other rooms you could have used, but it was always down there, in my father’s special place? You were so secretive even though it was so cold. So I went looking and I found it.’
He swallowed. ‘The box was locked.’
‘I know. I had a new padlock ready, exactly the same make,’ Helena said. ‘I s
cuffed it up so that it didn’t look new. All I had to do was replace the padlock and put the new key onto your key ring. I did the swap when you were in the bath and waited until you went out. I used my spare padlock key, because they always come in pairs.’
‘This is bullshit.’
‘Is it? You might not know but I can get a little obsessed about things. But you wouldn’t know that, because you never really noticed me. Tell me: were you the one messaging Henry Mason, making him spill his dirty little secrets?’
He didn’t answer.
‘So if it wasn’t you, who else could it have been?’ she said.
Proctor paled.
‘I saw everything. My sister, you bastard.’ She took a deep breath through her nose, tried to blink away her tears. ‘You murdering fucking bastard. I saw her pictures, how she died. And all those other sweet things too, those young souls.’
He folded his arms. ‘Bullshit. You’d have gone to the police.’
‘That wouldn’t be enough,’ she said, her fist clenched, fighting to stop herself from banging the table, knowing it would bring the guards over. ‘You’d walk away from it all and I wasn’t having that. It wouldn’t stop you either.’ She crossed her legs. ‘So I used you. I had my own demons to exorcise.’
Proctor shook his head. ‘No, I would’ve known.’
She scoffed. ‘Would you? Or maybe you didn’t see past the little woman act? Didn’t you ever wonder why it was that teacher?’
‘So, he’d been fucking your sister, and for that you wanted him killed? And I’m the bad guy?’
‘It’s not just that he was fucking her,’ she hissed, leaning forward, gripping the edge of the table. ‘Don’t you get it? He let her go home alone, a child, because protecting himself was more important. He couldn’t be seen with Adrianne, so she stayed on the bus for the extra stop, so that she came back to the house a different way, so no one would know where she’d come from. And you were waiting.’
‘That was down to her,’ he said. ‘The same routine every time. I used to watch them, but you know that, if you’ve seen the pictures. She loved the back of his car. He didn’t love her back, though. Why didn’t he come forward to help the investigation?’
She slammed her hand onto the desk, unable to stop herself, making a guard look over. ‘So now you understand.’
He shook his head in disbelief, gritting his teeth. ‘You know what, for the first time in my life, you interest me.’
‘I don’t need your admiration. You’re weak. How easy was it to get you to kill Henry Mason, all over your little box of dirty secrets, your treasured memories?’ She blinked away tears. ‘My little sister, reduced to a souvenir. I guessed how much you’d want it back. Remember the burglary, when it went missing? So easy to stage. I just threw a few things around and moved the box to somewhere you couldn’t find it. I knew you’d do anything to get it back. You think you’re so clever but you were predictable. I knew you wouldn’t call the police. You didn’t even bother with an insurance claim. And do you remember the blackmail that made you kill Henry Mason?’
‘“Kill him or the box goes to the police”, the messages said.’
‘No, I said,’ and Helena slapped her hand against her chest in emphasis. ‘You kill the man in the park and it goes no further, that’s what I said, because we’d have something on each other. Simple.’
‘So you were sending me those messages?’
‘Right in front of you, and you thought I was just looking at the internet or going on that quiz app I like.’
‘But you weren’t so clever, because you didn’t mask your internet address enough,’ he said. ‘Some of those messages will come back to you.’
‘No, Mark, not to me. To you. Don’t you get it? That was my back-up plan. Whenever you were in the house, I didn’t use a proxy server. I made sure it would all come back to you.’
‘But you wanted Mason dead. Why am I the bad guy?’
