Helen paused for a second, then slipped on her helmet.
‘There’s nothing more to say.’
She climbed on her bike and sped off, Jake growing smaller and smaller in her mirrors. Right now if he vanished all together she wouldn’t have cared. This evening had proved one thing and one thing alone. Her life was one massive, bad joke. And the gods would never tire of laughing at her.
104
She slid the laptop out of the case and placed it carefully on the kitchen table. She was alone now – the house felt crushingly silent – but even so she hesitated. Was it weakness to give in? Or was it just acknowledging a basic truth?
Tim had left an hour ago. He had said his piece and gone. Events were moving so quickly now and despite the endless chats that would have to take place – the window dressing of a marriage break-up – she could tell already that Tim had made up his mind. There would be no way back from this. He didn’t love her any more. It seemed strange to think such a bald, nasty thought, but that didn’t stop it being true. He had found someone who made him joyful and happy. That was no longer the case with his wife.
Strangely, Ceri didn’t want to fight for him. Not because she didn’t love him – she did and the thought of being a discarded wife stung bitterly – but because she had always shied away from a losing battle. Why prolong the agony? She chided herself for such resignation – wasn’t it the done thing for a betrayed wife to fight for her man – but suddenly she didn’t seem to have the energy or will. What was happening to her?
She crossed to the fridge and poured herself a glass of water. Her emotions were all over the place today – deep misery mixed with a strange sense of anticipation – and she wanted a moment to gather herself. She seemed to be constantly on the point of either laughing or crying today. Pulling herself together, she walked back to the kitchen table and sat down.
She pressed the ‘On’ button and the laptop buzzed into life. Immediately a dialogue box popped up, asking for the master password. Ceri’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. It was bad enough having Helen’s laptop here – ‘borrowed’ from her contact in Anti-Corruption – but it was much worse still to actually access her private files.
Helen had provided her with all her password protection information, so with a little shiver of transgression Ceri typed in the master password. Immediately, Helen’s desktop opened up in front of her. She clicked on the first file and was confronted by another box, demanding an encryption code. Harwood dutifully entered it and the file came up on the screen. But it was of little interest – just a contacts sheet. Shaking her head, Harwood persevered, opening and closing files, entering more and more passwords, slowly delving deeper and deeper into Helen’s system.
She was now accessing the most hidden material, the inner workings of Helen’s mind and soul. She drank in her detailed journal of her time stalking, then befriending, Robert Stonehill. She read the many emails she had sent to him, desperately trying to locate him. And deeper still, she found the real pay dirt. A diary Helen had kept on and off since she first started in the Force, chronicling her pride in her uniform, the feeling of security and power the job gave her, as well as her deep doubts about herself, as her career progressed.
It was late now, but Ceri read on, drinking in Helen’s confessions of anger, self-loathing and recrimination that nestled amidst the moments of happiness and optimism. Helen really was cursed, Ceri thought, despite all her success, driven by a desire to expel demons that forever eluded her. All those years in that flat, in the care homes, had left her raw and bruised. It gave Ceri no little satisfaction to realize that some of these wounds would never fully heal.
She sat in darkness, her glass of water untouched, and clicked on to the next page. She was careless of all around her, hooked in now to her examination of Helen Grace. Her exchange with Tim was already long forgotten and for a moment it was as if he didn’t even exist.
105
It’s hard to be inconspicuous, when you are the size of a small whale. This was one very good reason why heavily pregnant officers tended to find themselves assigned to desk jobs.
It was early morning and the inhabitants of Georges Avenue were slowly surfacing. Curtains were being drawn, cups of tea drained, and the early birds were now climbing into their cars and vans, occasionally shooting a quizzical look at the pregnant stranger leaning against the lamp post.
Charlie suddenly felt tired and foolish. They only had one car and even though Steve wasn’t using it today, Charlie had avoided it. Steve loved that car and kept meticulous care of it. He wasn’t a controlling person, but he would nevertheless have noticed the spike in miles on the clock that a journey to and from Northampton would have caused. So she had taken a cab, then a train, then another cab – eventually being deposited in a Northamptonshire village with nothing to do but wait. It had cost her money, her feet ached and a headache was brewing and yet… she had felt compelled to come here. Unwittingly she had played a part in a conspiracy that might yet claim Helen’s scalp. If there was a chance that she could now influence proceedings, Charlie had to seize it.
She heard the front door shut and looked up. DI Tom Marsh paused as he walked to his car, turning back to wave to his wife who now appeared in the front window. Charlie found herself marching towards him.
‘Can I help you?’ DI Marsh looked at her quizzically. ‘Have you come to see Rose?’
‘No, Tom, I’ve come to see you.’
Suddenly Marsh looked less certain. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie could see his wife watching on from the front window. She wondered what romantic crimes Marsh had been guilty of previously and whether this could be used to her advantage. Being confronted by an angry pregnant woman wouldn’t look good to his wife – or his neighbours.
‘I’m sorry I don’t know who you are and I’ve got to get to work,’ he said, attempting to brush past her. But Charlie caught hold of his arm firmly, stopping him in his tracks.
‘You don’t know me, but I am a police officer and a friend of DI Grace.’
Charlie was pleased to see the colour fading from Marsh’s face.
‘You have played your part in a nasty little conspiracy and I’m happy to fill your wife in on your role – she looks pretty intrigued already – but I guess that would involve you confessing how much you were paid by them. Does she know you take bribes?’
Marsh shot an anxious look to his wife. Her face asked a thousand questions and Charlie was amused to see sweat breaking out on Marsh’s forehead.
‘But I’ll spare you that indignity if you tell me when and where Harwood first contacted you. If you can give me that and corroborate it in writing -’
‘Harwood? I don’t know any Harwood.’
‘Come off it, Tom. I know she contacted you, warned you Helen would find you, asked you to record -’
‘I never met with a woman,’ Marsh interrupted. The front door was now opening and Marsh shot another anxious glance towards it.
‘Then who? Who told you to record your conversation?’
‘He said he was called DI Latham, but I never believed him. I’d recognize him again if I saw him though. Tall black guy with a South Coast accent.’
‘A tall black guy?’
‘You heard me,’ Marsh spat back, turning to face his concerned wife.
‘What’s going on, Tom?’ Rose Marsh said, her eyes fixed on Charlie and her bump.
‘Sorry to have bothered you. I can’t raise anyone at number eighty, wondered if you knew when they might be back?’
Charlie smiled an awkward thanks and walked off, not caring much if her lie had been believed. A little domestic trouble was the least Marsh deserved. As she pulled out her mobile to ring for a cab, Charlie’s mind was already spooling forward to what she had to do next.