Her team still didn’t look convinced. Eve shrugged. ‘Any better ideas?’ She stared at the three of them and was met with silence. ‘Go to it then.’ She watched them walk off.
‘Sorry I haven’t checked in.’ Elliott slid a cup across the desk towards her.
‘No worries. I don’t need to be babysat. Anyhow, this makes up for it.’ Eve lifted the cup and blew on the hot coffee. ‘Our favourite journalist is pissing off Hastings.’
‘Today’s paper.’
There was resignation in Elliott’s voice. She wasn’t sure what the hell she was expecting him to be able to do about Jenkins. ‘Don’t know what she’s up to,’ Eve continued, ‘but she’s gone off radar. Surprised I haven’t heard from her after she left me a voicemail.’
‘Trying to get the scoop?’
‘Said she had something I needed to know.’
Elliott shook his head, smiled. ‘Ah, good old Jenkins. Anything to get you to bite. Let me guess, she didn’t give any clue as to what that might’ve been?’ He stood to leave.
Eve nodded. ‘You know her … Anyway, let me know if you get hold of her. I’ll keep trying too, see if talking to her means we can find Lexie’s dealer friend.’
Elliott threw his coffee cup in the bucket by Eve’s desk. ‘Let me see what I can do.’ He walked to the door, then stopped to turn around. ‘Not a lot, I expect. I don’t think I’ll be her favourite person after shooting her down at the press briefing. My favours will be done.’ He waved once and disappeared down the hall.
Eve stared at the crime-file photo on her computer screen as she hung up the phone yet again. She’d been trying Jenkins all morning, both at the office and on her mobile, but all her colleagues would tell Eve was that she was out on a job.
Eve shuffled her seat closer to the desk, read the notes accompanying the photo for the hundredth time. The shot showed the bruised and battered flesh below Helen Black’s cheekbone, a partial shoe print magnified upon the damaged skin. The young woman was barely recognizable compared to the other picture of her on file – one of her in life: vibrant, beautiful. Just as Melanie and Lexie had been. Was it a coincidence that they all had the same colouring? The same long brown hair, same almond-shaped eyes?
Eve could make out the letter ‘C’ imprinted on Helen’s soft face. Through the miracles of modern science, Jack’s people had been able to match the print to ‘Carolina’ work boots manufactured in America, not a common brand in the UK. It had given them hope but had come to nothing.
Eve made a note to have Ferguson check out workwear companies that operated or supplied to companies throughout the UK, see if any of them stocked the boots. Something she knew had been done a year ago, but it wouldn’t hurt to check again. She smiled, imagining Ferguson’s reaction when she gave him the arduous task. They might be finding a way to work together, but she could still take pleasure in the small things. Her moment of enjoyment was interrupted as her team came rushing into the office.
‘Something you’ll want to see.’ The excitement was obvious in Ferguson’s voice, and definitely a surprise, as he tossed the press clipping in front of Eve. ‘The bell that was ringing for me when you mentioned vets.’ Ferguson tapped his finger against the paper. ‘Adrian Hardy. Veterinary assistant for a practice in the West End. Was. Sacked over a year ago and done for theft.’
‘Ketamine?’ Eve felt the familiar stirrings of excitement at a possible lead. She ignored the fact that Ferguson had shown no sign of any bell ringing when he’d tutted and questioned her instruction earlier. But, then again, reading Ferguson and his ways was next to impossible sometimes.
Mearns butted in. ‘Yup. And anything and everything else by the sounds of things.’
Maybe it was Mearns who had made the connection. The two of them were in cahoots. Ferguson would be happy to take the glory, and perhaps if there was something going on Mearns would be happy to give him it.
Ferguson nodded. ‘Sanders was the arresting officer.’
A memory fought to rise to the forefront of Eve’s mind. Countless drug-related arrests over the years. This one obviously hadn’t stood out against any other at the time. Nothing more than a coincidence that it had been Sanders who arrested him.
Ferguson paused. ‘And he’s been in trouble before.’
Eve saw the glint in Ferguson’s eye. She was glad to see the fire back in him, regardless of his problem with her. ‘Go on.’
‘Our Mr Hardy had been cautioned for stalking six months before the theft. Seems he had a bit of a thing for a young lass that lived in his neighbourhood. Never went beyond the warning though. But maybe he had some unresolved issues, if you get what I mean.’
Eve did a quick count in her head. ‘Issues that he might’ve still been dealing with around about the same time Helen Black was murdered.’
‘Bingo.’
‘Anything linking him to her or St Andrews?’
‘Not that we’ve found.’
‘We know where he is?’
Cooper hadn’t said a word, probably as confused as Eve as to how Ferguson and Mearns had found the connection. Still, it didn’t matter. They had a lead.
Ferguson carried on. ‘Got off lightly with the theft. Two-year suspended sentence. Did his eighty hours of community service. Last known working at a pet shop. Seems his love of animals might be genuine.’
Eve frowned. She looked at the clock on the wall, realized she’d missed the last dose of her painkillers and that it was a first. Too busy for pain. She opened her drawer and felt for the bottle.
Eve lifted the glass of lukewarm water on her desk, saw Mearns walking to the door. She was making small chat with the guy standing there, signing for something. Eve craned her neck. She swallowed the pills as Mearns turned from the courier.
Mearns was carrying a small brown-paper-wrapped package in her hand, its edges wet from the rain falling outside. Cooper and Ferguson were watching her as she approached.
‘For you.’ Mearns placed the package on the desk.
