Slowly, the younger children sloped off to bed. Her closest sister, Luciana, kept her company through Game of Thrones, then she too called it a day. Leaving Emilia alone with her thoughts.
Her career – her life – had stalled. Her disloyalty in selling the sensational Ella Matthews story to the Mail, rather than to her employers, had not gone down well and she had very nearly lost her job at the Southampton Evening News. The job that had been promised at the Mail never materialized, leaving Emilia in the undignified position of having to beg to keep her old job – a job which she still thought was beneath her. She had always hoped regional crime reporting would be a stepping stone to greater things and even her worst enemies couldn’t deny that she was good at her job. But here she was, still stuck in Southampton, with much less chance of getting promotion than she had had before.
She needed a scoop. Something big that could put her front and centre again. The body on the beach had sounded exciting at first, but would probably end up being some depressing drugs murder or the like. And Helen Grace – the one police officer round here guaranteed to create news – was determined to give her nothing. As she drained the last of her wine, Emilia felt sure that the answer to her present conundrum lay with Helen Grace.
She had to get her back onside – by means fair or foul.
36
Charlie took a deep breath and stepped inside the pub. She had been inside the Crown and Two Chairmen so many times – this drinking hole was a second home to most Southampton Central coppers – but tonight she felt nervous. As she made her way through the crowds towards the knot of familiar faces in the corner, she felt the colour rising in her face, the heat of the pub mingling with her anxiety to give her a distinctly pink hue.
Charlie was greeted with warmth and affection, every man and woman there trumpeting, patting and generally drawing attention to her enormous bump. Charlie smiled and received their enquiries in good humour, but in truth she felt uncomfortable and ridiculous. The baby was particularly active tonight, pummelling her from the inside, pressing down hard on her pubic bone in agonizing fashion. Charlie felt uncomfortable, unattractive and dispirited. She had hoped a night out would raise her spirits, but just getting to the pub had exhausted her and now she found herself chatting to people she barely knew. Helen smiled over at her, but was kept at a distance by the persistent attention of Detective Superintendent Harwood, who was clearly grilling her about operational matters.
The cause of all the merriment was DC Grounds, a career copper soon to retire from the Force. He was a solid, old-fashioned kind of policeman whom you couldn’t help liking – a sort of dad to the team, persistently uncool but well intentioned. It was being spun that they were rewarding him with retirement after twenty-five good years of service, but Charlie saw it differently. Grounds was being elbowed out to make room for fresh blood.
Charlie knew that this was at Harwood’s instigation. Over the last two years, most of Helen’s allies had gone or been sidelined. Mark of course – Charlie pushed that thought away quickly – Tony Bridges, Charlie herself and now Bob Grounds too. They had been replaced by shiny, fast-track coppers of the type beloved by Harwood – Lloyd Fortune, DC ‘Call me Ed’ Stevens and the person Charlie now found herself talking to – DC Sarah Lucas.
The ambitious, shiny Lucas only increased Charlie’s discomfort. She was young, slender, university-educated and going places. She had joined the police late, having completed a degree in Criminal Psychology at Durham, one of the new breed of fast-track CID officers. Harwood had come across Lucas at her previous station and had fought hard to get her transferred to Southampton Central. The rumour was that she was Harwood’s heir apparent. Charlie could well believe it – like her superior, she had no discernible sense of humour and little more sincerity.
‘You look amazing, Charlie.’ It was Lucas’s third lie in as many minutes.
‘I feel horrible,’ Charlie countered, smiling bravely.
‘How long is it till…?’
‘Any day now.’
‘I’m not surprised’ was the neutral reply, as Lucas eyed Charlie’s bump.
The conversation carried on in this fashion until Charlie feigned a weak bladder to make her escape. To her consternation, on returning from the loos she was cornered by Harwood, who felt duty-bound to engage her in some small talk. They talked about birth, babies and child-rearing, Harwood full of helpful tips that she had no doubt picked up from her nanny. The conversation continued pleasantly enough, but was an exercise in window dressing. Charlie had crossed swords with Harwood a year ago and hadn’t been forgiven. Would she ever make it back into the golden circle? Tonight Charlie seriously doubted it.
DC Sanderson was making her excuses and as Charlie glanced over Harwood’s shoulder at the thinning crowd of revellers, she noted few friendly faces. Helen was of course the notable exception but Charlie now realized that her former boss was no longer present. As Harwood bored on, Charlie suppressed a smile – Helen hated these things even more than she did and if someone was to escape the forced bonhomie and excessive drinking, Charlie was glad it had been Helen. Typical of her to slip away unseen though, Charlie thought to herself.
Forever the enigma.
37
Hurrying through the night air, Helen felt herself relaxing once more. Harwood had been particularly persistent tonight, interrogating her about the Pippa Briers case. Harwood had heard rumours of a connection to the Ruby Sprackling investigation and clearly suspected Helen of withholding information from her. Harwood was right, she was, but Helen had worked hard to convince her superior that there was no established connection yet and no cause for alarm. Since they had first started working together, Harwood had been convinced that Helen looked for these connections, as if obsessed with serial offenders and somehow willing to manufacture them if they didn’t actually exist. It said something about Harwood’s insecurity that she believed Helen would ‘create’ serial killers just to burnish her already impressive reputation.
‘You had a lucky escape, Harry,’ Helen offered breezily, as she buzzed herself back into Southampton Central. ‘If you see any of my team propping up the lamp posts tonight, do me a favour and sling them in the cells, will you?’
‘It will be my very great pleasure,’ Harry replied, grinning.
Helen was soon on the seventh floor and back in the incident room. For a moment she paused to look at the board. Pippa’s young face stared back at her, full of promise, but now snuffed out. Helen couldn’t help wondering what Daniel was up to right now. He was in a Hell of grief and bitter self-recrimination and it would be incredibly hard for him to find some kind of normality again. Dark thoughts would eat him up for months and years to come, torturing him with ‘what ifs’. It was the mystery of Pippa’s last few months that was torturing her father now – as she stared at the board, Helen vowed privately to uncover the truth of this poor woman’s final days and see that justice was done.
She grabbed her bag from her office and was about to leave the empty incident room, when she paused. It was stupid really, worse than that it was pointless, but still something compelled her to sit down at the vacated computer terminal and log into the system. She used DC Lucas’s personal codes this time, which wasn’t on, but needs must. She typed Robert Stonehill’s name into the PNC and hit Search. Why did she do this to herself? She blamed herself entirely for ruining this innocent young man’s life, but even so, what was achieved by this endless trawling? It was a fruitless search, which always ended in bitter disappointment.