Pop Goes the Weasel

69

The team spread over Southampton, searching for Lyra. North, south, east and west, leaving no stone unturned. Extra uniform and community support officers had been drafted in and, led by CID detectives, they visited brothels, mother-and-baby drop-ins, health clinics, social security offices, Accident and Emergency departments – clutching their e-fits and appealing for information. If Lyra was hiding in Southampton, they would surely find her now.

Helen led the hunt in the northern reaches of the city, firmly believing that the killer would operate from somewhere familiar and safe. She kept her radio volume turned up high, hoping that at any moment it would squawk into life with news of a breakthrough. She didn’t care who got Lyra, didn’t care who brought her in – she just wanted this to be over.

But still she proved elusive. Some claimed to have seen Lyra, some thought they might have known her under a different name, but so far no one had confirmed that they had spoken to her. Who was this woman who could exist in such a bubble, so devoid of human contact? They had been at it for hours, spoken to scores of people, but still they had nothing concrete. Lyra was a phantom who refused to be found.

Then just after lunchtime Helen finally got the break she’d been craving. As the hours had ticked by, as each working girl had claimed ignorance of Lyra’s existence, she had started to wonder if Melissa had made it all up to get some attention and a bit of cash, but then suddenly and unexpectedly they got a positive ID.

Helen picked her way through the litter-strewn tenement building on Spire Street, utterly depressed by what she saw. Working girls and junkies lived cheek by jowl in the leaky, derelict flats that were due for gutting and redevelopment next year. Many of the squatters had kids, who ran round Helen’s legs as she stalked the building, running from the policewoman in mock horror, hiding from her in dirty and dangerous corners of this ruined building, squealing all the while. If she could have, Helen would have scooped them all up and taken them somewhere decent. She made a mental note to contact social services the moment she had a spare second. It can’t be right for kids to be living like this in the twenty-first century, she thought.

A group of women sat round a two-bar fire, breast-feeding, gossiping, recovering from last night’s work. They were hostile at first, then sullen. Helen had the distinct impression that they were holding out on her but she persisted nevertheless. These girls may be far gone but they all have families of some sort or other and are not immune to emotional blackmail. Helen played on this now, painting a grim picture of the bereaved families burying their defiled fathers, husbands and sons. Still the women offered nothing – whether this was fear of Anton or fear of the police, Helen couldn’t tell. But then finally the quietest one of the group offered something up. She wasn’t much to look at – a shaven-headed junkie with a mewling baby in her arms – but she told Helen that she’d known Lyra briefly. They’d worked for Anton together, before Lyra disappeared.

‘Where did she live?’ Helen demanded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why not?’

‘She never told me,’ the girl protested.

‘Then where did you see her?’

‘We worked the same places. Empress Road, Portswood, St Mary’s. But her favourite was by the old cinema in Upton Street. You could usually find her there.’

Helen carried on quizzing her for a few moments longer, but already she had what she needed. All the places the girl had mentioned were in the north of the city, which fitted her theory. But more than that it was the mention of the old cinema that had set Helen’s heart beating. Tony had filled her in on his latest debrief with Melissa, which had also pinpointed the cinema as one of Anton’s haunts. It seemed too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Was this where Anton and Lyra had come to blows? Had he been killed there? Would she still be haunting this lonely and desolate spot?

Helen called it in immediately, ordering a plain-clothes CID officer to secure the old cinema swiftly and quietly, so that a SOC team could slip in and do their work. Simultaneously a surveillance team would set up camp on the street. Already Helen was impatient for results. Something in her waters told Helen that the old cinema would prove crucial in cracking this case. Maybe they were finally getting close to Lyra. Maybe their phantom was about to become flesh.