Read Online The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) by Tania Carver - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tania Carver
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trying to take her mind off what was happening. Or what might be happening. She could have been back in her office on campus. Almost.
Because this wasn’t a way to forget. All Marina did was remember.
Fiona Welch. PhD student. Murderer. Killed three women and one man – a police officer – that they knew of. Her self-justification: an attempt to demonstrate a transgressive lifestyle. To show superiority to other humans. In reality: self-deluded jealousy. The victims were all ex-girlfriends of her boyfriends or, in the case of the police officer, her lover.
Marina knew all that. What she didn’t know was the woman’s life story. Where she came from. What caused her to grow into the monster she became?
She looked at the screen, rubbed her eyes, ran another search.
Names appeared. Photos. None of them right. She didn’t want Fiona Welch the business analyst whose LinkedIn profile said hailed from Cardiff. Or the Fiona Welch who, according to Facebook, was a second-year Classics student at Manchester University and was planning a trip to Glastonbury. She redefined her search parameters. Added
Murderer
to the list. That did it.
A collection of true-crime articles appeared. She leaned forward, read the titles of each one, checked on their provenance. It was what she had expected. Some were erudite, psychological in approach, attempting – or claiming to attempt – to understand what had formed her, made her behave the way she had. Others were more predictably lurid, their prose sensational, making no attempt at understanding, just glorifying and amplifying her violently murderous career.
Marina realised she should have been looking at the reports with a degree of professional detachment but since it was her own husband who she was trying to find she found it increasingly difficult. Especially after reading the tabloid reports.
My husband has been taken by
that woman
…
She shook the thought out of her head. Not that woman.
That
woman was dead. Another woman. One who she needed to find. Hoped this would help her to do so. Head down again, she tried to continue. She read everything, attempting to ignore both the tabloid prurient descriptions of crime scenes and skipping over the broadsheet pseudo-psychology behind her motivations. Just the facts. All she wanted. Facts. From them and more official reports and associated databases she managed to piece together Fiona Welch’s early life.
Fiona Welch had been brought up in various care homes in Chelmsford, Essex. Marina made a list of the ones noted. Foster homes were also mentioned but she could find no specific details of them. She had attended various schools in Chelmsford, not lasting very long at most of them. Marina leaned forward. It was becoming interesting. The schools she attended all spoke of an initially disruptive pupil who, with time and effort, settled down and began to apply herself to work. Such an achievement in itself shouldn’t have been a surprise, thought Marina, but children from care and foster homes always struggled, always started on a lower rung to children from happy homes. She immediately felt guilty for thinking that. Her husband Phil had had a similar background, brought up by foster parents who had eventually adopted him. Phil’s adoptive father, and possibly the greatest male influence on his life, had been a police detective. And that was, even after all this time, something she still couldn’t work out about him.
Phil, Marina had often observed, was the last person most people would think of as a police officer. She had watched, amused, as he had introduced himself to friends and colleagues at the university. His dress sense, hair and general manner all suggested another lecturer, possibly English, maybe History or even Drama. Then she would see their faces change when he told them who he was and what he did for a living. Apart from the fact that he was good at catching criminals, Marina wondered whether he wouldn’t have been
Because this wasn’t a way to forget. All Marina did was remember.
Fiona Welch. PhD student. Murderer. Killed three women and one man – a police officer – that they knew of. Her self-justification: an attempt to demonstrate a transgressive lifestyle. To show superiority to other humans. In reality: self-deluded jealousy. The victims were all ex-girlfriends of her boyfriends or, in the case of the police officer, her lover.
Marina knew all that. What she didn’t know was the woman’s life story. Where she came from. What caused her to grow into the monster she became?
She looked at the screen, rubbed her eyes, ran another search.
Names appeared. Photos. None of them right. She didn’t want Fiona Welch the business analyst whose LinkedIn profile said hailed from Cardiff. Or the Fiona Welch who, according to Facebook, was a second-year Classics student at Manchester University and was planning a trip to Glastonbury. She redefined her search parameters. Added
Murderer
to the list. That did it.
A collection of true-crime articles appeared. She leaned forward, read the titles of each one, checked on their provenance. It was what she had expected. Some were erudite, psychological in approach, attempting – or claiming to attempt – to understand what had formed her, made her behave the way she had. Others were more predictably lurid, their prose sensational, making no attempt at understanding, just glorifying and amplifying her violently murderous career.
Marina realised she should have been looking at the reports with a degree of professional detachment but since it was her own husband who she was trying to find she found it increasingly difficult. Especially after reading the tabloid reports.
My husband has been taken by
that woman
…
She shook the thought out of her head. Not that woman.
That
woman was dead. Another woman. One who she needed to find. Hoped this would help her to do so. Head down again, she tried to continue. She read everything, attempting to ignore both the tabloid prurient descriptions of crime scenes and skipping over the broadsheet pseudo-psychology behind her motivations. Just the facts. All she wanted. Facts. From them and more official reports and associated databases she managed to piece together Fiona Welch’s early life.
Fiona Welch had been brought up in various care homes in Chelmsford, Essex. Marina made a list of the ones noted. Foster homes were also mentioned but she could find no specific details of them. She had attended various schools in Chelmsford, not lasting very long at most of them. Marina leaned forward. It was becoming interesting. The schools she attended all spoke of an initially disruptive pupil who, with time and effort, settled down and began to apply herself to work. Such an achievement in itself shouldn’t have been a surprise, thought Marina, but children from care and foster homes always struggled, always started on a lower rung to children from happy homes. She immediately felt guilty for thinking that. Her husband Phil had had a similar background, brought up by foster parents who had eventually adopted him. Phil’s adoptive father, and possibly the greatest male influence on his life, had been a police detective. And that was, even after all this time, something she still couldn’t work out about him.
Phil, Marina had often observed, was the last person most people would think of as a police officer. She had watched, amused, as he had introduced himself to friends and colleagues at the university. His dress sense, hair and general manner all suggested another lecturer, possibly English, maybe History or even Drama. Then she would see their faces change when he told them who he was and what he did for a living. Apart from the fact that he was good at catching criminals, Marina wondered whether he wouldn’t have been
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