‘Do you really believe that, Marianne? Because if you do, you’re more far gone than I thought -’
Suddenly Marianne was marching across the room towards Helen, fire in her eyes. Helen immediately raised her Glock and Marianne paused, checking her march. There was only three feet between the pair now.
Helen took in her sister’s face. So familiar in its shape and lines, but so alien in its expression. As if a monster had climbed inside her and was eating its way out.
‘Don’t you dare look down on me,’ Marianne hissed. ‘Don’t you dare… judge me. It’s you who’s on trial here, not me.’
‘Because I did the right thing? The decent thing? You murdered our parents, Marianne. You murdered them in cold blood.’
‘And did you miss them? Afterwards? Did you miss those rapists?’
For a moment, Helen was lost for words. She had never asked herself that question. She had been so caught up with Marianne in the aftermath, so involved in her own bewildering journey through foster homes and Social Services that she’d never really had space to grieve.
‘Well, did you?’ Marianne demanded. A long silence followed and then:
‘No.’
Marianne broke into a smile. A smile of victory.
‘There you are then. They were nobodies, worse than nobodies. And they deserved a worse fate than they got. I was kind to them. Or have you forgotten what they did?’
She tugged off the blonde wig she was wearing to reveal her scalp. The hair had never grown back on the spot where her father had held her head to the three-bar fire, leaving a strange and unattractive bald patch on her crown.
‘These are just the scars you can see. He would have killed us in the end. So I did what had to be done. You should be bloody grateful.’
Helen watched her sister – the same defiance, the same anger that she’d displayed during her trial was still there all these years later. There was truth in what she said, but it still sounded like the ravings of a madwoman. Helen suddenly felt a strong desire to be out of this awful room and away from this burning hatred.
‘How does this end, Marianne?’
Marianne smiled, as if she’d been waiting for this, and then:
‘It ends as it started. With a choice.’
And now it all started to make sense.
‘You made a choice all those years ago,’ Marianne continued. ‘You chose to betray your sister. Your sister who’d helped you. Who’d killed for you. You chose to save yourself and throw me to the wolves.’
‘And all your victims faced a choice,’ Helen countered, as the horror of Marianne’s scheme became perfectly clear.
‘You think people are good, Jodie. You’re one of life’s optimists. But they’re not. They are mean and selfish and cruel. You proved that. And so did every one of the selfish little shits I abducted. In the end, we are all just animals scratching each other’s eyes out to survive.’
Marianne took a step closer – instinctively Helen gripped the trigger of her gun. Marianne paused and smiled, then raised a Smith and Wesson to Helen’s eye level.
‘And now you have another choice to make, Helen. Will you kill or be killed?’
So that was it. Helen and Marianne were to be the last players in her deadly game.
115
DC Bridges left Charlie where she lay and sprinted towards the building. SO19 were on their way in full SWAT gear and the paramedics were racing to the scene, but he didn’t have time to wait. Helen was in there with the killer – Suzanne, Marianne, whatever the hell she was called – and he didn’t fancy her chances of survival. This was a scheme that was always designed to end in bloodshed.
He burst through the lobby. The lifts were dead, but the door to the basement was ajar, so he ran towards it. Down the stairs and along the corridor. He wasn’t armed but what the hell. Every second was crucial now.
And there it was. The locked metal door. He hammered at it and Helen’s voice rang out clear, telling him to back off. ‘Bugger that,’ he thought, scanning around desperately for a tool of some kind.
The corridor was empty, but the last door at the end was a store cupboard, still littered with half-used bottles of bleach and disinfectant. Lying discarded on the floor, however, was a fire extinguisher. One of the old-fashioned seventies ones, heavy and thick. Bridges hauled it off the floor.
Sprinting down the corridor, he was back in front of the metal door in seconds. He paused, gritted his teeth, then launched the fire extinguisher at the lock.
116
The door shuddered with the impact, a roaring metallic scream echoing down the corridor, but Marianne didn’t blink. Her eyes were trained on her sister, her finger caressing the trigger of her gun.
Crash. Another heavy blow to the lock. Whoever was outside was obviously determined. The door moaned under the sustained assault.
‘It’s decision time, Jodie.’ Marianne smiled as she spoke. ‘I will fire the second that door opens.’
‘Don’t do this, Marianne. It doesn’t have to be this way.’
‘It’s too late to call off the dogs. He’s coming through. So make your choice.’
The door was starting to buckle. Bridges was making progress.
‘I don’t want to kill you, Marianne.’
‘Then the choice is made. Pity really – I thought you’d jump at the chance.’
The door creaked ominously – there were only seconds left now.
‘I want to help you. Put the gun down.’
‘You had your chance, Jodie. And you washed your hands of me. You saved all those people. All those strangers but you washed your hands of me.’
‘And don’t you think that I felt guilty for that? Look what you’ve done to me. What you still do to me.’
Helen had ripped off her shirt to reveal the scars on her back. For a moment, Marianne paused, shocked by what she saw.
‘I eat myself up with guilt every minute of every day. Of course I do. But I was thirteen years old. You’d killed two people. Killed my mum and dad in their bed, for God’s sake. You murdered our parents. What was I supposed to do?’
‘You were supposed to protect me. You were supposed to be pleased.’
‘I never asked you to kill them. I never wanted you to kill them. I never wanted any of this. Can’t you see that? You did this all to yourself.’
‘You really believe that? Do you honestly believe that?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then there’s nothing more to say. Goodbye, Jodie.’
Just then Bridges burst through the door and a single shot rang out.
117
Through the driving rain, Charlie glimpsed two figures. A man leading a woman away from the tower. Charlie had never been a religious woman, but she’d been praying for the last ten minutes, hoping against hope for a miracle. And now she would have her answer.
Pushing the attending paramedic aside, she rushed forward. She only made ten yards before her legs gave way. She fell to her knees on the sodden ground. Shielding her eyes from the rain, she strained to see through the gloom – was Bridges helping the woman or restraining her?
Then suddenly the sun broke through and for a moment the gloom lifted.
It was Helen. She had survived. Already the paramedics were rushing to her, her colleagues surrounding her. But she pushed them away. Charlie called out to her, but Helen walked past without hearing.
Shrugging off Bridges, Detective Inspector Helen Grace walked alone through the rain. It was over. She was alive. But she hadn’t won. Her ordeal was only just beginning. For as Marianne knew only too well, there is no peace for those that shed the blood of those closest to them. It was Helen’s turn to live with that stain now.