by Mel Sherratt
He was the stupid one thinking that she hadn’t changed.
She could see the police in the distance now. As he came at her again, her hand found its way inside her coat pocket. Her fingers clasped around the knife she’d put there that morning. She stood up quickly and, with as much force as she could muster, plunged it into his stomach.
‘That’s for Finn,’ she said. ‘For pretending he was alive when you’d killed him. For using me for two years. For being a bastard and making my life hell coming after me.’
The look on his face was almost amusing, as if he didn’t believe she had it in her to do what she’d done. She’d said she would look after her family, and this was the only way she could think of how to stop him.
With the knife still in his side, he lunged for her again, pushing her to the ground and straddling her. He punched her in the face. Pain erupted all over it and she turned her head away from him.
He hit her again.
Alerted by children’s screams, Grace and Frankie had changed course and headed for the back of the building. Three uniformed officers were behind them.
Grace turned the corner. Someone was coming towards them. Lily was running with Tyler in her arms, the poor boy bobbing up and down as she struggled to carry him.
‘Take the children to safety,’ she shouted to an officer. Racing forwards she could see Ruby on the grass, Dane on top of her.
‘Police! Stop what you’re doing!’
Dane didn’t even look in her direction. As Grace drew level, she jumped on him, pushing him over to the side. He didn’t get up, but rolled over onto his back. It was then she saw the blood staining his jacket, the knife embedded in his stomach.
‘Get a paramedic here, right now,’ she told Frankie.
She dropped to her knees, while she caught her breath. They had got him.
FIFTY-TWO
Harrison House was a riot of organised chaos. The area had been cordoned off to allow the CSIs to do their work, as well as the police. The smashed-up car had been towed away to the pound. Luke Douglas and Dane Walker had both been shipped off to the Royal Stoke, one under police guard.
People had been hanging around and there were several uniformed officers asking questions yet again. Grace laughed inwardly as she knew some of the residents would be sick of the sight of them. She had been joined by Allie and Perry, who she had then left at the scene.
Three hours later, she and Frankie went into a side room in the hospital. A battered and bruised Ruby had a child under each arm. Both clung on to her as if they didn’t want to let her go.
‘How’s Luke?’ Grace asked immediately.
‘He’s been taken into surgery,’ Ruby replied. ‘I’m not sure I can go through this again.’
‘Again?’
Ruby glanced at her children.
Grace nodded her head to the door. ‘Frankie, would you take Lily and Tyler to get a drink of juice?’
Tyler clung to his mum but Lily knew the drill. ‘Come on, Ty. I bet we can get some chocolate too.’
‘I want to stay here,’ Tyler cried.
‘I promise I won’t move,’ Ruby told him. ‘No one is going to hurt any of us ever again.’
‘Come on, little fella.’ Frankie held out his hand. ‘We can be back in no time.’
A tentative Tyler paused and then took Frankie’s hand. Frankie lifted him into his arms.
‘Whoa, that plaster cast on your ankle is heavy.’ He staggered around the room. Tyler giggled.
Grace smiled at Ruby. It must be a good sound for her to hear.
Once they were alone, Grace took out her notebook. ‘I have to get a first statement from you, and then we’ll need an official one from you later. Okay?’
Ruby nodded. ‘I stabbed him.’
‘Yes, I realise that,’ Grace spoke gently. ‘If you acted in self-defence then a judge and jury need to know that too.’
After a moment’s silence, Ruby told Grace everything that had happened that morning. How they’d bumped into Seth in the car park, and he had attacked Luke. How she had run to get her children, only for Dane to attack her. Grace took notes through it all.
‘I have a gun belonging to Dane,’ she finished. ‘That’s what he was after. It was my security.’
Ruby spoke so quietly that Grace had to ask her to repeat what she’d said. But she was none the wiser. She shook her head.
‘I don’t understand.’
Ruby explained to her what had happened the night she had taken the gun and made a run for her life.
