The Truth Will Out (30 page)

The whole station heard the chair crash to the floor as a fireball of temper erupted from Chilli Franks.

Chapter
Thirty-Five

Spasms of pain pricked the back of Helen’s eyes as they peeped through narrow slits.

Slowly, she scanned the room. It was a small box with bare magnolia walls. Peach curtains covered the window. Her watch lay on the cream cabinet beside her bed. A chair was positioned on the opposite side.

Helen glanced back at the grey cushioned chair where the consultant had sat this morning and explained that she’d suffered concussion as a result of blows to the front and rear of her head. She’d been dizzy on admission yesterday, floating in and out of consciousness. She’d heard someone mention cracked ribs, head injuries, a concern about internal bleeding. A CT scan showed no clots, but ophthalmology tests revealed the retina behind her right eye had become detached with the blow, making her eyes oversensitive to light; an injury that would take four to six weeks to heal.

As soon as she woke, thoughts of Robert spiked her brain. In desperation, she’d rung for the nurse who reassured her that he was home and well and would be visiting later. Helen felt impelled to question further, but the nauseating heaviness in her head forced her to close her eyes and fall back into her slumber.

Whispers in the corridor woke her. Gingerly, she adjusted position. She recognised Pemberton’s voice and persuaded the nurses she felt well enough to receive her colleague. She could see him now, sitting at her bedside. Pemberton, the most reserved person she knew, pressing his hand on hers.

“Jenkins was here earlier,” Pemberton said. Helen tried to raise her eyebrows, but said nothing. She couldn’t imagine Jenkins sitting beside her bed. “Got called back to the station, but sends his best regards. He’ll be in tomorrow.”

“Well, come on. Fill me in,” Helen urged.

Pemberton sat forward and relayed the series of events following her disappearance. He started with the meeting with Sawford where he felt that Helen’s integrity was questioned as flaws were pointed out in Operation Aspen. How Sawford implied that the evidence had been manufactured to solve the case and that Dean and Helen were mixed up together in something untoward. When he mentioned the email, allegedly sent by Helen to Gooding, Helen gasped. Only this morning had Pemberton managed to get the station techies to prove her account was compromised and the email was sent by a third party, probably Dean.

He explained how he’d searched for her. How he’d located her through the control room call, arriving just as Chilli Franks and his associates exited the building.

He described the scene when he reached the cellar: Fitzpatrick and Helen lying in a pool of blood. Initially, he thought them both dead. But a trace of pulse in Helen’s wrist motivated him to wrench Dean’s dead body away. The bullet had pierced Dean’s heart, killing him instantly. He’d inadvertently butted Helen on his fall, causing her to lose consciousness. They both lay in a pool of his blood, her body trapped beneath his.

Helen listened silently as he explained the events that followed.

Finally, he said, “Chilli’s associates heard the commotion in the interview and started to talk. Apparently, Chilli’s been teetering for a couple of years, paranoid that people around him, some within his own organisation considered him past his best and were pushing for his retirement.”

“They weren’t specific, probably too scared of the legal repercussions, but they didn’t need to be,” Pemberton said. “What they alluded to just confirmed our suspicions. Black Cats has been a front for organised crime for years – drugs, prostitution, firearms – Chilli was just too clever to let us get close. He kept it well under wraps. They did mention that those boys Leon Stratton and Kieran Harvey that were shot last year were from the ‘East Side Boys’, runners and suppliers for Chilli’s rivals. Their deaths could have been Chilli’s idea of a message if this war has been raging for some time. I’m guessing that whatever it was that disappeared from the latest shipment was arranged by the East Side lot too. And Chilli could see them closing in.

“When Nate died, Chilli’s world was literally ripped apart at the seams. He raised that lad the only way he knew how: as a torturer and a killer, his perfect ally. Without him, he could trust no-one.”

The events played on Helen’s mind well after Pemberton had left her to rest. What was missing from the Mini? What motivated Chilli? What caused Nate to plan out these murders so meticulously? She recalled Dean’s presentation to them when they arrived in Hampton, “Many of the guns are smuggled in from the Baltics.” The girls had travelled to Milan. Surely they wouldn’t need to travel that far for a shipment of heroin or cocaine? But Italy bordered the Adriatic Sea, close to the Baltics. The police would no doubt try to trace the car, but it was most likely emptied out, cleaned and sold on. They would probably never know for sure.

