Authors: Tania Carver
L
etisha Watson walked through her flat like a ghost. She would walk into one room, not remember why she was there, go back to the room she had come from, wonder what she had been doing in there in the first place. On and on, haunting herself all morning.
She hadn’t been able to sleep. Her encounter with Moses, and especially Tiny, the day before had left her more shaken that she would have thought possible. Yes, she knew it was going to be difficult to go in there but what was happening now, especially between Moses and her, had to be confronted. She couldn’t just ignore what had happened. And it wasn’t just sex. It was the connection, the being wanted again for who she was, not just her availability.
She knew what they called her on the estate. Whore. Prostitute. Slag. Slut. She knew all that. And not behind her back, either, right in her face sometimes. In the estate pub, the shop. Whenever someone wanted to have a go, felt like they had the right to. And worse of all, sometimes Letisha agreed with them.
When she had fallen, she had fallen hard. From being Julian’s top bitch to nothing. In about the time it took to say it, it felt like. When Julian died Letisha was nothing. Cast out, shunned, only her clothes and jewellery for comfort. And they didn’t last long: sold or pawned for ready cash. She had expected Moses to help her, had pleaded with him for help but he had shunned her too. Nicely, saying it was best they never met again, she must understand, it was for the best, even if neither of them wanted it. He had given her what he could moneywise, but that had run out pretty quickly too.
Desperate, she threw herself on her mother’s mercy. But all she received was a lecture. Repent of her sins, give herself to God, be healed, cleansed and saved and then she would consider it.
Fuck that.
So she did the only thing she knew how to do. Got by on using her body. Selling it to whoever wanted it, for whatever they were willing to pay. She tried to set herself up as high class at first, visiting transient, lonely businessmen at their hotels, getting what she could out of them, charging top dollar for her services. Wearing what labels and bling she had left in an effort to impress. She didn’t last long. The hotels were a closed shop, run by escort agencies she couldn’t get a look-in with. There wasn’t much demand for a mixed-race ex-gangsta’s girl. No matter how many labels she wrapped herself in she still smelled of the street, as one agency boss had delicately put it to her.
So the street was where she went back to. What she knew. Turning tricks on street corners and dark alleys, getting into strangers’ cars, wondering if she was ever going to get out of them again. Sometimes the johns wouldn’t pay, wanted to smack her around instead, test their car’s side windows with her head after she had sucked them off, their lust coalescing into anger at her, self-loathing for themselves. She would be dumped from the cars, battered, bleeding, bruised. Not able to work for a week. And, starving and desperate, would sometimes even get back inside the same cars, knowing what was coming, hoping that she could get away with just a bit of money this time. Any optimism she had was soon forcibly dragged out of her.
And then she met Darren. He wasn’t much to look at, wasn’t much in bed, had no kind of future that didn’t involve getting stuck in prison’s revolving door. But he was kind to her. He treated her well. He never beat her up, never hurt her. She had good times with Darren. Getting high as many different ways as they could. On the town, having a laugh. She didn’t love him, didn’t have time for any shit like that, wouldn’t lie to herself. But she was grateful to him for coming along when he did.
She clung to him, like he was her life raft. So when he met that slag Chloe Hannon she was devastated He made her life, her job, bearable. Stopped her getting too hard, too cold. She was scared of what she would become without him.
That was why she fought for him. But it was too late. That slag was pregnant with his kid. And even though he had always said he didn’t mind and was happy to be just with her, she knew he wanted kids. Or even just one kid. And she couldn’t have them. Too many violent johns had seen to that. So she knew when that happened she had lost him.
And when she lost him, she lost herself again.
She had existed in a kind of limbo for months, not moving forwards, not moving back. Just doing what she did, enduring what she had to. Surviving.
Then the police turned up.
And then Moses.
And she thought her life was about to begin again. Fair enough, that feeling only lasted for the night he was with her. He soon showed her how wrong she was the next morning. And she understood that. She really did. But hadn’t enough time gone past now that it shouldn’t affect them? That they could move on? Apparently not. As Moses had said and as her trip to the studio had demonstrated. Now, she didn’t know what to do, or what the future held for her. But she knew that unless she pulled herself together, thought fast, then it wouldn’t be good.
A knock at the door.
She jumped, the noise pulling her back into the present. Was that the police again with their snide insinuations, hoping she would crack and tell them everything? Or worse?
She stayed still, not daring to move. Knowing that if she opened the door and the wrong person was standing there then that would be it. All over.
Another knock.
But would that be such a bad thing? Maybe her mother was right, maybe God was waiting to forgive her, welcome her into heaven. Maybe she would get a long, long rest.
Or maybe not.
Another knock. Accompanied by a voice this time: ‘Come on, Letisha, I know you’re in there.’
