The Woman Who Lied(19)

I swallow my disappointment. I don’t know what I expected her to say. He might have been off the scene for sixteen years but he’s far from stupid. I was hoping he was rusty. That he’d finally slip up, make a mistake, as he was out of practice.

I get up and tuck my notebook into the pocket of my coat. ‘Well, thank you so much, Lorraine. I know this is a shock.’

She stubs out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and immediately lights another. ‘Am I in danger here? What if he comes back for me this time?’

I couldn’t rule it out. Who knows what attracted this man to his victims? They ranged in age from thirty to forty-five. He never sexually abuses them, just stabs them and marks them with his sinister praying-mantis etchings. One thing is for certain, he’s a misogynistic psychopath.

‘Is there anywhere you can stay for a few days?’

She sniffs. ‘Yes. My daughter lives in Paignton. I can stay there.’

‘I think that would be a good idea,’ I say, moving towards the hallway. She follows me out. ‘I’ll get one of my officers to sit with you until you’re ready to leave.’

She opens the door to her flat and we step out into the main hallway. The front door is still open, the crime-scene tape still surrounding the garden. I’d like her to be out of here before the body of Trisha Banks is taken away.

The wind whips at the hem of my smart wool coat. I can see Saunders and Doyle standing in the doorway of one of the neighbours opposite. Michelle Doyle is making notes – a good sign. Hopefully they’ve seen something. I’m about to go over when Lorraine suddenly pipes up: ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘I know it’s not much, but he smokes. The man I saw. He was a smoker.’

‘Okay.’ It’s not much but it might help. We’ve had sod-all else over the years.

‘But not regular cigarettes,’ she continues, from the doorway. ‘Those menthol ones. They have a very distinctive smell. I know because my granddad used to smoke them, and my dad and brother.’

Menthol cigarettes have recently been banned due to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, so I wonder where he’s getting them from. I thank her, then hold up the crime-scene tape so I can walk underneath it. A tall man who smokes recently banned menthol cigarettes. It’s more than we’ve ever had before.

Maybe he’s making mistakes after all.





14





Emilia stares at her phone, swallowing her panic as she tries to work out the doorbell-camera app that Elliot had installed before he went away. She’d had to hide the wreath in the garage at the end of the garden, so the kids wouldn’t see it, then make an effort to act normally until she’d dropped them off at school. She didn’t want to ring Elliot and worry him while he’s away.

Now she’s alone in the house, standing at the island in the echoey kitchen that suddenly seems too big. One of the lilies’ petals has dropped onto the marble worktop. Elliot would have scooped that up in a flash, frantically bleaching the area it touched just in case the pollen stained the expensive stone. But she leaves it where it is. Eventually she works out how to see the camera footage and her heart beats faster as she brings it up on screen. She rewinds. It must have been put there this morning when they were still getting ready. And, yes, there at 7.45 a.m. is a figure walking down their driveway holding the wreath. Emilia presses her reading glasses further onto her nose. The figure comes into focus and she can see that it’s a man, and now he’s bending down to place the wreath on the brickwork to the left of the front door. That was why Elliot didn’t notice it when he rushed out this morning.

The man doesn’t ring the bell but takes a few steps back to look up at the windows. Who is it? Does she know him? His face is now in view in the fish-eye lens. He’s bearded, in his fifties perhaps. And then she notices the familiar brown uniform. It’s a delivery guy, for fuck’s sake. She closes the app with a frustrated sigh. And then her eye goes to the card that she’d pulled from the wreath, now lying on the dining table. She snatches it up. The In Sympathy is scribbled in black ink and was probably written by the florist at the request of whoever ordered it. She holds the card up to the light so she can see the address better. It’s written in a small font in the corner of the card but she can just make out that the florist is local. Twickenham. Does that mean whoever sent it lives around here? Or did they just choose a florist that was close to her home?

Her mobile is still in her hand, so she dials the number. A woman answers cheerfully.

‘Hi,’ says Emilia, swallowing, her throat suddenly dry. ‘I have a wreath here that was sent to me this morning but there is no name or address and I wanted to check who it’s from.’

‘Oh, okay,’ the woman says brightly. ‘Hold on a sec, I’ll just look.’ She hears the sound of typing and then, ‘There’s no address or telephone number …’

Emilia takes a deep breath. ‘Okay. What about payment details?’

‘Well, it was paid for in cash. Hold on …’ More typing. ‘Yes, that’s all we have. Someone called us and later they came into the shop to pay.’

Her stomach lurches. Does this mean they’re local? ‘Can you remember what the person looked like?’

‘It was a man I think … in his thirties, maybe. Mid-brown hair cut short. He said – I remember now – he said he was ordering them on behalf of his wife, Miranda Moody.’