[Alicia Friend 01.0] His First His Second Page 21

  “Trust me, Alicia. I know about that sort of thing.”

  His tongue on her belly, circling her navel, then down.

  “Alicia, you are truly a special woman. You can’t be wasted on the evil that is eating away at you. Come back to me. Be yourself again.”

  His words made it to Alicia’s ears, but as he raised her thigh onto his shoulder and buried his mouth inside her, the words ran away, stored in the back of her mind for another time, as all guilt about leaving Murphy alone with Paavan Prakash faded away in the shower, beside the man with whom she was fairly certain she was falling in love.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The girl seemed familiar to Katie. She was strapped to the chair opposite, gagged, struggling with her bindings. The man who visited them that evening had freed Katie briefly, then manacled the chain to her leg once more, and he left without a word to either of them. Katie had approached the girl in the chair, a mess, her eyes pleading, but the chain stopped her a good six feet short. She wanted to help, but knew the time would soon come that her captor would give the order to commence.

  And Katie would have to try and kill this girl, to remain this man’s First, whatever the hell that meant.

  It was self-defence, she kept telling herself. And it would be self-defence again.

  She’d been ordered not to speak to the new girl, another spitting image of Katie, like the one who died, who the man called “Rachel”, but who was not Rachel, not at all. For now he referred to Katie as Rachel, which was as frightening as anything that had happened so far.

  The new girl tried to speak through the gag, but Katie refused to respond, as per the instructions. She hated obeying, but it was how to survive. Obedience.

  It was him who put the crowbar in the girl called Rachel’s hand. It was him who ordered the Rachel-girl to attack. It was him who told the girl to prove her love for him by extinguishing his Second.

  Soon, the man would give Katie a weapon and tell her when he wanted this new Second wiping from his life.

  Katie wondered how hard it would be. Could she? Could she be the aggressor here if it meant surviving?

  He said he’d kill Katie in this girl’s place if she didn’t obey. Last time, the girl attacked first, without question, and it was thanks only to her dad’s insistence on teaching her how to destroy an attacker much larger than herself—“attacker” meaning “man” or “rapist”—that she beat the girl away.

  Yet it was rage, the anger she’d been saving for the man keeping them here, a will to live that had enabled Katie to slam the girl’s head on the floor until her blood sprayed everywhere, until the moment the ear tore from the girl’s head. Katie remembered looking at it in her hand, curious at first as to what it was. Then when she realised what she’d done, how much damage she inflicted, she simply stood up and backed away, handed the ear to the shocked-looking man, and sat in the chair.

  Now she knew.

  There was no way either of them, here in this room, was leaving alive. It had taken too much to push her to that point. She remembered little of the actual fight; only the aftermath remained vivid. The girl in the chair wouldn’t fight either. She’d seen nothing of this guy. Whatever happened to the first Rachel must have been unthinkable, something able to spring her into action on a whim. And whatever it was, Katie vowed it would not happen to her.

  It was self-defence.

  It was self-defence.

  Next time it wouldn’t be.

  “I’m Katie,” she said to the girl.

  The girl’s eyes softened. The tears that had been welling spilled in a stream of gratitude and hope. What Katie had been unable to glean from the last girl, this one had achieved from Katie. Things were going to be different this time.

  “I’m going to tell you what this guy has planned,” Katie said. “I’m going to try and stop him. But I need your help.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The guilt Alicia predicted would descend circled high overhead, not bothering her one little bit. Her early morning rush from the hotel to her apartment, and subsequent interrogation by Roberta, another quick shower and change, all added to the feeling of running, of movement, of not standing still long enough for the cloud to catch her. Whilst showering, Roberta stood in the bathroom and Alicia regaled her with last night’s perfection. Roberta questioned the ethical side of things but Alicia reminded her that the ethics of the police and her own morality were two different entities. After all, she didn’t stick around for a morning repeat, dashing out at 5 a.m. It would be vulgar while Katie was still missing.

