‘Yes, we’ve just finished his interview. He was on a bus at the time of Francesca’s murder. With stops, that takes care of forty minutes. We’re just checking out the pubs in Redditch he said he was drinking at. I suspect he went there to deal but we’re not likely to get a confession out of him.’
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted something that could tie him to Francesca Carter’s murder.
‘We’ve had to let him go for now.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
‘We’ll catch this person.’
She smiled. There didn’t seem to be enough to go on. ‘Organise a search of Robin Dawkins’s flat for first thing but in the meantime, keep digging. We can speak to his girlfriend too. A six o’clock wake-up call will ensure she’s in and catch her off guard. Does Cassandra Wilson have a record?’
‘No, not a jot.’
‘Have we managed to crack Robin Dawkins’s phone?’
‘Not yet, but that should come back soon. It takes a lot to keep our tech team out.’
‘At least he has a phone. We still haven’t come across the phone or tablet that Holly Long had been using.’
‘Oh, Wyre and O’Connor are back.’
‘It’s all happening at once. I’ll come through in a second. Maybe Francesca Carter’s post-mortem will tell us something.’ She quickly scanned the system. Holly Long’s bank statements had been fully uploaded. She needed to delve further into Holly’s life and take a closer look at the flags against certain transactions.
Her mind flashed back to Francesca’s body lying in the bathtub, her hair splayed out and her bleeding toes, then she shivered. There was no putting it off.
She tried Hannah one more time but her phone was switched off. Hannah had to be with Samuel Avery, regardless of her daughter’s reservations when she spoke to her the other night. Her stomach fluttered as she pushed the image of the two of them out of her mind. What was Avery playing at?
Chapter Fifty-One
He hurried through the door and scurried down to the cellar to see his victim. He’d been gone a while but his absence had been unavoidable.
The light flickered on. There she was, waiting for him. Exactly where he’d left her with her hands bound behind her back only a couple of hours earlier. She’d drifted off to sleep, her head leaning against a dusty shelf.
He hadn’t meant to be gone so long. Her low-cut top exposed his fingermarks on her neck and he grinned. The damsel-in-distress look suited her so well, better than he’d ever have thought. He only wished she was enough for him but she had merely been the catalyst for what he’d done wrong – not that he regretted it. His fingers twitched, but not for her. His body craved a release, and she couldn’t help. His mind craved a new memory, one that could be replayed for an eternity, but it wasn’t craving memories of her.
‘Let me go,’ she whimpered.
She looked so insincere he almost wanted to burst into laughter. ‘You’re awake.’ He pulled a bottle of water from his bag and held it to her berry-coloured lips. She guzzled down half the contents before spluttering a mouthful into her lap. He bent down to stare into her eyes but she turned away. ‘You hungry?’
She shook her head.
He kissed her gently on the forehead taking in the damp smell that had seeped through her clothes and hair. ‘You’re cold.’ He grabbed a fleecy blanket and pulled it over her shoulders. She still wouldn’t look at him even though he was doing everything possible to make her comfortable. This was a game he hadn’t played before. He didn’t know what his next move would be. All he could do was improvise.
He dragged a chair from under the stairs and slumped into it. It had been a long tense day, which was evident by the smell seeping from his pits. ‘Look at me.’ She looked down. He grabbed her hair and turned her face to his before locking his lips over hers. ‘There, that’s better.’ Was it better? It didn’t feel right at all. He didn’t know why he was bothering. It wasn’t working. This was all too weird.
She wasn’t enough – this woman in front of him. There was another on the horizon and he knew just where to find her. He pulled the phone from his pocket and reread the stored messages.
‘Okay, if you won’t be nice, I guess I’ll have to leave you here a bit longer.’ As he stood to leave, he slipped his hand behind a bottle of wine and checked to see if Holly’s tablet and phone were still there. They were. She glanced across at the pink tablet then looked away again. The woman in front of him had read everything on that phone and tablet already.
Once again, she leaned her head on the shelving and closed her eyes. He hurried back up the creaky steps and locked the door behind him. He had some business to attend to, some paperwork to straighten, then he’d be leaving for good. All the plans had been made and starting again would be fun, a whole new world of opportunities was about to open up. However, one opportunity lay on his doorstep and the urge to take it made him feel like an addict chasing a fix. He knew exactly who was next in line.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Wyre stood in front of the boards while she added to the notes under the photos of Francesca, and O’Connor leaned back in his seat at the other end of the room. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a squashed pasty. Gina felt the saliva building up in her mouth. She’d barely eaten over the course of the day and he was making her hungry.
‘Are you okay going through the post-mortem with us?’
‘Yes, guv,’ Wyre replied. ‘Thankfully everything went without a hitch. O’Connor didn’t heave once – result. It was pretty much as described at the scene. We can confirm that Francesca Carter definitely drowned in her own bathwater. A huge clump of her hair was missing from her head and that too was found at the scene. There was evidence of several knocks to the back of her head, consistent with being dunked repeatedly. I’m afraid there wasn’t much more to report. No evidence of previous abuse. No evidence of strangulation like we found on Holly Long’s neck. She was slightly underweight for a twenty-five-year-old.’ Wyre did the zip up on her black jacket and shivered a little.
‘Anything flag up in the post-mortems to link Francesca Carter to Holly Long? They were both asphyxiated, one in water and one with a pillow, but was there anything else?’
Wyre flicked through her notes and scanned a few pages. ‘No.’
‘Okay, what are we missing? Holly was pregnant.’
‘Francesca definitely wasn’t,’ Wyre interrupted.
‘Any sign of a flower or petals on her body?’
‘No, guv.’
Gina’s mind whirred. ‘I have a theory. Francesca wasn’t pregnant. Carnations are Mother’s day flowers. The petals had been sprinkled across Holly’s stomach, the murderer trying to tell us that Holly was a mother. The flower head in Holly’s throat, was that to gag her, to stop her from talking about her pregnancy? And now I’m bouncing back to there being two suspects.’ Gina stared at the wall as she let the cases flood her mind. ‘How about the scene? Anything else to report?’