“I called so many favours in on this that if I end up with egg on my face, I’m going to be in payback city for years.”
“I can imagine. Not many magistrates would stick their neck out on something as tenuous as this.” Blackett’s smile was as cheerful as the drizzle that had just started to fall. “Let’s hope we find something.” He moved away to talk to his assistants.
Duvall cleared her throat. “Right, everybody. You all know what you’re supposed to be doing once we get inside. Professor Blackett and his assistants will wait with me under the clock in Middle Street. If anyone finds anything at all suspicious, come to us at once and the pathologists will go with you and examine whatever it is you’ve found. Mr. Green?”
Barren stepped forward with a theatrical gesture that looked completely absurd. “This way,” he announced.
“Good luck,” Duvall called as the team filed in. She followed them as they fanned out to their allotted sections. “We’ll need it,” she added under her breath.
THIRTY-NINE
For once, Kit was awake first. He shifted across the bed and wrapped his arms round Fiona, kissing the back of her neck. “Unnh,” she groaned.
“I’m getting up now,” he said. “I’m going to make kedgeree for breakfast.”
“Oh God,” Fiona sighed. “Must you? Couldn’t we just lie here and luxuriate in the afterglow for a while?”
Kit chuckled. “The afterglow was then. This is now. I can’t think why, but I’ve woken up with an appetite. Get yourself out of bed, Dr. Cameron. Breakfast in…oh, make it forty minutes.” He peeled himself away from her with another kiss and jumped out of bed, pumped with energy. When it came to displacement activity, like most writers, Kit had turned it into a fine art.
Fiona listened to his receding footsteps, then dragged herself into a sitting position. She yawned, stretched her spine and got out of bed, flexing shoulders that had stiffened in the night. Too much tension, she told herself. Far too much tension. Not knowing what was happening in Sarah Duvall’s investigation was a kind of torture. And given how she’d left things with Steve, she couldn’t even use him as a way in.
If Georgia was dead, she needed to know. Her fear for Kit vibrated through her constantly now, and she couldn’t be with him twenty-four hours a day. At least if they found Georgia’s remains in the market, they could take steps to make him safer than he was now. And if she was wrong…For once in her life, Fiona longed to be hopelessly, embarrassingly wrong. She wanted nothing more than to see Georgia’s face smiling out of the morning papers, restored to Anthony’s arms in one piece. She’d even forgive her for the anxiety she’d caused, if only it meant she could feel Kit was safe again. She didn’t know how she was going to get through a normal day at work when her mind was so heavily occupied elsewhere.
Twenty minutes later she was showered, dressed and decently made up. More than that, she was awake. Over breakfast, they said little, allowing the radio to fill the silence. There were too many thoughts and fears rumbling in the background of their minds for idle chatter to be possible. Fiona finally pushed her plate away after two helpings. “That was wonderful,” she said. “Not only a night to remember, but a morning as well.” She stood up and reached for her briefcase.
“You’re lucky to have me,” he said, grinning wolfishly, then spoiling it with a wink.
“I know. And I plan to keep it that way. You will look after yourself today, won’t you?” Fiona gave a nervous smile and stepped into his arms for a hug. “Take care,” she said softly.
“Of course I’ll take care. I’ve got a book to finish, love. I’ll talk to you later.” It was a promise he fully intended to keep.
Like a child on Christmas Eve, Steve had scarcely been able to sleep. What had happened between him and Terry thus far had left him feeling breathless and exhilarated. But the promise of what could follow had robbed him of all but the sketchiest of sleep. And yet he wasn’t tired.
He leaned back on the pillows, stretching his arms over his head and arching his spine. Relaxing again, he rolled on his side to watch her. She was a sprawler, legs and arms extended like a giant starfish. Terry lay on her stomach, face turned towards him. Even with smudged make — up and sleep-distorted hair, he thought she was gorgeous. He felt dazzled and dazed in equal measure. His own body felt strange and new. He’d made more technically perfect love with a woman before, but last night technique had seemed irrelevant. He’d occupied his body entirely, not a scrap of himself available for scrutiny of what he was doing. There had been none of that sense of performing for someone else’s benefit, or his own. Whatever had happened between him and Terry, it had consumed him as never before.
And it had been fun. They hadn’t just burned up in the heat of passion, they’d found laughter as well. Steve had woken in the same familiar space, but he was looking at the morning with the eyes of an explorer. It was unnerving, almost frightening to find himself so thoroughly gripped by attraction. All his adult sophistication, all his professional shrewdness had left him unprepared and vulnerable, and he didn’t know how to handle it.
Terry stirred, making a small indeterminate noise in the back of her throat. Her face twitched, eyebrows rising. Then she opened her eyes.
A moment’s disorientation, then her mouth spread in a self-satisfied grin. “Thank fuck it wasn’t a dream,” she said, gathering her limbs together and snuggling against him.
He rubbed his chin, bristled with overnight stubble, across the snarl of her hair, slipping his arms around her. “You academics have a real way with words.”
“Ah, but actions speak louder than words, and I am definitely a woman of action,” Terry countered, running her fingers down the defined muscles of his chest and across his ribs. She could feel him hard against her, and hooked one leg over his, languorously moving her hips towards him.
Steve groaned softly. “You’re a morning person, then,” he said, his voice roughening with arousal.
She pulled her head back and pouted. “You have a problem with that?” Her voice was as much of a tease as what her body was doing to his.
He drew her into his arms, her breasts warm against his chest. “Not unless you have to be somewhere in the next hour.”
Sarah Duvall felt sick. She knew it had more to do with having had no sleep and too much coffee than with what she’d seen at Smithfield Market, but understanding didn’t make her faint underlying nausea go away. Explaining to Anthony Fitzgerald exactly what he was going to have to identify at the morgue hadn’t helped either. She almost wished that the killer had stuck more closely to the text. Then there would have been one less horror for them to face.
She sat grim-faced in the back of the car. But the immobility of her features disguised a mind that was racing. This case was messy in more ways than the obvious. It was going to produce potentially devastating media interest, which meant every move she and her team made would be under scrutiny not only from an army of hacks but also from a nervous hierarchy worried lest she should do or say the wrong thing.
And then there was Fiona Cameron. With this latest development, Fiona would no longer be the only person putting two and two together and coming up with a serial killer. It wasn’t something Duvall wanted to acknowledge publicly, but she had no conviction that they could continue to maintain there was no connection between the deaths of Drew Shand, Jane Elias and Georgia Lester. Either way, it wouldn’t be long before some bright and ambitious journalist remembered that Fiona lived with a crime writer. They’d be beating a path to her office, and while she believed Fiona was unlikely to go to the press off her own bat, Duvall had no idea how she would respond to a direct question from a journalist. And once the kite was in the air, there would be a stream of panicking thriller writers demanding police protection. It was a minefield. Especially if the media also found out that someone had been sending out death threats to crime writers.