Priya looks back over her shoulder at the scene. I can’t bear to follow her gaze, so I carry on trying to explain things the way I see them.
“There is a friendship bracelet tied around her tongue, just like the other two victims. We haven’t shared that information with the press or the public. Whoever killed the others killed Zoe—or are you suggesting she sewed her own eye closed?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, sir. But she could have been working with someone else, and things went wrong. I’m just gathering the evidence, like you taught me to.”
Her phone rings and I think she’s grateful for the interruption until she sees who is calling.
“It’s the deputy chief constable,” she says.
“Well, answer it.”
She does, and I watch while he talks and she listens. It feels like an eternal wait for the call to end, but in reality, it only lasts a couple of minutes.
“He wants you off the case. I’m sorry, sir, but given the circumstances I think it’s probably the right call.”
The short speech packs a punch and was well delivered. Either the alcohol we drank earlier has given her additional confidence, or she’s been rehearsing for the moment she could justify stealing my job.
I’m distracted when someone starts to take pictures of the crime scene behind us. The flash jogs something in my tired broken mind, and I remember the photo. I push past Priya and hurry down the stairs. She follows me into the kitchen, and at first I think the picture has disappeared, that maybe I imagined it. But then I see someone walking away with an evidence bag.
“Stop,” I say, snatching it from them.
“I saw the photo, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Priya says. “I asked them to bag it up.” The look she gives me is one I haven’t seen before. I stare at the picture, at the faces crossed out with a black marker pen, and I start to see things the way she must. I take a step back without meaning to. It just got even louder than before inside my head.
“You do know that I didn’t have anything to do with this, don’t you?” I ask her. The respect she had for me only a few hours earlier seems to have disappeared. “I was with you all day, and all night.”
“Technically not all night. I went out, sir. Remember? And you left my house well over an hour before you rang me. I’m not sure why it took you so long to call for help.”
The room starts to twist a little, catching me off guard so that it feels like I might fall. I was sure I called her straightaway, but it must have taken me longer than I thought. Probably the shock of what I saw.
“Come on, Priya. You know me.”
“No, sir. I don’t, not really. We’re just colleagues, like you said earlier. The team searched the trash cans outside, looking for a discarded weapon, and found a pair of muddy size-ten Timberland boots instead. Just like the footprint found next to Rachel Hopkins’s body in the woods. Are they yours?”
I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in a parallel universe. I don’t understand why Priya is behaving this way. She’s been treating me like a hero for months, we kissed earlier tonight, and now she’s looking at me as though I might be a suspect in my own sister’s murder.
“Do you know where the knife is, sir? The one that appears to be missing from the block?”
“Please stop calling me ‘sir.’ Look, I think someone might be trying to set me up. The photo of the girls was here when I got home,” I insist. “Somebody put it here, the same someone who killed Zoe. That’s Rachel Hopkins, Helen Wang, Anna…” My voice falters. “… and my sister.”
“Who is the fifth girl?” asks Priya.
“I don’t remember her name.”
It’s obvious she doesn’t believe me—I’m starting to doubt myself—but I have to try to get Priya on my side. I panic when she starts to turn away.
“Wait. Please. I don’t think the other girl was very popular, and I’m surprised they were friends with her, to be honest. Three out of the five people in this picture are dead, and my sister wrote Anna’s name on the wall in blood. Don’t you think we should at least try to find her?”
“I do, but perhaps not for the same reasons as you, Jack.”
I think I preferred “sir” after all.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“As you say, three out of the five girls in this photo are dead. We only know the identity of one of the others. I think maybe Zoe was trying to write a warning when she spelled out Anna’s name, and that your ex-wife might be in danger.”