by Gytha Lodge
‘DC Hanson,’ she said, trying not to sound irritable.
‘Hi,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘It’s – it’s Phoebe Plaskitt. I hope it’s OK … I have something I really want to tell you.’
There was a shake to Phoebe’s voice, a sense of stress that cut through Hanson’s annoyance.
‘Of course. Anything you have to say is helpful,’ she replied, pulling her notepad towards her.
‘I’ve been looking at Alex’s videos,’ Phoebe said. ‘I got – I actually got a little bit obsessed with the trolls. Some of them are repeat offenders, and the things they say are really vicious. One of them started a little while before the row I had with Issa about Alex stopping it all. It’s got a ridiculous username but … but I looked back through the posts from that account, and there was basically nothing much before the trolling, but the account’s been up a while.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘I looked at the comments this person had made three years ago, when it was first opened, and they’re totally different. A couple of nice comments on some music. And one of them is on the music of a friend of mine, and I remember that comment. I read it at the time, but the username was different then.’
‘You recognised it?’ Hanson asked.
‘Yes. Because it was a band I recommended to Issa and the comment was from him.’ She gave a strange, tight laugh. ‘The troll was Issa.’
Two things happened rapidly after Hanson finished her call with Phoebe Plaskitt. The first was that Lightman found Alex’s car on the ANPR file. It had been driven down London Road at three minutes past one on Friday night, and then past Asylum Green at one thirty-seven. He reported his findings quickly to Hanson and the DCI, whose expression was distant and, she thought, slightly troubled.
Before the chief had said anything, his phone buzzed, and he switched it to speakerphone before he said, ‘Domnall. Anything to report?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ O’Malley said, his voice tinny. ‘April Dumont has managed to smuggle Louise Reakes out of the house. She drove past me a good ten minutes ago and I’m positive Louise is no longer in the house. I’m ready to pursue, but I have no idea at present where they’ve gone.’
‘I’ll get Heerden’s team on it,’ the chief said and rang off. As he was striding back towards his office, he called, ‘I’d like you to get Issa Benhawy on the phone and find out where he is, too.’
Hanson nodded, her hand already going to her mobile. She could sense Lightman’s eyes on her as she made the call and waited through eight full rings before it went to answerphone.
‘No reply,’ she said.
It was Chief Inspector Yvonne Heerden’s team who tracked Issa down. It took them eight minutes to flag him on a traffic camera at the junction with the M27 Eastbound. Two minutes later, as Jonah and Lightman were walking towards the Mondeo, Heerden called to inform them that April Dumont’s car had been picked up slightly further along the same road.
‘They’re headed in the general direction of Portsmouth,’ she told him. ‘And they’re about fifteen seconds apart on the camera. It looks like pursuit to me.’
As soon as she rang off, Jonah dialled through to O’Malley, who was already on the correct side of town. ‘Get after them if you can.’
‘Thanks, chief,’ O’Malley said. ‘I’m sure I can close the gap, Lotus or no Lotus.’
‘We shouldn’t be too far behind you,’ Jonah said, picking up his coat. ‘We’re going to leave now.’
‘Do you have any thoughts about what Issa Benhawy is trying to do?’ Lightman asked him, after the call was done.
‘Lots of them,’ Jonah said grimly. ‘And none of them are good.’
‘Done,’ April said, leaning in through the driver’s door to pick up her suede handbag. The car was full of the smell of petrol, a scent Louise had always loved. ‘Need anything from the store?’
‘Vodka?’ Louise asked.
‘Hell yes!’ April replied, and manoeuvred herself back out of the car. She slammed the door hard enough to make Louise’s head ring. For some reason April seemed incapable of closing doors quietly.
Louise followed her progress across the petrol station forecourt, hugely relieved to trust her again. What April had told her about that strange moment in the club had rung true, not least because April had been endlessly loyal to her from the moment they’d met. She, unlike Niall, had proved herself over and over.
