It gives her another insight into who Bea was as a person. Someone not only successful, but ordered. In control.
Yet something’s bothering her. Elin rummages through the case again. This time, it strikes her: no swimwear. Why come to a retreat like this and not bring something to swim in? It might be an oversight, but it also might imply that Bea had packed in a hurry, was in some way distracted.
She thinks about the fact that Bea let Tom know she was coming only yesterday, and about the phone call he’d overheard. She picks it over, once again gripped by the sense that another narrative is running alongside what she already knows.
No way to tell at this point if it’s important to the case, but it’s niggling at her.
Piece by piece, she puts the clothing back in place.
She’s nearly done when there’s a ping from her phone: a message from Rachel.
All done here. Can you come down when you’re ready?
Elin taps out a reply. She’s about to zip the suitcase back up when she notices a daily planner in the woven netting in the top half of the case. It’s clear from the battered cover that it’s well used. Bea, like her, still prefers paper over digital when it comes to making notes.
Flicking through, her eyes immediately alight on the calendar section. It’s meticulously filled out in neat, precise handwriting up until the last few days, which are blank. Moving on, she finds notes from various meetings. It’s only when she hits the end page that she finds something that piques her interest: a couple of website addresses.
It’s not the sites themselves that draw her attention, but how they’ve been written. The messy script is nothing like the ordered handwriting style in the rest of the organizer, and the addresses are scrawled diagonally across the page, underlined several times.
Definitely Bea’s handwriting, she thinks, comparing the shapes of the letters.
www.fcf1.com, www.localhistory.org
Taking a photograph with her phone, Elin places the organizer back into the case.
The addresses, like the packing oversight, might be nothing, but still, she can feel something stirring to life—that sense of momentum that comes with questions starting to pile up, loose threads pulling free.
24
Right.” Rachel shoves her camera into her bag. “I think I’ve gone as far as I can on the forensic front.” Her voice is flat with the kind of weariness that comes with extreme concentration.
Elin’s eyes once again travel over Bea’s body. Maybe she’s imagining it, but she can smell the blood in the air, starting to turn—a musky, metallic tang. Her stomach flips.
“Any sign of a phone?” she says to Steed, thinking of the call Bea made when Tom left her in the meeting room.
Rachel pulls down her hood to reveal wet hair, a ring of indentation marking her forehead where the hood has gripped her flesh. “Doesn’t look like she had anything on her when she went over, unless it went into the sea. Unlikely, given where the body was found. Nothing with Leon?”
“No. I did find her suitcase, but no phone was inside.”
“She’d have had it on her, wouldn’t she?” Steed steps forward. He, too, is now red—the telltale mark of sunburn forming on his cheeks. He stretches, his shirt patchy with sweat, individual continents starting to overlap across his muscles like tectonic plates.
“I’d have thought so. No sign of anything else? Leon found a mark in the grass on top of the cliff. We thought she may have dropped something, knocked it over with her.”
“Not that I can see, sorry.” Rachel’s climbing out of her suit. “Is Leon finished?”
“Yes. He’s packing up.”
“You’re happy with everything?” Steed murmurs.
“More or less. CCTV’s pretty conclusive, an accident rather than anything more sinister, but a few things are bothering me about why she was here. I need a bit more time to think it through.”
“Makes sense. What are you going to do about the scene?”
“Release it, get her to the hospital mortuary. I’m going to run everything past the DCI now. If she agrees, I’ll call for the police boat.” It’s a big decision to release the scene, but they have the evidence they need, regardless of the backstory to Bea being here. Steed nods.
Elin picks her way back over the rocks, but this time as she navigates the uneven surface, she’s slower—it feels like she’s wading through mud. Her stomach growls. She glances at her watch: past lunchtime. Food and drink are calling.
Jumping off the rocks and onto the beach, she walks toward the shade beneath a rocky overhang of cliff.