She had obviously forgotten they were supposed to be meeting tonight, which angered him – how could she be so bloody cavalier? She looked at him blankly at first, as if trying to place him, then without saying a word turned and headed back inside. Lloyd felt a fool standing there, clutching his small Jiffy bag, like an unwanted postman. What was he supposed to do? Enter or wait here? Had he been dismissed? Or welcomed?
Lloyd stepped inside quickly. He was here to do a job and leave – no point lingering where people might see him. A black face in this part of town would excite more interest than usual and he wanted to be as anonymous as possible.
‘Hello?’ His voice seemed to echo in the spacious and well-appointed home.
‘Downstairs’ was the listless reply from within.
He walked down a precipitous spiral staircase to the large basement kitchen. He chided himself for it, but he felt deeply uncomfortable here. He had no problem with rich people, with folk enjoying the fruits of their labour, but it was so alien to him. He had never known luxury or privilege. He wouldn’t know what to do with a house this size even if he had one.
‘Drink?’
Harwood smiled grimly at him, as she filled a glass to the brim.
‘I’m ok – I need to get back.’
‘Nonsense,’ Harwood replied, pushing the glass into his hand. ‘So what’s the news from the front?’
Lloyd looked down at the glass in his hand and anger flared through him. She had no right to play games with him.
‘The bodies have both been exhumed now and are with Jim Grieves. We haven’t officially ID’d them yet, but we’re ninety-nine per cent sure they are Roisin Murphy and Isobel Lansley.’
Harwood drained her glass.
‘Press?’
‘Nothing yet, but we’ve closed off the beach again, so it won’t be long before we’re fielding questions. Have we discussed a media strategy with liaison?’
‘Just give the hacks signed copies of Helen’s mugshot. That should do the job.’
Lloyd realized she was attempting humour, which only made this whole situation more surreal. Suddenly he wanted to be out of this place. He had no idea what had occasioned this burst of uncharacteristic behaviour, but he didn’t like it. For the first time he realized that perhaps Harwood wasn’t quite as in control of the situation as she had claimed to be.
‘Here.’
He held out the Jiffy package to her.
‘Put it on the side,’ she said, gesturing towards the obscenely large marble-topped island, before wandering off to the fridge once more.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’
Finally, Lloyd’s anger had erupted.
‘Do you have any idea how dangerous this is? For me? For us? If you’re so bloody uninterested, why did you start all this?’
Harwood paused and turned. She looked surprised, rather than offended, by his words. She shot a look at the package and her face softened. Slowly she made her way back over to him.
‘Forgive me, Lloyd,’ she said softly. ‘It’s been the worst of all days.’
She seemed uncertain whether to go on. For his part, Lloyd wasn’t sure what to say.
‘I know how this must look. But I am grateful for everything you’ve done. I know I can always rely on you.’
She looked at him warmly.
‘So let’s forget my bad behaviour, have a drink and talk about something else shall we?’
‘I don’t want to intrude. Especially if Tim’s at home and -’
‘I kicked him out.’
Lloyd was speechless once more. She didn’t seem keen to elaborate further. Harwood took a step closer to him, her nose now only a couple of inches from his.
‘So why don’t you sit down on the sofa, have a drink and relax?’
As she said it she ran her finger down his face, brushing his lips and chin before coming to rest on his chest. Her eyes sparkled fiercely at him, but he felt no desire for her, just a mixture of horror and pity.
Gently taking her hand from him, he placed his still full glass in hers and said:
‘I really must be getting home.’
78
Jim Grieves never said very much, but today he was unusually taciturn. The reason for this was obvious – two partially decomposed women lay on neighbouring slabs in his mortuary. This meant a sudden spike in workload for Jim – which he never appreciated – but more than that it meant a depressing few hours spent in the company of two young people who should have had their whole lives ahead of them. Fifty-something Jim was truculent and sarcastic, navigating his job with gallows humour, but he had grown-up girls of his own and Helen could tell that he was affected by the latest arrivals to the mortuary.
‘Roisin Murphy and Isobel Lansley,’ Jim began, ‘Missing Persons had their dental records on file. I’ve sent off DNA samples to double-check, but it’s them.’
Helen nodded.
‘How long?’
‘Roisin about two years. Isobel less – a year to eighteen months.’
Two more girls kept alive from beyond the grave through tweets and texts. It gave Helen no satisfaction to see that she had been right about the killer’s need for fresh victims.
‘I’m going to need a bit longer to give you cause of death. But both are likely to have suffered some kind of organ failure. They’ve been starved and kept in darkness. Like Pippa, their eyes have deteriorated, they have a complete absence of vitamin D in their systems, their skin is leathery. At some point their bodies just shut down – I’ll pin it down further as we go on.’
Helen knew this was coming but it still upset her.
‘We do have something here that we didn’t have with Pippa. All three bodies were washed clean – either by the killer or by Mother Nature – but I found something odd on Isobel. Two of the hairs in her fringe were stuck together. Nothing unusual in that – wet sand is sticky – but this was stuck together with some kind of solvent.’
‘Any idea what it is?’
‘Not a clue,’ he replied cheerily. ‘Not my department. But I’ve sent it off for tests. I’ve told them we need it back within hours. You can imagine what they said to that.’
For the first time today, Helen smiled. Jim enjoyed nothing more than winding up the lab crew, whom he unfairly dismissed as automatons.
‘What about the tattoo?’ she said, pressing on.
‘Similar pigments as used on Pippa. Hard to say if he used the same needle – if there’s bacteria on the needle that may help us decide either way – but one thing’s clear, he’s getting better at it. Isobel’s tattoo was much more skilled than Pippa’s.’
Helen took this in.
‘Truth be told,’ Jim continued. ‘You can buy these inks and needles online or in scores of stores in Hampshire. They are all pretty generic and I’m not sure that’s going to take you anywhere. If I were you I’d concentrate on the design. Find out why the bluebird is important to him.’
Helen left shortly after, having thanked Jim for his endeavours. He was right of course, though it didn’t take them any further forward. They had done the necessary checks on the tattoo – nobody sporting a bluebird tattoo had been arrested in recent history, nor was there any record of bodies turning up which were decorated in this way. Computerized records only went back ten to fifteen years, so it might be that the evidence was out there somewhere, predating computerization, but she couldn’t allot valuable manpower to sifting the archive, when the result of this line of investigation was so doubtful.
There was, however, one card left she could play, though it wasn’t a card she was particularly looking forward to using. She was still pondering how to approach this, when her phone rang.
On the other end was a very excitable DC Sanderson.
79
Lloyd was halfway down the stone steps, when he heard her calling after him.
‘Lloyd?’