April passed by a young guy, probably only in his twenties, as she stalked her way in, and he stared after her with obvious admiration. The April effect.
Louise smiled, and then yawned. She was beginning to feel genuinely tired now. She guessed the adrenaline was finally wearing off. There was no longer any reason to feel keyed up. She was out of the city and accompanied by her best friend.
She cranked her seat backwards, and then shifted until she’d found a comfortable position. She felt as though she might, finally, sleep. Her eyes were half closed as she looked lazily at the rear-view mirror and watched an old Ford Fiesta pull into the station forecourt behind them. She could see the driver looking ahead as he pulled into the small queue of cars waiting to fill up. She caught his face just before he turned and vanished behind the bulk of a Qashqai. Sleepily, she thought she recognised him.
It was Issa, she realised, with a sudden jolt. What was Alex’s husband doing here?
Then she remembered that she had flirted with Alex. That she had, in all probability, gone home with him. That his death was her fault.
She turned to look behind her, and saw Issa climbing out of his car. There was something really wrong in his expression. Something that went beyond grief. And he was holding something under his jacket. Something bulky.
She was suddenly no longer sleepy. Not sleepy at all.
She hurried to undo her seat belt, and then pushed the door open. She scrambled out in a crouch, hoping to be hidden behind the SUV until she could make a run for the shop and the tills. She could feel every inch of her flesh crawling as she scooted forwards and round the front of the car, not caring that a woman leading a small girl back from the shop was staring at her.
‘Hey!’
It was Issa’s voice. He’d seen her.
She stood up and ran for the shop. She didn’t notice a car trying to exit the petrol station until she was already in front of it, and she gasped as it jolted to a stop. But she ran on. And then she cannoned into the heavy swing door, feeling the time it took to open as if it were an age. But she was through, into the shop, where April was. Strong, dependable April, who would somehow stop whatever it was that Alex’s husband was trying to do.
Except that there were only two customers in the shop, and neither of them was April.
35
‘We’re coming up on Junction Eight,’ Jonah told O’Malley.
‘I’ve already passed Nine,’ O’Malley answered. ‘I haven’t seen either of them yet. Are they still on the M27?’
‘I’ll check with Yvonne’s team.’ Jonah rang off and listened to the phone ring four times. ‘Come on,’ he muttered.
And then Yvonne Heerden was there, telling him they had the two cars thirty seconds apart going past Junction Nine. ‘They were still on the road eight minutes ago, but we haven’t picked them up since.’
The toilets. April must be in the toilets. And there were locks on the doors. They could hide if they had to.
Louise saw an open door at the rear left of the shop and ran towards it. She almost tripped on the mop and bucket that were propping it open, but then was through.
She was so busy running forwards, totally fixed on escape, that she was slow to realise there were no toilets here. They must have been through another door. Out here there was just a small staff kitchen and a storeroom. Boxes of confectionary spilling out into the hall.
There was nobody here, and nowhere to lock herself away.
She could feel her pulse twitching madly in her chest and neck.
Shit. What do I do?
There was a way out. A heavy grey doo
r with a bright green lever. She barely paused before bolting towards it. She slammed it open, and felt as if she were leaving some form of hell behind her as she ran out into the bright sunshine again.
She closed it behind her as quietly as she could, and then moved to her right, along the blank back of the shop. What next?
She took a breath, knowing she just needed to stay calm and try to find April.
But at the thought of moving past the bins and round to the front a vivid image of Issa stalking towards her struck her, and she leaned back against the wall for fear of falling.
O’Malley slowed just before the entrance to the petrol station, his eyes scanning the forecourt. He was almost past it by the time he saw the back of April’s Lotus. It only became visible as a large vehicle pulled out from behind it.
Cringing at the thought of being rammed, he stepped on the brakes, and felt the car begin to skid as he turned the wheel. The Astra hung for a moment, as if unsure whether to let him live through this or not, and then suddenly gained grip, and lurched towards the forecourt. He pressed the brakes harder and managed to bring the car into a controlled entry with a few feet to spare.
