by Emmy Ellis
Kane led Henry to the door, and Nada held Charlotte’s elbow, guiding her behind the two men. Outside, Charlotte squinted at trees directly ahead.
“Where did he take me?” she asked.
“You didn’t know, love?” Nada asked.
“I…I was in his house, then woke up in there.” She jerked her thumb backwards.
Kane thrust Henry through the branches, and Nada patted Charlotte’s shoulder to remind her to follow. She did, leaving Nada behind and pushing through two trees to come out on the other side. She was in Henry’s bloody back garden. Now she knew why it was smaller than hers, why he’d planted the trees. The sick bastard had had a steel room down here all along.
She swallowed bile—bile created by rage.
“Got a key, have you?” Kane said.
“Of course I sodding have,” Henry said, “but the back door is open.”
He didn’t sound the same, like he was someone else entirely—mean and evil and without remorse for all the things he’d done. He’d be remorseful soon, Charlotte would put a bet on it.
In the house, she took the lead, showing the way to the living room. Kane shoved Henry so he flopped onto the sofa, wincing, no doubt uncomfortable with his hands cuffed behind him like that.
Good.
“What changed you?” she asked Henry. “Why don’t you tell the nice policeman here. Why don’t you explain how you can be a lovely, kind person on one side and a bastard on the other?”
Kane stood beside her, in front of the door, blocking the exit.
Charlotte dared to sit beside Henry. What harm could he do now? He’d already wrecked her just as much as Jez had, lied through his teeth for sixteen years, all the while pretending to be her friend, when really he’d just wanted to get into her knickers. He sickened her, and she mourned the loss of a man she’d trusted with all of her secrets, but not this version of the man, not the man next to her now.
“He killed Mrs Smithson,” she said, glancing across at Kane. “I just don’t understand it. She did nothing to you, Henry, she—”
“She lit those fires, and it’s H1,” he said. “H1, all right?”
“What?” Kane frowned.
“None of your business,” Henry said. “And you want to know what changed me? Tough, because I’m not telling you.”
Belligerent shit.
“I can tell you what changed him, Kane,” she said.
“Kane, is it?” Henry stared at her, mouth slack and wet, his moustache quivering. “Bit familiar, isn’t it, Char?” He looked at Kane. “Been up her fanny, have you?”
“Enough,” Kane said. He raised his eyebrows at Charlotte. “What changed him?”
“His sister,” she said.
And waited.
Henry head butted her, forehead crunching her nose, and she cried out in pain and shock, smacking backwards onto the arm of the sofa, one of the matted tassels from the pink pillows stroking her cheek. He was on her, humping her, his face coming closer, his lips nearing hers. She screeched with temper and tried to shove him up and off, but he was strong—so bloody strong—and then he wasn’t there anymore.
She sat to find him on the floor, tossed there by Kane. Her nose throbbed, and she tasted blood at the back of her throat. Hot liquid oozed from one nostril, and she cuffed it away.
Henry wiped spittle off his chin by rubbing it against his shoulder. “I would have killed you and all, you know. Would have loved it, too. Bitch.”
He rose so fast his movement blurred, and barged the side of his arm into Kane, smashing it into his face. Kane staggered back, bashing into the far corner, blinking as though he couldn’t believe what had happened. As he surged forward to take hold of Henry, she caught a glimpse of the madness in Henry’s eyes. He’d played the long game, reeling her in, and now the shit had hit the fan he had nothing to hide—and his madness wasn’t hiding, it was there, stark as anything.
He lunged towards her, and she skipped to the side, darting around him. He turned to face her, and she knew he’d go for her again. Knew he felt thwarted by her, that he hadn’t won the prize he’d been playing for.
There was only one winner in this game—and it would be her.
She grabbed the town crier’s bell from the mantel.
And rang that motherfucker.
Kane halted his advance.
Henry’s face showed shock, confusion, terror, and she kept ringing, staring at him, right in his eyes—eyes that no longer showed his kindness and honesty—reading the emotions in them. But instead of crumbling as she’d thought he would, he roared and went down on his knees.
“You won’t beat me,” he said. “You won’t fucking beat me with…that.”
“Try me.” She shook the bell some more.
“I…I…”
She thought she had him, thought he’d broken then, until…
“I killed your mum, Char.” He grinned, eyes gleaming with malice, and threw his head back, laughter billowing out of him.
Charlotte almost joined him on the floor, down on her knees, her whole world breaking apart. But she stayed standing, guilt at her mum being vulnerable to something like this because of her, fuming that he’d gone there and…and…
He bowed his head, and Charlotte brought the bell down, cracking it onto the back of his skull. And she kept cracking it, blood spurting, Kane shouting, his voice sounding far away, police sirens even farther still, and she didn’t stop until Henry keeled over onto his side, unmoving.
Yes, if he was dead, where she was going, there would be limited men.
Not like you saw many in prison, was it.
