Detective Lucy Harwin 01-The Lost Children

by Helen Phifer

  ‘Of course it is,’ Lucy said, feeling herself blush again. ‘And thank you for being so understanding. Not many people get it.’

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow and see if you’re busy. Don’t worry if you are. I’m back in work tomorrow afternoon – I’ve ended up agreeing to cover a shift for my colleague, who has had a last-minute completion date for moving house.’

  He turned, walking back to his car. As Lucy watched him go, she realised that she liked Dr Stephen King a whole lot more than she’d ever imagined possible.

  She locked her door, returned the key to her purse and hurried back to her car. She was buzzing to see the artist’s impression of what Lizzy Clements would look like now. The case was finally coming together. She had a feeling that she was on to something. Some people called it a copper’s instinct – and Lucy thought that was a pretty accurate description. Her dad had always told her to trust in her gut instinct and so she had. It had never let her down.

  She drove to work much faster than the thirty-mile speed limit dictated. The roads were deserted this time of night, anyway.

  47

  Mattie made it in time to meet Heidi at the bar of the Belmont, which resulted in her giving him the biggest smile ever. She leant over and kissed him on the lips. Her finger trailed down his chin and neck until she stopped, placing her hand on his heart.

  ‘I’m so glad you could make it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really not want to ever see you again.’

  Mattie thought about telling her that Lucy had gone off on one about them, but then decided against it. If he was here and having to pay for the bloody place, the least he could do was to try to make the most of it. He couldn’t relax, though. The conversation with Lucy kept replaying in his mind. For a start, why hadn’t Heidi told him that her real name was Jane? And then there was the fact that he felt bad that he’d upset Lucy with his sneaking around. He should have had the balls to tell her from the beginning about his relationship, and then it wouldn’t have been so bad. Even though his personal life had nothing to do with Lucy as a colleague, she was his closest friend. He ought to be able to share things with her. God knows, there had been plenty of times when he’d had to tell her to wind her neck in, or had given her advice about her problems at home.

  He felt his cheek sting. Heidi had just slapped him. He rubbed at his face, bewildered. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘You’re thinking about her, Matthew,’ Heidi said. ‘Don’t deny it. Jesus Christ, every single time you think about her, you get that sad little puppy-dog look in your eyes. Well, let me tell you a home truth: she doesn’t give a shit about you. She just wants you at her beck and call. Her little lapdog. If she really liked you, wouldn’t you be with her now? Sharing a bottle of wine? Sharing her bed?’

  Mattie looked at Heidi – really looked at her, as if for the first time. As if someone had just taken the blinkers off his eyes so he could see her clearly. She was attractive for her age, yes – she didn’t have many lines or wrinkles. But it was her eyes that caught his attention now. They were so dark and cold. He felt as if she were staring straight down into the depths of his soul. It scared him.

  Then, in an instant, her face changed back to its usual warmth. She smiled at him, leaning forward to kiss his face where he could feel that she’d left a red mark.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a terribly busy day. You know how jealous I get of her – of any woman, really, who I see as competition. I can’t help it. She’s so young and pretty, and I’m so much older than the both of you. Here, have a glass of wine.’

  ‘You have it all wrong,’ Mattie said. ‘Me and Lucy – well, we’re just really good mates. Look, I found out today that you’re Lucy’s daughter’s support worker. I understand why you didn’t tell me that – client confidentiality and so on. But why did you tell me you were called Heidi, when Lucy knows you as Jane?’

  Jane sighed. ‘My full name is Heidi Jane Toppan. I prefer to use plain Jane for work – it’s just easier.’

  She’d poured him a large glass of some sparkling wine. Mattie prayed it was Prosecco and not champagne, because he was already going to have to sell his soul to pay for tonight. And he didn’t even want to be here – all he really wanted to do was to go and see Lucy.

