Her Last Mistake - Detective Gina Harte Series 06 (2020) Page 10

  ‘On it now, guv.’

  ‘Oh, forensics and Holly’s bin. Have they gone?’

  ‘Yes, about half an hour ago.’

  Gina glanced around the room as she fiddled with the buttons on her jacket. There was no sign of Briggs. He must have already left and be getting ready for their chat. A throb filled Gina’s head. On top of the chat-to-come and lack of sleep, she knew she wasn’t going to be good company. She checked her phone again. Nothing at all from Hannah. She tried to call but the phone went straight to voicemail. A lump formed in her throat. Marianne Long would never get through to her daughter again. Gina had to know Hannah was safe with all that had happened. There was something Gina needed to do before heading home, and it couldn’t wait. She punched out a message to Briggs.

  Make it nine. Gina.

  Briggs would have to wait another half hour.

  Gina turned the heating up to full in the car. The May evening was chillier than expected. Maybe it was the tiredness kicking in or the darkness that had fallen that gave her an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach. As the car warmed, Gina felt a wash of calm flushing through her body. But there was nothing calm about the evening, not a jot. Hannah hadn’t answered her call. She turned into the dark street and pulled up alongside the Cleevesford Cleaver where Hannah was staying. Only one light was on in the front of the old building. The fact that it had once been a butcher’s many years ago sent a shudder through Gina. She always thought the name was a bit sinister given its history. She remembered her father taking her to a traditional butcher to get their Sunday roasting joint as a child. The smell and sight of death always turned her stomach. Blood, a pig’s head stuffed with apples. The cleaver placed on a bloody metal surface and the sound of the chop as it cracked through bone.

  A figure walked across the lit room and leaned on the windowsill. Gina remained in the dark, parked alongside a hedge. There was no way Hannah would see her watching but the thought of being caught didn’t put her at ease. The double-fronted building had some old-style charm with the large bay windows and the heavy burgundy front door. A solid building that would survive everything. Gina glanced up, hoping to catch sight of Gracie; just a quick glance, then she’d go home to face Briggs.

  Her body stiffened as she caught sight of the man. A short, sharp dizzy spell made her jerk up in her seat. No, no, no, this can’t be happening.

  Chapter Twenty

  Slamming the car door closed, she ran to that huge burgundy door and knocked over and over again. The guests normally had a key. Someone had to let her in. She had to warn her daughter.

  ‘Mum! What on earth are you doing?’ Hannah leaned out of the top window, her face reddening.

  ‘Let me in.’ Gina pressed her palm against the door, desperate to hurry through.

  ‘No. Just go home, Mum. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Where’s Gracie.’ The thought of that man being around her granddaughter made her skin crawl. It was bad enough that he was in a room with her daughter. She knew something was wrong between Hannah and her partner, Greg. She had sensed that Hannah had been lying. Had she been with him when Gina had looked after Gracie a few days ago?

  ‘She’s with her Nanny Hetty. She’s fine.’

  Gina was flung back as the main door opened and a man hurried out. She darted in, running to the top of the stairs and banging on the door to Hannah’s room with both hands.

  ‘I said I’d call you tomorrow,’ Hannah said as she opened the door. ‘What are you doing, spying on me?’

  Gina fought to gain her breath back. ‘I wasn’t spying. I tried to call you and I was worried when you didn’t answer. A woman was murdered last night and I guess I panicked. Please let me in, love.’

  Hannah let go of the door and ran her fingers through her stark blonde hair.

  ‘Hello, Detective Inspector.’ Samuel Avery gave her a sickening grin as he placed a hand on Hannah’s back.

  ‘How dare you. Leave my daughter alone. This man—’

  ‘This man what, Mum? What? Seriously, I need you to go home and leave me alone. You’re interfering.’ Hannah brushed him away and as she sat on the double bed, the floorboards creaked, shaking the mirrored wardrobe slightly.

