And it was whilst reviewing the personnel files that she found something intriguing. Helen had been at the forensics lab on the day that Amy’s testimony was illegally downloaded, Whittaker had been sailing at Poole and Charlie had been accounted for – in Helen’s mind at least. That left Mark and the techies: Peter Johnson, Simon Ashworth and Jeremy Laing. They had all been on strike that day, so it couldn’t have been one of them… but there was something curious about Simon Ashworth. Something Helen had overlooked previously. He had come to Hampshire police from the National Crime Unit in London, where he had been helping to construct the new database, arriving here on the back of a promotion. He had fitted in well, been a good worker, but now he was being transferred back to London. Having only been with them four months. It was a sideways move and a strange one, especially as he had taken a twelve-month lease on a flat in Portsmouth. Something had happened. But not officially. Something unseen and unsettling had sent him scurrying back to London.
Helen was on the scent now and her suspicions were further aroused by the fact that Ashworth was nowhere to be seen. Sick leave – though nobody seemed to know what was wrong with him. No, that wasn’t quite right. People did know what was wrong with him, they just didn’t know if he was sick or not. It had taken Helen quite a while to open Peter Johnson up – to get him to talk about his colleagues – but when she did she soon discovered that Simon Ashworth was not a popular man.
He had broken the strike. Helen felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up when he said it. Ashworth was not a union man, but still he had been expected to follow the lead of his boss and colleagues and honour the one-day walkout. But he hadn’t. He was a loner by nature, socially maladjusted, and often rubbed people up the wrong way. It made him a bad team player and potentially easy for someone like Mickery to pick off? Peter Johnson made his antipathy for Ashworth pretty plain, but denied getting him transferred. He and his colleagues may quite possibly have made him feel unwelcome – usual treatment for a scab – but he would say no more than that, fearing an accusation of harassment, even bullying. The transfer must have been Ashworth’s idea.
‘But you’d have to ask him that yourself,’ Johnson concluded.
Helen would do just that. But she would have to find him first. No one had seen hide nor hair of him for weeks.
73
All she could taste was vomit. Vomit and dried blood. Her mouth felt parched, her throat torn, and her head throbbed with a dull, nagging pain. She hadn’t eaten in days and she could feel the ulcers forming in her stomach. But that didn’t bother her – what she really wanted, needed, was water. Usually she would drink litres a day, getting slightly twitchy when she suddenly found herself away from the necessary supply. What a joke those small privations felt now when she was genuinely dying of thirst. She’d never thought about that phrase before, but now she knew what it meant, what it felt like. Despair was setting in – she knew instinctively that there would be no escape.
Sandy lay inert across the way, hoping perhaps to be carried off in his sleep. A peaceful death to end this nightmare. Some hope. They were trapped. And that was all there was to it. Mickery’s eyes flicked left, picking up the flight of the flies that hovered round the effluent piled up in the corner. The flies weren’t there to begin with, so how did they get in? Which tiny fissure in this tin can had they penetrated? Little bastards could probably come and go as they pleased.
When she had first awoken from her stupor, Mickery had been dazed, confused. It was so dark, she couldn’t tell what time of day it was, where she was and what had happened to her. She’d got the fright of her life when she heard Sandy moving. Up until that point she’d assumed she was dreaming, but Sandy’s wild distress had rammed home the grim reality of their situation.
They immediately set about exploring their confines, hammering on the walls, tracing the joins in the metal, slowly coming to the crushing conclusion that they were in some kind of giant metal box. Was it a freight container? Probably, but what did it matter? It was solid, secure, and there was no way out of it. That was all they needed to know. Shortly afterwards, they chanced upon the gun and the phone. And it was then that Mickery’s brave attempts at denial finally collapsed.
‘She’s got us, Sandy.’
‘No. No, no, no, no. There must be another explanation. There must be.’
‘Read the message on the fucking phone. She’s got us.’
Sandy wouldn’t look at the phone. Wouldn’t engage at all. But then again, what was there to say? It was clear that there was no easy way out – the choices were starvation or murder. It was Mickery who put these two awful options on the table. Sandy was proving to be a coward, weak, unwilling to face their situation. But Mickery had made him.
They had chosen to take action. The waiting was too much to bear. The despair too crushing. Their life was now slow torture and it was time to do something about it. So they had decided to draw straws – or rather flies as that was all they could find. So Mickery now found herself with arms outstretched facing Sandy. In one of her hands was a dead fly. The other hand was empty. If Sandy picked the fly, he lived. If he didn’t, he would be killed.
Sandy hesitated, willing his eyesight to penetrate the skin and reveal the treasure within Mickery’s palms. Left or right? Death or life?
‘Come on, Sandy. For fuck’s sake just get it over with.’
Mickery’s voice was desperate, entreating. But Sandy didn’t feel any pity, couldn’t feel any pity. He was frozen in the moment, unable to move a muscle.
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Do it now, Sandy. Or I swear to God I’ll make the decision for you.’
Mickery’s tone was savage and it jolted Sandy out of his paralysis. Muttering the Lord’s Prayer, he slowly stretched out his arm, tapping Mickery firmly on the left hand.
A long, terrible moment. Then slowly Mickery turned her hand round and opened it for both to see.
74
It had been the strangest day. The best and worst of days. Charlie lay in bed trying to make sense of it all.
After Helen had gone, the team had hopped to it, driven on by Charlie’s energy and zeal. Encouraging her guys to be brutal with the clinic managers who were evasive, hiding behind client confidentiality, the team had made good progress, working their way steadily through the list, chasing down the surgeons in the Hampshire area who had the expertise to take on a gender reassignment operation. In the end, however, they had drawn a blank. Everyone had been quizzed, but no one recognized Martina or could cast any light on who she might have been when she was a he.
So it was time to widen the search. There were several dozen clinics nationwide that did this kind of thing and they would have to contact them all. Please, God, Martina had not had the op abroad – that would be too much for their limited resources and they were desperate for a clue, something to get them back on track. Charlie left the guys at it. She was sick with tiredness and needed a moment’s respite. As she drove home her mood lifted at the chance of spending a few valuable minutes with her boyfriend and cat, some decent food and, best of all, some sleep.
Roadworks. And a diversion. Irritating, but no more than that. But it meant Charlie had to take an unusual route home. A route that would take her straight past Mark’s flat. With a sudden pang of guilt, she realized that she had momentarily forgotten about him. She had been so intent on proving to herself (and to Helen obviously) that she could lead the team. In so doing she had shown herself to be a bad leader and an unworthy friend – one shouldn’t forget the walking wounded in one’s desperation to win the battle.