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  Before he could reply her phone rang and she answered it through the car’s Bluetooth.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Mrs Maguire,” a voice echoed through the car. “It’s Joey.”

  “Hi Joey. How’s tricks?”

  “Good thanks. You asked me to let you know if Alice had any visitors.”

  “Yes?”

  “Someone called DCI Dwyer left about twenty minutes ago. He was with Alice for a good hour. I don’t know what they discussed but she seemed pretty upset. Hello, Mrs Maguire?” he said when his revelation was greeted with silence.

  “I’m here Joey. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll transfer the usual fee later when I get back to the office.”

  “Thank you,” said his polite voice before she hung up.

  “I take it that’s a member of staff from Alice’s care home?” said Ryan.

  “It is. He stinks of onions. I just thought he really liked onions, then I realised it’s actually a terminal case of bad breath.”

  “A little more information than I required.”

  “Dwyer has Jez and Mikey locked up. He’s going for the hat trick and he’s going to use Alice to do it. He’ll make her admit that I started that fire.”

  “So it would seem but would she tell, after all these years?”

  “She’s an evil paedo. Course she would. I need to see her. Shit, it’s one thing after another at the moment.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  “No. I need to do this alone. Could you go back to The Manor and sort out Stuart the Slug?”

  “Of course, just leave that with me.”

  “Thanks bruv,” she said, looking troubled.

  “What are you going to do about Alice?”

  “That depends on what she has to say.”

  After dropping Ryan off at The Manor Jules headed straight to the care home, making a stop on the way. She found Alice asleep in the armchair in her room.

  Jules knelt by her side. “Alice,” she whispered.

  She jumped awake and released a whimper of fear when she saw who her visitor was. “Jules. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I’ve seen what’s been happening on the news. I thought you’d be too busy to visit me.”

  “I’m never too busy to visit you Alice.”

  Alice studied her, attempting to discern whether she knew about the conversation she’d had with Dwyer but she reasoned how could she? “I’m so sorry about what happened to Mikey.”

  “It’s only temporary,” said Jules, glad she sounded more confident than she felt. “I’m getting him out, Jez too. The charges are all bullshit anyway.”

  “I’m sure you will, you’re so smart.”

  “Yes I am.” She looked around the room. “It’s been redecorated.”

  “Yes, last week. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Very pretty. You always did love flowers,” said Jules, taking in the wallpaper dotted with red roses. “You used to call me and the other girls your little flowers right before you let some nasty bastard rape us.”

  Alice swallowed hard. “I thought we’d got past that.”

  “You’d got past it you mean. Do you think what you did will ever leave me?”

  “Jules, I’m not that woman anymore.”

  “No you’re not, thank God. But I often wonder how sharp that devious brain of yours still is.”

  Alice couldn’t bear her hard grey gaze so she looked down at her hands.

  Jules took a small device out of her pocket and began wandering around the room with it.

  “What are you doing?” said Alice.

  Jules held up a finger, indicating for her to be silent while Alice looked on, puzzled. She recoiled when Jules waved the gadget around her.

  “What is it?” she rasped, clutching her hands to her chest.

  “Making sure we won’t be overheard.”

  “You think I’ve bugged the place?”

  “Just being cautious.” She replaced the device in her jacket pocket. “What did DCI Dwyer want?”

  Alice’s damaged hands trembled. She knew better than to lie. “He asked me if you started the fire that did this to me.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Jules was careful to keep her tone pleasant, genial almost but Alice could see that underneath she was seething. “I told him what we agreed - that the fire was an accident, end of story.”

  “And he just left after you told him that?”

  “Pretty much. Why? Who is this DCI Dwyer anyway and why is he so interested in you?”

  “He’s the bastard who put Mikey and Jez in prison and now he’s after me. I also know that he’s not a man to give up until he gets what he wants.”

  “Well I didn’t give him anything.”

  “That’s a load of crap. You told him about the fire, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you?” snarled Jules, thrusting her face into hers, making her recoil.

  “I swear I didn’t Jules,” she stammered. “I wouldn’t go behind your back like that.”

  “For the first time in your life Alice have the guts to tell the truth. Or is that what you want to be your entire life - a spineless coward?”

  “Alright,” she sighed, as always a conversation with her adopted daughter draining her. “He did ask me about the fire and I told him you started it.” Alice cringed, expecting yelling, shouting, a punch even but Jules just sat there looking so calm it was disturbing.

  “What did we agree about that?” Jules eventually said.

  “That we would never speak of it to anyone.”

  “Exactly. You’ve managed to keep your gob shut all these years. What made you change your mind now?”

  “He said he’d find out what happened to Leighton,” she rasped, a tear sliding down her cheek.

  “That’s still haunting you, isn’t it?”

  “It always will. If only I knew then I could die in peace.”

  The look in Alice’s eyes wasn’t lost on Jules and she nodded. “Alright, I’ll tell you. Alice, calm down,” she added when she began to shake and gasp.