  ‘Does Greg know?’ She stared at her daughter’s eyes, her dilated pupils giving her away. Her speech was very slightly slurred. Gina charged across the room towards Samuel. ‘If you so much as even touch her, I will—’

  ‘You’ll what?’

  What would Gina do? What could she do? Two consenting adults in a room together. He was too old for her, too sleazy. He was everything bad she could think of. Was he her daughter’s and granddaughter’s future? She hated him. All the times the police had been called to his pub because he’d inserted himself into some woman’s marriage and been punched by a jealous husband. Then there was the story during the case of missing Deborah Jenkins. One of her friend’s had said Deborah had been petrified when Avery had assaulted her, but Deborah never reported it. After the case had been closed, Deborah herself had said she just wanted to forget that moment with all that had gone on. The man in front of her was trouble and now he was in her daughter’s life.

  ‘He’s dangerous, Hannah. You need to tell him to go.’

  Her daughter stared hard at her. Gina glanced around the room. There weren’t clothes everywhere, no underwear on the floor. The bed looked made, but what was he doing here? Her daughter had had a drink. She knew exactly what he was doing. She inhaled the faint smell of rum, Hannah’s favourite and spotted the empty miniature bottle on the bedside table.

  ‘Mum, you’re making a fool of yourself. Just go. Please.’

  ‘You heard what she said.’ Samuel stepped forward and went to grab Gina’s wrist.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me or I’ll take you in for assault.’

  He held both hands up. ‘You look a little shaky. I was just going to steady you, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

  His flowery blue shirt barely touched his non-existent skinny waist. Blue shirt. Her mind flashed an image before her. When Lilly Hill was looking through Holly’s letterbox, she caught sight of a blue shirt in the hall mirror.

  ‘That sounds like harassment to me. I suggest you go and leave us to it. Have I hurt you, Hannah?’

  Hannah shook her head.

  ‘Did you invite me in?’

  Hannah nodded. ‘Mum, please go. I’m fine, see. All is fine.’

  ‘Fine, fine, it’s all fine.’ She had lost this one. Gina stepped backwards out of the room, her gaze alternating between Hannah’s and Samuel’s. She left, stamping her feet down every step.

  ‘What’s going on? If you don’t keep it down, you’ll have to leave.’ At last, the man who ran the rat-infested dump of a bed and breakfast had surfaced. His half-asleep look and dirty vest told Gina all she needed to know. An owner that took little care of his business.

  ‘I’m leaving and the pleasure’s all mine.’ She slammed the main door and hurried back to her car, glancing up one more time. Samuel grinned through the condensation on the glass as he slowly drew the curtains. He hadn’t been stationed at his bar all night at the wedding reception. He had opportunity to kill Holly. He had now been bumped up to the top of her list. As soon as she’d attended Holly’s post-mortem, she would be heading straight over to the Angel Arms. One thing was for sure. With Gina turning up like that, Hannah was safe. There was no way he’d hurt her now, not tonight. She pulled at her knotty hair and hit the steering wheel. Samuel Avery had crossed a line when it came to her daughter.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Snaking the car through the deserted country roads, Gina took each corner a little too quickly. She felt the car skid slightly as she took the last bend that led to her house, tyres screeching as she pulled onto her drive next to Briggs’s car. She got out and slammed the door, stepping close enough to the house to activate the security light.

  ‘I thought you had stood me up.’ He
grabbed a bag from his front seat. Gina could smell the Chinese food escaping.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘It’s been a long day—’

  ‘I know, I know. It’s been a long day for all of us.’

  He followed her to the house as she opened the door and walked in, leaving him to close it. The cat meowed. ‘Okay, Ebony, I’m getting your food now.’ She hurried to the kitchen and began slopping a pouch of cat food into a bowl. Without any gesture of thanks, the cat greedily tucked into the meaty chunks.

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Gina turned away and faced the back door, fighting a tear of anger. Was she upset? Was she angry? Both. She was everything all at the same time. Confused. Never in a million years would she have expected the biggest sleazebag in Cleevesford to be in her daughter’s room.

