“Right. Go on.” Elise tried not to sound irritated. She’d been a newbie once.
“So we’ve got Phil Golding’s DNA on the phone and on the zip fastener.”
“Zip fastener? Show me.”
It was there in the section of results for the exterior of Charlie’s bag. A smudged print the SOCOs couldn’t lift but the microbeads of sweat from the finger that had touched it had been a partial match for his DNA. “Twenty-five percent,” the lab technician had written beside it.
“But he was dead,” Elise said.
“That’s what I thought,” the young officer said.
The explanation from the forensic scientist on the end of the phone was long and unnecessarily detailed, but when Elise ended the call, she was clear.
“The best hypothesis is that it is from a half-sibling,” she breathed. “Dee.
“Can you drive?” she said to DC Chevening.
“Yes. Where are we going?”
“To find her.”
* * *
—
Elise rang Caro as she walked, breathlessly talking her through the new evidence.
“Phil’s sister was there. Dee Eastwood. My cleaner. In the basement. Kevin said the bag was there when they left and gone when they came back.”
“Dee is Phil’s sister? When did you find that out?”
“Er, yesterday. Stuart Bennett put me onto it.”
“And you think seeing her made Charlie have a heart attack?”
“I think she confronted him about what he made her brother do. She told me yesterday she was glad Charlie was dead.”
“Did she? So you’ve spoken to her?”
“I went to tell her about the police investigation into her brother’s death.”
“Right—so I suppose it could have terrified Charlie. He was wrapped up in cling film, so completely vulnerable.”
It stopped Elise in her tracks and DC Chevening crashed into her. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“You go and pick her up, Caro. Take DC Chevening with you. I need to call Aoife and then speak to Toby Greene. About the plastic in Charlie’s gut.”
“What?” Caro said. “Oh, okay. On our way.”
* * *
—
Aoife Mortimer didn’t speak for a full three minutes when Elise asked the question. She thought the line had gone dead and had been about to redial when Aoife cleared her throat.
“The shreds in the stomach could be from a cling film gag,” she said carefully. “If it’d been loose enough. He could have fought to get it off. And smothering him with a bag or film could certainly produce a heart attack, especially in someone with his medical history. And would leave no evidence.”
“Toby, did you gag Charlie with the cling film you used?”
Toby Greene shook his head. “No. I told you, Kevin used an old tea towel. But Charlie had managed to spit it out when we found him. I couldn’t work out how. I wrapped it up with the cling film and threw it away.”
“I see. And you are sure you never put cling film near his face?”
“Of course not. What kind of monster would do that? He wouldn’t have been able to breathe.”
* * *
—
“Dee Eastwood left home this morning with her son,” Caro said when she called in. “She asked the babysitter to look after her dog and said she’d be in touch. She hasn’t taken her car—she must have thought she’d be too easy to find. I’m getting a warrant to check movement on her bank account. Shouldn’t take long.”
It didn’t. “She bought two tickets for a coach to Truro. One way,” Caro said. “We’re a good hour behind her but the coach stops a few times along the route. I’ve asked the local police to be there in case we don’t manage to catch up.”
In the car, Caro put her foot down hard and Elise closed her eyes and reran the conversations she’d had with her cleaner. Looking for the signs she’d missed. But Dee had been clever. The invisible cleaner who sees everything. Who cleans up everything. The messes, the filth. Charlie.
She wondered what it had felt like to have him at her mercy. To watch him die. Dee had been a child when she’d seen Birdie fight for breath in Addison Gardens. But she wasn’t anymore. She had known exactly what she was doing when she put that cling film over Charlie’s face.
“I should have pushed her about the sighting of Liam’s van the night Charlie died,” she said almost to herself.
“Stop beating yourself up, boss. Look, we’re at the turnoff. We’re there now.”