by Celina Grace
She groaned. “I can’t! I’ve got to go.”
“Please. Just a quickie.”
“I can’t—”Kate said, in the tone of voice that she knew Anderton would take as saying ‘well, not unless you persuade me’. She tried to say something else, but he covered her mouth with his. “Oh, go on then,” she gasped, once she came up for air.
Later, driving to work, Kate reflected on the pleasant start to the morning with a smile on her face. Then she sighed a little. With work so intense, she had little headspace, or indeed the emotional energy, to devote some thought to where she and Anderton were going. I really, really must talk to him properly, once this case is done. She nodded to herself, made a mental note to do just that, and turned her attention back to the road.
Nicola was pacing the floor again when Kate got to the office. Wondering whether her DCI would make a sharp comment about her lateness (Kate was guiltily aware that her morning antics with Anderton had added another twenty minutes to her usual commute, quickie or no quickie), she smiled rather hesitantly at her boss.
“Kate, you’re here. Good.” It was said with no tone of sarcasm. “To bring you up to speed, we’ve raided Karen Black’s home address. Thanks for getting that over to us so quickly, by the way.”
Kate smiled again, pleased at the praise. “Have we got her yet?”
Nicola shook her head. “No, not that lucky, I’m afraid. I’ve got Rav and Theo over there now, gathering the evidence, of which I understand there’s plenty.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. All to the good when we build a case.”
“Do you want me to go over there?”
Nicola shook her head. “No, they can handle it. I need you here, keeping everything turning. I’ve got a press conference in half an hour and I need you in the office.”
“Sure.” Kate was secretly relieved, having just got out of the car. “I’ll crack on with things here, then.”
“Thank you.” Nicola gave her a distracted smile and hurried out. Just as quickly, she hurried back in. Kate looked up in surprise.
Nicola was looking awkward. “Kate, listen. I’ve—I’ve been meaning to say to you for a while how much I appreciate your—well—discretion. Over…well, you know—”
Astonished, Kate took a moment to respond. “It was none of my business.”
“Well, I appreciate it.” Nicola was almost scarlet now. Briefly Kate wondered whether she’d be able to resume her normal colour before she had to face the cameras.
“It’s really not a problem,” she said firmly.
Nicola gave her an embarrassed smile. “Well, thanks.” Then she looked at the clock on the far wall and added, “Help, I must go. See you later.”
She hurried off again. Raising her eyebrows—Kate had not been expecting that—she went over to her desk and tried to collect herself.
Once the press conference was underway, Kate found the remote for the television over in the corner and turned it on. She found the right channel and watched as Nicola outlined the case for the media. She spoke well, and Kate found herself feeling oddly proud of her boss. It suddenly occurred to her that women now outnumbered the men in the office, with Olbeck away. Thinking of him, Kate sent a quick, supportive text to say hello and then slung her mobile in her bag, determined to get on with some work.
She was just checking through her emails when Chloe came into the office, sounding out of breath.
“You alright, bird?” asked Kate.
“Bloody car broke down again. I had to walk most of the way.”
Kate groaned. “I thought you were getting rid of that old banger?”
“Well, it keeps going, most of the time.”
Kate shook her head. “Anyway, it’s okay. Nicola’s doing a press release so you’re safe.”
Chloe was opening her mouth to respond when the phone on Kate’s desk rang. She picked it up, wondering if this was going to be the call telling them that Karen Black had been apprehended.
“Kate, it’s Jane Simmons here from the DSS.”
“Hello,” said Kate. She knew Jane slightly from working with the Department of Social Services. “What’s the problem?” She crossed her fingers under the table that something horrible hadn’t happened to a child.
Jane didn’t sound upset, just rather puzzled. “Am I right in thinking that Melanie Smith is no longer in custody?”
“Yes, that’s right. She was released yesterday.”
Jane sounded even more puzzled. “Well, she was due to collect her children from the temporary foster home last night and, well, she didn’t.”
“She didn’t? They’re still there?”
“Yes. I mean, they’re fine—the carers didn’t tell them their mum was going to pick them up because, well, for all we know you could have charged her. So it’s not that they were expecting her, but we were. She’s not answering her mobile.”
“That is strange,” said Kate, thinking it was probably more likely that Melanie had seen the opportunity as a chance for some rare child-free time. But perhaps that was uncharitable. As she thought back, she remembered what Melanie had said. Look, I’ll tell you, okay? I just want to get back to my kids… A twist of anxiety began to uncoil in her stomach. Out loud, she said, “We’ll look into it, Jane, okay? We’ve got her address. You can leave it with us. Just make sure the kids can stay with their foster family for now.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll keep you posted. Thanks, Jane.” Kate said goodbye and hung up. She looked across the table at Chloe, who had clearly sensed the tension in her friend.
“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked.
Kate rubbed her jaw in thought. “Melanie Smith appears to have gone missing.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, she didn’t turn up to collect her children when she was supposed to.”
Chloe shrugged. “Well, she’s hardly the reliable, conscientious type, is she? She’s probably out on the razz or shacked up with some bloke while she’s got the chance.”
“Mmm.” Even though those had been Kate’s first thoughts, now she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, we can send some uniform over to her house to check, right?”
