by Cari Hunter
“Don’t you risk wrecking that status quo when you date other people, though?” he asked.
“I suppose, but it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe we set such an impossible standard for prospective partners that no one measures up.”
“Unless one day someone does,” Nelson said quietly. “What happens to the one left behind then?”
The prospect brought a lump to Sanne’s throat. It was exactly what she lay awake fretting over, especially when she knew Meg was on a date.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I try not to think about it. I know we could commit, make ourselves exclusive, and still live separately, but even that would change things.”
“If it ain’t broke…”
“Precisely. Don’t rock the boat.” She rolled her eyes at her mangled proverbs.
“You’re not mad at me for asking, are you?”
Sanne shook her head. Sometimes it was a relief to try to work the logic through, even if all that did was emphasise the illogicality of it all. “To be honest, mate, I’m surprised you waited this long.”
Chapter Eleven
An automatic plug-in air freshener sprayed the reception area of Cotter’s Garage every ten minutes, but its pungent floral bouquet did little to mask Joan Cotter’s chain-smoking. Nicotine tinged the wallpaper, and a phone that had once been cream was now a tarry yellow.
“A week on Wednesday. Would that be okay for you?” Joan spoke around her cigarette, puffing out smoke like a carcinogenic dragon.
Eager to retreat to a safe distance, Sanne agreed to the date and jotted it in her diary. “I’ll drop it off as soon as you open. Are you three able to spare us ten minutes now?”
In lieu of an answer, Joan opened the door connecting to the workshop and bellowed for her son and husband. Her lips never lost their grip on her cigarette. Sanne saw Nelson’s eyes widen in appreciation.
“Hey, Sanne.” Wiping his hands on a grease-stained rag, Billy Cotter greeted her warmly. “My dad’s on his way. Can I get you a drink?”
Keen to get back to the office and type up their reports, she and Nelson declined the offer. When Geoff joined them, they pulled up chairs in the office, Joan lighting another cigarette from the stub of her last. Sanne introduced Nelson and began to run through the questions. The family’s answers were simple and unembellished: Billy spent most of his days in the garage or on call outs, and in the evenings he was either at home or at the pub. Geoff’s routine followed an even more straightforward pattern: garage, home, and a visit to the Working Men’s Club on a Tuesday. None of them recognised Rachel, and no one but locals had used the garage in the past two weeks. Both men were willing to volunteer DNA samples if that would help exclude them from the enquiry, and Billy offered to double-check the diary and computer records, to make absolutely sure they hadn’t dealt with anyone from out of the area or who might fit Rachel’s description.
The Cotters already had Sanne’s mobile phone number on their database, but she was in the middle of giving them her work number as well when her phone rang yet again.
“Excuse me,” she said, remembering to check who was calling this time. It was Eleanor’s mobile. “Hey, boss. We’re just finishing—”
Eleanor cut across her. “Scotty and Jay found the vic’s car, shoved into a riverbed off the Snake. They tracked it back to a rental agency in Sheffield. The manager there confirmed that a Rachel Medlock had signed the rental agreement. He couldn’t give a positive ID from the photograph, but she’d provided a local address for the paperwork: a holiday cottage out in the sticks.”
“Jesus.” Acutely aware that she had an audience, Sanne turned away from the Cotters. “What’s the address?” Trapping the phone with her shoulder, she scribbled down the details.
“You’re closest,” Eleanor said. “The owner of the cottage has agreed to cooperate fully and will meet you there in twenty minutes. I’m en route with Duncan and SOCO, but the traffic’s gone to shit in the rain. Approx ETA is one hour. Update from scene ASAP, please.”
“Yes, boss.” Sanne was already gathering her paperwork. She hung up and turned to Nelson. “We have to go.”
He didn’t stop to ask why. “I’ll bring the car around,” he said, heading for the door.
“Is everything all right?” Joan asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Functioning on autopilot, Sanne fell back on her training. “Sorry to have to cut this short. Please get in touch if you remember anything you might have overlooked.”
