The Woman Who Lied(49)

He nods.

‘Right.’ My mind is racing, trying to piece together the puzzle. Did she know Martin Butterworth? Maybe she was the officer who put him away seventeen years ago for armed robbery. But, no, that can’t be it. She was around thirty-five. Which means she would have been too young. ‘What’s her name?’

‘DC Louise Greene, ma’am. And the thing is …’ DC Haddock hops from one foot to the other. ‘We’re still not sure of all the details but the woman who found her was DC Greene’s friend. The crime writer Emilia Ward.’





Part Two





33





Emilia Ward. I’ve read some of her books. I’ve always been impressed with how accurate the police procedural part of her stories is. Now I know why, given she was friends with a detective at the Metropolitan Police.

‘Where is Emilia now?’

DC Haddock pushes a lock of hair from his eyes. His face has a greasy sheen. ‘I’ve taken a statement and let her go home. She was in a bit of a state, as you can imagine.’

‘You let her drive home on her own? After she’d just found her friend dead?’ I shake my head at his insensitivity.

‘I offered her a lift but she said she was fine,’ he bleats.

Bloody useless. ‘She’s probably in shock.’

He glances down at his feet like a chastised schoolboy, which is what he resembles in his short-sleeved shirt with an ink stain on the pocket. I’m about to move away from him to talk to his superior when he asks me if he can have a word outside. I nod and follow him to the front garden. I immediately light a fag. I offer the packet to Haddock, and he takes one as we walk around to the back of the building, where it’s quieter.

‘So?’ I begin.

The light from an upstairs window reflects in his pupils. ‘The thing is, I’ve been in contact with Emilia these past few weeks because someone has been targeting her.’

I frown. ‘Targeting her?’

‘Mirroring the plotlines from her bestselling books to frighten her.’ I listen as he tells me about troll dolls found in trees, the broken neck of a ceramic seagull, missing daughters at concerts and hoax calls.

I exhale a plume of smoke that dissipates into the warm night air. ‘Right. What’s this got to do with DC Louise Greene?’

‘That I don’t know. But she told me DC Greene had left a message on her phone earlier today, asking to meet. I listened to the message. Louise sounded upset. Contrite and, well, guilty.’

‘You got all that from a voice message?’

‘Yes. You can listen to it too.’

I need to speak to Emilia Ward as soon as possible.

I stub out my cigarette against the brick wall. ‘Do you know what time Louise died?’

‘Not one hundred per cent yet. But Louise left the message for Emilia at three thirty p.m. Emilia found her at five eighteen p.m.’

So, quite a short window, which should make it easier for the police. ‘Does Emilia think that Louise’s death is also copied from one of her books?’ I think of the doodle on Louise’s ankle and how similar it is to the praying-mantis case I’ve been working on for years.

He angles his body so that he’s facing me. ‘Well, that’s the thing. She said the doodle on Louise’s ankle is from her new book. But it hasn’t been published yet.’

I stare at him in shock. The doodles might not have been inflicted in the same way but surely they’re too similar to be just a coincidence. A similar insect’s head, in the same area as the serial killer brands his victims. I need to speak to Emilia Ward pronto to find out what the hell is going on.





34





Emilia doesn’t ring Elliot until she’s driving home. She’d texted to tell him while she waited for the police to arrive to take her statement, and then she’d called DC Haddock and told him everything, trying not to cry until she’d managed to get all her words out. Then she’d had to wait for him to arrive so he could listen to Louise’s message on her mobile.

‘Just concentrate on getting home safely,’ says Elliot, gently, over the phone. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’

Now all her limbs feel like lead and she has a metallic taste at the back of her throat. ‘God, I’m so sorry,’ Elliot whispers, into her hair, when she staggers into the house at gone 10 p.m. Elliot wraps his arms around her while she cries onto his chest. Her daughter hovers anxiously behind her stepdad, chewing her nails. Thankfully, Wilfie is in bed so she doesn’t have to break it to him yet. She thinks of poor Toby, who is maybe still blissfully unaware, and cries harder.

‘What is it? What’s happened to Louise?’ Jasmine’s face is white. She hardly knew Louise but Emilia can see how much this has thrown her daughter.

Emilia pulls away from Elliot to wrap her arms around Jasmine. ‘I don’t know yet, sweetheart,’ she says, not wanting to scare her. ‘I found her collapsed on the floor.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ she says, her voice catching in her throat. She doesn’t mention murder, instead saying that it might have been an accident. But Jasmine doesn’t seem pacified as she eventually trudges up to bed.