Pop Goes the Weasel

106

Helen sprinted to her bike, switching her phone back on as she ran. Seven voicemail messages. They would all be from Harwood but Helen didn’t have time for that now. She dialled Sanderson instead.

It rang and rang. Then:

‘Hello?’

‘Sanderson, it’s me. Can you talk?’

There was a momentary pause, then:

‘Oh hi, Mum, give me one second.’

Clever girl. There was a longer pause, then the sound of the fire door swinging open and shut.

‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ Sanderson resumed in a hushed voice. ‘Harwood is going nuts looking for you.’

‘I know and I feel bad asking for one more favour, but… I need you to find Carrie Matthews. Find out what she knows about her sister’s movements and see if you can get a photo from her. If she hasn’t got one, try the University. Alan Matthews destroyed all their photos of her after she turned up pregnant following a gang rape. Ella Matthews is our killer – I’m a hundred per cent certain of that. The priority for you and the team now must be to bring her in before she kills again.’

‘On it. I’ll call you when I have news.’

Climbing the stairs to Jake’s flat, Helen felt a mixture of panic and relief. Relief at seeing him, but also anxiety at the darkness rising within her. Strong as she was there were always moments when it took her. The world was full of viciousness and sometimes she was thrust right back to a time when she was the world’s punch bag, when she and her sister had taken the sins of the world upon their shoulders. She was jumpy now, unable to contain the panic spiking inside her, the feeling that any minute, she would be back there in that room.

Jake wanted to hold her, but she wouldn’t let him. She chained herself up without being asked and told him to get on with it. She knew she was being rude and aggressive, but she needed this badly.

‘Now.’

Jake hesitated.

‘Please.’

Then he relented. Taking a medium-sized crop from his armoury, he raised his arm and brought it down firmly on her naked back.

‘Again.’

He raised it again. This time he wasn’t so reluctant – he could feel the charge flowing out of Helen’s body, as her anxiety escaped. He brought the crop down again, then again, his excitement rising as the rhythm of the beating took hold. Helen was moaning now, demanding more pain. Jake gave it to her… faster and faster.

Eventually the beating slowed as Helen relaxed and before long everything was calm once more.

Helen relished this moment of stillness. Her life had been so fraught, so out of control, but whatever happened now, she could always come here. Jake was still the fix she needed when she was ambushed by the darkness. She didn’t love him, but she needed him. Perhaps that was the first step on the road.

She was lucky. She had found someone. Ella hadn’t. She had been the plaything of men who enjoyed controlling and abusing women. First her father with his taste for violence, sadism and cruelty. Then a group of men who took pleasure from imprisoning and torturing a vulnerable young woman. She had been left brutalized and pregnant. A single woman bringing up a child of rape.

Unbidden, Robert popped into her brain. And alongside him, as always, thoughts of Marianne.