  The waiter came over to tell them their table was ready. Heidi stood up, slipping her hand inside Mattie’s, and tugged him towards the restaurant. He picked up the wine glass with his other hand and downed the contents. The waiter showed them to a cosy table in the corner. Mattie was relieved the lighting wasn’t very good, because he didn’t want to have to look at Heidi. He had a bad feeling about tonight. He wondered if he should just apologise, throw her a hundred quid and walk out of here. Out of her life.

  Only that wasn’t who he was. He had been brought up with better manners than that. So he found himself sitting down, and the waiter poured him another glass of that fizzy stuff –

  which was actually quite nice, meaning it was expensive. Thank god, Mattie thought, that he had his credit card on him, because it wasn’t pay day for another week yet. Two bowls of soup were placed in front of them and Mattie looked down at his. He hadn’t even seen the menu.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me ordering for you?’ Heidi asked.

  Mattie did mind. He minded a fucking lot because he never ate soup, and if Heidi had bothered to ask him, she would have known that. A burning rage filled his insides. He shook his head, but the room began to spin a little so he stopped. The wine must have gone straight to his head.

  Instead of standing up and telling her to fuck off, like he was tempted to, he picked up the spoon and began to shovel soup into his mouth. He was relieved to find that it tasted better than it looked. He picked up a bread roll, ripped it apart, and stuffed it into his mouth. He saw Heidi cringe, which gave him some feeling of satisfaction, so he did the same again. The room was still spinning and he wasn’t sure if he was going to puke or not. Better get his money’s worth before he did. This thought made him laugh, and he looked across at Heidi, who was sitting there not touching her food. He gulped down his bread roll and pointed at her soup.

  ‘What’s up? Not hungry?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Why not? You took the liberty of ordering my food so that it arrived faster. You must be starving.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re acting like an animal.’

  ‘I’m just getting my money’s worth.’ He picked up the wine glass and downed the contents. Suddenly, the room lurched violently and he thought he was going to pass out. ‘I need to lie down,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel well.’ The words sounded as if he’d tried to speak through a mouth full of cotton wool.

  Heidi put her napkin down and stood up. Walking over to him, she linked her arm under his elbow and tried to help him up off the chair. Mattie tried to stand, but his legs didn’t want to hold his body weight. The waiter came rushing over to help.

  ‘Is everything OK, sir?’

  Mattie heard him. His mouth opened to answer – only, nothing came out.

  ‘I don’t think he’s very well,’ he heard Heidi say. ‘Can you help me get him up to our room, please?’

  The last thing Mattie wanted to do was go and be sick all over the hotel room. He tried to mumble this to the pair of them, but it was unintelligible. He felt them take an arm each and march him out of the restaurant to the lift. Within a matter of minutes, he was being laid down on a king size bed. He could hear Heidi thanking the waiter as he lay there, trying to stop the room from spinning. He felt his shoes being tugged off his feet and his trousers being removed. His tie was loosened and his buttons undone, and then everything went black.

  48

  As Lucy rushed through the side door into the station, she was surprised to see Browning in the process of putting his radio away in the locker room. It was late, and he’d started earlier than she had, yet he was still here and only just about to leave. Fleetingly, she felt bad – there must be some reason why
he was still here – but she carried on past him and went upstairs to the empty CID office.

  Lucy flopped down onto the chair behind her desk and typed her username and password into the computer, hoping it wouldn’t take forever to log on like it normally did. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Browning come back into the office and begin hovering around his desk. She didn’t acknowledge him. She knew what he was up to – trying to find out why she was here. Wouldn’t she be the same if it were the other way around? She knew without a doubt that she would.

  The blue screen finally filled with icons and Lucy double-clicked on the email envelope. The message from Chris was the newest one in her folder and she opened it, trying not to swear loudly or drum her fingers on the desk as it took an age to load. She could feel the meal she’d eaten earlier lying heavy in her stomach, and she wished that for once she’d eaten a salad. The computer was playing up and it wouldn’t open the attachment. Thumping her fist on the desk, she turned the computer off and stood up. She needed to find another computer, one that wasn’t frozen. She looked at Mattie’s – his was free, so she logged in once more. It was taking forever, and Browning was still hovering around by his desk.