‘Why didn’t you bring it to the police?’ Grace asked.
‘Because I realised how much danger I was in. I knew that he would have found me anyway, like he has done now, and he would have got rid of me regardless. Just like he did with Finn.’ Her voice broke at the mention of his name. ‘Dane was obsessed with getting revenge. I took the gun so that even if he caught up with me, I was one step ahead.’
‘But if you hadn’t got the gun, he might not have come after you.’
‘I couldn’t be certain of that. Even if I’d left without it, he could have sent someone else if he couldn’t get to me. You don’t know him like I do.’
‘Where is the gun?’
‘It’s at my dad’s house. I hid it in the loft on the day I ran from Dane.’
Grace smiled, even though it didn’t seem appropriate. Here she was thinking Ruby wasn’t a strong woman because of the lies she’d told. Yet everything she’d heard about what she’d been through meant she had great strength to come out of this still standing. She was very tough, looking out for her family as well as trying to protect her own life. But it could be deemed as concealing evidence if the gun turned out to be linked to other crimes as Ruby had kept it away from them.
‘You do understand that charges may be brought against you for withholding this?’ Grace explained.
Ruby nodded. ‘It was worth it to keep my family safe.’
And then she understood. Ruby was right. Dane would never leave her alone. So she’d done what she could to protect everyone, knowing that either she would be in trouble with the police, or equally she could be dead at Walker’s hands.
It was a tough call, but Grace knew she would have done the same in those circumstances.
‘Thank you for your help.’ Ruby paused. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you about … everything. I just didn’t know what to do for the best.’
The door opened and Lily came running in. Frankie still had Tyler in his arms and he put him down on Ruby’s knee.
‘Chocolate, Mummy!’ He handed her a wrapper with a half-eaten wafer biscuit.
‘Is that for me?’ she said, mouth wide open in mock surprise.
‘We save for Daddy.’
‘We will.’ Ruby pulled him close. She put an arm around Lily too.
Grace stood up. ‘I hope Luke goes on okay.’
‘Thanks.’ Ruby nodded at them both.
They left her to it then, a family reunited, hopefully soon to be all together as one.
TWO WEEKS LATER
FIFTY-THREE
Grace sat at her desk. She’d enjoyed being back on the estates since Dane Walker had been charged with the assaults on Ruby Brassington and Tyler Douglas two weeks ago. With his previous convictions being taken into consideration and the fact he was on licence, plus the new evidence, he’d most likely get another lengthy sentence.
Grace really wanted him to suffer for what he had done to Ruby and her family, murdering the man that she had loved and hounding her for years. Dane was a sick and twisted individual who she thought belonged in prison.
Ruby would be safe from him for a fair few years now, yet would always know that his release may bring him looking for her again. She would have to continue to live her life looking over her shoulder. A sentence for both of them. And there was nothing anyone could do about that.
The murder of Mary Stanton was still being investigated. Forensic evidence came back linking fibres found around and inside Mar
y’s mouth to a pair of leather gloves located in a search of Seth’s flat. Traces of her saliva were on them too. But there was no evidence to say the gloves belonged to him, and Seth had denied it. There was nothing caught on camera, no witnesses coming forward but they were confident they would get their conviction soon.
Seth had been charged with GBH for the attack on Luke Douglas. There was also a baseball bat found in his flat, with blood from a number of victims on file, including Milo Benton. Milo had finally admitted it had been Seth who attacked him, now that he knew Seth was behind bars.
Seth had also been charged with the minor assault on Ruby Brassington. Also, after hours of searching, Sam had finally come up with footage of his car on the main road on the day Caleb Campbell had been hit. On further investigation, Shelley hadn’t backed up his alibi that she had been with him either.
Grace had also been doing some digging into Dane Walker’s past, and his associates, and in particular the gun that they had collected from Ruby’s childhood home. Ruby had insisted her father knew nothing of it being stored there, and after meeting him to fetch it, she’d had to agree. He wasn’t under suspicion of hiding it for her.
