Absent Light (23 page)

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you think?”

Some piece of wasteland, a canal towpath, dark alley, derelict factory, anywhere he could do what he wanted and get away with it, she thought wildly. She attempted to talk again, to keep him connected.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Shit, this was looking bad, she thought, desperately trying to keep a lid on her terror. Too often women died because they were too frightened to think.

“I'd like to thank you,” she blurted out. “You didn't need to go to all this trouble.”

He said nothing.

“I got what I wanted.”

“Then you can thank me properly.”

“But…”

“Nothing for free, I told you.” There was a dangerous edge to his voice.

His words jabbed right through her. She felt a cold chill settle on her stomach, crawl up her spine. Was this some kind of divine retribution, she thought? Was it her turn? A sickening image of Rose flashed through her brain.

Crazily, she tried to formulate a plan. He had to get her out of the car. That's when he'd be at his weakest. Maybe she could injure him, slam his hand in the door, scream for help. But what if he had a gun or a knife…

The car pulled up with a screech, throwing her hard against the seatbelt, winding her.

“Get out,” he said. She heard the locks pop up. “What are you waiting for, bitch,” he snarled, “I said get the fuck out of here and don't come back.”

She scrabbled for the door, expecting a sick joke. But it wasn't. Thrusting the door open, she hurled herself out. With a squeal of brakes, the car took off, laying a thick band of rubber on the road.

She looked around her, feeling dizzy, hardly able to believe her eyes. The pub was closed, shutters drawn up.

And her car was exactly where she left it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

S
OMEONE WAS BATTERING DOWN
the door. At least that's what it sounded like. She got up, went to the bedroom window and looked outside, catching her breath in pleased surprise. Joe Stratton was standing there. Then she saw his face. It was dark with anger.

Too exhausted to undress the night before, she'd slept fully clothed. It looked like it, she thought, catching her ragged reflection in the wardrobe mirror as she tried to smooth the creases from her face and clothes.

Glancing at her watch, she sped down the narrow cottage stairs. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. She'd slept for over nine hours.

“All right, I'm coming,” she shouted, wondering what was wrong. She opened the door and he plunged straight in, almost knocking her off her feet.

“Well, hello, how are you?” she said, squashing herself against the wall. But Stratton was in no mood for humour.

“What the bloody hell do you think you're playing at?” he roared.

“Tea, coffee?” she said, trying to defuse him.

“This isn't a social call,” Stratton said coldly.

“I can see that. How did you track me down?”

“Through your employer.”

Thanks, Ray, she thought. “So what crime have I committed?”

His eyes levelled with hers. “Think yourself smart, don't you? Think yourself bloody clever?”

“If you've come here to hurl insults, you can leave now,” she said, flashing with anger.

“Have you any idea what you were doing last night?”

She felt her mouth drop open.

“What sort of mess you could have got yourself in?” Stratton persisted.

“How did…”

“Is this your idea of sorting yourself out?”

“Look, Joe, I don't know how the hell you got your information.”

“From a reliable source.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. The guy in the leather jacket. He'd approached her, taken care of her. In spite of the threats, he'd let her go. How dumb could she be?

Stratton hadn't finished. “In spite of your squeamishness, I gather you paid an informer.”

She let out a groan and sank into the nearest chair. “I didn't know. Wasn't like that,” she began.

“Wasn't it?” He sat down, too. Not much of the anger seemed to have dissipated.

She rubbed at her face with her hands. “I was looking for my half-brother.”

“That's why I'm here,” he said uncompromisingly.

Helen looked across at him, feeling her senses sharpen. “You know about Lee?”

“I do now.”

“Thing is,” Helen said, rippling with excitement. “Painter's the link. He knew Karen, I'm sure of it. He also had an involvement with the Park Lane Boys. Maybe he's pissed people off. Maybe that's why I've been threatened. It's quite possible he's…”

“Dead.”

“What?” she gasped, hands flying to her head. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It's not true. I don't believe it. Not again.” And what about the guy in the photograph? Who was he, for God's sake, a professional mourner, or someone with a different agenda?

