Eeny Meeny - страница 4

The Social Services were supposed to call round, to keep an eye on them, but they avoided this place like the plague and visits were fleeting at best. And so Helen, who had little to keep her home at night, would pop in. Which is why she’d been there when Steven Green and company returned to finish the job. He was high as usual and clutching a petrol can that he was trying to light with a home-made fuse. He didn’t get the chance. Helen’s baton caught him on the elbow, then across the neck, sending him sprawling to the floor. The others were caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a copper and dropped their petrol bombs to flee. Some of them made it, some of them didn’t. Helen had been well trained in how to take the legs out from under fleeing suspects. She foiled the attack and not long after had the distinct pleasure of watching Steven Green and three of his closest friends get a substantial prison sentence. Some days the job really did give back.

Helen suppressed a shiver. The dingy corridors, the broken lives, the graffiti and filth were too redolent of her own upbringing not to provoke a reaction. It conjured up memories she’d fought hard to suppress and which she forced back down now. She was here for Marie and Anna – she refused to let anything darken her mood today.

She knocked on the door three times – their special code – and after much unlocking the door swung open.

‘Meals on wheels?’ Helen ventured.

‘Piss off,’ came the predictable reply.

Helen smiled as Marie opened the outer grille for her to enter. Already her dark thoughts were receding – Marie’s ‘warm’ welcome always had that effect on her. Once inside, Helen doled out her gifts, received hers and felt utterly at peace. For a brief moment, flat 408 was her sanctuary from a dark and violent world.

The rain poured down, washing away her tears. It should have felt cleansing, but it didn’t – she was too far gone for that. She plunged madly through the tangled foliage of the wood, not heeding her direction. She just needed to keep going. Away. Away. Away.

Thorns tore at her face, stones lacerated her feet. But on she went. Her eyes scanned desperately for someone, something, but all she could see were trees. For a moment she had a terrible thought – was she even in England still? She screamed for help, but her cries were feeble, her throat too hoarse to function.

At Sampson’s Winter Wonderland, families were queuing patiently for Santa’s Grotto. The whole site was really just a handful of marquees hastily erected on muddy farmland, but the kids seemed to like it. Father-of-four Freddie Williams had just bitten into his first mince pie of the season, when he saw her. Through the driving rain, she appeared ghostly. Freddie’s mince pie hung in mid-air as she limped slowly but deliberately across the site, her eyes fixed on him. On closer inspection, she wasn’t ghostly, she was pitiful – bedraggled, bleeding and deathly pale. Freddie didn’t want any part of her – she looked mental – but his legs wouldn’t move, rendered immobile by the fierceness of her gaze. She covered the last few yards quicker than he’d expected and suddenly he was reeling backwards as she launched herself upon him. His mince pie somersaulted into the sky, landing with a satisfying plat in a puddle.

In the site office, swathed in a blanket, she didn’t look any less mental. She wouldn’t tell them where she’d been or where she was from. She didn’t even seem to know what day it was. In fact, all they could get out of her was that she was called Amy and that she’d murdered her boyfriend that morning.

Helen jabbed the brakes and came to a halt outside Southampton Central Police Station. The futuristic glass and limestone building towered above her, commanding fantastic views over the city and the docks. It was only a year or two old and by any measure was an impressive nick. State-of-the-art custody facilities, a CPS unit on site, SmartWater testing facilities, it had everything a modern copper needed. She parked up and walked inside.