The Doll's House: DI Helen Grace 3 by M. J. Arlidge Page A

it.
    DC Sanderson was making her excuses and as Charlie glanced over Harwood’s shoulder at the thinning crowd of revellers, she noted few friendly faces. Helen was of course the notable exception but Charlie now realized that her former boss was no longer present. As Harwood bored on, Charlie suppressed a smile – Helen hated these things even more than she did and if someone was to escape the forced bonhomie and excessive drinking, Charlie was glad it had been Helen. Typical of her to slip away unseen though, Charlie thought to herself.
    Forever the enigma.

37
    Hurrying through the night air, Helen felt herself relaxing once more. Harwood had been particularly persistent tonight, interrogating her about the Pippa Briers case. Harwood had heard rumours of a connection to the Ruby Sprackling investigation and clearly suspected Helen of withholding information from her. Harwood was right, she was , but Helen had worked hard to convince her superior that there was no established connection yet and no cause for alarm. Since they had first started working together, Harwood had been convinced that Helen looked for these connections, as if obsessed with serial offenders and somehow willing to manufacture them if they didn’t actually exist. It said something about Harwood’s insecurity that she believed Helen would ‘create’ serial killers just to burnish her already impressive reputation.
    ‘You had a lucky escape, Harry,’ Helen offered breezily, as she buzzed herself back into Southampton Central. ‘If you see any of my team propping up the lamp posts tonight, do me a favour and sling them in the cells, will you?’
    ‘It will be my very great pleasure,’ Harry replied, grinning.
    Helen was soon on the seventh floor and back in the incident room. For a moment she paused to look at the board. Pippa’s young face stared back at her, full of promise, but now snuffed out. Helen couldn’t help wondering what Daniel was up to right now. He was in a Hell of grief and bitter self-recrimination and it would be incredibly hard for him to find some kind of normality again. Dark thoughts would eat him up for months and years to come, torturing him with ‘what ifs’. It was the mystery of Pippa’s last few months that was torturing her father now – as she stared at the board, Helen vowed privately to uncover the truth of this poor woman’s final days and see that justice was done.
    She grabbed her bag from her office and was about to leave the empty incident room, when she paused. It was stupid really, worse than that it was pointless, but still something compelled her to sit down at the vacated computer terminal and log into the system. She used DC Lucas’s personal codes this time, which wasn’t on, but needs must. She typed Robert Stonehill’s name into the PNC and hit Search. Why did she do this to herself? She blamed herself entirely for ruining this innocent young man’s life, but even so, what was achieved by this endless trawling? It was a fruitless search, which always ended in bitter disappointment.
    Except tonight it didn’t. The computer suddenly came alive with times, dates and more importantly a case number.
    There was a match. Robert Stonehill. The nephew whom she had loved and lost was back from the dead.

38
    He slipped the key into the lock and turned it silently. He had stayed out late – and drunk too much – and he didn’t want to wake his father by crashing around. Stepping inside the door, Lloyd Fortune listened. He had expected, and hoped for, silence, but the TV in the living room was still on, despite the late hour.
    ‘Evening, Dad. What’s on?’ Lloyd said brightly, perching on the vacant end of the sofa.
    ‘The usual fools,’ his dad replied, gesturing at the talking heads on a late-night politics show.
    ‘Tea?’ Lloyd continued.
    ‘Yes, I will. I expect you could do with one too,’ his father replied evenly.
    Lloyd headed to the kitchen, the earlier fun of the evening already