by Mel Sherratt
‘We’re too late,’ she whispered.
The game really was over.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The following week, Allie sat at her desk, dealing with an endless mountain of paperwork. She always seemed to be tidying up paperwork, or filing paperwork, or sifting through paperwork. There was so much to complete or store away in her role, get right for trials. But this time, there would be no prosecution. There wasn’t anyone to charge.
Nick stopped at her desk. ‘You did a great job last week, Allie.’
‘Thanks, sir.’ She smiled. ‘I’m part of a good team.’
‘Indeed you are. I’m glad you remembered that. No running along on your own steam this time.’
Allie looked down. It was a back-handed compliment whose very meaning was huge. Nick was referring to her working on her own during the investigation into Steph Ryder’s murder three years before. But that had only been because he’d asked her to – hadn’t it?
‘So when are you going to go for inspector?’ he continued. ‘I think you’d do a good job of that too.’
‘I don’t know.’ Allie shrugged. ‘I like being hands-on, and the further up the ladder I go, the further away I go from that.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose I enjoy getting down and dirty.’
Nick laughed. ‘In your heels? I doubt that very much.’ He sighed. ‘It’s up to you, of course, but I’d be happy to put a word in for you when you change your mind.’
He wasn’t listening, expecting her to be flattered regardless. She knew his game.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she replied.
Perry joined her later. ‘Hey, how’s Lisa?’ she asked.
‘Still wanting to kick my ass for scaring the shit out of her.’ He gnawed his bottom lip for a moment. ‘I’m a prick, aren’t I?’
‘For going with a gut reaction?’ Allie shook her head. ‘Of course not.’
‘But I was wrong.’
‘I think you need to remember what could have happened if you were right.’
‘I must admit, it shook me up. It’s the closest the job’s come to getting personal, I suppose, and there’s a lot of guilt there too.’
‘Why?’
Perry perched on the edge of Allie’s desk. ‘Maybe if us kids had befriended Patrick instead of making him a scapegoat, he might have turned out better.’
Allie thought back to the earlier phone conversation she’d had with Ray Morgan. She was heading out to meet him in a few minutes. He had some things to say, things that he wanted her to hear. Things to get off his chest, she reckoned.
‘I doubt that,’ she said. ‘Whatever was going on at home was enough to take Patrick over the edge.’
‘I guess,’ said Perry, ‘but we didn’t make it any easier.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for any of this.’
‘We were always fooling around.’
‘Precisely!’
‘But it must have got to him.’
Allie sat forward so that only he could hear what she was going to say. ‘When I was fifteen and in my last year at Reginald High, I was friends with a girl called Sarah. She was one of those kids like Patrick. Always picked on because she was one of three sisters whose parents didn’t have much money, so they were always in the same clothes – hand-me-downs, too. My parents wouldn’t let me stay out late then so, as she only lived two streets away, I always used to go round to her house. We used to have such a laugh together. But she wasn’t a cool kid to hang around. I started to get picked on because of that.
‘All our parents went to a social club on the estate and every summer we’d go off on a bus to Blackpool. Karen was too old for it by then – it wasn’t cool – so Sarah came along instead. We had such a great time together. But one summer, at the school disco the following evening, I was with another friend chatting away in the toilets about how I didn’t really want to be friends with Sarah as I thought she was a wimp, a geek etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.’
Allie wasn’t sure why she was telling him this, or where the memory had popped up from, but she went on.
‘When we turned around, after I had blasted about her and told Michelle that I wanted to be friends with her instead – all down to acceptance, you know – we noticed a locked cubicle door.’ Allie’s cheeks began to burn. ‘Guess who was in there?’
Perry’s eyes widened. ‘She heard it all?’
‘Yes! I was mortified. Although I really liked hanging out with Sarah, I didn’t want to be excluded from Michelle’s friendship. Sarah came storming out eventually and never spoke to either of us again. I had a real hard time with it.’
‘Did you ever see her again?’
‘Around town a few times.’ Allie tried to shrug away her guilt. ‘But don’t you see, it’s kids’ stuff. Peer pressure when you’re a teenager is very powerful. We try our best to fit in, often not seeing who we upset to do just that. That’s why we move on as adults and leave some friends behind. They were people we had to see on a daily basis. As we get older, we make new friends – sometimes we lose them too. But more often, we find friends who stay with us throughout our lifetime, are there for us whenever we need them and make life just that bit more bearable when we’re at our lowest. They’re also there for us until we’re well and happy again. I guess Patrick never had that.’
‘I guess.’
‘All I’m saying is try not to take it to heart.’ She smiled at him. ‘Feel better?’
Perry smiled and nodded.
‘Good.’ Allie grinned back. ‘Now, get your ass off my desk and do some work.’
As Perry stood up and moved away, Allie wondered about the memory. Like a lot of people, she suspected she’d pushed the incident to the back of her mind, along with all the other things she was ashamed of saying and doing in her life. Okay, everyone makes mistakes – it was part of growing up. Learning from them was the best thing to do: learn and move on. Still, although she didn’t want to exaggerate her own importance for fear of sounding arrogant, she hadn’t liked the thought that maybe she had done something to change Sarah’s life, made her feel inadequate, like Perry had done with Patrick Morgan.
