by Arlene Hunt
The scream died in his throat when he saw Yvonne standing there, her face alabaster white.
‘Is she … is she dead?’
She looked so small and scared he went to her immediately and wrapped his arms around her.
‘She’s alive, but I don’t think we should touch her.’
‘I heard him, the man who did this, he was here.’
‘Well he’s gone now, so we can—’
Samantha began to twitch, then to convulse.
‘Colin!’
‘Oh shit.’
Panicked, he grabbed Samantha and tried to roll her over, terrified that she would harm herself or choke. But as strong as he was, he could barely hold onto her. Suddenly she stiffened, made a strange rattling sound and was still.
‘Oh my God, is she …’
Colin stared at his wife, stricken.
‘She’s not breathing.’
Yvonne Hershey screamed until her throat was raw.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Eli Quinn got the call shortly after three a.m. He roused Miranda from her bed on the way.
Now they were sitting in Yvonne Hershey’s kitchen, drinking coffee. Yvonne, still in her clothes from the night before, looked pale and shaken, but she insisted on talking to them while Colin, her husband, excused himself and went upstairs for a shower.
‘I can’t believe it, I just can’t.’ Her left leg jiggled up and down non-stop as she spoke.
They were sitting on either side of a long table. Even Miranda, who had almost no interest in interior design, could see that it was a beautiful room. She marvelled that people owned homes like this one in real life. The kitchen alone was probably almost the size of her entire apartment.
‘She was so fucking sweet; she was the sweetest person you will ever meet. She didn’t deserve this, she didn’t deserve any of the shit she had to put up with.’
‘No,’ Quinn said, reaching for his coffee. It was good, as were the fancy lemon butter cookies. So far he had eaten two and was considering another, though he didn’t want to look greedy.
‘You mind if I smoke?’ Yvonne asked.
‘It’s your house.’
‘You want one?’
‘No thank you.’
‘I’m trying to quit,’ Miranda said.
‘Oh yeah? I tried once, it was shit.’ She lit a cigarette, blew the match out and took a deep drag. Her hand shook badly.
‘I’m very sorry about your friend,’ Quinn said. Word had come through from the hospital that Samantha Mullins had died.
Yvonne’s bottom lip wobbled and tears spilled down her cheek.
‘She … she didn’t deserve that,’ she repeated.
‘No one does.’
‘Every time I close my eyes, I see her, you know? I keep thinking I should have gone there sooner, I should have known something was wrong. I could have saved her.’
‘You saw Samantha yesterday?’
She nodded. ‘I met her at the school gate. Our children go to the same school.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘I don’t know, a little distracted. Giddy.’
‘Giddy?’
‘Michael was moving back in.’ Yvonne dashed at the tears with the heel of her hand. ‘Poor cow thought it was a good thing.’
‘They’d broken up?’
‘He cheated on her, broke her heart into a million pieces, and she forgave him; she was giving the bastard a second chance.’
‘You didn’t like him.’
She gave him a look that would have withered a lesser mortal.
‘That’s a pretty accurate assumption, but even he didn’t deserve what happened. Oh God, it’s so awful.’
‘Can you think of anything that had changed recently in Samantha’s life? Anything that struck you as unusual?’
‘Apart from taking Michael back?’ Yvonne tried for a smile but couldn’t pull it off. ‘Not really. Well, she’d got a job, part-time gig, nothing special. Just answering phones, but she liked it.’
‘Where was this?’
‘For a printing company, three mornings a week.’
Miranda and Quinn exchanged a look.
‘When did she start there?’
‘About four months ago. Look, it was a shitty job and the wages were crap, but she liked having some financial independence, you know. It gave her a bit of confidence back, and God knows she needed that after the crap Michael put her through.’
‘Do you know the name of the company?’
She told them. Quinn entered it into a search engine and felt a genuine gut-punch when it turned up the company address.
He showed it to Miranda. Her eyes widened.
‘She was so happy, you know; for the first time in so long she was really fucking happy. This is all so surreal.’ Yvonne put her head in her hands and began crying openly. ‘You hear about these things, read about them, but you never think it will happen to you, to someone you love.’
‘No,’ Miranda said. ‘You never do.’
‘I mean, why her? She was one of the nicest people you could ever meet.’
‘A real sweetheart,’ Quinn said softly.
Chapter Fifty
Delia Shawcross’s family home was a large house set well back from the road with an unusually long front garden. The exterior was covered in ivy and there was a metal balcony over the front porch, looking out to the Irish Sea.
Margaret Shawcross had answered the door wearing an apron and a smile. Now, as she and Roxy sat down in the living room, she wore neither.
‘I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted trip, Sergeant. Delia no longer lives here.’
Roxy, perched on the edge of the high-backed sofa, regarded Margaret Shawcross with professional interest. The older woman had a pretty decent poker face, she was willing to grant her that, but her eyes told a different story; she looked petrified.