Breathing hard, he drove round the queue waiting to fuel up and dumped the Astra in the space reserved for putting air in the tyres. A quick glance showed him that the Lotus was empty. He tried to remember what kind of car Alex Plaskitt had owned. The one Issa might be driving.
His eye fell on the Fiesta that was now sitting two spaces behind the Lotus. It was empty, too, despite the fact that the driver hadn’t made it to a pump.
O’Malley checked his waistband for his baton, and then jogged towards the shop.
The clunk and squeak of metal as the back door opened was one of the most terrifying sounds Louise had ever heard. She should have moved. She should have gone round to the front of the shop.
And then Issa’s quiet voice said, ‘Louise,’ and her flesh crawled. She was trying to remember. To remember if this was the voice she’d heard that night, even while she pushed herself away from the wall and tried to stumble away from him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
And Louise found herself stopping. Turning. He was crying again. She could only remember ever seeing him in distress. Even when he’d been angry with her.
He was putting his hand into his pocket, and she tried to back away further. Had he armed himself with another knife? With a gun?
And then he pulled his hand out and it wasn’t a knife. It was a box of some kind. Dark wood inlaid with gold.
‘I found this in Alex’s car,’ he said.
He was holding it out to her, and she didn’t want to come closer to him. It must be a trick to get her to come over, so he could attack her. The knife would come out from another pocket, and he would kill her.
But watching him hold it out to her, with such pathos, she found that she couldn’t refuse to take it. She took two steps and stretched to cross the gap between them until it was in her fingers.
And then she opened the hinged lid, while trying not to stop looking at him.
What she saw made no sense at first. There was nothing in there but hair. Strands and fragments of hair, all of them dark. Two of them so dark as to be almost black. All of them coiled up and slotted into neat squares.
And then her hand went to her own hair, and she suddenly understood.
‘You must have been one of many,’ Issa said, quietly. ‘You must have been just one of a long list. It wasn’t your fault.’
Louise took a large, shaky breath. ‘It is my fault. I was angry. And hurting. And I flirted with him.’ Her vision had become fragmented as her eyes filled with tears. ‘I sat at the bar with him for half an hour. An hour. I’m not sure. And I sank drink after drink with him and I laughed at everything he said, and I put my hand on his knee, and I told him – I told him that I’d like to take him home with me.’ She gave a great, heaving sob. ‘And I didn’t even mean it. I didn’t mean it.’
Issa’s jaw moved. For a moment he looked angry. But then he said, ‘I think he would have followed you anyway.’
There was a long silence, which wasn’t really silence because of the rush of cars from the motorway.
‘I think I killed him,’ she said, a little later, remembering the slick feeling of hot blood on her fingers. Remembering that he had made a strange laughing sound that had turned into a groan. ‘I think I killed him.’
And Issa, to her profound sadness and humiliation and relief, said, ‘It’s OK.’
The back door of the shop opened so hard that it banged back against the wall, and the rotund police sergeant cannoned through it, followed quickly by April, who looked so terrified it was almost funny.
‘It’s all right,’ Louise said, holding out a hand. ‘He just needed to show me something.’
And then April flung her arms round her, and Louise felt as though her legs had turned into string. Perhaps harp strings. And she laughed as she slid through the embrace and sat heavily on the tarmac.
‘We’ll need to know about Friday night,’ Jonah told Issa an hour and a half later. ‘You went to find him, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Issa said. ‘I thought he might cheat again. When he didn’t reply to my messages on Friday, I called him, and a woman answered instead. So I went to find him. I couldn’t get my car out so I took his. I should have told you … but I never found him. I looked for him up London Road, and then between there and home. But I didn’t catch sight of him.’ He put his hand onto the table edge, very carefully. ‘I must – I must have driven right past them, mustn’t I? While he was attacking her.’
‘It’s possible,’ Jonah agreed. ‘They would have been out of sight.’