Stratton was looking at her in the same way as when her mother died. “I'm sorry, Helen. I ran his name through criminal records this morning. He had a history of theft and drug offences, including possession. His involvement with the Park Lane Boys was minor, bottom rung. He did a bit of gophering. Baldly speaking, he was out of his league, wasn't up to the job. Got sent to Featherstone on a burglary charge, served three years. Came out eighteen months ago. Same month he was released, he was found dead by his landlady.”

So that's why Blackie looked her straight in the eye, she thought. How much money would it have taken to get to the truth? Another fifty? A hundred for the story behind it? More? The strangled feeling in her stomach returned with a vengeance. “Murdered?” she said.

Stratton shook his head. “Drug overdose.”

She felt her head swim. “But that's what happened to Karen Lake.”

“So what? Karen was a prostitute with a habit. Painter was a crook with a habit.” He was my flesh and blood, too, she thought, unsure whether she felt relief or sadness. She briefly considered whether to mention the blonde guy in the photograph to Stratton but he didn't look terribly amenable.

“More to the point,” Stratton said, “Painter was already dead long before Karen suffered a fatal overdose.”

He was right. Just as well she'd never entertained ideas of becoming a detective, Helen thought ruefully, she'd have been lousy at it.

She'd wanted Stratton to stay, to have a cup of coffee, but his caseload prevented it, or so he said. So she watched him leave, saw his car disappear from view, and was reminded of the last time she'd seen Adam. Same grim set of his shoulders. Same departing anger. Her fault. It seemed she was pathologically incapable of maintaining a relationship with a man, even a good one.

Walking glumly back inside, she sat down in Ray's kitchen, on one of Ray's chairs, and stared out of Ray's sitting room window at a landscape obscured by driving rain. She felt as if she were stuck at a crossroads. It didn't matter where she looked there was nowhere else to go. She'd exposed herself to danger. She'd wasted energy in pursuit of a dead man. No wonder Stratton thought her a fool. No wonder he was livid.

In spite of the weather, she decided to venture outside, to feel the rain on her hair, the chill against her skin. At least, these things were real, she thought, concrete and comprehensible.

The road was a mire of squashed animals and mud. Wind whistled through the telegraph wires, making them whine. Rain slashed at her face, stinging her eyes, penetrating her jacket, her clothes. Soon she'd have to return to the real world, she thought, to Ray's studio, to smiling brides and happy families, to visiting her dad and her batty old grandmother, to carrying the family secret.

And still the guilt remained.

After a mile or so, she turned back. It was growing dark. She was soaked through. Her jeans chafed at her shins and thighs. Her socks squelched in her shoes. Water ran off the fields and into the road in a torrent. She felt as wet as the time she was fished out of the canal. It's where it all began, she thought, where it all started to get complicated.

When she got back, she stripped off, took a long hot bath, and dressed in warm clothes. She'd just finished eating an omelette when her cell phone rang. Hoping it would be Stratton, she picked up.

“That Helen Powers?” The female voice was one she recognised but couldn't place.

“Yes.”

“We met yesterday.”

“I'm sorry,” Helen said, racking her brains to put a face to the voice.

“At Albion Place.”

“Shirley,” Helen exclaimed. Then another more insidious thought took shape. “How did you get my number?”

“Jewel gave it to me, your receptionist.”

I know who she is, Helen thought indignantly, wondering what tale Shirley had spun.

“How did you find out where I worked?”

“It was on the snaps,” Shirley said sketchily. “Thing is, I've got some information for you.”

“What sort of information?” Helen asked, suspicious.

“About Karen.”

Do I honestly need this, Helen thought? It's done, finished, over. And why now? Why not tell me yesterday? “What about her?”

“I'd rather not discuss it on the phone. Could you come over to the house?”

You must be mad, Helen thought. Here I am, sitting by a nice warm fire, with the promise of an early night, and all you have on offer is a drive in the cold and rain to a Godforsaken rat hole for a nugget of knowledge that at best will prove irrelevant. “Look, Shirley, I really think this is probably a waste of both our time. Things have changed since yesterday. I'm no longer interested.”