A tsunami of relief washed through her. She rushed to the door, opened it. Moses almost fell inside, so hurried was he to get off the landing.
She grabbed him, arms round him straight away.
‘I thought you’d… I thought you’d…’
Not without gentleness, he took her arms away, moved into the living room. Turned to her.
‘Who’s been here? Today?’
‘No one. Just… just you.’
‘You haven’t been followed, no calls, nothing like that?’
‘No. What does —’ She stopped speaking, looked at him. There was something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen for years. Something that caused them to live apart since then.
Fear.
‘We’ve got to move fast,’ he said.
‘R
ight,’ said Phil. ‘Which brings us back to you again, Elli. CCTV. How you getting on with that?’
‘Nowhere, really,’ she said. ‘Going backwards, I’ve looked at the footage from last night. We can’t get a bearing on the woman at all. It’s like she knew there would be cameras on her so she’s kept her face shielded as much as possible. Her hair’s all down around her face and when she talks she uses her hands a lot, covers her mouth. She also keeps her head down, angled away. Glen Looker has to lean in several times to hear what she’s saying.’
Phil nodded. Felt like another brick wall had just been erected in front of him. ‘Have we got anything on her? Even some shots that we could put together to try to make up some kind of composite e-fit picture of her?’
Elli smiled. ‘I thought you would say that, so I had a go. The software I’ve got is very limited, still in beta, but without giving it to the specialists, here’s what I managed to get.’
She clicked her mouse and an image appeared on her computer screen. A head-and-shoulders shot of a woman. Blurry, like it was taken at high speed and weirdly composed as if – which was exactly what had happened – several images had been stitched together. A Frankensuspect, thought Phil.
Everyone crowded round to look.
‘I’ll print some off so you can all have one,’ said Elli. ‘But this is her, as well as I can do.’
Phil studied the image. Beyond the basic physical details, medium height, light build, it wasn’t good enough to issue for uniforms to look out for. Or shouldn’t have been. Phil had seen a lot worse e-fits handed out.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘that’s brilliant work. At least we’ve got something to go on, something to recognise.’
‘I’m working on something else, too,’ she said, smoothing her heavily ringed hands down her sides. It was a nervous gesture, Phil knew. She hated talking in public, even among her colleagues. As she did it, Phil noted the T-shirt she was wearing today:
Fahrenheit 451
, a reproduction of the Ray Bradbury book cover, with the tagline, ‘Read & destroy!’ He liked the fact there was someone on the team more individually dressed than he was. It gave him, in only a small way, some kind of hope.
‘Here,’ Elli said, ‘watch this.’
She clicked her mouse once more and the image of the woman disappeared. It was replaced by CCTV footage. Low quality, fixed camera, shot from a distance. The exterior of the Radisson Blu Hotel.
‘From last night,’ she said. ‘I’ve gone over this a few times. See what you think.’
She started to play the footage. It showed the taxi rank outside of the hotel, rows of black cabs lined up, waiting. Fuller than usual, knowing there was an event going on, touting for business. As they watched, the front door of the hotel was opened and Glen Looker and the woman came hurrying out.
‘Right,’ said Elli. ‘Watch this.’
They did. They saw the two figures walk straight to the first cab. The woman went to the window, spoke to the driver.
‘No sound,’ said Phil. ‘Pity. Would make it so simple for us.’
Instructions given, Glen Looker opened the door for the woman to get in. The cab then drove off.
The screen froze as Elli stopped the tape. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘what d’you all make of that?’
‘They got into a cab,’ said Nadish. ‘Drove off.’
‘Exactly,’ Elli said, ‘but didn’t you notice anything else?’
‘Their body language,’ said Imani. ‘Glen Looker’s especially. He looks, I don’t know. Relaxed? Eager. Yeah, eager.’
‘Knows what he’s gonna get,’ said Nadish. ‘Or thinks he does.’
‘Yeah, but,’ said Phil, ‘this is coming straight after what just happened to Ian. Looker might have even seen it. And he makes no attempt to escape, to run. Knowing, or even suspecting, what she must have done.’
‘We presume,’ said Cotter.
‘Want to watch it again?’ asked Elli.
They did so. At the end, Phil nodded. ‘You’re right. Looker seems almost eager to get in, to be away. The big question here is, does he know that she’s connected to the Lawgiver? Or is he such a knobhead that, even after everything that’s happened, he still thinks he’s going to get a shag?’
‘Well, we have had dealings with Mr Looker before,’ said Cotter, ‘we do know how his mind works…’
Polite laughter.
‘True,’ said Phil. ‘But even so…’ He stared at the screen, at the frozen taxi. ‘Can we get the number of that cab? Find out where they went. See if any other CCTV camera in the city centre picked them up. Hopefully we can get some idea of the route they took from that. Can we watch it again, please? One last time.’
They watched it again. Phil scrutinised it closely. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Stop.’