  ‘Gina, what’s happened? You can tell me.’ He placed one of his large shovel-like hands on her shoulder. He was hefty but so gentle. That was something she had loved about him and possibly still loved about him.

  ‘You know I had a bit of a falling out with my daughter?’ She turned around, hoping that he wouldn’t see the remnants of the tear that she’d just wiped away. There was no tear but she knew her eyes would have that watery look about them and he’d know.

  ‘You mentioned that earlier.’

  ‘She’s staying at the Cleevesford Cleaver. She wasn’t answering her phone and I got worried so I drove over after work.’ She grabbed the tea towel off the side and wiped the worktop with it. ‘When I got there, my daughter was in her room with no other person than Samuel Avery and I lost my temper.’

  He placed an arm around her and she crumpled into his chest. ‘He’s a despicable human being. I can see why you’re so upset. You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?’

  ‘What do you take me for? Of course I didn’t. Unless stomping down steps and slamming doors qualify as stupid. Can we not have our talk tonight? I’m not fit for anything. I need to work on keeping it all together for the case.’

  Gina pulled away slightly. She could see the disappointment in his expression but she couldn’t have the talk, not with everything that was going on. Her mind was all over the place and the last thing she wanted to go through were the finer details of how her ex-husband Terry died, or more so, how she watched the life leave him at the bottom of the stairs on that stormy night. Briggs had been patient with her for a long time. He sensed her trauma when it came to talking but as the holder of her secrets, he deserved to know everything, and soon she’d tell him, but not tonight.

  ‘Okay for now, but you have to stop shutting me out. How do you think I feel when you ignore me or try to avoid me?’

  ‘That’s why I wanted us to end, because of this, and it would have been worse had we carried on. People can see that we share something. They don’t know what. It’s not obvious, but I can’t deal with the fact that I know, okay?’

  He pulled a couple of bottles of light beer from the carrier bag. ‘I struggle when it comes to dealing with everything too. This isn’t just about you, Gina.’ He grabbed the magnetic bottle opener from the fridge, cracked open the beers and passed her one.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She took the bottle and sipped the cold beer. ‘I don’t know if I can face food, not after what’s happened tonight.’

  He began opening the foil containers on the kitchen table, then he grabbed a couple of plates and some cutlery. ‘You need to try. We’re both running on empty.’

  He was right, as always. The part of her that was breathing a sigh of relief at having postponed their conversation had been replaced with a churning anxiety after seeing Hannah with Samuel Avery. She slumped at the kitchen table and slopped some of the sweet and sour onto her plate. Staring at it, she knew she’d struggle to get it down. She pushed the chunks of pork around with her fork and an image of the pig’s head on the butcher’s slab flashed through her mind. She dropped her fork in the food, wishing he would just go home and leave her to wallow.

  A few minutes passed and the food had already started to form a skin across the top as it cooled. The silence was too much. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not good company.’

  ‘Gina, why won’t you tell me all that happened? I know you keep your secrets pent-up. I see what you put yourself through, the nightmares and the crippling anxiety. You hide it so well from the others, but not from me. I’ve seen you wake up in the night, full of fear. I know I wasn’t meant to hear your most personal words at your mother’s graveside but I did and I can’t un-hear them. We can’t go back, only forwards. And we can’t stay in limbo. That isn’t an option.’

  She felt her resolve crumbling. For so long her past had remained all hers but now he knew. ‘It tears me up, Chris. I don’t think I can talk about it all. I feel that if I do, I may not even be the same person ever again. I’m so scared of losing me.’

  ‘Have you ever thought that you might gain you back?’

  She pushed her plate away. ‘He was so cruel to me – Terry. When we investigate these cases, such horrific cases, there are elements of each that often trigger flashbacks. I’ve tried hard to bury everything so that I can move on but they won’t leave me alone. Each of my personal stories of abuse and cruelty are mine to tell. That’s the only power I have over them. I had no choice when he was doing the things he did to me but it’s like I’m in control and I don’t want that control taken from me. Besides, he can’t hurt anyone else, he’s dead.’