There was a slow intake of breath. “She wasn't working alone.”

Helen felt as if she'd been drop-kicked. “What did you say?”

“Meet me at six and I'll explain.”

She knew the risk. Even though she was meeting a single woman, Helen couldn't be sure Shirley would be alone. Remembering her training, she tried to phone Stratton to let him know what she was doing, but there wasn't enough battery on her phone to get a decent signal. She thought about stopping off en route and finding a phone box but, apart from the lack of time, she believed he'd either pour scorn on her efforts, or try to stop her. And she wasn't stopping. Not for anyone. If there were the slightest chance of getting to the bottom of it, she wasn't going to walk away. Not this time. Stupid, maybe, but she owed it to herself and, more importantly, to her mum.

The drive was a nightmare. She had to negotiate the rush hour. There was no let-up in the weather. Rain sprayed like shrapnel.

She pulled up in the seedy street, saw that a light was on in the upstairs bedroom, and made her way up the path. Encouraged by the downpour, the weeds had grown in strength and vigour. They stretched out to her legs as she passed, clinging to her, impeding her progress, intent on taking her down.

She noticed that the door was ajar. She stepped inside, called out softly. There was no answer. She called again, more boldly. Still no reply. She walked down the corridor, opening doors, peering inside, contemplating what she might find, just as she'd done when she'd worked as a SOCO. There were no surprises. Just a shabby house with shabby furnishings.

She made her way upstairs, her footsteps sounding impossibly loud, the stairs creaking with each tread. She poked her head around three doorways, cast her eyes over barely-furnished rooms, two double, one single, stared at the detritus of other people's lives, wondering which bedroom had housed Karen Lake's lifeless body, in which one she'd taken her final fix.

The door to another room was closed. Presuming it was the bathroom, she tapped on it, asked if anyone was in there, waited a few beats, then opened the door, a large part of her expecting a body to be hanging from the shower rail, or floating in the bath, drowned or with wrists sliced open. But there was nothing other than a smell of mould and the sound of silence. She glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes past six. Maybe Shirley had been held up by a demanding client. Maybe she was coming back from the hospital. Maybe she wasn't a very good timekeeper. However Helen viewed it, she felt it would be a mistake to leave. It was too important. She'd sit it out, she told herself, but she wasn't staying inside. That really might be asking for trouble. She'd wait in the car.

She battled her way back down the path, feeling the moisture flatten her hair against her scalp. The wind had picked up and was crashing against her ears. The night felt heavy on her back.

Hoping to deter car thieves or vandals, she'd taken the precaution of parking underneath a street-lamp. Good, no dents, she thought, hurrying through the rain, but, somehow, the MR2 didn't look right. It wasn't sitting level on the road, for a start. There was a definite list. She ran up to the car, running her fingers down its side, then went round the front, crouching, examining the tyres, feeling the trickle of ice-cold rain down her neck. Shit, she cursed. The rear offside tyre wasn't flat. It was non-existent. She looked around her, furious, wondering which antisocial creature was responsible for the vandalism. There was nobody or nothing to see other than driving rain, empty streets, closed curtains and darkness. She was just weighing up her options when a guy pulled up alongside her in a work-van. He wound down the window, called to her, his voice muffled by the raging elements.

“My wheel's been nicked,” she said, craning her head to get a better view of her Good Samaritan. It looked as if he, too, had been caught in the rain. He was hunched over the steering wheel, his features obscured by a hoodie plastered to his head.

“Just on me way home,” he shouted to her in a thick Brummie accent. “I can give you a lift, if you like.”

Her mother's voice rang in her head.
Never accept a lift from a stranger.
“No, I need to stay here. I have to meet someone.”

“Tell you what, you keep dry in your car while I see what I can do.”

“Right, thanks,” she said, walking towards him. She watched him get out, move round to the back of the van, open the doors.

“Really appreciate this,” she said, turning to go back to her car.

The blow from behind came without warning. Pain was her immediate response then shock. Her vision blurred. Her arms shot out at angles. The road seemed to leap up to meet her crumpled body. Then it went dark.

Very dark.