  “S…sorry,” she stammered, wiping her tears away on the back of one ruined hand, her body violently trembling as years of repressed emotion seeped to the surface.

  “I tracked him down years ago,” began Jules as Alice listened with rapt attention. “He was hiding out at a house in Falmouth in Cornwall and I brought him home.”

  “Home? You mean to our home?”

  Jules nodded.

  Alice wanted to scream and shout and demand why she hadn’t told her but was afraid if she did Jules would stop talking.

  “I intended to kill him when I found him,” continued Jules. “But when the time came I couldn’t do it. He put me through the worst ordeal of my entire life and almost killed me but I remembered the father he’d once been to me, the father I had loved so much. So instead I fucked up his face with my knives. When I was done not even you would have recognised him. I locked him up in the cage in the basement where you kept all us girls.”

  “For how long?”

  “Two years.”

  Fresh tears spilled down Alice’s face. “Why…did you never tell me?”

  “How could I? I couldn’t let him out.”

  “But you could have taken me to him.”

  “You were better off remembering him as he used to be, not that pathetic mess that constantly stank of piss.”

  “Did he ever ask about me?” she said timidly.

  “Once I remember, not long after I found him again. But that was it.”

  Alice broke down in tears as all the hopes she’d nurtured for so long were crushed. Jules leaned back in her chair, waiting for her to calm down before continuing.

  “What happened to him?” Alice eventually asked.

  “I kept trying to kill him, I knew I was taking a hell of a risk keeping him there but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Every time I trie
d I fucked it up. So someone did it for me.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” No way was she telling anyone Mikey had held a pillow over Leighton’s face to put him out of his misery after she’d messed up trying to poison him again and left him writhing in agony.

  “He’s been dead all this time,” murmured Alice, although there was relief in her voice.

  “Yes he has,” said Jules. “So now you know.”

  Alice released a long, shaky exhale as a weight was lifted from her shoulders. She looked to Jules, one side of her face streaked with tears, the bloodshot eye bright red. “I’m so very tired Jules. Let me go to Leighton. It’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be.”

  Jules nodded once, feeling none of the reticence she had with Leighton but then again she’d used to love him deeply. She’d always hated Alice. Before the fire Alice had treated her with nothing but contempt and subjected her to regular beatings and abuse.

  Jules took a syringe containing a clear liquid out of her jacket pocket.

  “Will it hurt?” said Alice.

  “No, I made sure of that. It’ll just be like falling asleep. I don’t need to see you suffer anymore.”

  “You have changed so much Jules, my daughter,” she added, patting her cheek.

  Anyone else would have recoiled from those scarred, ruined hands but Jules had long ago got used to her.

  “Dwyer won’t win,” added Alice. “You won’t let him.”

  “Damn right I won’t,” said Jules.

  Alice nodded at the syringe. “So, how do we do this?”

  “I’ll inject it between your toes. No one will notice in all the scar tissue.”

  “Will it happen immediately?”

  “No, it’s slow-acting, so in a few hours. When you start to feel drowsy just let yourself slip away. It’s as easy as that.”

  “Will anyone know?”

  “It’s untraceable. It’ll just look like you passed on in your sleep.”

  “You know, that sounds rather pleasant. I’m so tired of pain.”

  Jules knelt before her and gently removed one of her slippers. Alice couldn’t bear the feel of socks on her scars, so her feet were already bare. Gently Jules slid the needle into the skin between her second and third toes, replaced her slippers and resumed her seat, hiding the syringe in her jacket.

  “It feels warm and pleasant,” said Alice, a dreamy smile on her lips, sinking deeper into the armchair.

  “Good,” said Jules tightly. Alice had been a monstrous woman her entire life - first as a paedophile and then as this scarred mess but she’d been part of Jules’s life since she was a little girl. She had thought she’d rejoice in the monster’s death but on the contrary, it was bringing her no pleasure. It was difficult saying goodbye to a mainstay in your life, even if that mainstay was the devil incarnate.

  Jules touched her hand. “Goodbye Alice.”

  “Goodbye Jules. Before you go could you pass me a photo of Leighton?”

  Jules plucked one from the wall and placed it in her lap. Alice cradled it in her hands, touching his handsome face with her fingertips. “I tried to love you like he did,” said Alice as Jules headed to the door. “But I couldn’t because he was the only person I ever cared for and he loved you more than me.”

  Not knowing what to say to that Jules left, quietly closing the door behind her, leaving Alice with her memories, the shadow of death hovering over her.

  Ryan knew Alice Parker always had a negative effect on Jules but he wasn’t quite prepared for how dejected she looked when she walked into The Manor. He steered her into the lounge before the others saw her.

  “How did it go?” he asked her.

  “Dwyer visited her and she told him about the fire.”

  “Christ,” he sighed. “Is she going to give evidence against you?”

  “No. She’s dying as we speak.”

  “You killed her in the care home?” he exclaimed.