  “And besides,” she added, stepping from the shower and into a fluffy bathrobe, “I’ve not been myself lately. I’ve been blindsided by a few things and it’s all down to me letting them get to me. From now on, it’s one-hundred percent Alicia.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Roberta said, running a tap for her toothbrush. “Now get to work, you dirty whore.”

  It was at work where she felt least like herself. Since Monday, anyway. It was now Thursday and it was a clean slate, a new day, the day she would take back control.

  At seven a.m. she signed in at Glenpark, and the constable said, “You do something different with your hair today?”

  “Sure did,” Alicia replied.

  “What? I’m not sure.”

  “You’ll never make CID at this rate.”

  She flashed a smile and skipped on over to the door. It buzzed and she entered, tugging on both pigtails, making a parp-parp noise as she went.

  They were Roberta’s idea. She said they made her look younger, made the suggestion as a joke, but Alicia needed them today. She needed to replace the business-like ponytail with the schoolgirl hairstyle. And she absolutely adored them. She even tied a little pink scrunchy round each.

  “What the hell do you look like,” Murphy said in the operations room.

  He was wearing the same suit as last night, hadn’t shaved, and smelled a bit funny. The guilt cloud hovering around Alicia then swooped like a vulture and seized her with its claws.

  “You stayed all night?” she said.

  “It was two a.m. when I finished the report. Here.” He passed her Paavan’s statement. “I need a coffee. Then I need to pop home and feed my cat. Maybe grab an hour.”

  He left the room and Alicia read the statement.

  Yes, Tanya disappeared on the twenty-third of May last year, and yes, Paavan maintained his story about Wellington beating him and adding the warning that he needed to leave town.

  How very cowboy.

  He also claimed that James Windsor—although nice to him initially—threatened him, told him to disappear. He’d gotten the credit card, the house, all of it through Tanya’s estate—

  —how was that possible? Oh, Murphy asked that.

  James told Paavan that Tanya came to her senses and left Paavan, buying him off with these offerings, which meant Paavan knew something was up. He made enquiries of those investigating her disappearance. It was then that Wellington came to him. Not before, as Alicia had assumed. So Paavan accepted the bribe, knowing they could monitor his spend, and he vowed to make enough cash of his own—cash “they” could not trace—to hire an investigator, someone to locate Tanya, so he could understand, so he could know. That was why he switched from his “great” novel to commercial horror fiction; the money he arrogantly assumed he would make, but failed to materialise.

  No, he didn’t think she was dead. She was alive somewhere, maybe living abroad; he was sure of it. She had to be. No way James would harm her.

  It was here that Murphy informed him of the recent discovery on the old railway tracks behind Evergreen Industrial Estate. Paavan didn’t watch television and avoided the news. He was too busy with his writing to be distracted by such things. His cries were illegible on the page, just a note of when he started sobbing and when he stopped.

  “I’m guessing James hurt her,” Murphy said, returning with coffee. “Loved her too much, made his move at the race course pa
rty, and she rejected him. His dad helped cover it up. Kept her somewhere so she couldn’t press charges.”

  “Where?”

  “I dunno. Probably subcontracted that. Some gang. Or professionals. They’ll have known private security firms through the arms industry, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to find someone willing to hold her. Sent James abroad in case we put the pieces together.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  “Ball has a crazy theory.”

  “Yeah? I love crazy theories. Hit me.”

  “Pippa, Hayley, Katie. All taken by a maniac. Tanya … killed by the people holding her and made to look like the others. Could be Tanya isn’t connected to Katie.”

  Alicia asked, “Have we confirmed James is abroad?”

  “We confirmed he left the country, yes. Interpol are tracing his movements.”

  Alicia read the whiteboards again, several things bothering her, unsure which things, unsure why they bothered her, positive they didn’t tally with what she and Murphy were working on. Ball’s theory was neat, but a bit “out there.”