She thought about Sawford. She guessed he had received intelligence on Dean, suggesting a link to Chilli. And when Dean became involved on this case, he came down to take a closer look. Maybe he’d been watching him for some time, his move to become his boss engineered in an attempt to bring him closer. Sawford was a pedantic investigator, with political allegiances to forward his own career. But, at this moment, Helen was grateful for his presence, without which none of this may ever have come to light and she may have died in that cellar.

And Dean. Pemberton had told her about the debtor’s book they’d found in the safe at Black Cats, which indicated regular loans to Dean over the past nine months. They’d matched the dates with a private card game Chilli had run with some of his associates. Helen was astounded. What drove an apparently honourable man like Dean to gamble with the likes of Chilli Franks, and eventually become tangled into a web of organised crime? She could just imagine Chilli’s delight at having a senior detective in his pocket.

Outwardly, Dean had appeared calm, his usual congenial self, but inwardly, it seemed he tussled with the strains of servicing a debt that multiplied daily. And yet there were no giveaway signs – no chewed fingernails, nervous twitches, mood swings – all habits and mannerisms they were taught, as detectives, to notice. Perhaps his years in the force helped him to mask his own troubles. But eventually they’d eaten away at him, consuming his honesty and integrity, until there was nothing left. Chilli and Dean: an unlikely alliance. It was ironic that the one person who didn’t succumb to Dean’s charms, brought about his downfall.

But there was one small thread of conscience left in Dean. Instead of taking Robert, kidnapping and securing him as Chilli intended, he’d borrowed the boy’s mobile phone and dropped him within an hour of home - far enough that he’d have to walk and Helen couldn’t reach him and close enough to keep him safe. Chilli trusted Dean’s loyalty that he’d secured him. Yet all the time he was safe at home. Although he tracked Helen through her GPS, hunted her down for Chilli, Dean’s refusal to involve her youngest son in the debacle that followed was significant to her. Did Dean know this was the end? She would never know.

There had been a time when Helen wondered if he had engineered the move into organised crime, the assistance to Hamptonshire force in their hour of need, to be close to her. She had been flattered by it. Helen thought about the dingy guest house where he was staying, where she had stayed with him. She could see him, smell him, feel the tender touch of his hand, the softness of his eyes upon her. But really he was settling his debts. And he was willing to sacrifice her in pursuit of this goal. This thought sickened her mind.

Now he was dead. The image of him standing in front of her, gun in hand made her stomach cramp. He used her. Thick droplets gathered in her eyes. Right now, she felt like a glass, knocked off the table and smashed into a million broken pieces.

As she quietly sobbed, she considered her fate. She had achieved the same as her father, caught the same dangerous man, brought down an empire of organised crime. Yet right at this moment she didn’t feel like much of a success.

Chapter
Thirty-Six

Eva peered out of the car window. They passed a jogger in a fluorescent jacket, a woman struggling with a mobility scooter on the uneven tarmac and a group of teenagers, clumped together, laughing. It was a normal Monday, the rest of the world continuing about their business whilst her world had toppled and almost fallen apart.

She had just endured a police interview under caution. With no solicitor of her own, she chose the duty solicitor, Janine Rhyme: a tall, well built woman whose big teeth, long nose and ponytail of black wavy hair made her look distinctly horse-like. It only took twenty minutes alone with Janine for Eva to take her advice and elect to make ‘no comment’ when interviewed. ‘The Crown Prosecution Service only prosecute a case where there is a reasonable chance of a conviction,’ Janine had said. And with Jules and Naomi dead, unless the police were able to trace the vehicle, she was confident there would be insufficient evidence to build a case against Eva.

When the interview was over, the detective advised that her parents were waiting for her. For the first time in what felt like forever, Eva felt a jolt of relief. The walk down the corridor to meet them seemed to take twice as long, anticipating the look of sadness on her mother’s face, the disappointment on her stepfather’s. They weren’t due back for another week.