  Finally, the attachment began to open. Lucy hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath until the image was fully loaded onto the screen, when she gasped so loudly that Browning shouted: ‘Are you OK over there, Lucy? Don’t want you having a heart attack when I’m about to go home.’

  Lucy peered at the screen in horror. She couldn’t say it was her one hundred per cent –

  the hair colour was different, and the woman she knew had fewer lines on her face – but the likeness was uncanny. She stared at it, hoping to god that it wasn’t true. Only, the more she studied the face staring back at her, the more she was convinced it was her.

  ‘Browning,’ she said, ‘I need you to come and look at this now. I know who the killer is.’

  Heidi stood and watched Mattie for a little while, so she could catch her breath. Getting him on the bed had been hard work, even with the help of the waiter. It had left her quite flustered. She hadn’t expected the drugs to work so quickly on him.

  He was so handsome. As she looked at him lying there, almost naked and in a deep sleep, she felt quite sad that this relationship was over. It had been fun. He was a nice guy – but she no longer had any use for him.

  His phone began to ring with an unknown number and she picked it up, sending the call straight to voicemail. It rang again, then vibrated to say there was a voice message. Intrigued, Heidi dialled through the voicemail and heard Lucy’s voice. The panic in it was quite refreshing to hear. She had thought that Lucy Harwin had everything under control, but judging by that message, it seemed not.

  Heidi deleted the message. So, the clever Lucy had figured out who the killer was. How kind of her to warn Heidi like this – in doing so, she had just sealed her own fate. It was just as well Mattie was out for the count, Heidi thought, because if he’d got an inkling that Lucy was in danger, she didn’t think he’d have thought twice about killing her.

  Bending down, she kissed his cheek. ‘It was good while it lasted. Thank you.’

  As she left the room, she hung the ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign on the door handle, and smiled as she walked away.

  49

  The woman Lucy was looking at bore a very strong resemblance to Jane Toppan. Oh, god, Mattie. Mattie!

  She waved Browning closer. There was no time to mess around. She was convinced that Lizzy Clements had grown up to be Jane Toppan, which meant that Mattie could be in serious danger. He was probably with her right now.

  Browning looked at the artist’s sketch on her screen.

  ‘It’s pretty good. What are you doing, taking up portrait drawing in your spare time?’

  She shook her head. The lump that was forming in her throat was making it hard to speak.

  ‘This is an artist’s impression of the Clements’ daughter, Lizzy, as an adult. Did you not listen to the briefing?’

  Browning shrugged.

  ‘She was put into the asylum at nine years old and the Clements never saw her again. Supposedly she died in 1990 of a drugs overdose.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, this is an age progression portrait drawn up by a forensic artist. The woman in the portrait looks very much like my daughter’s youth offending key worker, and more importantly, that is who Mattie just so happens to be dating at the moment.’

  Browning studied the picture whilst trying to digest what Lucy had just said. He looked at her. ‘Sorry, it’s late. Forgive me, but what exactly are you saying?’

  Lucy took a deep breath. ‘This is our killer. We know who she is, and I think that Mattie might be in danger.’

  She looked for her phone to ring Mattie and realised that she’d put it down on her hall table when she’d turned to speak to Stephen. Picking up the desk phone, she dialled the only number apart from her daughter’s that she knew off by heart. It went straight to voicemail.

  Browning had disappeared and she didn’t know where he’d gone – she just hoped it was to do something useful. She tried Mattie again, this time leaving him a message:

  ‘Mattie, it’s Lucy. This is really important. I need you to ring me back as soon as you get this. I know who the killer is.’

  Browning appeared at the door with one of the student officers from the parade room. ‘Inspector, this is Luke. He’s a bit of a computer whizz, aren’t you, Luke?’

