SEVENTY-SIX

Helen kept on smiling as she walked towards reception, used her pass to go through the security door and took the stairs to the second floor. She returned each nod of recognition, said ‘fine’ and ‘thanks’ every time she was stopped and asked how she was doing. She did her best not to react to the looks of surprise and the whispered conversations that began almost as soon as she had walked past.

It was like being back in Polesford.

Three weeks since she had left her hometown for what she guessed would be the final time; four since she had last been in this place.

It felt like a lot longer.

She spotted her DCI moving between desks in the incident room. She hung back until she had caught his eye and watched him try to hide his irritation when he saw her. He nodded towards his office and she followed, another ‘fine’, another ‘thanks’ or two along the way.

DCI Adam Bonner sat back and sighed. He leaned forward again and straightened some papers. ‘You’re not supposed to be here, Helen.’

‘I know that.’

‘So, why make it more difficult than it has to be?’

‘I’m not trying to make it difficult.’

‘It’s just routine, you know that. It’ll all get sorted in a couple more weeks and you can get back to work. But until then . . . ’

Helen had been suspended on full pay, pending a full investigation into the events leading up to the death of Trevor Hare. The evidence of Poppy Johnston looked more than likely to clear Helen completely, but until the Professional Standards Directorate had finished looking into it all, there was still a . . . shadow.

Thorne had told her not to worry. He had lost count of his run-ins with the Rubberheelers. Bonner had said the same and did so again now.

‘You’ve just got to sit it out,’ he said. ‘Have a holiday or something. I mean your last one wasn’t exactly relaxing, was it?’

Hare had been found floating face down in Pretty Pigs Pool at first light the following day. Wedged against the bank, as ducks, lily-pads and empty cans floated nearby. The post-mortem had determined drowning to be the cause of death. Trevor Hare was a reasonably fit fifty-five-year-old and, according to his widow, a strong swimmer. In his comments, the pathologist had noted that heavy blood loss due to the knife wound – though not life-threatening in itself – might have contributed to the victim’s inability to get himself out of the freezing water.

It was unclear, and likely to remain so, how Hare had ended up in the water to begin with. He knew the area well, but it was dark and he was wounded, disoriented perhaps. He could easily have slipped. The ground was treacherous.

‘Don’t know,’ Thorne had said. ‘Don’t care.’

‘What about it?’ Bonner asked now. ‘There’s some good last-minute deals to be had in Greece this time of year.’

‘I’m here to report a case of historic child abuse,’ Helen said.

Bonner looked at her.

‘It’s what we do, isn’t it? Well, it was last time I was here.’

The DCI lifted a notepad from the other side of the desk. ‘How historic are we talking about?’

‘Twenty-five years.’

Bonner gently laid his pen down. ‘Helen, you know as well as anyone what a nightmare these old cases are. You sure?’

‘I’m sure,’ Helen said. ‘And I know what a nightmare it’s going to be.’

The DCI picked up his pen again. ‘You got a name for the perpetrator?’

Helen gave him the name. ‘He’s in a care home near Tamworth. I’ll need to check the exact address.’

‘A care home?’

Helen was already shaking her head. ‘I don’t care if he’s old, Adam. I don’t care if he’s bedridden and living on mashed potato and pissing through a tube. I want him done for this.’

Bonner had learned over several years of having Helen on his team that there was little point in arguing when she was this fired-up about a case. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll start the preliminaries, but you know you won’t be able to work it, don’t you? With this Standards thing still going on.’

‘I can’t work it anyway.’

Bonner looked at her again, a flicker of confusion. He went back to his notebook. ‘Right, what’s the victim’s name?’

‘It’s me,’ Helen said. ‘I’m the victim.’

She stopped in the car park and leaned against a wall, keen to get some air and to let her breathing return to normal. A squad car pulled in and parked up and she watched two uniformed officers that she recognised step out. One of them clocked her and looked set to come over, so she stared down at her phone until he had gone inside.

There were some difficult conversations to be had before she could think about talking shop.

With her father. With Linda . . .

They had not seen one another since the events at Pretty Pigs Pool and, until now, Helen had been content to leave the ball in Linda’s court. She had left her number, but Linda had not called. Helen remembered their last conversation, the night they had talked about Aurora Harley, then, finally about her grandfather.

It must have been hard coming back.

Harder staying.

Home, wasn’t it? Never had a way out.

Did you ever see him?

A few times. I wanted Wayne or Steve to kill him, almost told them about it once or twice. He smiled at me in the street . . .

Helen had been told that Linda’s house was on the market, but knew little of her plans beyond that, assuming that she and the kids would be looking to start a new life far away from Polesford and from her husband, charges against whom had been quickly dropped and whose whereabouts had not been released to the press.

Until a photograph had appeared a few days before of Bates and Linda strolling through a Tamworth shopping centre. Now there was speculation about the size of the wrongful arrest settlement.

There was talk of a book deal . . .

Helen would need to tell Linda what she was doing and that she had already passed on her name to those who would soon be arresting Peter Harley. It might well put another zero on to that rumoured contract for a book, but Helen did not know how happy Linda would be about it.

The same went for Aurora Harley, of course, but having made her decision, Helen could not afford to dwell on that. There were those much closer that she needed to consider.

She walked to the car, got inside and sat for a few minutes thinking about how best to broach the subject, that there was little point in going round the houses. Worrying that she was thinking way too much. Her thumb moved across the screen of her phone and she rubbed at a smudge with the edge of her shirt.

Then she dialled her sister’s number.