****
“He attacked you, all right?” Kane said. “You hit him in self-defence, okay?” He shook her. “Charlotte. Charlotte. Listen to me.”
If he thought he’d been crooked by paying a mate to run blood tests, he was bent right over now. Like a fucking pretzel. What a pissing mess.
She nodded, and he took the bell from her and placed it on the coffee table.
He held her in his arms—covered in blood, she was—but that didn’t matter to him. While she sobbed, he wondered if this piece of scum had been telling the truth about Mrs Rothers. If he was… Jesus, how did a person get over that? How could Charlotte move on after this?
“Don’t mention what he said about your mum,” he warned her. “He nutted you, got on top of you, tried to take your clothes off with his teeth—”
“But he di-di-didn’t, he—”
“Tried to take your clothes off, yes, and I came to pull him off you, and he threw me over there. I banged my head, couldn’t get up for a minute or two, bit dazed, and by the time you’d hit him with the bell, it was too late for me to do anything, he was out cold. Got it?”
She nodded against his chest.
“You lost it, absolutely lost it, frightened because of what he’d done to you earlier, understand?”
“Yes.”
He led her from the room, out into the hallway, and opened the front door. A police car swerved in front of an ambulance, and coppers and paramedics poured out. He gave directions to the room in the back garden, and a second ambulance arrived, the medics entering the house to see to Henry.
The bastard was still alive.
****
Kane stood in the Vine’s living room, Ursula’s wail tearing into his eardrums. Into his heart, if he were honest. The words he’d spoken—We have reason to believe the body found this evening is that of Debbie—were always the worst kind he ever uttered.
He didn’t know what to do, not when Xavier sagged down onto the sofa, as though all the fight had been sucked out of him, holding his head in his hands and sobbing.
A man crying tugged at the emotions more than a woman somehow.
Nada glanced over at Kane from the door, her face showing she was an empath and not dealing with this too well. Maybe he ought not to have her as his partner, but perhaps she’d harden up, given time. Kane had thought he would get tough, back in his early days
of being a copper, but look at him now, bottom lip trembling, his soul ripped to shreds from witnessing two people’s lives being filleted in front of him.
A family liaison officer sat beside Ursula, and the couple would be in good hands with Julia. She’d get them through the first few days—then, unfortunately, they were on their own.
Kane cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
What else could he say?
And he left the room, Nada by his side, walking out of the house and into a future he wasn’t sure he wanted to look forward to anymore.
This job… It had the ability to do you in.
EPILOGUE
Charlotte held her mum’s hand and circled her fingertip over the diamond engagement ring. She imagined her dad working hard to pay for it, presenting it to his intended on bended knee, like her mum had told her he had.
Will I ever have that?
She had no idea, but to be honest, she’d gone off men for some reason.
“He went down for twenty-five to life, then,” Mum said, staring at the news site on the laptop sitting on the kitchen table.
“Hmm.”
The woman Charlotte once was didn’t exist anymore. She didn’t have dreams—not the right kind anyway—didn’t think life would give her roses now she’d had her fair share of poison ivy. Didn’t think she’d ever truly be happy until—
She was off to Cornwall. Starting a new life down there, on the tip of the land on which she’d endured so much. She hadn’t expected to feel like this at thirty-something, tainted and bitter, everything decent in her soured.
Rotten.
Damaged.
But that’s what happened when you got shit on, wasn’t it?
It made you a bit twisted.
She sighed to hide a laugh.
“Reckon you’ll tell that copper where you’re going?” Mum asked.
“No. He’s…he’s not for me,” Charlotte said. “Right, I’d best be off. Train’s leaving in a few.”
She hugged Mum, promised to keep in touch, but she wouldn’t, it was better that way. Charlotte had things to do, and she couldn’t do them if her mum was there as a constant, gentle reminder that you didn’t have to let what happened to you define you.
Too late for that.
On the train, she used her new shiny laptop to compose a letter. The person she was writing to lived in Devon, not far from where she’d be renting a one-bed house. Close enough she could go visiting when the time was right.
She paused at the end of a sentence and stared at the countryside zipping by, the slight sheen of her reflection on the window. She was a blonde now, and she’d bought herself some specs—the kind you get for one ninety-nine in the cheap shops. She didn’t look the same at all, and that was fine because she didn’t feel the same either.
She finished the letter, and she’d print it out and send it once she arrived in Cornwall. This person she’d be pen pals with would be glad of her letters, she was sure. She’d help them feel better about themselves, give them sympathy, make them think she cared, and hopefully they’d ask her to meet them on one of those visiting passes. She’d build them up, lie to them for years if she had to, and then somehow, she’d finish what she’d started.
There was so much she had to accomplish, and sending her letter to the man serving twenty-five to life in HM Prison Dartmoor was just the beginning of a brighter future.
He didn’t deserve to live, and she would make sure he didn’t.
Good girl gone bad.