  “It’s too…” She couldn’t think of the word. Actually, the word was “scootchy” but she made that one up. “Too many threads, too much falling neatly. Could be the mercs or whatever decided to kill Tanya, but took the other girls first to obscure Tanya’s death. That would signal planning of great magnitude. True obsession, but incredibly high organisational skills too. Someone like—”

  Sergeant Cleaver entered, looking as bad as Murphy, also in the same suit as yesterday, also unshaven. He also looked rather pleased with himself.

  He said, “You are going to love me, babe.”

  “I love everyone this morning,” Alicia said. “Well, except one guy, but hey.”

  “Get a load of this.” He carried a sheaf of paper, some colour prints, a lot of numbers. “I was up all night, but it’ll never see a courtroom.”

  Was I the only one who had any sleep? Alicia thought. Then again, there wasn’t much of that…

  She read through the sheet he handed her. Then he handed another, pink highlighter daubing certain lines.

  “You stayed up doing this?” Alicia said.

  “Me and Darla Murphy over at Sheerton.”

  “And how is my brother’s little girl?” Murphy asked from the doorway.

  “She’s your niece?”

  “Hope you didn’t keep her out past bedtime.”

  Cleaver started again, explaining about the account numbers, the transfers of money through fictitious companies. One of these companies paid Paavan Prakash’s credit card each month. Another three paid share dividends to one John Michael Wellington.

  “It’s seven-thirty,” Cleaver said. “Can I bring Wellington in?”

  An hour later, Murphy and Alicia watched through a two-way mirror as John Wellington was lead into the interview room and politely asked to sit. Murphy still couldn’t believe that this man might be integral to a murder investigation.

  Through the speakers mounted above this side of the mirror, Wellington reminded Ball and Cleaver that he was here voluntarily, and added he had a ten o’clock tennis session. It was already eight-thirty.

  Alicia watched him closely, concentrating as the door closed and he was left alone in the room. His head dropped.

  “It’s all fake,” Alicia said. “The friendliness, the bravado, the beard.”

  “His beard’s fake?” Murphy said.

  “Gotcha!”

  Either Alicia was now more annoying since Monday or lack of sleep was making him grumpy. He had managed to feed his rather annoyed cat, wash, and dig out a fresh shirt, but didn’t catch any kip. Alicia didn’t seem to care.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Make me right.”

  As if he heard her subconsciously and was following these instructions, Wellington stood angrily and stomped over to the mirror, head up against it. Were this a normal window, he would have been eye to eye with Murphy.

  “Look, you know I know these tricks,” Wellington said. “I’m not some animal. You want to ask me questions, then ask. I cooperated out of respect for the police, for what was my family. Respect goes both ways.”

  Alicia reached up to the glass with a red dry-wipe marker and scribbled a pair of glasses on Wellington’s eyes. Murphy snatched the pen from her and shot her what he hoped was a disapproving fatherly look. Alicia ruefully wiped the pen off with a tissue.

  Outside, Murphy asked if she was going put her hair “back to normal.”

  “This is normal for me,” she said.

  They entered the interview room, Murphy dour and deliberate, Alicia as joyful as springtime. Something wasn’t right about her today.

  Wellington disengaged from the mirror.

  “Hi, John,” Alicia said. “Thanks for coming. It’s great to see you again. Want a coffee?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  They all sat at the fixed table, Alicia and Murphy this side, Wellington the other. They swept through the formalities for the benefit of the tape, emphasising Mr. Wellington was not under arrest and was here voluntarily. Wellington confirmed this.

  Alicia said, “Okay, some easy questions to start with.”

  “Shoot away.”

  She smiled, hung her head to one side. “Was your nickname ‘Welly’ when you were on the Force?”

  “No.”

  “Can I call you Welly?”

  Murphy nudged her. She was going off on one. He wondered briefly if she was on drugs.

  “You, my dear,” Wellington said with a toothy smile, “can call me anything you like.”