‘Can you tell me where she lives now? I’d like to speak to her.’
‘What is this in relation to?’
‘Delia was a friend of Andrea Colgan. I’m part of the team investigating her murder.’
‘They worked together,’ Margaret said firmly. ‘I wouldn’t have said they were friends. Look.’ She tried to smile, but it was a ghastly effort. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m being rude. It’s just … Delia had a horrific time last year. She lost her fiancé and had a very short but painful breakdown. I want you to know that I think it’s terrible what happened to Andrea, but I don’t think Delia would be of any use to you. I think talking to her could possibly be detrimental to her health.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. When you say she lost her fiancé …’
‘He died, Sergeant.’
‘Ah, my condolences.’
‘Thank you, it was very sudden.’
‘Accident was it?’
Margaret crossed her legs and hugged her knees. Move on, her body language said.
‘How long did Delia work for Albas Entertainment?’
‘Three years.’
‘What does she do now?’
‘She’s currently between jobs.’
‘I see.’ Roxy nodded thoughtfully. ‘Grief has a way of knocking us for six, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes it does.’ Margaret Shawcross looked at her watch.
‘So where is she living these days? I went by her old house, she’s not been there for a while I take it.’
‘When Declan died, she felt it was too painful to stay there, too many memories.’
‘I can understand that. I’d still like to talk to her though. Do you have an address for her?’
‘If you leave me your number, I’ll get her to call you.’
‘Okay, we can do that.’
Margaret left the room to fetch a pen and paper. While she was gone, Roxy got to her feet and looked around. There were numerous photos of what she assumed were various members of the Shawcross family dotted about. She picked up one that looked pretty recent and studied it. In it, a young woman with s
houlder-length dark hair was helping a baby toddle over some grass. Roxy had looked up Delia’s national ID before she had paid this visit and knew this was her.
‘The baby’s cute, what’s his name?’ she asked Margaret when she came back.
Margaret took the photo from Roxy’s hand and looked at it. Her expression softened.
‘Charlie, his name is Charlie.’
‘How old is he?’
‘He’s one and a half.’
There it was, the flutter of fear again. Now why on earth was this woman so afraid to talk about a baby she clearly loved?
‘They’re a handful at that age, aren’t they?’
‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, I don’t wish to be rude, but I really have to get on.’
‘Then I won’t keep you. Here, let me write my number down for you and I’ll get out of your hair.’
A few minutes later, Roxy had left the house and was walking down the path back towards the road when a man wearing wellington boots and a floppy green hat entered the garden. He was accompanied by a very chubby brown Labrador.
‘Oh hello,’ he said when he saw her. ‘Don’t mind Flossie, she won’t bite.’
Roxy reached down and patted the dog on the head.
‘She likes to go down onto the beach when the tide’s out.’ The man pushed his hat back on his head and scratched his forehead.
‘You must be Delia’s father.’
‘That’s right.’
‘My name is Sergeant Roxanne Malloy.’
She held out her hand and he shook it firmly.
‘Malloy, eh? Used to work with a Seamus Malloy, any relation?’
‘Not that I know of. I was here to talk to Delia.’
‘Delia?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Delia doesn’t live—’
‘Ned!’
Roxy and the man turned towards the house. Margaret Shawcross was standing at the front door, her hand to her throat. She looked like she was going to have a nervous breakdown. The Labrador ambled up to her and went inside.
‘What?’
‘You’re wanted on the phone right away, right now.’
‘Oh.’ He threw his eyes up to heaven and grinned at Roxy. ‘There’s never a dull moment, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’
‘I won’t,’ Roxy said, watching Margaret Shawcross frantically beckoning him into the house.
Charlie, she thought, a year and a half. Delia might be off the books, but it was unlikely her son was. He’d need vaccinations, for a start.
She looked back at the house. Ned had gone inside, but Margaret Shawcross was staring at her with a strange intensity. Roxy couldn’t leave fast enough.
Chapter Fifty-One
The wolf was wounded.
Getting out of bed was agony. His back hurt, and when he stood up, his right ankle was so badly swollen he could barely put weight on it.
The pain was incredible.
Hobbling, he made it from the bed to his desk and dropped into his chair. As soon as he switched on his computer, he felt a surge of anger and disquiet.
Weakness was not acceptable, and he had failed.
She would have been perfect. She had such warmth and natural kindness. It was abundantly clear that she was worthy of his love. She was maternal too; she understood the needs of boys and men.
Celine … He thought of her now, felt her ghost in the air mocking him, enjoying Schadenfreude. Balling his fists and pressing them to his temples, he rocked back and forth, moaning softly.
None of this was his fault. It was the women; they held all the cards, they were biological blackmailers. They tempted and teased, inflaming emotions and passions beyond boiling point, and then …
And then they did not deliver.
What did they expect?
Was he supposed to just take it?
Take it for ever?