‘Why do you think he ended up at her house?’ Issa asked, his gaze fixed on his own fingers. ‘Do you think she ran and he kept following?’
‘That’s the most likely explanation,’ Jonah agreed. ‘Alex may even have forced his way into the house after she injured him fighting him off. We think he might have taken her driving licence earlier on. So he would have known where she was. But by that point he had suffered extensive blood loss. Whatever he planned by way of revenge or … well. It may not have happened.’
Issa gave a small, hiccupping sob. ‘It’s – I still feel so sad that he – that he just curled up and died. Alone. And I don’t know how I can feel that now that I know …’
‘It’s still possible to feel for people,’ Jonah said, gently. ‘Even those who have done terrible things.’
Issa looked up towards the ceiling, but he nodded.
‘Do you have any idea why Alex might take hair from these women?’ Jonah asked. ‘Was there some reason for it?’
‘I don’t – I suppose all these women were – they looked a little like Alex’s mother.’ He rubbed at each of his eyes in turn. ‘I think he felt more betrayed by her, when she turned on him for his sexuality, than he did by his father. Maybe they all represented her. Or just … the women he told himself he should desire. I don’t know.’
There was a silence in the interview room for a few seconds, and then O’Malley, his voice full of sympathy, asked, ‘Could you explain to me, too, why you were trolling your husband?’
Issa’s empty expression briefly shifted. Fleetingly, he looked as though he hated himself.
‘I wanted him to take it seriously,’ he said, quietly. ‘I was so frightened that something would happen to him. I mean, I was frightened for myself, too, but he was the one who was going to get recognised. He’d – he’d done some TV appearances and it looked like he might get to be a regular fitness adviser on a lifestyle show. It was all dangerous for him.’ He gave Jonah a long stare out of gleaming eyes. ‘I know it was an awful thing to do. And it didn’t even work. He was a lot tougher than I am, I guess. Or maybe he just knew he was capable of – of hurting people.’
Jonah nodded, and then said, ‘We’ll need to hold on to Alex’s car for a few days.’ When Issa said nothing, he went on, ‘We’d also
like your help with a few dates from Alex’s diary. To make our search for the women whose hair he had easier.’
‘We have a shared diary on our phones. You can – can you see it on Alex’s?’
Jonah glanced at O’Malley, who said, ‘Yes, we should be able to. Thank you.’
There was another silence, and then Issa said, ‘Do you think he … hurt … any of them?’
Jonah knew he was asking whether Alex might have killed anyone, a question Jonah badly wanted an answer to as well. All he could say in reply was, ‘We’ll find out.’
Hanson felt flat. Flatter than she had felt at the close of any case.
She had been wrong about Alex. Really, truly wrong. He wasn’t a kind, supportive person. He was a bloody monster. A man who had stalked and abused women out of, what, a warped revenge on his mother? And then had kept trophies of them in his car. Memories of his victories.
Their job now, hers and Lightman’s, was to find them. To find the women he had attacked before. And that was depressing, too. Scanning case after case to find women who might have been Alex’s victims rather than anyone else’s.
It hadn’t taken her long to find one that seemed to fit. Just over a year ago, a student named Gianetta Jilani had been left huddled in a heap in Portsmouth with almost no memory of an assault that had left her bleeding. The one thing she remembered was a knife.
That attack had happened on Step’s birthday, six days after Alex had sent a photograph to the WhatsApp group. Six days after he’d talked about the knife as a Polish beauty.
36
The inevitable flurry of work that came with trying to tie up their investigation kept the team at their desks until late. O’Malley and the DCI spent a good hour shut away with DCS Wilkinson, going over and over the upsides and downsides to pursuing a case against Louise Reakes. Lightman spent the time writing up a preliminary report, which would be used to create a press release the next day. Hanson, meanwhile, finished compiling her list of assaults, rapes and murders across Southampton and major cities within a potential day trip or overnight distance, and started comparing Alex’s diary and messages with them.
