‘The guy you stabbed?’
‘Yes. I saw him talking to a woman outside the Blind Busker.’
Francis emerged from behind the cupboard door with a fresh bottle. ‘This is of interest to me?’
‘I’m scared. He told Thierry once that he wanted revenge for what I did to him.’ It was a lie, but Marni was a good liar. And in his current state, Francis wasn’t going to see through it. ‘I think he’s here to come after me.’ It made more sense than saying he wanted to steal her son away.
‘So you want our protection this time?’ Francis was referring to the fact that when Sam Kirby had been coming after her, she’d fought against having a police protection detail.
‘I want you to find him.’
‘I can’t arrest him on the basis of hearsay.’
‘But you could warn him off. I’m worried he’ll go after Alex to get to me.’
Francis took a mouthful of whisky. ‘Good luck to him with that.’
‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘Maybe if you’d tell me where Alex was, I could protect him.’
‘I don’t know where he is.’ She wasn’t going to tell Frank Sullivan where Alex was in a million years. The bastard would only go and arrest him again. ‘Some tattooing equipment was taken from my studio. I think Paul took it. You could arrest him for that.’ One lie, or half a dozen. What was the difference?
‘You reported it when it happened?’
Marni shook her head.
‘For God’s sake, Marni. Sure, if there were prints at the scene, we could arrest him. But if you don’t tell us about a crime . . . You know another girl has died? Tattooed with poison ink.’
‘What?’
‘She was called Lou Riley. She was also at the art college. I need to find Alex . . .’
‘So you can try and pin a third murder on him. You’re a bastard, Frank Sullivan.’
‘I don’t want to “pin” murders on anyone, Marni. I just want to get to the truth.’ Francis covered his face with both hands.
Marni couldn’t feel any sympathy for him.
‘If you’d stop trying to implicate my son and go after the real killer, things might be better for everyone.’
Francis slammed his fist down on the table. ‘What the hell do you think I’m doing? Listen, Marni, I’d be delighted if I could rule Alex out, believe me. But so far he can’t explain his whereabouts when any of those girls went missing.’
‘So that’s how you’ll get your killer? By ruling everyone else out, one by one? How long will that take you?’
A silence stretched between them and Marni reached for her drink. The whisky was good quality, slipping smoothly down her throat without the customary burn.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry for what? For victimising my kid?’
‘For everything. I fucked up, Marni.’
He took his hands from his face and looked at her squarely, making her remember how much she liked his blue eyes. Even bloodshot as they were at the moment. She put down her glass.
‘What? What did you fuck up?’
‘Us.’
Now?
‘No way, Frank. We’re not doing this. Nothing happened. Nothing can happen.’
He looked like he was going to be sick and she took pity on him.
‘You need coffee, don’t you?’
‘Would be good.’
Neither of them spoke while Marni set his espresso machine to work. She remembered where the coffee was, and the mugs, and left Francis to his own thoughts while she worked.
‘How was the funeral?’ she said, setting a cup of black coffee in front of him.
When he looked up, she saw his boyish, vulnerable side. The part he worked so hard to keep hidden.
‘My father was there.’
‘I thought . . . he was dead. You never talk about him.’
Francis took a sip of the coffee. ‘He left my mother, about ten years ago. I hadn’t seen him for six years and I had no idea he would be there.’
‘Was it good to see him?’
Marni brought a mug over to the table for herself and sat down again.
‘He had his new wife with him.’
‘At your mother’s funeral. Oh God, I’m sorry, Francis.’
Francis shook his head. ‘And his new son . . .’ His voice faltered and he gulped in air as if he was about to sob.
Marni waited for him to go on as he fought to control his emotions.
‘Kip. He’s four years old. I have a brother. He’s four years old and my father didn’t even tell me about him.’
‘Jesus, your father sounds like a piece of work.’
‘I don’t know why he came.’
‘Are you going to see him again?’
Francis shrugged. ‘They fly back to Bangkok tomorrow.’
Now Marni understood why Francis was upset and why he was drunk. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Francis slowly sipping his coffee.
‘Sorry, Frank. I shouldn’t have come here, should I?’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, staring into his cup.
Marni finished her coffee.
‘I should go.’
Francis put a hand out, placing it over one of hers on the table.
‘Maybe you could stay.’ His eyes pleaded with her.
Marni pulled her hand away and stood up.
‘I don’t think so, Frank.’
His face crumpled but all Marni felt was a hot flash of anger.
‘You need to sort yourself out. You need to sort this case out. My son didn’t kill Tash. And he didn’t kill Sally Ann or this other girl. I think you know that – so now it’s up to you to bloody find out who did.’
She went towards the kitchen door, but then turned back.
‘Drinking is a grown-ups’ game, Frank. You’re not ready for it, so get your head out of that bottle.’
She slammed the front door as she left. The last thing she needed in her life was another man who wanted mothering.
48
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Francis
Why whisky? Why in the name of God had he thought that was a good idea? Now his head was pounding and his vision didn’t seem quite right.
