“Yes, I imagine it must have been much cooler in the cellar. So Mr. Perry could have died at any time between the last witness seeing him on Friday night and Monday morning?”
“That is why we are appealing for witnesses—as I’ve said, we have no further sightings after he left the festival at the Old Vicarage.”
“What about the witness who said he was up by the workers’ village later on Friday night?”
All press heads turned to look at her.
Her twelve-year-old news editor must be pumping the air with his fist.
“We are still in the process of confirming that sighting,” Hugh said, but some of the reporters were getting out of their seats.
The hare would be running now—all the laborers would be pounced on by the media before Elise’s lot had got their car keys out. They were so fast—and potentially damaging. Like a plague of locusts, Caro said. Stripping whole communities of information. But people talked to the press when they didn’t always talk to the police. Sometimes, they just had too much to lose.
I bet some of the laborers don’t have visas. They’ll prefer to talk anonymously to Kiki. Let’s see what she and the pack get.
Elise turned the telly off and sat for a bit, thinking about the last time she’d seen Charlie. His blackened face. And the blowflies. She flicked her laptop on to remind herself of their life cycle with seasonal and ambient temperature variations. It was all there online for the amateur entomologist. First eggs are laid by flies on a corpse, especially on wounds or around openings like eyes, ears, and noses within minutes of death. Then the maggots hatch—within twenty-four to forty-eight hours—and start feeding.
The team had a sixty-hour window from the last sighting alive. So if Charlie had died on Friday night, the pathologist should have found second-stage maggots of about one centimeter in length.
If he died in the twenty-four hours before Elise found him, there should have been no maggots, just eggs.
Thirty-four
TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019
Elise
At two thirty, Elise was standing outside Southfold police station with Ronnie in close attendance.
“Are you sure you want to stay? You’ll have to sit in the waiting room. I can get them to drop me back at home.”
“No, I’m happy to mingle with the criminals.”
Caro came and fetched Elise, walking her down the tiled corridor to the interview suite. Elise breathed it in—the rough-edged disinfectant, the dark hint of meat stewed to shreds in the canteen. It was like opening an Egyptian tomb and smelling the air that had been shut in millennia ago. Another life.
“I see you’ve brought your new partner.” Caro grinned. “It’s all getting a bit cozy, isn’t it? What does her hubby think? Is it developing into a bizarre ménage à trois?”
“Shut up.” Elise punched her arm. “She’s been a good friend.”
“Right,” Caro snapped. Not like me unsaid but loud and clear. “Oh, and DI Ward wants to sit in on this,” she added, and pushed the interview room door open.
Elise didn’t have time to protest—or steel herself. He was walking in behind her.
“Hello, Elise,” Hugh said, his voice sending unwanted signals all over her broken body. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” she said, and had to clear her throat.
He looked completely unfazed—a bit blank if she was honest—and she was furious that she was the nervous one. She’d fantasized for so long about what she’d say the first time they met at work. She was going to be cool and distant, then be gracious. The bigger person. Instead, she was stuttering and blushing like a fourteen-year-old shoplifter.
She looked at him as he sorted through his papers and wondered if she’d ever really known him. She’d thought she had—thought they’d been completely honest with each other. Elise had told him early on that she didn’t want children. That she wanted to focus on her career. And Hugh had gone along with it. He’d loved the job too.
“And we’ve got nephews and nieces if we want trips to the zoo,” he’d said.
They’d moved in together but had never bothered getting married. Hugh had said it was a waste of money. “Can’t see the point—we’re happy as we are, El.” And she’d gone along with it. We are, aren’t we?
They’d spent their money on nice wine and expensive holidays and their days off going to the gym, watching dark-drama box sets, and following his beloved Crystal Palace FC. A tight couple, not needing other people to make them happy.