Chapter 26
Tyler
Bundled in my hoodie with the white sheets tucked around her and holding a cup of hot tea I’d made her, Dixie calmly talked through her story.
Starting with her throat being cut.
I’d burned to know more about it. What information I’d scraped together from the rest of the crew had been nowhere near enough.
“I don’t remember anything past Manny escorting me home.
It was after a long shift, and Manny left me at the bottom of the steps to my flat.
You’ve been there. The block has more than one walkway and staircase.
Someone must’ve grabbed me and thought they’d ended my life when they dumped me at the boathouse. ”
“Has anything come back at all? Being carried, the feel of the perpetrator?”
“Nothing, hun. Figured I’d been knocked out.”
That in itself was something. I released a long breath. “If only I’d given in to my obsession and put cameras outside your place earlier.”
She laughed. “You said the inside thoughts out loud.”
I tried to smile but failed. “Who in your family would benefit most from ye not being around?”
She blinked and switched her gaze to the arched brick window, our reflections watching us where I’d snapped a lamp on to give her the comfort of light.
“You think I was attacked because I was a Marchant? But nobody knew. Except, there were some strange things that happened in the month before.”
“Tell me about them.”
“It’s probably nothing, but I had someone knock at my door right before dawn, not long after I’d got home from work and had gone to bed.
They did it multiple times over the course of a couple of weeks, and on each occasion, no one was there.
I asked Cassie for time off to investigate it.
I was going to wait up and watch out for them.
It was driving me crazy, mostly because I got it into my head that finally, someone had uncovered my previous identity. ”
“What happened when ye waited up?”
“They never came. Then I got this.” She drew her finger across her throat, her half-smile fading. “Most likely, it was some local kid playing me up because he heard what I did for a living. At least one of my neighbours knew and judged me for it. Anyway, that’s a dead end, and I had another idea.”
I locked away the facts and gestured for her to go on.
“Earlier, when I talked to the skeleton girls, we discussed Esther and Karla. The by-the-neck attack method connects the killer. But what isn’t obvious is how the victims connect. Why them? Then there’s me. If all are sex workers, I fit a pattern.”
I’d heard something similar from Arran, likely courtesy of the women and their combined minds on the problem. “That’s helpful.”
She shrugged. “I’m sure I’m not the first to think it, but if it feels right, maybe it is.
And that works for my assumption someone targeted me at home because of my job.
” Dixie pondered her mug. “Can I move on to the final name? It’s been churning up inside me for a lifetime. I want to share it with you.”
I already knew who I suspected. There were three trusted company CEOs she would’ve been exposed to as a young teenager in her grandparents’ home.
Dixie hadn’t reacted to Sullivan’s name, which she would’ve if his father had been her attacker.
That left only one other man. Paul Debrock.
Owner of Debrock Finances. A money lender.
I’d kill him for what he’d done. “Tell me.”
“Denise Harford.”
My anger froze. The owner of Harford and Tien. The woman. “Not the name I expected.”
Dixie released a short breath. “Right? She’s all elegant and cultured and lives in this fancy place that’s practically a castle. That’s the Tien part. Not another person but the name of her family home. Outwardly, she’s the image of a respectable woman. No one would believe what she did.”
The look in her eyes had me rapidly correcting my mistake. “I believe ye.”
Her gaze clung to mine, as if my acceptance had been important. “Her husband was the rapist, but I don’t think he’d even remember me. But Denise, she managed it all.”
Two of them. Two names on my list. Another company rotting from the inside.
Dixie took another drink and set the mug down, adjusting her position to face me.
“Denise and my grandfather were tight, but they were very different. She would say in my hearing that girls had no place in business, despite the fact she ran her own company. Then when out of earshot of anyone else, she’d point to my grandmother and tell me to watch her so I should learn early what kind of role I’d be playing if my grandfather insisted on keeping me around. ”
She shrank in on herself, then took an unsteady breath and straightened her shoulders.