Allie’s mobile phone rang. A few heads snapped up as Andy Williams’ voice bellowed out Can’t Take My Eyes Off You at maximum volume.
‘What the . . . ?’ Allie cursed.
More heads turned and people stopped what they were doing as she grappled to turn it off. The call was from Mark.
‘You bastard,’ she said to him, a grin forming. ‘You switched my ringtone.’
‘Well, someone had to.’
She was just about to speak again when Perry started to sing. Sam joined in and pretty soon the whole office had joined in.
Allie covered her eyes with her other hand as they started on the chorus.
‘You see what you’ve started?’ she told Mark. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ As she disconnected the call, she could still hear him laughing.
Minutes later, her desk phone rang and she picked it up. ‘DS Shenton.’
That phone call had been from the DCI. He’d asked Allie to come up to his office. On the walk up the stairs to the next floor, she tried to think if she had done anything wrong. Trevor’s office was on the floor above theirs and a trip upstairs was known, unofficially, as a visit to the Gods. She walked along the corridor and opened a door to see Verity, his PA, sitting at her desk.
‘Go straight in,’ she told her, with a smile.
Nick opened the door, his eyes meeting hers for a moment before looking away. ‘Take a seat, Allie.’
Allie hid her surprise as he pulled out a chair for her at the head of a small conference table. Trevor was already seated there. Puzzled by the sombre atmosphere, she did as she was told, clasping her hands together on top of the table. Heart racing, she waited for the inevitable bollocking they were going to dish out.
/> When they were all settled, Trevor opened the file in front of him and turned to her, clearing his throat.
‘DS Shenton – Allie – there’s some information that’s come to light.’ He paused. ‘It isn’t going to be comfortable for you to hear, I’m afraid.’
‘Sir?’
‘When Chloe Winters was raped, you know we were running samples of blood and DNA through the database to see if there was a match.’
‘You have someone, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She held up a hand, unable to cope with what he was going to say next. Why else would she be getting this treatment?
‘Allie, we now know it was the same man who attacked Chloe Winters and your sister.’
‘No.’ Allie stood up so quickly that she shoved the chair across the tiled floor. Since the case had been resolved, she’d given up on the idea that someone was after Karen. Her vision blurred, spots of black appearing in front of her eyes. She felt like she was falling.
‘Allie.’ Nick stood up too.
‘No.’ She sat down again quickly, putting her head between her knees and hugging her calves.
Nick poured a glass of water and placed a hand on her back. When she sat upright, all the blood drained from her face.
‘That means he raped Chloe Winters to get back at me, doesn’t it? And that the letters Y and N – they were for me too.’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘You don’t know or you won’t tell me? He’s –’ She stopped, looking at them both in turn. ‘He’s going to come after me, isn’t he? Y, N. You’re next.’
‘Let’s hope not,’ said Trevor, ‘but it’s a possibility we need to look into. Set in place a risk assessment for you.’
‘I won’t stop doing my job!’
‘We’re not asking you to, but we need to take precautions.’
‘I can’t let him win.’ She looked at Nick. ‘I could lure him out.’
‘You mean offer yourself up for bait?’ He baulked.
‘If I have to.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Earlier, we talked about how good the team are,’ she reiterated. ‘They’ll help me and they’ll watch my back. I’ll be fine!’
Trevor closed the file in front of him. ‘You know I won’t allow that, and I want you to know that I won’t tolerate you going behind my back to do anything, either.’
Allie left the office a few minutes later. Downstairs, she walked into her office and sat down at her desk. By her side, she could see Sam, a look of apprehension on her face.
‘You okay, boss?’ she asked.
Allie nodded and then ducked her head behind her computer monitor. She stared hard at the screen, hoping to contain the tears building up in her eyes. That bastard – he’d done it again. How could that be so? Had he hurt more than two women? He must have – an animal like that was predatory. He wouldn’t be able to contain those kinds of urges.
She caught Sam watching her.
‘I worry about you, you know?’ her friend said.
Allie nodded. ‘I’m okay, thanks. Really,’ she added, when Sam continued to stare.
When Sam’s head bobbed down again, Allie held in a sob.
She would let her think she was fine. She would let everyone think she was fine.
And while they thought that, she would do a bit of digging. Because she was going to find the man who had attacked her sister. She had to, for Karen.
But more so, for her own sanity.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Allie went out the front door of the station and turned left along Bethesda Street. The winter sun was warm on her back; it felt good to walk after the difficult conversation she’d just had, if only for a couple of minutes. Grab some fresh air, no matter how cold, and think about things, put them into perspective.
Hearing the results of the DNA tests had thrown her but so far, she had thought only of her sister. She hadn’t wanted the two attacks to be linked – okay, more to the point, she hadn’t wanted to think about the connection because it would mean Chloe Winters had been attacked because of her. She swiped at the tear that fell from her eye. That poor girl.
