‘Hey, don’t beat yourself up. It’s fine. I’ll see you on Thursday. Give me a call when you land.’
She kisses him again, then watches from the open doorway as he walks down the steps and to the waiting taxi at the end of the driveway.
It’s not until the car pulls away that she sees it: a wreath propped up against the brick wall to the left of the front door, behind the pillar. She checks to make sure the kids can’t see, then bends down to look at it. There is a card, which simply says In Sympathy, and her insides turn to ice.
Miranda received a wreath in the third book of the series, No Stone Unturned, to warn her off a serial-killer case on which she was working.
But who would be warning her? And why?
13
Lorraine Butterworth is a tall, thin woman who exudes nervous energy as she constantly uses her hands, either to tuck a lock of dyed black hair behind her ear or light numerous cigarettes. She must be in her early sixties at least. Her hand trembles as she passes me a chipped mug full of too-milky tea. She’s standing with her back against the sink in the small kitchen with the window open, dragging deeply on her cigarette. The strip light above us buzzes, a fly’s corpse stuck behind the plastic. The poor woman looks utterly traumatized. I still remember the first time I saw a dead body. Nothing could have prepared me for it. It had haunted me for weeks.
‘What can you tell me about Trisha Banks?’ I ask, from where I’m sitting at the tiny Formica table. ‘How long has she been living in the flat above?’
‘Not long. I’ve lived here years. Seen lots of people come and go. She moved in five or six months back. Kept herself to herself mostly. I always got the sense she was running away from something or someone. She only went out to her job at Poundland, came home and then stayed upstairs. Very rarely saw her go out otherwise.’
‘Did you ever see any men coming or going? Boyfriends?’
‘Like I told the other copper, I’ve seen a guy hanging around in the distance. Although I’m not sure if he was her boyfriend. I never saw him come into the building, so I don’t think he ever went up to her place. But he was a tall fella.’
I sip my tea and regret it. The milk tastes sour. I put my mug down. ‘When you say “hanging around”， what do you mean exactly?’
Lorraine takes a deep drag of her cigarette, her veins sticking up through the thin skin on her hands. She exhales a puff of smoke that fills the small space. On the fridge I notice a child’s painting of a house, held on with a fluffy-sheep magnet. ‘I dunno, really. Lurking outside, I suppose you’d say. Once I saw her talking to him right on the street out there.’ She waves her cigarette vaguely in the direction of the front of the house. ‘But mostly I’d just notice him a little way off, outside on the pavement. Like he was waiting for her. I called to him once, asked him what he wanted, but he didn’t reply, just walked off towards the beach.’
My heart picks up speed. This could be the man. The killer. This could be the person we’ve been searching for all these years. There have never been any witnesses before apart from once … a long time ago. And that was unreliable at best. ‘What did he look like?’
She scrunches up her face and sucks at her fag. ‘Well-built. Fit-looking. Difficult to say. I didn’t see his face. He always wore a hood.’
‘And did he have any distinguishing features? Anything that stood out about him?’
She shakes her head. ‘Not that I can remember. He had on dark clothing, and it was always at night and, as I said, he always had on a hooded coat. I never saw him during the day.’
‘Hair colour? Eyes?’
‘Like I said, too dark to see and he was too far away.’
‘Height, roughly?’
‘I reckon a good six foot at least. I’m five nine and he looked taller than me.’
I swallow my disappointment. I don’t know what I expected her to say. He might have been off the scene for sixteen years but he’s far from stupid. I was hoping he was rusty. That he’d finally slip up, make a mistake, as he was out of practice.
I get up and tuck my notebook into the pocket of my coat. ‘Well, thank you so much, Lorraine. I know this is a shock.’
She stubs out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and immediately lights another. ‘Am I in danger here? What if he comes back for me this time?’
I couldn’t rule it out. Who knows what attracted this man to his victims? They ranged in age from thirty to forty-five. He never sexually abuses them, just stabs them and marks them with his sinister praying-mantis etchings. One thing is for certain, he’s a misogynistic psychopath.
‘Is there anywhere you can stay for a few days?’
She sniffs. ‘Yes. My daughter lives in Paignton. I can stay there.’
‘I think that would be a good idea,’ I say, moving towards the hallway. She follows me out. ‘I’ll get one of my officers to sit with you until you’re ready to leave.’
She opens the door to her flat and we step out into the main hallway. The front door is still open, the crime-scene tape still surrounding the garden. I’d like her to be out of here before the body of Trisha Banks is taken away.
The wind whips at the hem of my smart wool coat. I can see Saunders and Doyle standing in the doorway of one of the neighbours opposite. Michelle Doyle is making notes – a good sign. Hopefully they’ve seen something. I’m about to go over when Lorraine suddenly pipes up: ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘I know it’s not much, but he smokes. The man I saw. He was a smoker.’
‘Okay.’ It’s not much but it might help. We’ve had sod-all else over the years.
‘But not regular cigarettes,’ she continues, from the doorway. ‘Those menthol ones. They have a very distinctive smell. I know because my granddad used to smoke them, and my dad and brother.’
Menthol cigarettes have recently been banned due to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, so I wonder where he’s getting them from. I thank her, then hold up the crime-scene tape so I can walk underneath it. A tall man who smokes recently banned menthol cigarettes. It’s more than we’ve ever had before.
Maybe he’s making mistakes after all.
14
Emilia stares at her phone, swallowing her panic as she tries to work out the doorbell-camera app that Elliot had installed before he went away. She’d had to hide the wreath in the garage at the end of the garden, so the kids wouldn’t see it, then make an effort to act normally until she’d dropped them off at school. She didn’t want to ring Elliot and worry him while he’s away.
Now she’s alone in the house, standing at the island in the echoey kitchen that suddenly seems too big. One of the lilies’ petals has dropped onto the marble worktop. Elliot would have scooped that up in a flash, frantically bleaching the area it touched just in case the pollen stained the expensive stone. But she leaves it where it is. Eventually she works out how to see the camera footage and her heart beats faster as she brings it up on screen. She rewinds. It must have been put there this morning when they were still getting ready. And, yes, there at 7.45 a.m. is a figure walking down their driveway holding the wreath. Emilia presses her reading glasses further onto her nose. The figure comes into focus and she can see that it’s a man, and now he’s bending down to place the wreath on the brickwork to the left of the front door. That was why Elliot didn’t notice it when he rushed out this morning.