Ellis stopped it.
‘Look at that. See? What d’you all see there?’ He pointed to the two figures on the screen, just about to get into the cab.
‘They’re both smiling,’ said Nadish.
‘Look closer,’ said Phil. ‘She’s smiling. You can see that much about her face. But Looker? He looks like he’s been told to smile. Like he’s posing for a photo he doesn’t want to be in.’
Imani moved in closer. ‘He looks scared,’ she said.
‘Do we get a good look at her face there,’ asked Phil. ‘Or a better one?’
‘I’ll work on it,’ said Elli. ‘Try to incorporate it into the e-fit.’
‘Thanks.’ Something else occurred to him. ‘By the way, have we checked the CCTV from the Malmaison to see if this woman’s in it?’
‘Not yet,’ said Elli, ‘but it’s a damned good idea.’
‘Get onto that, too. If she was at the Radisson she might have been at the Mal.’
‘Could the Lawgiver be a woman?’ asked Nadish. ‘This woman?’
‘I’ve heard his voice too many times,’ said Phil. ‘It’s definitely a man. But that doesn’t rule out the fact that he might not be acting alone.’ He looked around the group once more, straightened up. ‘Okay. That’s where we are now. Anyone got anything more to add?’
No one did.
‘Keep going with what we’re doing, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll find him. Remember the profile. He’s not invincible. He’s going to slip up. He might have already done so and we just need to go over what we already have to find it. Okay?’
Everyone nodded.
‘I know you’re tired. I’m tired too. But we’re a man down and I need you all to step up on this one. Time is against us. We have to find Glen Looker before he succumbs to a similar fate as the previous two victims of the Lawgiver. Work every avenue you can, no matter how many times you’ve done it before. Check out any hunch or half certainty you had, no matter how ridiculous. Something you might have dismissed. It might just be the thing we need. We have to work as a team. Let’s get to it.’
The meeting broke up. Cotter and Phil were left together.
‘Well done,’ she said. ‘You got straight back on that horse.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I had no choice.’
‘D’you think he’ll be making him confess?’ asked Cotter. ‘The Lawgiver. Make him confess his sins before he does something untoward to him?’
‘I should imagine so. Try to make him repent, even.’
Cotter nodded. ‘Let’s just hope, for the sake of us who are trying to track him down, that he has a lot of sins to repent.’
F
iona Welch looked at herself in the mirror. She liked what she saw. Not too bad. The clothes were perhaps a little out of date, a few years maybe, and they weren’t what she would have chosen for herself but they fitted quite well. Blue jeans, a silk blouse and a jacket. Anonymous, blending in with the crowd. Good. That was exactly the way she wanted it.
She turned sideways, still looking, put her hand over her stomach, flattening it out. The jeans were a good fit. The woman whose clothes these had originally been must have imagined she was going to get herself back in shape. Lose the extra pounds she had been carrying. Fiona Welch smiled. Not any more.
The car had skidded off the road, Mickey Phillips screaming and dying as it did so. She had pulled away from him, braced herself for the impact as much as she could, crouching herself down in the leg space behind the driver’s seat. Arms still pulled behind her back, held tight by the cuffs.
As the car hit she tucked her head in as far as it would go, prepared for the crash. It wasn’t as bad as she had feared. A hawthorn hedge took most of the impact, its gnarled, twisted limbs and barbed branches acting as surrogate shock absorbers.
The car ended up skewed sideways in a ditch. She knew she didn’t have much time. She pulled herself out of the leg space, twisting her body so that her tied hands could reach the door. Tried the handle. The ditch jammed it. Quickly, she turned her body round, hurried over to the left-hand-side door, tried that. It took a few attempts and a shove that seriously hurt her shoulder but she managed to force it open. Crawling and sprawling into the nettle-filled ditch she felt the hawthorn barbs rip at her clothing, her skin. She ignored the pain, boxing it off in her mind as she had done so many times before, leaving it sectioned and dormant, to be dealt with at some later date. She pulled away from the car as swiftly as she could. Her knowledge of engine mechanics based solely on Hollywood films, she didn’t know whether it was going to explode or not but she didn’t want to take the chance.
She looked up. Headlights were starting to appear at the side of the road they had left. Cars stopping, seeing if they could do anything to help. She didn’t intend to stay around and be seen. Crawling as fast as she could, she dragged herself through the hawthorn hedge into the field behind it. Keeping her head down and her eyes closed, feeling the barbs and thorns dragging at her, getting under her skin, sticking and hooking, pulling bloodied slivers away from her as she hauled herself through. She wanted to scream but again kept it all contained. Pain would only slow her down.
She was stumbling away from the scene, her feet negotiating the rutted field, when she was knocked to her knees by an intense heat and what felt like a small bomb.
The car had exploded.