Nelson pulled up the car outside the office. She heard him rev the engine in an unsubtle hint.
“Did something happen on the case, Sanne?” Billy sounded intrigued.
“Yes, you could say that.” Giddy with the promise of real progress, she smiled at him and ran out into the rain.
*
Rowan Cottage was a picture-perfect example of a holiday retreat. Pink roses arched across its whitewashed exterior, and a gravel path meandered through a well-tended garden, whose flowers filled the air with scent and the buzz of bees. Its owner, Mrs. Martindale, had met Sanne and Nelson with trepidation, and taken two attempts to unlock the front door. It was little wonder she was nervous, having watched her visitors don Tyvek suits, gloves, and protective booties. Sanne politely requested that she stay outside and then followed Nelson into the hallway.
The door clicked shut behind them, leaving them in the beams of multi-coloured, late-afternoon sunlight shining through the door’s stained-glass panels. Dust motes danced in the air, and the pendulum of a grandfather clock marked time in a soothing rhythm.
“You okay to take the upstairs, and I’ll stay down here?” Nelson asked quietly.
“Fine,” she said, impatient to get started before SOCO arrived en masse and claimed ownership of the scene.
At the top of the stairs, she pushed open each door in turn, finding a double bedroom, a tiny single, and a bathroom. The single bedroom had obviously not been used. Its patchwork quilt was folded back to welcome a guest, and complimentary toiletries were arranged on an untouched stack of fresh towels. She left everything as it was and went across to the double room, stopping just through the doorway to observe its layout and contents. As she did so, her heart rate sped up, and she took an unconscious step forward.
Rumpled sheets and pillows told her that both sides of the bed had been slept in. The pillow on the left bore a folded pair of plaid pyjamas, but the occupant of the right side had discarded their nightclothes in a more haphazard fashion. Sanne knelt by the bed and picked up the satin nightdress, the fabric slipping in her gloved hands to reveal its mid-thigh length and the intricate lacing on its straps.
“Jesus,” she whispered, all her theories around a stranger-abduction beginning to unravel. If Rachel’s husband or boyfriend was the culprit, EDSOP would have a face to look for, and the case might be solved within days.
With mounting urgency, she started to search for whatever might help identify Rachel’s companion. The clothes in the wardrobe were a mix of casual trousers, shirts, and sweaters, plus a couple of dresses kept separate to stop them creasing. Two empty, matching holdalls provided more evidence of a couple on holiday. Wondering at what point it had all gone so wrong, she shut the wardrobe and opened the nearest bedside cabinet. She pulled out a collection of guidebooks and maps, and then felt farther back until her fingers touched upon a purse. Four pound coins and a fifty-pence piece dropped onto the floor as she hooked out a collection of plastic cards: one debit card, two credit cards, Boots and Nectar points cards, and a driving licence in the name of Rachel Medlock. The mugshot was too small for Sanne to distinguish much detail aside from blond hair, but the notes section of the purse contained a larger photograph, folded in half and tucked away behind a ten and two twenties. In red pen, an inscription on the back recorded the date as 14th February and beneath it: She said YES!
Sanne took a deep breath and unfolded the image.
“What the fuck?”
For a long moment, all she could do was stare. The
n she grabbed the driving licence and set both images on the floor in front of her.
“Oh, no. Fucking no.”
A background of bright blue sky and a vast aquamarine lake had made the light perfect for the photographer. Rachel Medlock’s cheeks were pink with cold, but she was smiling broadly at the camera, her arms wrapped around a taller woman whose eyes Sanne recognised even without the bruising and the swelling she was accustomed to seeing.
“Nelson!” She ran to the top of the stairs, both photographs clasped in her hands. She could hear him hurrying down the hall.
“San? You okay?”
“You need to see this. Fuck. Fucking shit, we’ve got it all wrong.”