She’d arranged to see Ruby at her flat to talk to her about it. When she arrived, she was pleased to see Luke there. The bruising on his face was a faded green-yellow now, his operation a success after repairing a fractured jaw and cheekbone. His mental scars would take a lot longer to fade, if at all, she thought.
After asking how everyone was, they sat down in the living room together. It was going to be a difficult conversation and although Ruby would need Luke afterwards, it would still be hard for him to sit through it. Luckily, the children were next door being looked after by Norma.
Grace was about to speak when Ruby went first.
‘I need to tell you what happened after I left Dane,’ she started. ‘I got on the first bus out of London. It was going to Manchester. Lily was two then and I bundled her onto the bus, looking over my shoulder convinced that he was going to come running up and stop us before we had time to leave.
‘I cried with relief most of the way there. I couldn’t believe I’d got away from him. I remember holding on tight to Lily as she slept on my knee, the bus putting miles between me and my old life.’ Ruby glanced at Grace. ‘Once there, I made my way to the local housing office and declared myself homeless. It was embarrassing and they wanted to know a lot more than I was comfortable sharing, but if it meant me and Lily were safe, then I was fine suffering the humiliation. They put us into a bed and breakfast in a small hotel. It was one room and a bathroom but for the first time in years, I felt safe.’
Grace’s eyes brimmed with tears. This young woman’s life had been tragic, and it could have been much worse had she not looked after herself.
‘It wasn’t nice staying there though,’ Ruby went on. ‘In the harsh light of day, it was worse than I’d thought. The place was full of weird people. Most of them were okay, but as you can imagine there was lots of noise, people taking drugs, breaking into rooms. But I got used to it, and people looked out for me because I had Lily with me.
‘Three months later, I was offered a small flat on the fifth floor of a tower block in Salford. It was hard work with the pushchair if the lift wasn’t working but I didn’t care. I was there for six months, still looking over my shoulder, even though I knew Dane was in prison. We visited my dad twice, and set up a private account on Facebook so that I could send photos and messages about Lily. There were no addresses sent. I could never tell him where we were living.’
‘I really don’t know how you coped back then,’ Grace told her. ‘You were so young to have all that weight on your shoulders.’
‘Luckily when he first located me, I saw him hanging around the building so I was alerted. He wasn’t long in prison that time. I didn’t know what to do so I called the housing officer who assisted me to move in. She was so helpful, packing up my belongings and getting me a temporary room in a hostel. She even drove me there, picking me up away from the flat so he wouldn’t see me. I don’t know how he found out where I was, though.
‘I moved, he caught up with me once more, and then he left me alone for a while. It was then I found out he’d been sent to prison again for armed robbery. He got twelve years. I sobbed so hard that night. Twelve years of not looking over my shoulder. I kept an eye on the news myself that time, googling him every now and then to see when he was out on parole. I must have missed his release because he got out earlier than I expected.’
‘Yes, he was let out on good behaviour.’ Grace harrumphed. ‘I really detest the system for that.’
‘Even before he was in prison, I felt as if I was the one who’d been given a life sentence,’ Ruby went on. ‘I lost contact with my friends, had to move away from the place I called home. It didn’t seem fair that my life could be so disrupted when I had done nothing wrong. Finn was the one in the gang and he was disloyal because of me. He wanted to be with me and live a normal life, away from the violence and the crime, and they wouldn’t let him.’ She glanced across at Luke. ‘That’s why I told no one. That’s why it took me a long time to trust anyone again.’
Grace blew out her breath. Ruby’s story was hard to hear and not what she was expecting. It made the news she’d come to deliver even more heartbreaking.
‘Since you gave the gun to us, we’ve carried out forensic tests on it and we’ve been able to link it to a serious crime.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Ruby let out a sigh, which turned into a sob.