Her heart felt like it had been clamped as she opened the door. The rest was a blur. Arms wrapped around her, larger arms encased them all. For a moment she was packaged in human bodies. A firm kiss was planted on her forehead. She looked up to see her stepfather’s worried face staring back at her.

The meeting seemed like a whirl, almost an out-of-body experience. Eva was racked with guilt, the shame she had brought on the family, the disaster of her own making. They were more concerned for her wellbeing, the tortuous events she had faced alone.

It wasn’t until later, when Detective Dark brought them coffee, did Eva discover that the detective had updated them in advance of the frightening incidents Eva had encountered over the last ten days.

But one question still puzzled her: how did they find out? Eva’s mother explained that they switched their phone on to call and check on her a couple of days ago and received a message from DC Dark, asking them to ring urgently. Dark had obtained their mobile number from the Spences’. What caught Eva were her mother’s words, “Your stepfather booked us on the next flight home.”

Her stepfather, the man she always disappointed, the man who said she needed to grow up and make some real decisions; he’d said this?

From the back seat, Eva twisted her head to view him. He reached his left hand down to change gear, then back up to the steering wheel, concentrating on the road as any advanced motorist would. She could see the side of his face, the patch at the back of his head where his blond hair was thinning. Her mother reached her hand across and patted his knee affectionately.

He’d been married to her mother for almost sixteen years and Eva certainly hadn’t made it easy for him. She’d refused to take his surname at her mother’s request, stayed out until the early hours as a teenager, flunked out of university when he’d paid the fees. Yet, he still drove her to youth club all those years, picked her up from the school disco, rushed back home to help in her hour of need, insisted that she go stay with them for a few days to rest.

And it wasn’t his fault two of her friends were murdered and she’d been interviewed for alleged drugs trafficking. He wasn’t even in the country. This one was down to her. Until now, her body had felt numbed by the tragic events she’d faced over the past week. Suddenly, a warm feeling trickled into her veins. This was like being given a second chance at life, her life. There were a lot of issues she needed to resolve. And she would start by making it up to him. This time she wouldn’t mess up.

***

The door opened and Helen managed a feeble smile as her mother, Matthew and Robert filed into the hospital room.

Jane Lavery approached the bed and stroked the back of her folded fingers across her daughter’s cheek. “How are you feeling, darling?”

“Like a boxer’s punchbag.” Helen recognised the shock and concern that her mother attempted to conceal and forged another smile. It caught the split in her lip, causing her to flinch and suck it into her mouth.

She turned to Matthew, who dug his hands into his jean pockets and hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. “How was your weekend?”

“Good, thanks.” He looked away, as if he felt guilty for enjoying himself.

Robert stepped forward. “You okay, Mum?”

His tiny frame almost always made him appear younger than his years and this time his facial expression followed suit. The relief at seeing him alive and well was palpable. She was desperate to grab him, hug him and never let go. Yet she didn’t want to make a fuss or alarm him anymore right now.

Helen suddenly realised how the bruises on her face, the split in her lip, the darkness in the room must be frightening for her boys. “I’m fine, really,” she said, easing her expression. “It looks a lot worse than it is. The doctor said I’ll be able to come home tomorrow.”

An uneasy silence descended upon them. Helen searched her mother’s face. There it was: the terror behind the eyes. Worse still, she could see the same terror both in Matthew and Robert. It wasn’t right. They were too young for this.

Helen had felt the same terror herself as she mentally fought against Matthew joining the Air Cadets, putting himself in danger, possibly being taken from her in a flying accident, just like his father. And thoughts of the amiable Robert being kidnapped, in danger, possibly dead, had plunged her heart into a freezer these past twenty-four hours. She was both a mother and father to her boys. Yet, through this job she consistently placed her own life in danger.

Maybe it was time to change positions. Take a desk job, a safe bet for her family. But did it have to be work or family? She had gained her own passions from her father’s career. An event like this was unlikely to ever occur again, not even in her line of work. She glanced from face to face, considering how to address the elephant in the room when the door swung open and Jo burst in.