“So it was definitely Milly Lancaster?”
“We’re not one-hundred-per-cent sure yet. We’ll need a sample of her DNA to compare with what we got from the car.”
“I can drive over to her house and bring in a hairbrush or toothbrush.”
“It can wait until tomorrow. The tech guys haven’t quite finished yet. I just wanted to fill you in on what we have so far.”
“Thanks,” Taylor said. “Murder. Are we any closer to any motive?”
“We’ve got nothing. Nasty, though, whatever it was.”
She rang off and looked at the ominous bank of clouds forming in the west. Time for bed. She took out the pink pillbox she usually carried in her bag, shook two blue capsules into her hand and swallowed them with the last of the ginger beer. She had started taking the sleeping pills shortly after the accident and now she found she couldn’t cope without the dreamless sleep they gave her. She knew that in half an hour or so, her eyes would start to feel heavy and her mind would slowly fill with dark mist. She put the pillbox back in her pocket and went upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER NINE
Taylor woke to the sound of her phone ringing beside her.
“There are two police cars outside Milly’s house,” Alice Green said without any preamble. “They’ve been there since early this morning.”
“They’re probably just having another look around.”
“Have you found something?”
“We’re not sure yet.”
“Milly’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Like I said, we’re not sure yet. We’ll know more during the course of the day.” She tried to sound as steady and reassuring as possible.
“I’m going to go over and ask them what they’re doing.”
“Please, Mrs Green, please just let them do their jobs. If anything turns up, I promise I’ll let you know.”
“Will you be popping round this morning? I’ll make us some tea and we can have some honey and bread. The honey’s a bit odd, but it’s still good, you know.”
“I have to go to work.” Taylor looked at the clock on the microwave. She was going to be late already.
“Milly was my friend.”
“I’ll see if I have time to come by later.” She felt obliged to — after all this was an old lady who’d lost one of the few people she was close to. “I have to go to work now, though.”
The police station in Trotterdown was a far cry from the hovel Taylor had worked at in Edinburgh. The outside of the station was clean and fresh. Flower-boxes had been placed on each side of the entrance. The car park was almost full, for once, with unfamiliar cars. She realised why when she went inside the station.
Unsurprisingly, the story of a car going over the cliff at Merryhead had attracted reporters, who were now pestering PC Hargreaves at reception. “I don’t have anything to tell you,” Hargreaves insisted. “I’m just manning the front desk. I’m sure you’ll all be informed in due time.”
Taylor hated journalists. After Danny’s accident in Edinburgh, they had hounded her day and night. One had even shown up at the funeral, complete with photographer. She despised the lot of them.
“Morning,” Hargreaves said. He looked harassed. “The DI wants everybody in for a meeting at nine thirty.”
“Is this about the car that went over the cliff?” asked a woman with a microphone. “Do we know if there was anybody in the car when it went over the edge?”
“Yes,” Taylor said without thinking, “we do happen to know whether or not there was someone in the car at the time.” She walked past them down the corridor. Hargreaves sniggered.
DI Killian was poring over some notes in the small meeting room. “There’s a pack of wolves at the front desk,” Taylor told him. “It doesn’t take that lot long to sniff out a story.”
“I’m afraid this is just the beginning. What happened up on Merryhead is going to be big news. You should know by now that nothing much usually happens around here.”
“Can’t we just kick them out?”
“I’m afraid not. In this day and age it’s a case of quid pro quo. They can actually prove to be very useful.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Press coverage helps us reach people we couldn’t otherwise. Have you seen Duncan?”
“His car wasn’t in the car park.”
“He’s probably hungover. You’re not a drinker, are you?”
“Not much. I’m usually on the tonic water or ginger beer.”
The door opened and PC Eric White and PC Thomas White walked in. They looked alike and shared the same surname, so everybody assumed incorrectly that they were related. “We can’t wait all day for Duncan,” Killian said. “We’ve got a lot to go through today. Taylor, you can start at the beginning for the benefit of the Whites.”
“Milly Lancaster was reported missing on Saturday,” Taylor started. “The PC who took the call didn’t feel there was anything to be concerned about. Milly’s friend Alice Green phoned in again yesterday. I took the call myself. DS Duncan and I went to take a statement and have a look around Milly’s house. There was no sign of a disturbance and the only thing missing was Milly’s car. As we all know, the car was found yesterday at the bottom of Merryhead,”
“Right.” Killian glanced at his notes. “I have the initial forensics report right here. The brakes were off and the locks on the doors had been tampered with. They were jammed shut. The engine wasn’t on when the car went over the edge.”
“So someone pushed the car over the edge with Mrs Lancaster inside?” Thomas White said.
“It appears so, yes. There was blood on the shattered windscreen as well as strands of hair. We now have some hair samples from Mrs Lancaster’s house and they’re being analysed as we speak.”
“If she was inside the car, what happened to her body?” Eric White asked.
“She was probably washed out to sea,” Taylor suggested.
“Which may mean we’ll never find her body,” Killian pointed out. “The tide would have taken her right out.” His phone started to ring in his pocket.
“Killian,” he answered it. “Thank you.” He put it back and frowned. “That settles it, then. The blood found on the windscreen belongs to Milly Lancaster. She was definitely in the car when it went over the edge of the cliff.” He scratched at a scab on his nose.
“The missing person case is now a murder investigation,” he added. “White and White, I want you to start gathering information about Milly Lancaster. We need to speak to everybody who might have spoken to her before she ended up on the rocks. We have to piece together her movements before the car was pushed over the cliff.”
“Alice Green last saw her on Friday evening at around seven,” Taylor said.
“Then we’ll start there. You can speak to Mrs Green yourself. I’m going to liaise with our friends from the press. I want Milly Lancaster’s photograph out on all media by tomorrow morning. Somebody must have seen something. An old lady doesn’t just end up at the bottom of a cliff without somebody knowing something about it.”
CHAPTER TEN
DC Taylor’s heart was beating faster than normal as she drove to Polgarrow. Murder, she thought. Finally, something to sink my teeth into. Dreadful, of course, but also something she could get really involved in. Since she had transferred to Trotterdown, nothing she had worked on had sparked much interest. The odd housebreaking and a less than suspicious death of a ninety-year-old man had been the highlight of her time in the south-west so far. But now she had a murder to investigate.