  Luke nodded.

  ‘He’s going to do some background searches on our suspect until Col can get back to take over – social media, whatever – whilst we try and get hold of the boss and tell him we need an arrest team assembling asap.’

  Lucy felt a wave of relief rush through her that Browning had taken her seriously. ‘Thank you. That’s brilliant.’

  Luke, who looked as if he was about twelve and had dressed up as a policeman especially for World Book Day, had turned beetroot red. Browning ushered him towards the nearest desk and told him to get started. Lucy tried Mattie’s mobile again, before looking up his details on the system to get his house phone number. She’d never had to ring it before because he always, always answered his mobile phone.

  * * *

  A quarter of an hour later, Lucy was pacing up and down the office waiting for the DCI to arrive and get the ball rolling. She’d already put in a request for cell site analysis of Mattie’s phone. If they could ping the phone masts and get a location of where he’d last used it, they would be able to narrow the search down to a specific geographical area within a three-kilometre radius. The control room inspector had promised they would start on this just as soon as Mattie’s house had been searched to make sure he wasn’t tucked up in bed. Lucy had wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. Mattie would never not answer her calls.

  A voice in her head whispered: Not usually, but you pissed him off today with your judgemental accusations, didn’t you?

  She heard a cough, and looked up to see Luke standing there, holding some sheets of paper.

  ‘What have you got, Luke?’

  ‘Well, ma’am—’

  She lifted her hand up. ‘Lucy. Call me Lucy.’

  He nodded, his cheeks glowing even redder. ‘Lucy. I couldn’t find anything on social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – for a woman called Jane Toppan. I did find her address, though – and this is off Google.’

  He handed her the sheet of paper and she looked down at a grainy black-and-white photograph of a woman.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘She’s called Honora Kelley. She was an American serial killer who changed her name to Jane Toppan.’

  Lucy read the printout. Honora’s father, Peter Kelley, had been supposedly insane and an alcoholic. Her mother had died when Honora was very young, and in 1863 Kelly had taken his two youngest daughters, Delia and Honora, to the Boston Female Asylum. He never saw them again. When Honora left the asylum, she changed her name to Jane Toppan
, became a nurse, and began poisoning her patients and the people who got close to her. She confessed to thirty-three murders in 1901.

  Lucy felt the hairs on the back of her neck begin to prickle as she finished reading. Somehow, Lizzy had found a kindred spirit in Jane Toppan, and had named herself after her. Lucy had never heard of the poisoner, and she wondered how Lizzy Clements had.

  ‘Thank you, Luke,’ she said. ‘This is very useful.’

  She dialled Mattie’s phone again. What if they were already too late? She’d never be able to live with herself. A cold feeling gripped her stomach as she realised that he’d tried to call her earlier and she hadn’t returned his calls.

  ‘Lucy, what the fuck is going on?’

  Lucy looked up to see Tom standing there in a pair of jogging pants and a faded T-shirt. She’d never seen him in anything other than a suit and tie before.

  ‘I believe Mattie’s girlfriend, Jane Toppan – aka Lizzy Clements – is our killer. She also works with my daughter at youth offending. Mattie’s been seeing her for a while now and I can’t get hold of him. I have two addresses that I want searching simultaneously – his and Jane’s.’

  ‘And this is based on what?’ Tom asked.

  Lucy pointed to the image on her computer screen. ‘I took the liberty of engaging the help of a forensic artist, who very kindly drew this age progression portrait from a childhood photograph of Lizzy.’

  ‘Jesus, Lucy, anything else you might want to tell me? Do you know how long it will take to get Task Force assembled to make up two entry teams? They all went off-duty at ten – they won’t be ready in the next thirty minutes. That I can guarantee.’

  ‘No, I don’t know, and I don’t fucking care, sir. I want to be ready to go as soon as possible. This is a matter of life and death.’