The Doll's House

74

They were closeted away in a snug at the back of the restaurant, away from prying eyes. Helen’s first instinct had been to ask Daniel Briers to come to the station, but she’d thought better of it. Too little privacy and far too formal – she loathed the cheerless beige walls of the relatives’ room, which seemed to sap the strength and optimism of everyone who set foot in it. So though an upmarket eatery was an unusual place to brief Daniel on developments, Helen felt she had made the right choice. Their relationship had already progressed well beyond the customary formality.

Daniel listened carefully as Helen talked him through the discoveries on the beach. She had been light on the detail – alive to the further torment she could see she was inflicting – but the thrust of her message was clear.

‘He’s a serial offender? A… serial killer?’ Daniel closed his eyes as he said the words.

‘That’s our belief.’

‘Good God, what must she have gone through?’

He looked up at her with an expression that was part anguish, part need. Like all relatives in these awful situations, once the worst has been confirmed, Daniel had hoped for a swift conviction and a clear, understandable explanation. A domestic incident. A crime of passion. A hit-and-run. But to imagine your daughter as the victim – the plaything – of a serial killer… that was too much for anyone to take on board.

‘What did he do to them?’

Helen noted how he talked about ‘them’, as if in his mind the new bodies on the beach were somehow divorced from Pippa’s case. She didn’t blame him for that – she’d do exactly the same in his shoes – but to her it was clear that all three women had fallen prey to a prolific and practised killer. The circumstances of their burial, the careful way they had been stripped off all identifying features and most disturbingly the bluebird tattoo that they’d found on all three corpses – it was the same guy.

‘We’re still looking into that,’ Helen replied, avoiding all mention of mortuaries and post-mortems. ‘But there’s no sign he inflicted violence upon them and it doesn’t appear he was sexually motivated -’

‘So, what, he just starved them to death?’

‘I don’t know, Daniel, but we’ll find out.’

Daniel took this in, but said nothing, staring at his feet. Instinctively Helen tried to climb inside his head, imagining the awful situations that were playing out for Daniel – his daughter, alone and scared, facing a slow, lingering death. Hoping against hope that the only person who really loved her – her daddy – would rescue her from a living nightmare. When did she realize that no one was coming?

‘You will catch him, won’t you?’ he said finally, his voice breaking even as he did so.

‘I gave you my word. Pippa will have justice.’

He looked up at her, his eyes full of tears. Taking her hand in his, he simply said:

‘Bless you, Helen. Bless you.’