The Doll's House: DI Helen Grace 3

by M. J. Arlidge

‘You brought this on yourself, Summer.’

  Then without another word he left, slamming the door behind him. The first bolt was pushed firmly into place. Then the next. Each one seemed to go right through Ruby.

  ‘Please. I didn’t mean it. Please stay.’

  Ruby could hear him walk away. Then the dull sound of another door closing in the near distance.

  ‘Please,’ she moaned.

  But there was no one to hear her now. And Ruby knew as she lay there that it was she who was in Hell, not him. With him, she was scared and uncertain, without him she was desolate. Like it or loathe it, there was no escaping the fact that he was her world now.

  44

  Charlie drummed her fingers on the table, shooting nervous looks at the entrance. Steve often passed by this way on his way to work. If he happened to spot her holed up in a coffee shop with Helen, when she’d explicitly told him she was meeting her mum, she would have some explaining to do.

  According to Steve, their life was now back on track following past traumas. The right decisions had been made, with the right results, and now a long and happy life lay ahead of them. Was it just fear – of the birth, of what followed after – that made Charlie uncertain? Or was it that she was a worker at heart, someone with a vocation that could not easily be discarded?

  She had been surprised – and excited – by Helen’s text. It read simply:

  ‘Can you meet this morning? Urgent and discreet if you can.’

  With surprising ease, she found herself lying to Steve, slipping on her coat and heading out the door. Did she really miss police work so much that she would drop everything and deceive her husband because of a brief text? Suddenly, Charlie felt a pang of guilt, but before her misgivings could take hold, she saw Helen hurrying towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late. Blame Harwood.’

  ‘I usually do,’ Charlie replied, their shared antipathy for their station chief drawing a smile from her boss.

  ‘And I’m sorry to be so secretive, but what I’m about to ask you to do breaks all the rules and could land you and me in a serious amount of trouble.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ Charlie said gamely, but was already a little unnerved by Helen’s manner.

  ‘If you want to say no – and you probably should – then that’s totally fine. But there’s no one else I can confide in.’

  It had been a long time since Charlie had seen Helen like this. There was clearly a lot resting on this meeting. Helen didn’t keep her guessing, filling her in on her recent ‘discovery’ of her missing nephew and her subsequent clash with Harwood about her refusal to formally request the unredacted file. Charlie could already see where this was going.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t have any meaningful contacts in the Northamptonshire force, no one I can trust at least. I know this is completely irregular, but –’

  Helen’s voice wavered slightly as she spoke, so Charlie put her out of her misery:

  ‘It’s ok, Helen, I know what you’re asking.’

  Charlie’s oldest friend from police college had just taken a high-profile desk job with Northamptonshire police. DS Sally Mason was the keeper of the administrative gates up there – if anyone could lay their hands on the unredacted material, she could. But Charlie had no idea how she would react to such an outrageous request.

  ‘Let me mull it over,’ Charlie said.

  ‘That’s all I ask. If I could think of another way, I would. But … I need to know if he’s ok, Charlie.’

  Helen left soon after, Charlie promising to be in touch. Truth be told, she already knew that she would do what Helen asked. Because she felt for her. Because it was the right thing to do in the circumstances. And perhaps – just a little bit – because it would be fun.

  45

  An hour later, Helen strode into the incident room. She was pleased to see that everyone was busy, the team finally finding its rhythm in the heat of battle. A major investigation had a way of forcing everyone to up their game, make connections and forge new ground together. It always gave Helen a quiet sense of satisfaction to observe it taking place.

  Seeing that everyone was fully occupied, Helen seized the moment, pulling Sanderson aside. Marching her into the office would have excited people’s attention, so Helen guided her subtly to the water cooler and, lowering her voice, outlined her plans. For the second time that day she was committing an act of gross insubordination.

  ‘I need you to do a bit of digging – for my eyes only, right?’

  ‘Of course, boss, whatever you say.’

  Helen had grown to trust Sanderson over the last couple of years. She wasn’t Charlie but she was the closest thing to her at present.

  ‘I think our perpetrator will have abducted – or attempted to abduct – other girls during the last five years or so. Someone who’s this committed, this driven, isn’t going to fall in and out of obsession. He’ll be compelled to stalk, abduct or kill.’

  Sanderson nodded, so Helen continued.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Harwood isn’t minded to agree, hence the need for discretion. Choose your moments, but I want you to go through the crime reports on the PNC, as well as trawling the missing persons lists for Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth looking for young women who might fit our profile. Limit yourself to single girls, who are isolated and vulnerable, perhaps just out of a relationship. They probably live alone, are not massively well-off and for now let’s assume they have the same look – black hair, blue eyes. Do it discreetly, but do it quickly. I hope I’m wrong, but if this guy is a serial predator, I want to know. Any crime – or attempted crime – might help us find him. Ok?’

  Sanderson nodded and hurried off to begin her task. Helen watched her go. She hoped she was doing the right thing trusting her, she was skating on very thin ice with Harwood already.