  “Yes but it was one of my hotshots. She won’t feel any pain, on the contrary actually and it won’t act for another few hours, long after I left.”

  “Dwyer will still put two and two together.”

  “So what? My hotshots are untraceable. Nothing can lead back to me.”

  “Alright, I’m aware you know what you’re doing in that department, you are the chemistry expert. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay I suppose. She went willingly. I think she’d had enough of life.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “When I told her Leighton was dead it was like all the will to live drained right out of her.”

  “He was the only reason she kept going.”

  Jules sighed and nodded. “I know, which is why I never told her. I wanted to torture her like she tortured me and those other girls for so many years. But even that lost its appeal after a while.”

  “So she didn’t protest?”

  “No. She was ready.”

  He wrapped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Actually it was a bit of an anti-climax. When I was younger I killed her hundreds of times in my head and each time it was violent and bloody and Alice was screaming her head off but her passing will be peaceful with no pain, not how I imagined it at all.”

  “Do you regret that?”

  “Despite the monster she was, no. I should have done it long ago, I always knew there was a risk she would talk. I had a go at Mikey for not killing Jake, I even took him out for him and here’s me doing exactly the same thing.”

  “Well it’s done now but Dwyer still has her statement.”

  “Without her to back it up it won’t mean much, I hope.”

  “It might give him enough to take you in.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And Alice dying so soon after talking to him will look suspicious.”

  “Undoubtedly but I had no choice. Anyway, enough about the old paedo bitch. What did you get out of Stuart?”

  “Everything. He began talking before we’d even laid a finger on him.”

  “And?”

  “His brother instigated the attack, which wasn’t a surprise. They intended to kill Cathy and take the children…” He took a deep breath as he dealt with his fury. “And do to them what they were going to do to the boys.”

  “The spineless shits,” she spat. “Right, I want a little chat with Stuart myself, I’m in the mood for some mindless violence.”

  “Sorry, you’re too late.”

  “You killed him, didn’t you?” she scowled.

  “We had everything we needed from him. Don’t blame the others, I did it. We can’t spare men to guard him. Anyway, I think you’ve been around death enough for one day.”

  “We need to find out who The Coalition is,” she barked.

  “And we will but you also need to remain the strong leader you’re being, so I suggest you sit down, grab a brew…”

  “I want a beer,” she glowered.

  “A beer then and relax for a couple of hours.”

  “Relax? How can I possibly relax?”

  Ryan’s slate grey eyes hardened. “Try.”

  She huffed and threw herself onto the couch, putting her booted feet up on the coffee table. “What?” she snapped when Ryan frowned at her feet.

  “Nothing. I’ll get you that beer.”

  He returned with not one but two and sat beside her.

  “I thought you were more of a red wine and whisky man,” said Jules as she swigged from the bottle.

  “I’m eclectic,” he said, taking a sip. “Mmm, not bad.”

  When Carter returned he joined them too and they sat in silence, drinking their beer, some of the recent tension draining from their bodies. Jules gave her brother a nod in acknowledgement of his sage advice.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jez’s request to visit Cathy had been approved and he was escorted to the hospital in a van by no less than four prison officers. Had he not been so worr
ied about his wife he would have taken it as a compliment.

  He walked between the officers, hands cuffed before him, still in his grey prison tracksuit, drawing the attention of everyone they passed by.

  They were halted at the entrance to the High Dependency Unit, the staff objecting to five men going into one room. After some negotiation, during which Jez’s fuse grew increasingly short, one officer elected to remain at the doors into the unit, another two waited just outside Cathy’s room along with Paula and one was allowed inside with him.

  Jez slumped into the chair by Cathy’s bedside, horrified by how pale and vulnerable she looked. Her golden hair, which she usually took such good care of, was greasy and had been combed back off her face. When he picked up her hand tears filled his eyes at how cold she felt.

  In response to his touch she groaned and shifted on the bed. Her eyes opened and filled with joy. “Jez,” she murmured.

  He kissed her lips. “I’m here babe.”

  A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and stained the pillow. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you too. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay.”

  She didn’t look okay but that was typical of Cathy, never wanting to worry anyone, putting everyone else’s feelings before her own. “It doesn’t hurt too much I hope?” he said anxiously.

  “No. They give me lots of painkillers.”

  His body shook with repressed sobs. He didn’t want to break down in front of the screw but he was having a hard time keeping it in. “I can’t believe this happened. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, brushing his face with her fingertips. “We’re all safe.”

  “You did so well sweetheart, you protected our kids.”

  “I’d do it again.”

  “I know,” he said, kissing her fingers. “And I love you so much for it.” He thought the painkillers and her injuries were probably preventing her from feeling the full force of taking a life, even if that life had been trying to take their children from them. One day it would hit her hard and he was determined to be there for her when it did.

  “Come home soon Jez,” she murmured before drifting back to sleep. “I need you.”

  “I will babe, I fucking promise,” he said passionately. “No one is taking me from you ever again.”