He met her halfway, and she handed him the images.
“That’s Rachel.” She pointed to the blue-eyed, fair-haired woman.
“Poor kid. She’s pretty, isn’t she?” He studied the larger photograph. “So who’s the other one?”
She wiped a hand across her face. Her glove came away wet. “The other one is the woman I found at the bottom of Laddaw Ridge.”
It took Nelson a few seconds to register that. She watched his jaw slacken as he scrutinised the two women again. Uncertain whether he was convinced, she pulled out the photograph they had used for the interviews.
“It’s difficult to see it, I know, but look here, at the shape of her face, her chin. I saw her eyes when she woke up, Nelson. They’re hazel, almost brown. Rachel’s are blue.”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “There are two sets of dishes on the draining board. Were they both here?”
She nodded. “I think they’re a couple. They shared a bed, and you can just…Well, look at them.”
Nelson returned his attention to the lakeside photograph. He tapped his finger just above Rachel’s head. “Do you think she’s our perp?”
“No.” Sanne’s voice betrayed her, cracking on that one word. “I think he took them both. I think that when he came back and realised our woman had escaped, he moved Rachel somewhere else. That would explain why he started the fire where he did. We assumed he was destroying evidence of himself, but maybe he was blitzing the spot where a second woman had been lying.”
Nelson’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ.”
“The woman at the hospital tried to tell me,” Sanne said. “She wasn’t saying her own name, she was asking for her partner.”
“You couldn’t have known that, San.”
“No, I suppose not.” She shivered. “But all this time we’ve been looking for him, when we should have been looking for a second victim.”
“One will probably lead to the other,” he said, though he must have known as well as she did that the wasted days might have cost Rachel her life.
He tilted Sanne’s chin and made sure she looked at him. “You okay?”
“Yes.” She might not be okay later, when she was alone with time to think, but right now she just wanted to do her job. “We should call Eleanor, give her a heads-up.”
Nelson offered her his mobile. She managed a small smile and began to dial on her own phone.
“Wish me luck,” she said.
*
Sanne discovered a second pile of bankcards and store cards hidden in a sock in the wardrobe. She had often done that herself before going hiking: emptied her purse of everything but a few quid for parking and an emergency tenner. The cards were similar to Rachel’s, except that they belonged to a Ms. Josie Albright. Sequestered among them was a bus pass, complete with photograph.
There was nothing else of interest upstairs, no other helpful documents, no signs of a disturbance or a break-in, no indication that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. Satisfied that she had finished her sweep, Sanne met Nelson in the kitchen, where she swapped Josie’s pass for two unsent postcards he had found propped up against the toaster.
“Definitely the same woman,” he said, holding the pass alongside the lake photo. “See the addresses on the postcards? Her parents live in Australia. Rachel’s are a bit closer, though. Up near Loch Lomond.”
“And the cards are dated seven days ago, which fits our estimated timeline,” Sanne said. The scribbled messages were standard holiday fare: having a lovely time, weather is great, Josie got chased by a cow, Rachel fell into a bog, the fish and chips are amazing. Nothing hinted at any kind of tension or relationship breakdown, and both women had promised to Skype their parents as soon as they were “back in civilisation.” They had booked the cottage for two weeks, which would explain why no one seemed to have missed them yet.
“Pity the parents,” Nelson said. “Should be getting these, and instead they’ll be getting a phone call from the boss.”
“Can’t imagine that, can you?” Sanne murmured. Everywhere she looked she saw traces of the couple: odd socks left to dry on the radiator, the Guardian newspaper spread over the kitchen table and scattered with crumbs, a note reminding them to buy stamps and milk. There was no outdoor gear in sight, which suggested they had gone for a hike, taking their boots, rucksacks, and raincoats with them. Had they been followed onto the moors, or had their assailant acted spontaneously once he had seen them up there?
A timid knock on the front door brought her out of her reverie. She hadn’t noticed the cars pull up, but she could hear their doors opening and voices calling to one another.