‘Because he killed my parents when he sold them that death trap.’ She stood up and leaned over the desk, jabbed her finger towards him. ‘I had a good life before you came along, before that car came along. I never told you his name because when Adrianne was taken away,’ and she raised her hand, ‘no, when you took her away, Henry Mason seemed less important, and my hatred was focused elsewhere. But he sold them a car that my father drove into a bridge. It was faulty, it must have been. He’d told me the pedals felt strange. Without that car, my sister wouldn’t have had just me, and she wouldn’t have sought out a new father figure, like Keith Welsby. And she wouldn’t have come across you. We’d still be a happy family. I was only twenty-four. It wasn’t my job to look after her.’
‘And you didn’t, did you?’ Proctor said, sneering. ‘This is what it’s all about, that you let your sister down and you’re trying to make it everyone else’s fault.’
A guard shouted over, ‘Sit down!’
‘But I got Mason’s secrets,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Like you, he was sick, liked them young. Sometimes he paid for it, I watched him, so I knew how young he liked them, and other times he looked for it on the internet. He put a link on his Facebook page, No One Tells. It wasn’t there for long, but I saw it.’
‘I said, sit down!’
‘You remember all that weight I lost last year?’ she continued, ignoring the guard. ‘You never noticed me, did you, but it dropped off. I set the trap, and sometimes being skinny enough to show your ribs is enough to convince someone you’re a child. He never got my face, though. And the things he shared with me.’ She shook her head. ‘I had enough to ruin him. Pictures of very young girls, some he’d even taken himself.’
‘Please, miss, sit down.’
‘He told me stories too, things I could prove, from when he used to work in a children’s home,’ Helena went on, oblivious to the guard. ‘He thought I liked hearing about it, and I did things for him, on the webcam, a skinny body eager for him, but with the camera too low to see my face. I videoed him. Just a camera out of view but pointing at the screen. But I didn’t need to blackmail him into killing the teacher in the end. He thought with his cock, you see. So I promised him that if he killed Keith Welsby, he could be my first time. I made up some lies about Welsby so it sounded as though he deserved to die, a teacher who’d raped a friend but she wouldn’t come forward. That’s what I learned about people like him, that they don’t see it as abuse. They try to twist it as something the girl enjoys.’
‘And then you got me to kill Henry Mason,’ Proctor said, nodding.
The guard started to walk over, impatience showing in his stride.
‘Like the papers said, dominoes, that’s all it was,’ she said. ‘Mason kills Welsby, and you kill Mason when he turned up to claim me, and then someone kills you. Who’d suspect the grieving widow, a victim once before? And I get rid of everyone. You included.’
‘But why did you give the box back to me?’
‘Because you hadn’t been killed!’ Her hand slammed the desk again. ‘I wanted it back in your workshop, so I could interest people in it, hoping they’d do something with it, take it away and work everything out. I couldn’t know anything; that was the point.’
Proctor glowered, a deep pink hue to his cheeks. He’d been trumped. That hurt the most.
‘So you chanced upon Gerald King,’ he said.
‘I didn’t want him involved. I’d hunted around on the same site I used to trap Mason, because the trap was the same, someone eager and underage. I wanted secrets, enough to make someone act, but they were too hard to find. They were mostly cowards in the end, wanting an internet thrill, nothing more. So I gave the honour to someone who deserved it: Gerald, one of your victims. Because that’s what he was to you. It wasn’t really about his daughter. It was about the misery you could spread.’
‘But I didn’t die.’
‘No, and that’s something I’ve got to live with, but you made that happen.’
The guard put his arm across her. ‘Sit down or le
ave.’ All other conversations drifted into pauses as everyone turned to watch.
‘You weren’t that clever, choosing that spot,’ Proctor said. ‘Didn’t you think I’d suspect something?’
‘Gerald was insistent. It was symbolic.’
‘And what if he hadn’t gone through with it? I’d still be alive.’
‘There’d be someone else. I was prepared to wait. In the end, you trapped yourself. I got lucky. They linked it to you and even found a motive.’
‘Miss, please!’
