He angles his body so that he’s facing me. ‘Well, that’s the thing. She said the doodle on Louise’s ankle is from her new book. But it hasn’t been published yet.’
I stare at him in shock. The doodles might not have been inflicted in the same way but surely they’re too similar to be just a coincidence. A similar insect’s head, in the same area as the serial killer brands his victims. I need to speak to Emilia Ward pronto to find out what the hell is going on.
34
Emilia doesn’t ring Elliot until she’s driving home. She’d texted to tell him while she waited for the police to arrive to take her statement, and then she’d called DC Haddock and told him everything, trying not to cry until she’d managed to get all her words out. Then she’d had to wait for him to arrive so he could listen to Louise’s message on her mobile.
‘Just concentrate on getting home safely,’ says Elliot, gently, over the phone. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’
Now all her limbs feel like lead and she has a metallic taste at the back of her throat. ‘God, I’m so sorry,’ Elliot whispers, into her hair, when she staggers into the house at gone 10 p.m. Elliot wraps his arms around her while she cries onto his chest. Her daughter hovers anxiously behind her stepdad, chewing her nails. Thankfully, Wilfie is in bed so she doesn’t have to break it to him yet. She thinks of poor Toby, who is maybe still blissfully unaware, and cries harder.
‘What is it? What’s happened to Louise?’ Jasmine’s face is white. She hardly knew Louise but Emilia can see how much this has thrown her daughter.
Emilia pulls away from Elliot to wrap her arms around Jasmine. ‘I don’t know yet, sweetheart,’ she says, not wanting to scare her. ‘I found her collapsed on the floor.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she says, her voice catching in her throat. She doesn’t mention murder, instead saying that it might have been an accident. But Jasmine doesn’t seem pacified as she eventually trudges up to bed.
‘Here, have a glass of wine. It might help,’ says Elliot, when they’re alone on one of the sofas in the kitchen.
‘Isn’t it supposed to be brandy? Or whisky?’
‘Well, we don’t have any, so wine it will have to be,’ he says. She notices he has a glass too, and that his hand trembles as he sips. She hasn’t even told him yet about the inking on Louise’s ankle and how a character in her book – also a police officer who worked with Miranda Moody – died in a similar way while looking for the praying-mantis murderer. Although she doesn’t have to tell him that bit. He’s read her latest book now. As soon as she mentions the inking, he’ll know.
Elliot rests a hand on her thigh, as though he’s trying to anchor himself as well as provide comfort for her.
‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ she says again, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. ‘I can’t stop thinking about Toby, growing up without a mum …’
‘Don’t.’ Elliot’s face darkens. ‘You can’t think of that. You’ll drive yourself crazy. This isn’t your fault.’
‘But what if it is?’ she cries, moving forward to deposit her wine glass on the table and dislodging Elliot’s hand from her lap. ‘I was the one who wrote those stupid books. I basically wrote her death!’
‘Stop it. You didn’t.’
‘But I did.’ She places her head in her hands and groans. ‘You know my book is about a detective looking for a serial killer who draws a praying-mantis head on a victim’s ankle after they die to mark them as his. And that’s what she had, Elliot! She had that marking on her ankle!’
His eyes narrow and his hand clenches around his glass. ‘For fuck’s sake. This is ridiculous. What are the police doing about it?’ He doesn’t have to say it: she knows he’s thinking about the ending of her book. The sidekick to Miranda Moody dying in the same way as Louise. And Miranda being killed next.
‘You do think this is my fault, don’t you?’
‘Of course not. This is just some nutter –’
‘Some nutter who I must know!’ she shouts, jumping up from the sofa.
‘Calm down,’ he hisses, shocking her. ‘Sorry, but do you want to disturb the children? You’re spiralling. And you can’t spiral, Em. You have to keep level-headed.’ He stands up, too, and grabs her upper arms. His grip is tight. ‘You need to stop blaming yourself. This isn’t your fault. You’re a writer, that’s all. You’re not fucking God.’
She hangs her head. He’s right, of course he is. This isn’t her fault. And yet she can’t help the guilt tugging at her insides. And the fear that she may be next.
She can’t sleep. All she can think about is Louise’s dead body sprawled on the carpet of her living room, her still face, her cold skin, the wound at the back of her head. She’d never seen a dead body in real life regardless of how many times she’s written about them. She replays Louise’s last voicemail over and over in her mind. What had she meant? Why had she kept saying she was sorry? Why did she take Elliot’s bike, if indeed it was her?
In despair she gets up. Elliot is fast asleep although he’d taken a while to drop off. They had both lain there, pretending to sleep, until eventually she heard his soft snores. She pads out of the bedroom and hovers on the landing, frozen in indecision. Usually, when unable to sleep, she’d go to the kitchen, make a milky drink and watch a feel-good show that she knows Elliot doesn’t like, like Emily in Paris or Selling Sunset. Now all she can think about is that huge empty kitchen surrounded by glass. She’d feel like a cornered animal, wondering who was out there lurking in her garden, able to see her when she can’t see them. Louise’s death has shown her that whoever is behind this has been playing with her until Louise’s murder. They didn’t hurt Jasmine, just orchestrated her disappearance to scare Emilia, like a lion taunting its prey until it goes in for the kill.
She sighs. She can’t just stand on the landing in the dark. But she can’t go downstairs either. Instead, she decides to head to her office in the attic. Since they changed the passwords on Alexa the skylights have stopped opening so at least she knows she won’t have to contend with that. She climbs the steep staircase, panting slightly when she reaches the top. Her grief is pressing down on her chest, threatening to suffocate her. She’s gasping by the time she sits at her desk, with the door firmly shut behind her. Straight away she feels comforted by the mess surrounding her, the homely trinkets on the shelves, her beloved paperbacks of authors she admires and looks to for inspiration when she’s stuck, a pile of uncorrected proof copies sent to her for an author quote.
With an unsteady hand she pulls out the drawer at the front of her desk. In it is her notebook. She has a new one for every novel she writes. She’d used this one for Her Last Chapter: it has a Moomin on the front, with a full moon and an inky black sky in the background. She flicks open the pages, remembering the notes she made before she started writing. Notes about Miranda Moody’s new case. A serial killer who likes to ink his victims with the face of an insect. And then the back story of Daisy and her quest to find her mother’s killer, the Doodle Man, how she believes he’s the father of her lover, Ash, which culminates in Miranda being stabbed. Tears splash onto the pages as she remembers what she did. And what Louise did. And now Louise is dead. How can it not be Emilia’s fault?