‘There was a body of a man which turned up with gunshot wounds but no identification. Ruby, I’m sorry to say this but there wasn’t enough left of the body that we could get prints or dental records from at the time but we now believe, after Dane’s taunt when he confessed to you, and evidence from the gun, that victim was Finn.’
‘You mean Dane smashed him and cut him up so he couldn’t be identified after he was shot?’ Ruby gasped at the enormity of her words.
‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’
Ruby turned to Luke, who took her in his arms as she began to cry.
Grace looked away for a moment, the emotion becoming too intense. Ruby had lived in hope of Finn being alive for eight years. She would never see Lily’s father again but Grace trusted it would bring closure for the young woman. Finn Ridley hadn’t left her.
‘If I’d given you the gun, he would have been in prison, wouldn’t he?’ Ruby spoke quietly.
‘Not necessarily. It would have been hard to prove Dane was the one who had pulled the trigger.’ Grace wouldn’t sugar-coat anything. ‘But even that wouldn’t have kept him inside forever,’ she noted. ‘And when he does get out of prison again, rest assured that the police will offer you and your family protection from him, given his history of hunting you down.’
‘It’s better than living in constant fear,’ Luke said. ‘And at least we’re all safe for now.’
‘I don’t know how you did it.’
‘I know some people will question why I didn’t leave,’ Ruby added. ‘It’s not as simple as walking out of the door and not looking back. It’s what follows you, regardless of whether it’s a person or not. He got inside my head. I was so scared of what he might do, even when he wasn’t there. He’s evil.’
‘He is. But he’s locked up for now. For a good while.’ After a natural lull in the conversation, Grace stood up. ‘I’ll let myself out,’ she told them.
‘Thank you for everything,’ Ruby said when she got to the door.
Grace nodded. It certainly hadn’t been a pleasure but it was job satisfaction at its best.
Stepping out onto the walkway, she breathed in the fresh air, as if it was filling her with the good stuff again rather than the tarnished.
She leaned on the railing where Tyler Douglas had been held over, shutting out the image of him on the ground below.
She looked down to the car park where Milo Benton had been beaten with a baseball bat.
She turned and walked away, for now happy with the results if not the resolution.
FIFTY-FOUR
At Stoke railway station, Shelley sat on a bench on platform two waiting patiently for the train to Manchester Piccadilly. After the events of the past month, she couldn’t wait to get out of the city.
In the suitcase and holdall at her feet were all of her worldly possessions. Her clothes, photos she loved, two books she hadn’t yet read, her favourite shoes, nearly four thousand pounds deposited into an online savings account and one thousand pounds in cash. She had no friends in Stoke, no family she cared for, or who cared for her. So she was going to start again.
Before she left, she’d gone to square things up with Eddie. She hadn’t really been able to tell him any more about Seth but she wanted out. She thought she might have a bargaining tool but wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. She was tired of her life with them: first the threat of the sex parties, then having to be Seth’s woman to gather information for Eddie, being in danger all the time in case anyone came after him and hurt her instead.
Eddie had been true to his word after the conversation in his car. Now that Seth had been sent down, her job had finished. Seth wasn’t there to encroach on the Steeles’ patch any more. She’d half expected him to say she couldn’t leave, but she’d begged him and he had seen sense – she’d served her purpose to him now anyway.
Especially when she had given him the T-shirt. She reckoned the blood on it belonged to Milo Benton, the young teenager that Seth had beaten with a baseball bat just before Tyler had been dropped from the balcony. It wasn’t much to convict Seth on, not that he wasn’t already looking at a long sentence for what he’d done, but Eddie had seemed to like her loyalty.
Seth might come after her later, now that she’d taken his money. She might be on the run for the rest of her life like Ruby. But she was willing to take the chance. She’d stayed at Mandy’s house, hiding the stash without her friend knowing. Then she’d waited for the police enquiry to go quiet.