  Helen was so engrossed in her thoughts, that she didn’t notice DC Lucas approach.

  ‘Good news, Ma’am.’

  Helen turned, surprised by her sudden appearance.

  ‘Nathan Price is on the move.’

  46

  The van sped along the road, its tyres spitting rainwater up off the slick surface. It had been raining solidly for an hour now and the storm showed no sign of relenting. Normally Helen would have cursed such weather, but not today. It reduced driver visibility, making it easier to tail the van unnoticed.

  The windscreen wipers swept back and forth, beating out the rhythm of Helen’s anxiety. Nathan Price had been driving for forty minutes with no sign of stopping. Where was he heading? He had done a couple of laps of the ring road, presumably to throw off anyone following him. If that was the purpose, he had signally failed. The three unmarked police cars were still on his tail, changing positions at intervals to avoid detection.

  The van headed south now through Northam and Itchen, leaving behind prosperity and aspiration. The van was crawling along and Helen had to drop her speed to avoid giving herself away. They were in Woolston now. What had once been an affluent pre-war suburb was now a forgotten wasteland – never having recovered from the brutal bombing it sustained during the Second World War. The rickety houses round here had been left to moulder and were inhabited now by squatters, illegal immigrants and petty criminals. It was a nasty, forgotten place.

  Finally the van slowed to a stop. Helen glided past and parked up out of sight round the street corner. She was out of the car in seconds and rounded the top of the street just in time to see Price step inside a house not fifty yards away.

  Helen, flanked now by DC McAndrew, hurried towards it. She could see DC Lucas and Lloyd Fortune approaching from the other direction and signalled them to hold back. She would take the lead on this one.

  Gesturing to McAndrew to follow, she slipped round the side of the house, keeping below the line of the windows. The back door banged quietly in the wind. Helen hesitated, listening. Voices. She could definitely hear voices. Price’s was raised in anger, but who was the other person? W
ho was he talking to?

  Teasing the door open, Helen slipped inside. Edging across the room to the open doorway, she could hear the voices more clearly now. Price and a young girl, who was crying and remonstrating. She seemed to have done something wrong, though Helen couldn’t tell what, as the voices had now gone quiet.

  A nasty bang made Helen jump – the crying that followed making it clear that Price had struck the girl. Helen didn’t hesitate. Pushing the door open and raising her baton, she stepped inside.

  It was time to bring this game of Hide and Seek to an end.

  47

  Ruby screamed for all she was worth. She shrieked, whooped, ranted and raved – anything to break the awful silence that filled the small room. Her captor had only been gone a few hours but it felt like an eternity. What was he doing? How long would he punish her for? How long would she be left alone down here?

  She bitterly regretted her outburst now. She had no power here, no bargaining chip, so why had she pushed him away? As she’d lain alone in the half-darkness after his departure, the minutes crawling by, the worst kind of thoughts had seized her. Thoughts of herself slowly withering to dust in this dreadful place. So she screamed to distract herself, to keep herself company in her lonely cell.

  Tiring of this, she now found herself stalking the room again. It was more in hope than expectation – she had already explored her confines several times – but she had to do something. Passive resignation would only lead to madness or worse. She had to think. To act. To find a way out.

  Clambering on to the table, she ran her fingers over the ceiling. The floorboards were wooden and could perhaps be prised apart … But, for all her probing, they refused to budge. They had been sealed with solid silicone mastic that stubbornly resisted her attempts to remove it. It was presumably some kind of DIY soundproofing. Ruby shivered at the thought. Why did he need soundproofing down here?

  Jumping down, she completed another circuit of the walls, but giving up quickly, turned her attention instead to the other items in the room. She pulled the pictures off the wall and yanked fruitlessly at the metal coat hooks. She pulled the pointless cooker and fake basin away from the wall, then, in a final fit of pique, grabbed the clock that hung above the bed and tossed it across the room. It was a flimsy children’s clock, designed to help kids learn to tell the time and it stared down at her day after day, mocking her with its idle hands, which remained resolutely locked at a quarter past twelve. It landed with a clatter on the far side of the room.

  Ruby breathed out heavily. All that was left now was another assault on the door. It was solidly built with a heavy lock. There was no way she could pull it off its hinges or ram it with her shoulder. They only way to open it was to force the lock with some kind of implement. But what could she use? She would need something heavy and solid, which she could smash down on it …

  Bricks. She was surrounded by bricks. The mortar had been touched up in places, but the brickwork was probably a hundred years old or more, so … Ruby ran her hands over the cold surface of the walls, forensically searching for signs of weakness in the mortar. Round and round she went, her nails scraping at the mortar, but every brick held firm. Had her captor thought of everything? Had he left nothing to chance?

  Ruby was tired now and about to give up, when she spotted one place she hadn’t tried. Pulling the bed away from the wall, she dropped to her knees to examine the brickwork that lay behind.

  As she leaned down to take a closer look at the mortar, she felt a trickle of cool air brush over her face. She kept her eyes closed, revelling in it for a moment. It felt as if someone was stroking her face, like an act of kindness. It felt like a lifetime since she’d received one of those.

