I sit at the opposite end of the sofa to DS Barnes. He angles his body towards me. I can see the spider-web tattoo on his arm. He notices me looking and pulls at the hem of his shirt sleeve. ‘Is Mrs Cutler here?’
‘Um. No. She’s … she’s in London today.’ Now they’re here I can ask them if they have any updates on the Harrison Turner that Brenda mentioned.
A flash of concern crosses his face. ‘We have bad news, I’m afraid.’
I nod, steeling myself. ‘Okay.’
‘We’ve identified the male body in the garden.’
My mouth goes dry. ‘Right,’ I say, wondering why this would be bad news. Unless I knew him. But that’s not possible. And then I think of Gran and my stomach turns over.
DS Barnes reaches for his little black book in the inner pocket of his suit jacket and flips a few of the pages over. ‘Does the name Neil Lewisham mean anything to you?’
I shake my head. ‘Never heard of him.’ Just get to the point.
‘Well, as you can imagine, it has been a difficult job trying to identify both of the bodies, considering they died a long time ago. But we’ve gone through a list of people who were reported missing from 1975 to 1990 in the south-west of England in particular, and in the thirty to forty-five age range. A thirty-nine-year-old man called Neil Lewisham was reported missing in April 1980 by his wife. Although he was from Surrey, what alerted us to him was that his wife said in a statement taken at the time that he was going to visit someone in the Chippenham area before he disappeared. This, of course, was followed up back in 1980 but came to a dead end. Unfortunately his wife has since died so we spoke to his son, who agreed to a DNA test. The DNA matches.’
I feel like someone has knocked the breath out of me. ‘So, you’re saying he died in this house … while my gran was living here?’
‘It looks that way, yes. He was last seen at Chippenham station on the seventh of April 1980. He hasn’t been seen since and he never tried to access his bank account. So we can assume he died on, or around, the seventh.’
‘Are you definitely sure it’s this man? The DNA … I mean …’ I frown. ‘How?’ The flesh would have decomposed by now, surely.
‘We can extract DNA from bones and teeth. His son is a match. It’s definitely him.’
I feel sick. Gran was living here when he died. ‘I … I can’t believe this.’
DS Barnes shuffles in his seat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, holding my gaze, his eyes sincere. Then he turns to the notebook in his hand, tapping his pen on the page. ‘We’re still trying to identify the other body. For now,’ he continues, ‘all we can do is look into missing females around that time period and for anyone with a possible connection to Neil Lewisham. Now we have a date it will narrow the time-frame at least. It might take a while but we have a team working on this. Plus a number of officers have been making door-to-door calls in the village, asking residents if they lived in Beggars Nook at the time and what they can remember. We also have officers doing background checks on this house to see if anyone has ever reported a disturbance taking place here, or anything else. And we are working on the victimology.’
‘Victimology?’
‘Yes, on Neil Lewisham. Information on the victim, essentially. To see if we can find out why he was killed. I just want to reassure you that we’re doing everything we can.’
I swallow down nausea. ‘What does this mean … for my gran?’
He flicks away an imaginary piece of lint from his trousers and avoids eye contact. ‘Well, we’ll need to speak to her again, to see what she can remember. We’re also trying to locate the whereabouts of your grandmother’s two lodgers. A Kay Groves and, of course, Daphne Hartall.’