“There goes the neighbourhood.” Nelson placed the photograph and the pass on the kitchen table. “I think that was Mrs. Martindale trying to warn us.”
“Yeah, SOCO aren’t likely to knock.” Sanne went to the window in the living room. An SUV and a Crime Scene Investigation van were parked behind Nelson’s car. She saw Eleanor greet Mrs. Martindale with a distracted smile and head for the front door.
“Evening, boss,” Nelson said as Sanne joined them in the hallway.
Eleanor shook her head. A flush of stress coloured the tip of her nose. “You two certainly know how to kick up a fucking shit storm,” she said.
*
Nursing a bottle of water, Sanne watched Eleanor talking to an overweight man in a smartly pressed, navy blue suit. She didn’t recognise him, but from the way Eleanor deferred to him, he was probably one of the top brass, dragged out of his office just as he was contemplating going home, to come and stand instead on a muddy driveway in the middle of nowhere. He held up a hand, cutting Eleanor off mid-sentence to answer his phone. She waited for no more than twenty seconds before going back into the cottage.
“That didn’t look very encouraging,” Nelson said. Predictably, SOCO had requested that he and Sanne leave the house so they could begin to process the scene.
“It didn’t. Do you think someone’s head will roll for this?”
He ran a hand over his chin, scratching at his five o’clock shadow. “Who the hell knows? I wouldn’t want to be the one who has to stand in front of the press and admit that we only just realised another woman is missing, and that, by the way, we still have no idea who our perp is.”
A crunch of boots on gravel warned them of Carlyle’s approach.
“I’ve got a damn good idea who our perp is,” he said. His thin smile made his lips look purple.
Nelson settled onto the bonnet of his car, folding his arms. “Care to share with the rest of the class?”
Carlyle’s smile widened. He ignored Nelson and directed his answer at Sanne. “One lesbian in the hospital, one lesbian AWOL. You do the maths.”
Sanne blinked slowly and counted to ten before she responded. “You’re considering Rachel Medlock a suspect?”
“Obviously.” He frowned. “Although you’d expect it to be the other way around: the butch one on the run, not at the bottom of the rocks.”
Sanne felt Nelson shift closer to her, as if afraid she might go for Carlyle’s throat. She held herself perfectly still and started another count. While it was true that Josie’s hair had been shorter than Rachel’s, neither woman adhered to a butch or femme stereotype, judging by the clothing Sanne had examined.
“Most lesbian relationships don’t work like that, Sarge,” she said quietly.
“No?” He lowered his voice. “Hey, if you ever feel like giving me some pointers…”
She smiled sweetly, wishing she could knock his teeth out. “There’s not enough time in the world to teach you half of what I know.”
His face turned scarlet, his obvious discomfiture making Nelson chuckle. Sanne was grateful Nelson had left her to fight her own corner. He knew she was capable of holding her own against Carlyle.
As Eleanor left the cottage and began to walk over to them, Carlyle fired a parting shot. “Just because they’re gay doesn’t mean they’re special, Jensen. Cases like this, nine times out of ten it’s the boyfriend. Or, in this instance, the girlfriend.” He turned to leave, calling back in a singsong voice, “You don’t want me to be right, but I am.”
Nelson waited until he was out of earshot before speaking. “Ignore him. He’s a prick.”
Sanne was proficient at ignoring Carlyle, but part of what he’d said had hit home. She wondered whether she really was following the evidence in believing Rachel a victim rather than a suspect, or whether other factors—including her own sexuality and preconceptions—were clouding her judgement. There was little about Josie’s abduction that would point to Rachel being the culprit, though. The use of drugs, the knowledge of the local caves, the prolonged torture, and the sheer physicality required to subdue Josie initially—all seemed to suggest a premeditated crime by a male perp, not a woman of slender stature who was writing light-hearted postcards in the hours before she disappeared.