After a shower that was as long and as cold as he could bear it, and a coffee that was as hot and as strong as he could make it, Francis began to believe he might be human again. He threw the half-smoked packet of cigarettes in the bin, took two ibuprofens and climbed into his car, not caring that his blood alcohol would still be over the limit. He knew exactly how long it would take to clear his bloodstream. But at least Marni’s visit had stopped him from finishing off the second bottle.
He pushed the thought of her from his mind as he parked outside the morgue. No good would come of thinking about Marni Mullins.
‘God, you look like death warmed up,’ Rose said, as she unlocked the front door.
‘You’re the expert,’ said Francis. He wanted to throw up, so he gritted his teeth and followed her inside.
‘You want to know about Lou Riley’s autopsy?’ Rose had performed the PM the previous day while Francis had been at the funeral.
‘Yes. But first I want images of the UV tattoos from all three girls. They’ve got to be the key.’
Rose led the way to her office.
‘We’ve examined them closely, Francis. There’s nothing – just a series of random jabs and scratches. There’s something very aggressive about them.’
‘Did those tattoos also contain taxine or was it just the black ones?’
‘Just the black ones,’ said Rose, dropping down into her black leather desk chair.
Francis was too fidgety to sit. He went to the window and came back again without looking out.
‘Right,
so the UV tattoos weren’t a vehicle for the poisoning. That means they had some other purpose.’
Rose produced photos of the three tattoos, taken with a UV light shone on them to make them visible. Francis snatched up the images and studied each one in turn.
‘Tracing paper.’
‘What?’
‘Now, Rose. Come on – another woman’s life could depend upon this.’
Rose’s eyebrows shot up, but she spun her chair and opened a small wooden stationery cupboard behind her desk. ‘I think I’ve got some.’
Francis paced to the window again, this time looking out over the graveyard that lay beyond the back of the building the morgue was housed in.
‘Here.’ Rose held out a few sheets and finally Francis sat down.
‘Pencil?’
She handed one to him.
Over the next five minutes, Francis sat in silence as he traced the smattering of curved and straight lines that made up Tash Brady’s UV tattoo, along with a couple of larger shaded areas. When he’d finished, he held up the tracing paper, first one way and then rotating it through ninety degrees.
‘See anything in it?’ said Rose.
Francis shook his head. ‘I don’t expect to at this point.’
He took the image of Sally Ann’s UV tattoo and studied it. Then he handed it to Rose. ‘Can you make a copy of this to the exact same scale as Tash’s? And Lou’s as well, please.’
Each tattoo had been photographed with a ruler along one side to give the measurements of the area pictured. Rose went out of her office to use the photocopier in the hallway and returned a couple of minutes later. Francis took the two new copies and quickly traced them both on to separate pieces of tracing paper.
‘Now we’ll see,’ he said, switching on the lightbox that sat on one end of Rose’s desk.
He put the tracing of Tash Brady’s tattoo down first, then layered the other two tracings on top of it. Rose leaned over from her side of the desk and they both considered the composite picture the three images created.
It looked like nothing more than a series of random lines, curves and circles.
‘Damn!’ said Francis.
He lifted the top two tracings and then turned them this way and that to see if he could make anything in the images line up and make sense.
‘Wait,’ said Rose.
Francis paused.
‘Look, put this one here,’ she said, taking the tracing of Lou’s tattoo from his hand, ‘and this one like this . . .’
They both gazed down at the light box. Francis could make out some order in the combined image now. He moved Lou’s tattoo slightly and as if by magic, some of the lines joined and some circles were almost completed.
‘Oh my God,’ said Rose. ‘You’ve done it.’
‘But what is it?’ The realisation hit him before he’d even finished speaking. ‘It’s a map, isn’t it? Do you see that?’
‘Yes.’ Rose was nodding her head. ‘It’s definitely a map.’
‘It looks like a map of a river or waterway somewhere. But where the hell is it meant to be? And what’s the meaning of it? Why would the attacker be drawing a map on his victims?’
‘There are still gaps in it, so it’s going to be hard to work out where it is.’
‘Still gaps – that means he’s planning to attack again.’ Francis stared down at the broken image. ‘As many times as it takes to complete this map.’
He looked up and Rose’s eyes met his.
‘We can’t let that happen,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to work out where it is now – and use it to identify the killer.’
‘How’s the map going to do that?’
Francis’s frustration bubbled up into anger and he stood up abruptly.
‘I’ve got no bloody idea.’ His head was throbbing and Rose’s small office seemed suddenly airless. ‘I need a minute,’ he said.
Rose looked at him but didn’t speak.
Francis went to the men’s toilet at the rear of the building. He splashed cold water onto his face and had a long drink from the tap, uncaring of how much he spilled down his front.
No more whisky. Never again.
When he got back to Rose’s office, she was still studying the tracings.
‘Look at this, Francis,’ she said, pointing with her finger to one corner of the joint image. ‘It looks like a small bird or something.’