“One evening, when my grandfather threw a party at his house, she took me aside from the rest of the guests, saying nice things about my outfit. I was so proud of the pretty sequined gown, which was my first real grown-up evening dress, so I chatted away. I had no idea what she was doing until it was too late. While everyone else from the party was in the conservatory, her husband, Terrence, had crashed out drunk in a lounge on the opposite side of the house. Denise led me to the room and told me to wake him. I was happy to be helpful, so trotted over and shook his arm. Nothing happened. Denise hissed at me to say the line ‘The entertainment is here’. I obeyed her. He lurched up from the furniture and snatched my arm, yanking me face-first down on a chair.”
She faltered, her expression haunted and her gaze on that distant scene.
“It happened so fast. He wrenched up my dress, ripped down my underwear, and shoved his fingers where no one else had ever touched me. I screamed, but he pushed my face into the cushions. Then he raped me. No hesitation. It hurt. It took two minutes but ruined every part of me. It stole my safety, my identity. Everything.”
My insides turned to stone.
I forced calm to my surface so I didn’t scare her.
Dixie continued. “I had no chance of getting away. He was so strong, and I didn’t understand any of it until he thrust into me.
I was fourteen. Mostly na?ve about the realities of sex, as a kid should be.
Denise watched it, blocking the door. She even tucked him away when he stumbled off me and slumped back down.
Then she snatched my arm and dragged me to my grandmother. ”
Dixie’s features crumpled. She forced out the words to finish the story.
“Denise announced that she’d caught me with her husband, and I was a dirty little slut.
She slapped my face and confronted me in the room where it was just the three of us.
I was in shock, and I barely managed a word.
I think when you’re a kid and still learning right from wrong, you trust others too much.
I somehow got it in my head that I’d been bad, and it really had been my fault.
I’d done my task wrong and I was to blame.
That shut my mouth as much as my grandmother’s horrified expression.
If she’d shown any other emotion, I might have managed to speak. ”
I couldn’t hold my tongue. “A man had just raped ye. There was no right way for ye to behave other than traumatised.”
Her nod was shaky. Confirming her relief.
“This is going to sound fucked up, but even worse than the attack was my grandmother’s reaction.
It killed me. She believed Denise, without question.
She escorted me to my room and announced that I had to get out.
She wouldn’t even look at me. Her revulsion only added to mine, and I knew I was the worst kid alive for what I’d done.
Or allowed. Without seeing anyone else, I packed a bag and left in the taxi she’d booked to return me to Mum’s.
But when I got there, sore, and broken, Mum was just as angry.
She’d moved a new guy in and hissed that I couldn’t stay.
She said I’d ruin everything, like I must’ve done with my grandparents. ”
I stifled a fresh wave of emotions. The one person she should’ve been able to rely on let her down as much as the others. “Where did ye go?”
“On a late-night bus to Manchester. It was after two a.m., and I wandered the streets until two women noticed me. Sex workers. I still couldn’t speak, but they must’ve recognised something bad had happened because one said she’d take me to a street warden.
I nearly bolted, so instead, she took me into this place that I later learned was a brothel and set me up with somewhere to sleep.
Her name was Deborah, and she kept me safe.
To a point. That world was dangerous in ways I was brand-new to.
A few weeks on, a client killed her. By that point, I’d already been offered cash for favours.
I had spiralled so badly I barely knew who I was anymore, so I took his money. The rest is history.”
She shook her head, her blonde hair spilling over her shoulder.
“I was only a couple of weeks off my fifteenth birthday. In the right clothes and makeup, I passed for older, and I lied to everyone about my age so I didn’t get picked up by social services.
I wasn’t like Mila. I came from a shitty background, so I just slotted straight back in.
I worked clubs and brothels for the next several years, sometimes trying to make it with other jobs.
I had six months in a bakery that I loved.
Early mornings never bothered me. But then the owner tried to force himself on me, and his wife fired me for it. ”
“The name of the baker?”