Helen looked at her as if she was mad – as if she was playing a sick joke on her – but Charlie’s face was so solemn and pained that Helen knew immediately that she was telling the truth.
‘When?’
‘Call came in half an hour ago. But you were in with the Chief and -’
‘You should have interrupted. For God’s sake, Charlie, why didn’t you come and get me?’
‘I wanted more details first.’
‘What details? Why?’
‘I think… we think that this might be the third abduction.’
With the eyes of her team on her, Helen tried her damnedest to keep her composure. She instigated the usual procedures, but her mind was already halfway across town. She had to get down there to see for herself if it was really possible. Biking to Melbourne Tower she thought of all things – good and bad – that they’d been through together. Was this really the end that had been waiting for them all along? Was this their reward for the years of struggling through?
Some days life really kicked you in the throat. Helen had felt sick when Charlie told her the news. She desperately wanted it to be a mistake and wished with all her heart that she could turn back time and somehow make it untrue. But she couldn’t – Marie and Anna were dead. A team of demolition experts recceing the estate had spotted a weird SOS message, daubed on a bedsheet and hung from a fourth-floor window. They investigated but couldn’t raise anyone, despite the fact that the lights and TV were still on, so rang the police. The attending constables had been none too pleased – it had taken them ages to get the iron grille off and the front door was so dead-locked it took repeated attempts to barrel-charge it. They’d been convinced all along that the whole thing was a waste of time – that the inhabitants were deliberately hiding or high on drugs or some such. But on entering, they’d found a mother and daughter lying together on the living room floor.
Their first thought was suicide. Lock yourself in and do the deed. Except on further investigation they hadn’t found any keys – to the deadlocks or indeed to the padlocks that secured the grilles. Stranger still, the victims had a loaded gun. It was lying on the floor beside them, unused. There were no ligatures, no empty bottle of pills or bleach – no visible signs anywhere of suicide. An examination of the exterior showed no signs of forced entry and nothing seemed to have been taken. It was all very odd, they were just… dead. The flies that circled their bodies suggested they had been dead for some time.