Eeny Meeny

77

Helen was back at the helm when Charlie entered the incident room the following morning. Charlie felt a slight burst of irritation – her role as team leader had lasted no more than a day – but then immediately picked up the buzz of excitement in the room and all sense of resentment vanished. Something had happened.

Two things, in fact. One good, one bad. They had found ‘Martina’ – a gender reassignment clinic in Essex claimed to have a match. But they had lost Hannah Mickery. She and her personal lawyer, Sandy Morten, had been missing for several days now.

‘Why wasn’t I told?’ demanded Helen angrily.

‘We didn’t know,’ Charlie replied. ‘Morten was reported missing a few days back, but no one reported Mickery missing. It was only when we were going through Morten’s emails that we realized he had set up a three-way meeting for himself, Mickery and a woman called Katherine Constable. She claimed to be a journalist working for the Sunday Sun, but we’ve checked with them and there’s no one of that name on their payroll.’

‘Constable? She’s taking the piss out of us.’

Helen was fuming. With herself and with the situation. She had been so intent on pursuing the mole, on running that leak to ground, that she had taken her eye off Mickery. If she had stayed with her, perhaps she would have finally come face to face with their killer.

She dispatched Charlie and the rest of the team to Morten’s house. It was probably overkill but this was where ‘Katherine’ had met with Mickery and Morten – perhaps if they all went they’d pick up a thread there, a forensic clue, a witness statement, something. In the meantime, Helen sped east to Essex.

It was good to be back on the hunt. Good too to get away from Southampton nick – she needed time to think. Ashworth was now holed up in her flat, out of harm’s way, and his statement was written and signed. Since their explosive interview, she had done some further checks. She had never questioned Whittaker’s alibi before and kicked herself for that, for on close inspection it didn’t hold much water. Even though conditions for sailing from Poole had been good that day – the weather had been fine and most of the pleasure boats had ventured out from the harbour – some had stayed put, amongst them Green Pepper, Whittaker’s 26-footer on which he lavished so much care and attention.

So Whittaker had lied to her about his whereabouts and another serving officer had placed him at the scene of the crime. Furthermore, Ashworth had gone on to accuse Whittaker of bullying, coercion and perverting the course of justice. All the time Whittaker had been protecting his own interests. His squashing of Garanita had been designed to stop her from breaking the serial-killer story – it had nothing to do with protecting Helen or the team.

It was an incendiary situation and one that Helen needed to handle very carefully indeed. The success of the investigation – not to mention the future of Helen’s career – depended on her making the right move.

The Porterhouse Clinic in Loughton was plush and professional. Inside, the lobby was immaculate, the staff likewise, and the whole place had a distinctly soothing feel. The clinic carried out many types of surgery, but specialized in resolving issues around gender dysphoria. Therapy was the first stage on a journey that nine times out of ten ended in surgery and full gender reassignment.

The team had sent detailed information out when conducting the search for Martina. The timescale was wide enough to make the search tricky – they thought the op had been done three to five years ago, throwing up a large number of possible contenders. But still, gender reassignment wasn’t massively common. And given that they could provide height, blood type, eye colour and a good stab at ‘her’ health history, the chances of a match were good. None the less, Helen felt nervous as she was ushered in to see the clinic’s manager. There was a lot riding on this one.

The manager, a smooth surgeon with surprisingly hairy hands, wanted to be reassured that the clinic was not going to be on the end of any unpleasant publicity in connection with ‘this prostitute’s murder’, as he put it, and Helen had to work hard to get him to play ball, but when she gently reminded him that, in a case as serious as this, he could be compelled to help them, his attitude changed.

‘I think we may be able to help,’ he said, pulling out a file. ‘A young man in his mid-twenties came to us five years ago. He’d obviously been through a bad time, physically and mentally. We advised counselling to deal with his situation before committing to gender reassignment and suggested he might want at the very least to reduce his list of additional treatments. In the end we got him to drop a couple of procedures but that was it. He was determined to have an extensive rebuild. In addition to gender reassignment, he had some buttock augmentation, leg and arm toning and a lot of work done on his face.’

‘What sort of work?’

‘Reshaped cheek bones, fuller lips, a streamlined nose, skin pigmentation, filler…’

‘How much did it cost him?’

‘A lot.’

‘Any idea why he was going to such lengths to change his appearance?’

‘We asked him, obviously. We always discuss every procedure to see if it is… necessary. But he wouldn’t talk. And we couldn’t force him to.’

A defensive note had crept into his voice now, so Helen decided to cut to the chase. She gestured to the file:

‘May I?’

He handed it over. As soon as she saw his name, Helen felt a knot in her stomach. His picture – young, hopeful, alive – confirmed it. Her worst fears realized.

This was about her. It had always been about her.