  ‘Are those thoughts controlling you, though?’

  Her voice quivered with each word and her heart began to thump. ‘Probably, but I’m a survivor. If nothing else, I’ve proven that over and over again. Believe me when I tell you this, if I hadn’t accidentally pushed Terry down the stairs that night, he would have killed me. I know that much. I wouldn’t be here now.’

  Her throat began to close and her hands started shaking. Pushing him was one thing, but holding back until he’d passed away before calling an ambulance, that was on her. Coughing, she ran to the sink and poured a glass of water as she gasped in a few breaths of air. The kitchen seemed distorted, like it was swirling on an axis. The sound of the cat meowing for affection was as pleasurable as nails scraping a blackboard. The cat jumped through the cat flap into the garden, taking the noise with it.

  ‘Come on. You’ve got this.’ He held her close as she let it all out.

  She had felt a release. Was she losing her grip or was she feeling unburdened? That was a question she couldn’t yet answer. A moment, just the briefest of thoughts entered her mind. Like a picture in a film. Her on her wedding day, walking up the aisle towards Terry. Those moments of doubt had crossed her mind. She should have run out of that registry office and never looked back. Life could have been so different but if she hadn’t met Terry, she wouldn’t have Hannah. Every step up that carpeted aisle had felt like she was walking on glue. She would never forget the look in her own mother’s eyes. The one she ignored that said, you don’t have to do this, my love.

  She felt the calm beating of Briggs’s heart against her ear and she didn’t want the moment to end. For once she felt safe, but he couldn’t stay. They both knew that. Besides, safe was just a feeling. She wasn’t safe. He wasn’t safe. No one was safe when a potential charming predator was hell-bent on inserting themselves into your life. No one. And now, they had another predator to contend with, one that had taken Holly’s life and that of her unborn child. Had this perpetrator charmingly wormed his way in before gaining her trust and subjecting her to the most horrific of deaths? Now was not the time to lose her focus.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Monday, 11 May 2020

  Jacob shuffled into the room behind Gina, taking a seat. Being present at post-mortems was never a pleasure.

  ‘Can I get either of you a drink?’ the young man asked.

  Gina caught a glimpse of the scalpel gliding through Holly’s taught skin and she swallowed. ‘No, thank you.’

  The man
closed the door, leaving them to it.

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t offer us a bit of breakfast. Just the thing to help us through a post-mortem.’

  Gina glanced across, taking her dark straggly hair into her hands and forcing it into a ponytail using the elastic band she always kept in her pocket. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘Chill, guv. I’m definitely joking. I know I always say this, it doesn’t matter how many times we’ve seen this happening, it never becomes easier. I’m just glad we’re behind glass. I couldn’t take the smell today.’ He gave a little wave to one of the assistants.

  ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘I know, you can’t tell with all the garb she’s wearing.’ His gaze locked onto hers for a couple of seconds.

  The clean crime scene assistant snapped away, cataloguing every part of the process. One of Holly’s organs was removed then dropped into the scales; Gina guessed at it being her liver. The assistant with the form and pen scrawled a few notes and nodded back at the pathologist. He began calling out measurements along with a commentary.

  Gina twiddled her fingers in her lap and looked down for a second but the urge to watch was overwhelming. Holly’s red hair had been tidily placed to one side, eyes closed, skin bluish and as pale as skin could get. Gina had seen the photos of the young redhead. She had been pale in life but death almost gave her skin a translucent look.

  Gina glanced up as her stomach contents were being placed in a tin.

  ‘You okay, guv?’

  ‘This isn’t my favourite part.’

  ‘Mine neither. Such a tragic loss.’

  Gina slowly nodded. ‘What do you and Jennifer talk about at night?’

  He let out a slight laugh. ‘Not this, that’s for sure. Films, music, art.’