She hurried away, hoping that the blast hadn’t illuminated her fleeing self.
She ran, keeping to the edges of the field, staying in the shadows of the edging trees. Hands still cuffed behind her back, her mind working all the time, planning a way to get them free and then herself free.
She kept going until she came to a village. A normal person would have been exhausted by this point, beyond tiredness, even. But the woman calling herself Fiona Welch was fuelled from a different engine entirely.
She kept to the shadows, hiding herself if a car came past, headlights swinging round corners, bouncing over ruts in the road. Keeping herself hidden from the few pedestrians and dog walkers on the main road in the dark. Eventually she saw the lights of the village pub. She smiled to herself. Perfect.
It had gone the way of most country pubs. Original features pointed up, all beams and thatching but tastefully updated. She was sure that it would be more of a restaurant than a pub too. She was right. The windows spilled out a warm, welcoming glow through the darkness and onto the gravel car park. She crept round the perimeter of the parked cars, crouching, sticking to the bushes and hedges. She found a vantage point, waited. Watched customers enter and leave.
And then she saw the ones she was waiting for.
A couple, in their thirties she imagined, well dressed and entering without children. And they didn’t look like they were meeting anyone either, just dining on their own. Their car was smart too, a BMW. Perfect. Or she would make it perfect.
The woman calling herself Fiona Welch was nothing if not patient. It was a talent she had developed for herself, at first through necessity but then as a way of life to get what she wanted. Slow burn. Take her time. Plot and plan. She could do it. She had waited so long, a couple more hours while this couple ate was nothing.
She could see them through the window from the car park. She was crouched behind their BMW, waiting for them. They emerged from the restaurant, sated and replete, made their way to the car. That was when the woman calling herself Fiona Welch went into her act.
She curled herself up in a foetal ball behind the tyres, whimpering to herself.
She heard them coming, make to get in the car, stop when they saw her.
‘What’s —’ the woman said, bending down. She saw the pitiful, bloodied wreck of Fiona Welch and stepped backwards, her hand going to her mouth in alarm.
‘What the fu —’ Her husband joined her, recoiling in fear and surprise also. ‘Jesus…’
Fiona Welch gathered herself up, tried to run. She made a play of attempting to get to her feet but lost her balance, her cuffed hands supposedly unbalancing her, stumbled and fell down again.
‘Hey, no,’ said the husband, ‘it’s all right, we’re… it’s… we’re not going to hurt you.’
She whimpered, shook. Behaved like a cornered animal, wide-eyed and terrified.
The wife bent slowly down, arms outstretched, like she was trying to gain the trust of a feral cat. ‘Hey, it’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you… it’s okay…’
She extended a cautious hand. Fiona Welch turned, decided to show them the cuffs.
‘Jesus,’ said the husband. ‘Where’ve you been? What happened to you? Who did this?’
She just whimpered some more.
‘Come on,’ the husband said to the wife, ‘we’ll take her to the police.’
‘No,’ Fiona Welch said, her voice rasping and quavering, ‘no police, no… they’ll, they’ll please, no…’ She started sobbing.
‘But they’ll help…’
‘No, no police…’
‘Why not?’
She answered with more sobbing.
The husband and wife stared at her, at each other.
‘We can’t leave her here, Graham…’ Sotto voce, but still audible.
‘Well, what can we do? She doesn’t want to go to the police.’
The wife looked at the husband, face rosy with wine, eyes slightly glassy. She wanted to help, be the good Samaritan. Do her good deed. ‘Well, we can’t leave her here, can we? We’ll have to take her back to ours. Back home.’
The husband looked as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I mean, we don’t know anything about her, Lauren. We don’t know who’s done this to her, or, or why or anything. They might… might come after us.’
‘Graham, she needs help.’
He leaned in close to his wife, spoke in a voice that she assumed she wasn’t meant to hear. ‘Can’t we let someone else deal with it? There must be loads of people in the pub.’
‘That’s a disgusting thing to say, Graham. There’s no one here but us. Could you have it on your conscience if you just walked away from this woman? Left her here? God knows who might come along next.’
Graham looked at the woman, back to his wife’s imploring face. Sighed. ‘All right, then. We’ll take her back to ours. She can get herself sorted out then we can decided what to do from there.’
Lauren smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She turned to the wreck of a woman before them, spoke slowly as if to a retarded child. ‘We’re going to take you back to our house, okay? We aren’t going to hurt you. If you’d like me to I’ll help you to your feet. If you can do it on your own I won’t touch you. Okay?’
Fiona Welch, eyes darting like trapped sparrows, nodded.
She allowed them to escort her to the back of their car, where she made a performance of getting in. Once inside they drove off.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Lauren, turning round. ‘We’ll take care of you.’
Fiona Welch smiled.
Not half as well as I’m going to take care of you, she thought.