Kate stared into space, thinking. The worm of anxiety was bigger now, coiling and writhing. “I don’t know, Chloe. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Really?” Chloe looked sceptical. “Why?”
“I don’t know just yet. Shut up and let me think.”
Obediently, Chloe zipped it. Kate got up and began to walk around the office. She went over to the whiteboards and stared at the crime scene photographs, the victims, their faces. The statues. The Furies.
“Vengeance,” she muttered. Then she gasped and swung round to face Chloe, who stood up immediately.
“What—” began Chloe.
Kate talked over her. “William Bathford—Karen’s abuser. Roland Barry—her teacher, maybe. An abuser too, perhaps.”
“Yes,” said Chloe, staring at her.
“Amanda Callihan—the social worker who let her down.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Kate stared back at her. “Who else has let Karen Black down?”
Chloe frowned, puzzled. Then her face cleared. “Melanie Smith.”
“Exactly. And by now Karen will know we’re hunting her down.”
“Christ.” Chloe was already hunting for her jacket. “We’d better get over there.”
“Someone needs to cover the office.”
Chloe put up her eyebrows. “You’re not going over there alone.”
“I wouldn’t. I’m taking armed back up.”
“Let me organise that.” Chloe flung herself back in her chair and reached for the phone. “I’ll get someone else in here to deal with the phones, too.”
“You do that,” said Kate. She could feel her heart beating fast. “Thanks, bird.”
She saw Chloe begin to dial a number and then she turned and ran, desperate
to find Nicola.
Chapter Twenty Eight
The last of the afternoon light was draining from the sky as Kate, Chloe and their team made their way towards Melanie Smith’s house. Chloe drove, which gave Kate the chance to think things through. Could she be right? Having spoken to Theo during this search of Karen Black’s house, she knew that the evidence against her was overwhelming. But why had she started her campaign of vengeance now? Why not before? Had she really brooded and plotted for years, waiting to serve that dish of revenge cold? What had been the catalyst?
The disparity of the cases now made more sense. Total savagery when it came to the men who’d abused her so dreadfully. The social worker who’d not protected her had died in a less brutal fashion. Kate leaned forward, willing Chloe to go faster. Was she right in thinking that Melanie Smith would be the next victim? After all, it sounded as though Melanie had been as much of a victim as Karen herself had…
She’s a killer, Kate. She’s a soldier. Empathy is not high on her list of personality traits. Sighing, Kate sat back against the seat once more. Chloe glanced over.
“You okay?”
“Yes. I just… I just keep thinking what a dreadful life Karen Black must have had.”
Chloe snorted. “That’s hardly an excuse for what we think she’s done. Plenty of people have awful lives and don’t find it necessary to kill anyone.”
“I know that.” Kate thought, with an inner wince, of some of the more unpleasant memories of her childhood.
Chloe glanced over again. “Yeah, well. We both do.”
Silence fell as Chloe negotiated the narrow streets of one of the backwaters of Bristol. Kate glanced in the wing mirror to check the black ARU van was following them. She spotted it two cars back and allowed herself a moment of relief.
Out loud, she said to Chloe, “The one thing is, if we’re right, and I think we are, why start killing now? Why not before?”
Chloe shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. She was probably abroad. Or in prison.”
“Mmm.” Kate pondered that one. “I’m not sure about prison. Surely that would have come up on the searches?”
“Well—” Chloe broke off as Melanie’s street appeared up ahead. “I’m going to pull in up here. We don’t want to get too close without the ARU.”
Finding a parking space was difficult. Cursing freely, Chloe traversed the block, the van behind them copying their every move. Eventually, Chloe spotted a small private car park that backed onto an office block and swung the car in there.
“We don’t want to get clamped,” Kate joked, climbing out. Chloe made no response but smiled tensely. Kate knew how she felt. She could feel the adrenaline start to spike within her, her heart rate beginning to gallop. For a moment, she remembered Theo and his wish to be an action hero and smiled. Now she knew what he meant.
Melanie Smith’s house was dark and silent, the curtains on the windows drawn. The armed team spread out, quickly and quietly taking up their positions. The supervising officer this time was a good looking dark-haired man in his thirties, who introduced himself as Sergeant Chris Wilde. He, Kate and Chloe stood back from the house, quietly discussing what their plan of action was to be.
“You ready for us to go in?” asked Chris.
“Yes,” said Kate. “Tell us when it’s safe for us to come in.”
“It may not be. We won’t know what we’re dealing with until we’re inside, and these things can escalate very quickly.”
Kate nodded and handed him the spare set of keys she’d collected from the housing association that provided Melanie with her accommodation. “You’ll be able to go in quietly, at least.”
The two women retreated further back down the road, near to where uniformed officers were cordoning off the area. A curious crowd was already beginning to form behind the crime scene tape. Kate swore quietly, wishing that this were happening in the middle of the night so fewer people would be around.
She and Chloe watched as Sergeant Wilde approached the door of the house, one of his officers by his side.
“He’s cute,” said Chloe.
Kate turned to her with a grimace. “Bird! This is not the time.” She turned back to see the two officers enter the building with barely a sound, two more men following them. The women waited, tensely.
