Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Erika tried to arrange the thoughts in her tired brain. She had to tell Tess Clark, that was a priority. And then they would have to identify this poor young woman, and find out what she was doing in Vicky Clarke’s bed. Vicky was now a missing person, and whoever killed this unidentified woman now had a greater head start. And, of course, now Isaac had narrowed down the window for the time of death, it meant that Charles Wakefield or Shawn Macavity would have had a much smaller window of time to commit the murder. But who exactly were they now in the frame for killing? This case was now a mess, and Erika hated messy.
Erika drove over to Blackheath, and with a heavy heart, knocked on Tess Clarke’s front door. They lived in a squat terraced house in a road which looked down over the heath.
There was a rattle of keys and Fiona, the Family Liaison Officer, opened the door. She wore a grey towelling dressing gown over a pair of royal blue pyjamas.
‘What are you doin’ here so late?’ she said. Fiona’s mouth was always grim-set with a jowly dissatisfaction, as if she’d been forced to consume a diet entirely of lemon juice.
‘Are Tess and her husband home?’
‘Yes. It would be helpful to know what’s going on?’
‘Please can you get them to come downstairs,’ said Erika. She stepped inside, past Fiona, and closed the front door.
‘I think they’re asleep,’ said Fiona, rolling her tongue around her mouth. The downstairs room was a kitchen and living room combined, and the low ceiling gave the room a poky feel, despite its size. Fiona had a sleeping bag on the sofa, there was a steaming cup of cocoa on the coffee table, and an episode of NCIS: Miami was just beginning on the TV with the sound down low.
‘I need you to go and wake them up, please.’
Fiona nodded and went off up the stairs. Erika heard the creak of floorboards above, and she moved across to the kitchen. It was what she would term a ‘posh’ kitchen, with an Aga, lots of rustic wooden furniture, and copper pans hanging from the ceiling. The window looked out onto a small paved yard with an ancient-looking tree, its bare branches moving in the wind. Erika noticed above the Aga there was a long magnetic strip with a row of lethal-looking knives.
A tall, lean man came down the stairs, followed by Tess and Fiona. The man wore a thin blue T-shirt and football shorts, which emphasised his muscular physique, and he had black hair cropped very short. One of his arms was awash with a sleeve of coloured swirled tattoos, and his wrists and fingers were heavy with silver bracelets and rings. Tess’s short black hair was on end, and she wore a dressing gown similar to Fiona’s.
‘Hello, sorry to call on you so late. Are you Jasper?’ Erika asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. Tess held the collar of her dressing gown tight to her neck.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Are you here to ask that I formally identify Vicky?’
‘No,’ said Erika. There was an awkward pause. Tess turned to Fiona.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Fiona said, folding her arms.
‘Please, can you both sit down…’ Erika said.
‘Just tell me now, I don’t like this,’ said Tess, as she and Jasper went to the sofa and sat on top of the sleeping bag. Fiona eyed them for a moment, and then went to perch on the edge of an armchair.
‘I’m very sorry to tell you that the body that you found in the flat at Honeycomb Court is not Vicky,’ said Erika.
‘What? What do you mean?’ asked Tess. ‘That was Vicky.’
‘I’m afraid it wasn’t.’
‘But, I saw her, lying there.’
Jasper stared, with his mouth slightly open. Erika explained what Isaac had discovered during the post-mortem.
‘This is a fucking joke,’ said Jasper. ‘Isn’t it your job, as the bloody police, not to make these mistakes?’ he cried.
‘I’m very sorry. Your wife identified—’
‘No, no, no,’ he said, standing up and waggling his finger at Erika. ‘Don’t you blame my wife. This is typical of the bloody authorities…’
Erika looked at him and wondered exactly how this was typical. Did Tess have another sibling who’d been wrongly identified as a murder victim? She bit her lip.
‘I can only apologise. In our defence, the woman shares similar features with Vicky,’ she said. There was a long silence.
‘If that wasn’t Vicky… then who was it? That poor woman?’ asked Tess, putting her hands to her face, reliving what she’d seen.