Caroline collapsed to the floor, her chest heaving as the hopelessness and desperation of her situation hit home. She was alive only in name – her life was no longer hers. She was gripped by a ceaseless terror that made her victory over Martina empty and worthless. Throwing the gun in the bin, she called the police and confessed her crime.
Helen regarded Caroline across the table as she stumbled her way through her formal confession. Caroline expected to be punished. She wanted to be punished. So she seemed almost disappointed when Helen reassured her that it was unlikely they would press charges – if her story stacked up of course and if she promised to keep quiet about her ordeal.
She took them to the house where it had happened. Bought by an entrepreneur who’d subsequently gone bust in the recession, it had been left to rot. As had Martina, who had already attracted the attention of the rats and flies. The stench – a decomposing body in a damp cellar – made you retch, but Helen had to see the body.
What had she been expecting? Some bolt of lightning? She both hoped and feared she would know the victim, to give fuel to that line of enquiry, but she’d never seen the young girl before in her life. Truth be told she looked like any number of silicone-enhanced prostitutes who end up in a ditch. Why had the killer chosen her?
Caroline filled them in on Cyn. Who had auburn hair now, it appeared. Caroline explained in graphic detail the tricks she and Martina had performed for her pleasure. There was never any physical contact and their meetings took place in the killer’s van.
‘How did she contact you?’
‘Online. Martina had a website. She emailed her there.’
They’d look into that – see if the email could be traced to an IP address. But Helen wasn’t confident. The armour on this woman was too complete to allow for such a mistake. So she turned her attention back to the victims.
Caroline was nothing particularly out of the ordinary. She’d run away from home aged sixteen to escape the attentions of a grandfather who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She started off conning gullible punters out of cash without delivering the goods – until she encountered someone who could run faster than her. She couldn’t walk for days after that, but once she could, she turned her back on Manchester and headed south. First, Birmingham, then London. And finally to Southampton. Sad to say, she was a common-or-garden prostitute. Let down by her family, kicked by life, surviving by her wits. It was a depressing but unremarkable story.