The silence from the house dragged on and on, broken only by the sounds of the city around them. One of the streetlights above Kate’s head was broken, leaving the scene to be lit inadequately by the orange glow of the remaining lights. She realised she was digging her nails into the palms of her hands and forced herself to relax them.
Then there came a fusillade of muffled shouts from inside the flat, a man’s voice yelling something that wasn’t quite clear. Kate and Chloe flinched. The wind briefly changed and they heard mere words—where you are—hands above— before the breeze blew the voice back into unintelligible noise once more.
Kate realised she hadn’t breathed for some time and let out her breath in a huff. She heard Chloe do the same behind her.
“No shots,” whispered Chloe.
“Don’t tempt fate.” Kate realised she was quivering with tension, waiting for the inevitable sound of gunfire. How different it was now to when she started as an officer. She’d gone three years without even seeing a gun, whether in the hands of an officer or a suspect.
The blind at one of the windows of the flat suddenly glowed with yellow light. Then there was movement at the door of the flat and Sergeant Wilde emerged. He looked towards the two women and inclined his head in a ‘come here’ gesture. Kate and Chloe exchanged a glance, perfectly communicating their thoughts in complete silence, and then ran quietly but quickly towards the door.
When they reached him, Chris Wilde leant forward to speak to them in an undertone. “Suspect is in the flat. She doesn’t appear to be armed but I’m not taking any chances.”
“Have you arrested her?” Kate replied in an equally quite voice.
Chris hesitated. “No—it’s… You’ll see. Come through, she’s under heavy guard.” As Chloe stepped forward, he shook his head. “Just one of you. There’s no room for more in there, anyway.”
Kate squeezed her friend’s arm as Chloe obediently stepped back. Swallowing, she followed Chris Wilde’s broad back through the poky hallway and ascended the stairs to the room she recognised as Melanie Smith’s bedroom. The door was open, painting a stripe of golden light onto the dirty floor of the hallway.
Chris Wilde stepped aside so Kate could see into the room.
The first thing that Kate saw was Melanie Smith, curled like a comma on the floor, her hands tied behind her back with a cable tie. She was so still that for a moment Kate thought she was dead, before she saw the faint rise and fall of her chest and the flutter of a wisp of hair that lay across her half open mouth. The second thing was a woman, sitting on the edge of Melanie’s single bed, her hands gripping the duvet. She sat rigid, so still she might have been one of her own statues, staring ahead with unseeing eyes. Kate had a flash of memory; visiting her mother in a psychiatric hospital, one of the other patients there sat like a waxwork in one of the chairs, her eyes fixed on something only she could see. Catatonic.
Kate inched into the room. On either side of her, the tall black-clad officers of the ARU kept their weapons trained on Karen Black, who took as much notice of them as she did of Kate—none at all. Kate wondered what she was seeing, what she was remembering, and she swallowed down a rush of stomach acid that hit the back of her throat.
Making very sure she stood out of the firing line of the guns, Kate cleared her throat gently and spoke.
“Karen?” It felt strange, calling her that, remembering how she’d sat opposite her in her sad little office, thinking of her as Rachel Brown.
No response. For a fanciful second, Kate was convinced the woman had actually died and for some reason had stayed sitting upright, rigid even in death.
But, no. Just as with Melanie lying on the floor, Kate
could see the rise and fall of Karen’s ribcage under the black fleece she wore zipped to the neck. Black trousers, black boots. An assassin’s outfit. Kate remembered the baggy dress Karen had been wearing when she had first met her, hiding the muscled body that she could now see under layers of woolly disguise.
She tried again. “Karen? Can you hear me?”
For a moment, all she could hear was the laboured breathing of four sets of male lungs and the thunder of her own heartbeat in her ears.
Then there was a faint sigh. Karen’s fixed stare flickered and she blinked a little, as if waking from a deep and nightmare-filled sleep. Her gaze fixed itself to Kate’s face.
“What do you want?” Karen asked. Her voice was so oddly measured—so calm—that Kate repressed an involuntary shudder. This woman counselled people, she thought; vulnerable people. It was odd if you thought about it. Why didn’t going through a traumatic childhood mean you became more sympathetic to people in similar pain? In Kate’s case, it had done. But perhaps for some people it meant they thought along the lines of ‘well, I had to go through it so why shouldn’t they?’.
All these thoughts went through Kate’s mind in the blink of an eye. Out loud she said, as gently as possible, “I want to know why you did it, Karen.”
Karen’s face flickered. “You know why,” she said, after a moment.
Kate took a deep breath. “Your accusation—why you went to the police station about William Bathford—it was true. Wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was. It was the other times, as well. That Barry—he was a teacher, he used to come and give us private lessons. You can guess what he was actually doing.” For a moment, Karen’s lips drew back in a silent snarl. “Nobody believed me.”
Kate, for a moment, couldn’t speak. She remembered the news headlines about the other child abuse scandals of the last twenty years, covered up for decades by incompetent social workers, corrupt councils, uncaring police, a culture of victim blaming, of sexualising children. “They should have done,” was all she could manage, blinking hard.
