Page 94 of Her Last Breath

This wasn’t the time to care about them though.

‘I had no one else to blame. When he died. When your dad left. When I sometimes didn’t even have the energy to get out of bed. Only you were there and, instead of turning to you, I shouted at you and tormented you and pushed you away.’

Jane had wanted to hear this for so many years, these words that exonerated her and freed her from the shackles that bound her to the past, while she was trying to escape at the same time.

She held her mother closer.

‘It’s over, Mum. We’re past all this.’

Her mother kissed the back of Jane’s hand.

‘Do you want to know the strangest thing? And you won’t believe me. I loved you the most, Jane. You were the only one who stuck with me. I felt like your brother and father both left.’

Jane was shocked by these words. They made no sense to her, and yet in a way they made absolute sense. Jane didn’t point out to her mother that she had only stayed until she could get away. Because she was back now when her mother needed her the most and so in a way she had been the only one to stay.

Did her mother wish Jane was there during those years that they had been apart? Jane’s heart broke, thinking how they had both been missing each other, divided by two hundred miles and too much baggage.

‘Remember me, will you?’ Maeve said, her voice weaker still. ‘But in a kind way. In a way I don’t deserve to be remembered.’

‘Only good things, Mum,’ Jane reassured her.

‘Yes, only good things.’

They sat in silence broken only by her mother’s raspy breathing and jerky coughs. Jane’s phone beeped: she saw it was a message from Father Walsh. He was probably on his way.

‘I don’t think he’ll make it,’ her mother said. ‘Would you mind? Read me something?’

Jane picked up a book of prayers with one hand, holding her mother’s hand with the other. She recited the Lord’s prayer, unable to focus on anything else. Her mother repeated the words with her, only she stopped halfway. When Jane finished reading, she realised Maeve was still: she was gone. Jane kissed her again on the forehead. She noticed her face was serene, a smile playing on her lips.

Jane sat beside her, holding her hand. Soon there would be arrangements to make, formalities to deal with. In this stolen moment she was allowed to be alone with her mother, just for a while.

Jane thought how different this was to what she had imagined when she first got the news of her mother’s terminal diagnosis. She didn’t think it would end like this. Thirty-two years of bitterness between the two women, but in the end, despite everything that had passed between them, she was able to do this for her mother. Give her a good death and give herself closure.

Day Seven

Chapter 65

The desk sergeant gave her a sympathetic look as Jane entered Burnley HQ, before offering his condolences. It was late morning, Jane running on empty. The previous night had passed in a blur, with a steady drift of people through the house: Father Walsh, Dr Sandler, the undertakers. By the time Jane got to bed, it was already three in the morning and then she wasn’t able to sleep. She had messaged Sameer to tell him, refusing his offers of help; the news had then obviously been shared with people who knew her.

Alone in her team area, thankful it was a Sunday so not many people were in the building, Jane stopped in front of the photos of Alice, Mark and Bill. Pinned below theirs was Colin Wilson’s face, his links to them marked in bold letters and neat arrows. DS Johnson’s steady hand, no doubt. Letting the words on the boards wash over her, as though making sense of them afresh, she could feel her heart beating faster than normal. Her body telling her she should be at home, grieving. Pushing aside that notion, she thought of the haulage firm where Bill had worked. The indomitable Sarah Morne telling her Bailey’s Haulage had been closed down, after being implicated in people trafficking. Curious about these firms, Jane started to consider if there might be something bigger going on. Maybe with other haulage firms across Lancashire?

Aware she was delaying the inevitable funeral planning, Jane understood herself enough to know this was how she would cope with her grief: occupying herself with work.

Switching her computer on, Jane tried to follow the faint thread that had presented itself. Was something much more sinister happening on her patch? She caught herself, realising she was thinking of Burnley as hers.

Running a search on haulage firms in the Burnley and surrounding areas that had been investigated over the last couple of years by the team, Jane discovered there were two: Burnley and Pendle Haulage and the Shotski Brothers, out in Colne. They had been under investigation for months, until lorries were specifically targeted in each case. A routine check would have missed the hidden panelling, hiding sex workers and labourers from Vietnam and Moldova. Supporting evidence of payments, holding houses for the victims and then further transportation onwards to other parts of the country were found in raids. There were messages between the drivers and the business owners, not deleted yet because the cargo was still in transit.

Logging in to a second database, Jane scoured through Bill’s HMRC records. He had worked for both firms that had closed down. That wasn’t odd in itself, there weren’t many in the area that he could potentially work for. What was interesting was that he had left both the Shotski Brothers and Burnley and Pendle Haulage shortly before the arrests at both. Literally a week before in each case. The same pattern that had happened with Bailey’s Haulage.

Was Bill carrying on the work he had started with Colin, back in DRC? Was his sense of morality so strong that he was giving evidence against these firms, leaving them just before he exposed them?

Jane’s head was starting to ache, telling her she needed some carbs or sugar. Finding a Snickers bar in her drawer, she wolfed it down in two bites. The facts running in her mind were goading her on, telling her she needed to make sense of them. Jane rubbed her face to wake herself up, looking through details of Bill’s past.

He had a record of working for a number of haulage firms across the country with occasional stints when he was classed as non-resident. These weren’t charity drops, they were years he spent abroad. Jane noted the locations.

Germany, Poland. Albania.

She wondered if he had evidence lurking in his phone or laptop about these organisations. Had the two firms that closed down simply been careless enough for Bill to be able to prove their guilt? Or if she dug deeper, what would she find?