Francis looked. She was right. There was a shape in the top corner, not complete, but what there was of it suggested the silhouette of a small, dark crow, wings folded, with one leg raised out in front as if it were striding along.
‘I know that bird,’ said Francis. ‘I’ve seen it somewhere.’
If only he didn’t have this ruddy headache.
He racked his brains. Where had he seen that crow before?
Rose switched off the lightbox. It was making the small room hot. She pushed her hair back from her brow and watched Francis, waiting.
‘Where, where, where?’
‘Take it back to the office and get Kyle to do an image search for you,’ said Rose.
‘We don’t have the whole image.’ He turned his back on her and concentrated.
A small black crow.
He could see it in his mind’s eye, painted on stone.
It was in a church somewhere. A church that stood by water.
He looked at the partial map.
‘It’s Bosham,’ he said. ‘The crow – it’s on a plaque commemorating King Cnut’s daughter, who drowned there. This is a map of Bosham Water.’
Rose snapped the light box back on and they looked again.
‘You’re right.’
She quickly found the spot on Google Maps and they compared the images.
‘Look,’ said Francis. ‘There, in the water along Itchenor Reach.’ He pointed at a dark mark on the composite of the tracings. ‘What’s that?’
‘There’s nothing on the Google map that corresponds,’ said Rose. ‘It looks like it could be part of an X. Do you think he’s showing us something?’
Francis picked up his jacket from the back of the chair where he’d carelessly thrown it.
‘Come on, let’s go. I think this killer’s starting to give up his secrets.’
The fog was finally lifting.
49
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Rory
Not all the mud fringing the estuary was dry and cracked. Rory Mackay’s foot suddenly sank beneath him, and he almost overbalanced. He felt moisture seeping into his shoe and soaking through his sock. He looked down with disdain – grey, stinking mud up to his ankle.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he breathed, flexing his foot to release his trapped shoe with a loud squelch. It was his own fault – the SOCOs had laid some planks across the mud for walking on but he’d tried to cut a corner.
Rose Lewis waved at him from where she was crouching at the water’s edge fifty yards or so further up the half-dried river course. Francis was with her, bending to look at something she was uncovering.
‘Sergeant,’ she called, ‘over here.’
Rory was sweating inside his scene-of-crime suit. This wasn’t his idea of fun, and it was probably a wild goose chase, but the boss had demanded his presence. Thought it was a big break. Time would tell. Apparently, X really did mark the spot and they’d quickly come across what looked like a bone emerging from the mud of the dried riverbed.
Rory had driven just under forty miles along the coast from Brighton to get to Chichester Harbour, though it still fell within their jurisdiction. It was the combined estuary of a number of small rivers that joined the sea at West Wittering, but in the prolonged drought, several of them had run dry. Now there was more mud than water and the rivers were sharing their secrets.
‘What is it?’ said Rory, a
s he got closer to Rose. ‘Just a dead dog, I assume?’ He was yet to be convinced that the tangle of UV scrawls across three girls’ backs had really been pointing to this precise location.
Rose shook her head. ‘No, we’ve got what looks like a full set of human bones here.’
‘Brought to the surface as the river dried?’
‘Correct.’ She was carefully cleaning the mud away from a dome-shaped fragment – which even Rory’s untrained eye could see was part of a human skull. She had a camera hanging round her neck, and she stopped frequently to take photographs.
‘So they’ve probably been in there for decades?’ said Rory hopefully. If they could go straight to a history museum rather than crossing his desk, he’d be more than happy.
Francis shrugged. ‘Too early to say.’ His SOCO suit was heavily splattered with mud, but the cadaver-like pallor of the past few days had gone. He straightened up and pulled a folded photocopy out from within his white suit.
‘Look.’ He held it out to Rory. ‘We’ve now got a link to Bosham Church, and the map led us here.’ He pointed to a dark spot on the map and Rory could see that it approximated to where they were now standing. ‘These bones are going to lead us to the killer.’ There was new determination in his voice. Something had changed.
Rose carried on with her work in silence, finally lifting the muddy piece and placing it gently into a large plastic box. She scribbled something on the box’s label and handed it to one of the SOCOs loitering nearby. Rose was stuck into the painstaking task of carefully extricating each individual bone from the mud so it could be taken back to the forensics lab for analysis. The human body had two hundred and six bones in total, and all Rory could think was, rather her than me.
‘First assessment, Rose?’ said Rory, handing the map back to Francis. ‘The bones telling you anything yet?’
Rose stood up and flexed her back. Despite having a plank to kneel on, her white suit was besmirched with river mud, and she swatted at a couple of flies that buzzed round her head. Her red hair was damp with sweat, tendrils sticking to the nape of her neck and her forehead.
‘Definitely human, can’t tell you the sex yet,’ she said, unscrewing the cap from a small bottle of water that one of the SOCOs handed her. She took a long draught. ‘Too early to determine age, apart from saying that it’s not a teenager, and nor is it a very elderly person.’
Her Last Breath: The new crime thriller from the international bestseller (Sullivan and Mullins) Page 25