At Broad Street, she crossed the road to the Mitchell Arts Centre, named after Reginald Mitchell, the inventor of the Spitfire aeroplane who came from Stoke-on-Trent. She pulled on the door to the café and went inside. Bright green and white décor, dark tiled flooring. Everything was welcoming except for the forlorn figure sitting at a table in the window, nursing a cup.
Ray Morgan looked up as she walked over to him, nodded his head in greeting.
‘Can I get you a fresh one?’ she asked.
‘Thanks.’
While she was at the counter giving her order, Allie glanced back at the man. He looked lost, bereft even, and the compassionate side of her felt sorry for him. But then the harder side, the side she needed to do her job, came into play and she knew she should feel nothing but anger towards him. He had turned his son into a monster.
A few minutes later, she set down two white cups, the tiny black emblem of a plane stamped on the side of each. She sat down, picked up her cup and blew on the liquid, finding the noise of a busy café compared to the noise of their office as refreshing as the tea. She gazed out of the window at the boarding across the way. Building work for the new civic centre seemed to be on target for completion later that year. Despite the millions the council would have had to borrow to create it, and the arguments for and against from the residents of the city about its location, she hoped it brought much-needed custom into Hanley.
‘I suppose you think it was all my fault,’ Ray said, after gazing out of the window for a moment too.
‘He was spelling out the word revenge,’ Allie told him. ‘We guessed but there was no way of working out who the next victim would be. He left us clues, as if he wanted to be stopped. But I’m not one to judge, Mr Morgan.’
‘I was an alcoholic back then.’ Ray put his cup down. ‘I suppose I’ll always have the potential to be one again but for now, I’ve been sober for years. I got clean while I was inside. It’s not something I’m proud of saying because I shouldn’t have let the drink grab hold of me in the first instance, but I am proud of how long I’ve been off it. Patrick’s mother left me when he was nine years old. She took my youngest two with her – Robert and Louisa.’
Allie nodded in recognition, realising they must have been the children in the photograph that was in Patrick's house. ‘That was your wife?’
Ray nodded. ‘I knew where she’d been staying for years. ’Course I never told Patrick – I was too selfish. I just used it to make him suffer, telling him all the time that his mother had left him behind because he was pathetic, weak, unlovable. That she couldn’t bear to take Patrick with her because he was so like me. That she hated me, so she hated him too. That she was feeble and unable to cope with my ways. That it was his fault he’d been abandoned. Need I go on?’
Allie remained quiet.
‘I hate myself for even saying that out loud.’ Ray shook his head. ‘But I was so fuelled by my own anger. I took it out on Patrick more and more. I never thought for a minute of what long-term damage it would do. All I cared about was where my next drink was coming from and how quickly I could get it down my neck and go back to the world I knew. Drink made me feel powerful. It is a demon.
‘But, luckily, prison changed me.’ He looked up, eyes pleading for Allie to believe him. ‘When I was sent down, I soon realised there were much harder men in there than me and that I was a coward. I began to step away from the trouble.’ He smiled half-heartedly. ‘I got myself into more trouble because of it when I wouldn’t fight back, but gradually I earned a little respect. That’s what I wanted then from my son. I wanted his forgiveness too, I suppose. I knew I had ruined his life but I wanted to make amends when I came out. I wante
d to start again, show him how much I had changed.’
The young girl who had served Allie began to wipe the tables around them. Allie wondered if she was being affected right now with anything that would change her life for the worse or for the better.
‘Before I was due out, I wrote to Patrick,’ Ray continued. ‘For about two years. Lots of letters, telling him how much I had changed, hoping he’d come to see me. I never heard from him. I sent him visiting orders too but he never showed up.’ He glanced away for a moment as he composed himself. ‘I suppose it was selfish of me to think that he would, but it did give me something to focus on. Somehow, I wanted to get through to him just how sorry I was. I had no idea he wasn’t living there anymore, that his mail was being redirected.’
Allie knew some of this already. She’d read the letters Ray had sent to Patrick. Indeed, they might seem heartfelt if you were distanced from them. Add the real reason he was apologising all the time and she could just about grasp what Patrick had been going through. Ray Morgan had been a bully in every sense of the word. Emotional, physical, mental and monetary. Without help, Patrick never stood a chance.
She also couldn’t help but take satisfaction from the fact they now knew that Patrick wasn’t his son. If he had been, a partial match would have come up against Ray’s DNA when they had run Patrick’s through the system. Allie wondered if this was the reason that he’d been left behind by his mother – guilt perhaps, of an affair?
‘Can you understand me better now?’ Ray asked.
Allie shrugged. ‘I don’t have to understand you, Mr Morgan. That’s not my job. But, yes, I can see why you would want to make amends. Shame you were into the demon juice for quite so long, though – and that it took a prison sentence before you realised that.’
Ray had the decency to hang his head in shame. A moment later, he caught her eye.
‘I made a huge mistake.’ Tears glistened in his eyes. ‘One that I can never put right now, and I won’t ever forget that Patrick died because of it.’