He had not meant to harm Celine – he truly believed that. If she hadn’t laughed, if she had let him explain his feelings, things would have turned out differently.
That afternoon stood out in his mind now in stark relief. The funeral: dry-eyed relatives patting him on the shoulder, his bitch mother, fetching in her widow’s weeds, holding the arm of her companion, a sloe-eyed creep with pockmarked cheeks. He knew from their body language that they were fucking, the wanton whore. When she hugged him, he swore at her, and was glad when she recoiled.
‘Easy there, big man,’ the creep said, no doubt protecting his meal ticket.
Later, back at the house, he’d stood in the doorway of his father’s bedroom, staring at his bed. He was gone; his mother was gone.
Celine was gone.
The emptiness washed over him, unmoored him.
Then the doorbell rang, and there on the step was Celine, carrying a shopping bag.
‘I thought we’d wake the dead,’ she said.
The wolf didn’t understand the expression, but he was so happy to see her it didn’t matter.
The next three hours were the happiest of his life. They sat in the kitchen, listening to music on the radio, drinking spiced rum from crystal glasses. Alcohol loosened the wolf’s tongue, and near the end of the bottle he found himself telling her his true feelings; painting for her the future he had planned for them both.
At first she had smiled, patted his hand, but gradually she withdrew, her brow furrowed, her expression one of … what had it been? Pity?
Then he tried to kiss her.
Even thinking how he’d lunged at her filled him with anger and shame. When she finally squirmed free from his grasp, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
And laughed.
Wounded, he reached for the empty bottle and swung it.
He had never meant to hurt her. He had never meant any of this.
Later, he rolled her body in a rug from the formal living room and dragged it downstairs and outside to the much-neglected garden. Frightened and crying, he put her in a wheelbarrow, brought her down to the bottom of the garden and buried her under the mulch pile his father had been cultivating for his roses for as long as he could remember.
He burned her bag and her shoes in the grate in the kitchen, and waited.
Days went by, then weeks. Nobody came. He began to wonder about this and made casual enquires with the agency she worked with, who told him she was under investigation for larceny. Apparently sunny, sweet Celine had been helping herself from the various old cripples she’d been working with.
He wondered what she had taken from this house.
Six months went by. Sometimes he stood at the kitchen window and looked down the garden, thinking about her mouldering there with the mulch, returning to nature.
It pleased him and gave him comfort. Later that year, he tended to his father’s roses and was rewarded with a bumper grow of rich, tumbling yellow blooms.
It was a sign, he decided, a sign she had forgiven him.
Now he was not so sure.
He glanced at the empty space on the wall where his sword usually hung and felt a genuine stab of loss. It was a Shinwa Imperial Dragon Handmade Katana and he’d ordered it online many years before he birthed the Imperative. Since then it had become not just a weapon but also a symbol of his journey, a talisman of sorts.
Its loss was a source of intense anger and frustration.
He hung his head in his hands. They would find it; he knew that with absolute certainty. They would find it and they would come.
It was as inevitable as night following day.
But he would not succumb to their will, not now, not ever. He would show them what he was made of, and he would prove once and for all that nothing mattered, not them and not him.
Only the Imperative mattered.
His manifesto would make him a legend. His manifesto would change the world of men forever.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The moment Roxy arrived at the station, she felt it: there was almost a physical wave of nervous energy surrounding the place.
Curious, she went
directly to the incident room and found it packed.
Cora waved when she saw her, looking both nervous and excited. Roxy squeezed between the extra bodies and make her way towards her.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Didn’t you hear what happened?’
‘No, what?’
‘The Sweetheart Killer struck again last night, only this time he was disturbed and nearly caught. Apparently he jumped from a window to get away, and after a search they found a sword hidden in some bushes near the house. They reckon it’s what killed Kilbride and Bannon and the man from last night.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘I don’t know. Word went out half an hour ago that Quinn wants all available hands on deck.’
The incident room door opened and Quinn and Miranda entered. They both looked like they needed a good night’s sleep, but when Miranda scanned the assembled officers, Roxy saw the determined gleam in her eyes and knew this was it.
Show time.
‘Listen up, people.’ Quinn clapped his hands together to quieten the room. ‘As you know, last night the killer struck again. He killed two innocent people and destroyed the lives of two more families.’ He looked around, a muscle in his jaw bunching. ‘This stops here. This morning Sergeant Lynn and I made a series of calls and have come up with a list of people we are going to interview today. That list will be sent to your ENs at the end of this briefing, as will our most recent profile. You will work in pairs. You will report back to me or Sergeant Lynn as you work through the names assigned to you.’
‘What are we dealing with here?’ an officer asked.
‘Samantha Mullins, Lorraine Dell and Estelle Roberts all worked in the Park West Business Park, but they worked for different companies. What connects them? We ruled out couriers, because they stop at reception. Who does that leave? Maintenance guys, security, building managers, who else is there?’