  “Thank you. ‘Mr. Wellington’ is such a mouthful.”

  “John,” Murphy said firmly. “We need to ask you about the Tanya Windsor case.”

  “I didn’t think it was for my culinary skills, Detective Inspector Murphy.”

  “Tell us about the first moments, what you did when Henry Windsor first reported Tanya missing.”

  “It wasn’t Henry,” Wellington said. “And you know it. It’s there in the file.”

  “That’s right. Sorry. When her friend Hillary reported her missing, what was the first thing you did?”

  “We asked everyone at the party when they last saw Tanya, to work out the latest she could possibly have left the scene. It was Hillary who we established was last to speak to her. She didn’t recall about what.”

  “She’s since had a brain-flash, Welly,” Alicia said. “She remembers. Isn’t that cool?”

  Wellington fidgeted in his seat.

  Murphy said, “It has emerged that Tanya had a boyfriend. Someone she met in India and kept a secret.”

  “An Indian man,” Alicia said. “It’s so romantic.”

  Wellington leaned forward, his grey beard ruffling as his mouth twisted. “And?”

  “And Hillary claims she came to you with this information.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “Is she?” Murphy said. “Okay then. Let’s talk about the fact that this man is sat in a cell in this station right now.”

  “He’s here?” Wellington said.

  “He’s here,” Alicia said. “And he’s very upset that Tanya’s dead. For some reason he thought she was abroad.”

  “And why would he think that?”

  Murphy gambled on a lie, one that might trip them up later in court or with the CPS, but they had higher priorities than convictions right now. “Because that’s what he claims you told him.”

  “I told him no such thing!”

  “So what did you tell him?” Alicia said.

  “Nothing. I told him nothing.”

  “I thought you didn’t know him at all,” Murphy said.

  “I—”

  “I don’t believe you, Welly,” Alicia said. “Much as I don’t like Freud, you made a Freudian slip.”

  “It’s nothing. Try using it against me.”

  “Oh, Welly, do you really think I’d do that?”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  Alicia shru
gged.

  Murphy took over. “Mister Wellington, the last time you made an entry to the case file you ascertained that Tanya had met with foul play of some kind, probably with a stranger, since everyone at the party was accounted for.”

  Wellington looked pointedly at his watch. “Get on with it.”

  Murphy checked the time. Eight forty-five.

  “Welly,” Alicia said. “When did you first realise that Tanya had met with foul play?”

  Wellington now bristled at the name Welly. “After interviewing James Windsor. I grilled him thoroughly along with one of my Inspectors, Derek Doherty—ask him, he transferred to Doncaster last year.”

  “We will,” Murphy said. “But for now, answer the question. What did James say that made you suspect foul play?”

  “It’s in the file, Donald. Read the damn file.”

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  Wellington gave an exasperated sigh. “James said that there was no way Tanya would have run away without telling him. They were like brother and sister, not cousins. He loved her more than anyone, and she loved him. If she was running away, he’d have known.”

  “Then why didn’t you follow up on the mystery man angle?” Alicia asked. “Wasn’t it obvious she was seeing someone? With the tiger tattoo and everything?”

  “The tattoo meant nothing. A lot of rich kids get tattoos.”

  “Is that why it isn’t mentioned in the file?”

  Wellington stopped. Frozen in time.

  Gotcha, Murphy thought.

  Wellington stood slowly, shakily. “I’d like to go now.”

  “What a shame,” Alicia said. “We’d like you to stay. Please?”

  “No. I have to go and play tennis. I’m expected.”

  “Sit down, Welly. We have a couple more questions. Then it’s all over.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “No,” Murphy said. “You’re not.”

  He was gradually regaining his composure and bluster. “Then arrest me for something and get me a brief.”

  “Gretan Fortune do?” Murphy said.

  Alicia frowned. She wouldn’t know who that was. She was off comforting some guy in a hotel room, a detective sergeant doing the job of a FLO.