  The air was coming through the brickwork. She dropped down on to her front and crawled closer to the wall. Sure enough, the brick was loose. Her damaged fingers protested but she jammed them into the crumbling mortar round the edges and tugged for all she was worth. To her surprise the brick came out easily.

  The cavity behind it was stuffed full of paper. Confused, Ruby pulled the papers out, but was disappointed to find the cavity was shallow, hardly more than the depth of the brick itself. She pulled at the bricks next to the opening, but they refused to respond and three broken nails later, she gave up.

  She was about to pick up the brick to begin her assault on the door, when her eyes alighted on one of the many pieces of paper that now littered the ground around her. On it was a drawing – crudely done in felt-tip pen – of a green tree decorated with baubles.

  Curiosity now got the better of her and Ruby read the contents of the home-made card. It was an Xmas card to her mother from a girl called Roisin. In it, she wrote about how much she missed her family, how they were not to worry about her sudden disappearance and how much she was looking forward to the day when she could put this card in their hands herself. The latter section of the text was stained with tears and the card was dated a little over two and a half years ago.

  Ruby dropped it like a stone and sank to the floor. In an instant, the full desperation of her situation became clear. She was not the first girl to have been abducted and held down here.

  Which begged the question: what had happened to them? And where was this ‘Roisin’ now?

  48

  ‘You’re not in trouble, Lianne. But you will be, if you don’t start talking.’

  Helen was already in a dark mood and the teenage girl’s refusal to talk was only exacerbating her bad humour. When she had burst into the room to confront Nathan Price, she had found him manhandling a teenage girl. A teenage girl who was definitely not Ruby Sprackling.

  ‘You’re telling us that Nathan Price is a friend of the family.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And do friends of the family usually pop round when you’re home alone?’

  Nothing in response.

  ‘We’ll find out either way. Your parents are coming in – if they can confirm that Nathan Price is a friend of the family –’

  ‘You haven’t told them, have you? About him?’ Lianne interrupted.

  There was real alarm in her face now. Helen felt bad about lying, but needs must.

  ‘I didn’t have much choice, did I, Lianne? If you won’t talk to me …’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘So talk to me. I know you’re scared. I know that he hurt you.’

  A livid bruise covered the girl’s right cheek.

  ‘But he can’t touch you here. Tell me what’s been going on and I swear he won’t come near you ever again.’

  Helen held her hand out to the young girl. Lianne looked at it, then dropping her gaze to her lap, muttered.

  ‘I met him on Friday night.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Revolution.’

  Sanderson shot a look at Helen, but was ignored.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He bought me drinks you know. Asked me stuff.’

  ‘He took an interest in you.’

  ‘He was nice. He had money too. So we chatted until midnight, then went off.’

  ‘Where, Lianne? It’s really important you tell me –’

  ‘We went to his van, ok?’

  ‘You slept with him?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘How old are you, Lianne?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Helen repeated more forcefully.

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Lianne …’

  ‘Fourteen, ok, I’m fourteen.’

  The girl started to cry. Helen reached out to take her hand and this time the girl didn’t resist.

  ‘How long did you stay with him?’

  ‘A few hours.’

  ‘He was with you the whole time?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He dropped me home.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Just after four o’clock.’

  ‘Just after
four a.m. Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘I saw the clock as I came in. I was pleased – my folks are dead to the world at that time.’

  Helen concluded the interview shortly afterwards, the young girl having agreed to make a formal statement about the events of Friday night. There was some comfort in the fact that Nathan Price would face criminal proceedings – sex with a minor was a serious offence that would land him on the Sex Offenders Register – but it was of little solace to Helen. Lianne Sumner had just cleared Nathan Price of any involvement in Ruby Sprackling’s disappearance.

  Like it or not, they were back to square one.

  49

  He tried to focus, wrenching his mind back to the tasks in hand, but still he couldn’t settle. His unpleasant exchange with Summer had left him unsettled and disturbed – it was hard to concentrate on work today. Clients came and went as usual and he dealt with them in his usual professional manner, but he was on auto-pilot, getting the job done with the minimum of effort and interaction. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Why was she hostile to him? It didn’t make any sense. Why was she so … ungrateful? Didn’t she understand what he’d had to go through? The risks he’d taken?

  News of the discovery of a body at Carsholt beach had knocked him for six. He’d watched the local news repeatedly since, bought every edition of the local paper, scouring the reports for details. Images of a large police forensics team on site had unnerved him, as had the confirmation that local hero DI Grace would be leading the investigation. Ever since he’d seen the news, he’d been on edge, half expecting a knock on the door. He knew that this was unlikely – he’d been so careful, so meticulous in his work – but it just served to underline the lengths he’d gone to – the sacrifices he’d made – to do right by her.

  Why wouldn’t she give him the love he craved? The love he was owed? For the first time, anger flared in him. It could all be so perfect. It was so perfect. So why did she insist on denying him? She was an ungrateful little b—