A hooting to her left made Mickery start. But it was only Sandy rolling on the floor, tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks. He sounded insane. Insanely happy. What a bloody good joke it all was.
Mickery yelled. A blood-curdling, throat-splitting yell. Long, loud and agonizing. All that for nothing. She had tricked them, made them animals, but then denied Mickery her triumph. This wasn’t how the game worked. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She was meant to live. She wanted to live.
Mickery knelt on the floor, the energy draining from her. She was beaten, broken. Sandy’s hideous mocking laughter rang out like a death knell.
Helen was back at the helm when Charlie entered the incident room the following morning. Charlie felt a slight burst of irritation – her role as team leader had lasted no more than a day – but then immediately picked up the buzz of excitement in the room and all sense of resentment vanished. Something had happened.
Two things, in fact. One good, one bad. They had found ‘Martina’ – a gender reassignment clinic in Essex claimed to have a match. But they had lost Hannah Mickery. She and her personal lawyer, Sandy Morten, had been missing for several days now.
‘Why wasn’t I told?’ demanded Helen angrily.
‘We didn’t know,’ Charlie replied. ‘Morten was reported missing a few days back, but no one reported Mickery missing. It was only when we were going through Morten’s emails that we realized he had set up a three-way meeting for himself, Mickery and a woman called Katherine Constable. She claimed to be a journalist working for the Sunday Sun, but we’ve checked with them and there’s no one of that name on their payroll.’
‘Constable? She’s taking the piss out of us.’
Helen was fuming. With herself and with the situation. She had been so intent on pursuing the mole, on running that leak to ground, that she had taken her eye off Mickery. If she had stayed with her, perhaps she would have finally come face to face with their killer.
She dispatched Charlie and the rest of the team to Morten’s house. It was probably overkill but this was where ‘Katherine’ had met with Mickery and Morten – perhaps if they all went they’d pick up a thread there, a forensic clue, a witness statement, something. In the meantime, Helen sped east to Essex.
It was good to be back on the hunt. Good too to get away from Southampton nick – she needed time to think. Ashworth was now holed up in her flat, out of harm’s way, and his statement was written and signed. Since their explosive interview, she had done some further checks. She had never questioned Whittaker’s alibi before and kicked herself for that, for on close inspection it didn’t hold much water. Even though conditions for sailing from Poole had been good that day – the weather had been fine and most of the pleasure boats had ventured out from the harbour – some had stayed put, amongst them