Chapter 56
Three weeks later
Bella was in the car, skirting Regent’s Park along Albany Street, towards Camden, when she got the message.
They’ve got him!!!
She shot a glance at the screen of her phone, then swung a left at the lights and into the outer circle of the park at Gloucester Gate, heading towards the zoo.
It was early evening, just getting dark, and the roads were emptying, but she wouldn’t be able to process what she had read until she had stopped the car, and she knew there was a car park there.
She found it, pulled in and turned off the ignition, then called Eve straight back.
‘Todd Mitchell?’ she asked. ‘They’ve got him?’
‘Yep!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m positive. Sarah just called me.’
‘How?’ she asked. ‘How did they catch him?’
‘He turned up in a dumpster.’
‘A dumpster?’ Bella gasped. ‘You mean … alive?’
‘Alive but tied up and gagged and dumped out with the rubbish outside a factory in Maidstone.’
‘Oh my God.’ Bella drew a sharp intake of breath. ‘Who did that to him?’
‘The police think it was an organised crime group. They think he called in a favour or had something on them or … something. Anyway, the theory is that he went to them for help getting out of the country and they gave him shelter for a while and then turned on him.’
‘Did they want him dead?’
‘Maybe. Except that his phone went off grid soon after the attack on you, and then suddenly came back on. It was lying on a pile of rubbish next to him in the dumpster. So whoever did this was most probably having fun and games with him. He would have known he had until the battery died to be found alive.’
‘Jesus.’ Bella shuddered. ‘He got lucky.’
‘In a way. He might have been better off dead. Prison isn’t going to be a whole lot of fun for him either. Prisoners don’t like cops, and especially not bent cops who are rapists.’
‘So where is he now?’
‘He’s in police custody. He’ll go to court in the morning and from there to Wandsworth prison, Sarah thinks, where he will stay until his trial.’
‘There’ll be a trial?’
‘Well, they’ll have plenty of evidence against him.’
‘Unless it gets lost again.’
‘I don’t think there’s much chance of that this time. The chief of police, the press … the eyes of the world are on this now. And Sarah has the DNA match to Harley as insurance. I think we can safely say that Todd Mitchell will never hurt another woman again.’
They ended the call and Bella sat gazing into the distance for a few moments.
Todd Mitchell had been found. He had been found alive and had been taken into police custody.
She had never felt relief like it. She could finally breathe again.
But as she switched her engine on and drove back home, she knew it wasn’t over for her yet.
She still had to come to terms with the colossal mistake she had made.
She was doing whatever she could to put it right.
There were officers already being held accountable in Mitchell’s absence.
The force had already referred itself to the Independent Office of Police Complaints.
There would be an inquiry into Mitchell’s misconduct and into how he had managed to get away with what he had.
Bella knew this, because the chief of police had asked her to be there, to give evidence. She would, of course.
The Blenheim Road witnesses would have to give evidence too, she had been told.
Benfield and Norris would have to explain why they had lied about seeing Jamie on the evening of Christy’s murder.
They, too, would have been pressured or cajoled by Mitchell, no doubt.
Eve had been confident that it would all come out.
Bella felt a strange combination of pain and elation at the thought of this. There would be justice for her mum. There would be justice for her. But there would also be justice for Jamie Clarke, who, right now, needed it the most.