Eve picked it up, turning it this way and that. ‘What is it?’ She felt stupid when she saw Mearns’ face. ‘Yeah. OK. Open it. I hear you.’ She grabbed a pencil and poked a hole in the damp paper before ripping it open.
‘What the …’
It was a ceramic box. A trinket box of some sort, its lid the face of a crying Harlequin. Taped shut with masking tape. Eve’s flesh went clammy.
‘Never thought of you as being a girly girl.’ Mearns’ attempt at humour sounded forced. Cooper and Ferguson stood watching.
Eve laid down the box, opened her drawer again, this time reaching for latex gloves. She wasn’t taking any chances.
Not one of them said a word as she prised at the tape with the point of the penknife on her keyring. She ran the blade around the edges of the box, sat back once the seal had been broken.
She looked up at her colleagues, willing them to count to three for her. With trembling hands, Eve lifted the lid.
Newspaper. She breathed out.
The paper was scrunched like the poxy tissue wrap that was all the rage in gifts these days. Eve picked at the wrinkled paper, peeling it back bit by bit, careful not to rip it. She paused. The smell mingling with damp newspaper made Eve want to lift her hand to her nose. But she didn’t, keeping the gloves as clean as possible.
One more layer … Eve holding her breath, sure she recognized the newspaper article that was being revealed bit by bit.
It was Cooper who broke the silence. ‘Jesus Christ.’ His voice sounded strangled.
Mearns gasped, grabbing the edge of the desk to steady herself, Ferguson putting a protective hand to the base of her back as she did.
No doubt about the newspaper article. Eve swallowed, stared at the severed tongue in front of her. Gift-wrapped. The blue piercing at its plump centre answering all of her unanswered calls to Jenkins.
Chapter 25
Eve placed the sheet of paper on the polished oak table in front of Sanders and her husband. Archi
e took hold of his wife’s hand.
‘What does it mean?’ Archie’s trembling voice belied the masculine grip.
Their hands lay together on the padded arm of Sanders’ wheelchair. Archie’s black-haired, fleshy fingers covering the spindly digits beneath.
She shrugged. ‘Whatever it means, it’s just got personal.’
A colour photocopy of the original article, the scrunched-up paper in which Jenkins’ tongue had been sent lay spread out: red and black ink upon greying paper, Sanders’ and Eve’s faces looking warped amongst the many creases.
But the thick black letters of the headline were still as bold and loud as they had been back then – shouting at the injustice of Sanders’ injuries, the words below whispering at Eve’s guilt. Making sure the reader was clear this was the same woman who had run a suspect off the road. The same fellow officer with her at the time whose life had been put in the balance, with the scale finally tipping.
It was Jenkins’ front page. The page marking the event that changed their lives for ever.
Sanders’ eyes searched Eve’s. ‘How did they get hold of that article – an original?’
‘I’ve asked Elliott to look into that. But it seems our killer has easy access to these things.’
She didn’t say the most obvious answer was that someone had cut them out at the time of publication, intending to use them later.
Eve picked at the side of her finger. ‘I was lying in a hospital bed the first time I saw that story. Cooper was there and I was demanding to see you, to know how you were. Feeling like shit, knowing I’d let you down.’ She picked harder at her finger, didn’t say out loud that Cooper had been telling her over and over that it wasn’t her fault.
‘Cooper tried to block my view of the trolley as it made the rounds of the ward, to hide the newspaper and the truth of what people were saying – what they were thinking.’ She looked to the floor, sat in silence.
Archie set his mouth in a tight line. Sanders said nothing.
‘I wanted to silence Jenkins. I hated her – but not for what she was saying about me. It wasn’t that. It was how she was able to write what was inside of me. All the guilt, the shame, the anger.’ Eve didn’t care if Archie might be enjoying her confession.
‘I couldn’t deal with that, but I kept reading. Every day. Letting her beat me with her words, knowing I deserved them but wanting, praying for her to stop.’ Eve paused, letting the silence stretch. ‘Jenkins won’t be saying anything ever again. Won’t be able to do to people what she seemed to always take pleasure in doing. In some strange way I should be glad, but I’m not. I deserved what she did, but no one deserves what she got. Just like you don’t deserve that.’ She nodded towards the wheelchair, waiting for Archie to lay into her, but he didn’t.
‘What if all this is because of what I did? I mean, isn’t that what this is?’ Eve jabbed at the evidence bag, shifting it across the table and on to the floor. She wanted Archie to lay into her. To say what he’d always wanted to say, not buying into the bullshit forgiveness he’d been forced to give. But he sat there, clasping his wife’s hand, controlled, contained.
Sanders didn’t argue with Eve. ‘But why? Who? They’re all still inside.’
‘I know. But what else can it be?’ Eve was pissed at herself, feeling like a whining puppy, wanting instead to be top dog, to be in control of what was going on.
‘There must be a reason that front page has been dredged up. It has to be something to do with what happened. Maybe I should go and see MacNeill. Find out whether they’re influencing anyone on the outside.’
‘Can you trust yourself to be in the same room as him?’ Sanders’ voice was low, dangerous. ‘If I wasn’t in this thing, I know I wouldn’t be able to control myself.’
Eve carried on. ‘In there I can. Outside would be a different story.’
Sanders shook her head. ‘They’re bad bastards, but they don’t fit this. They’re not that clever and – as stupid as it sounds, considering – I don’t think even they’re bad enough for this.’
‘Maybe not, but we can write it off, eliminate them from inquiries. Anyway, I think it’s time that me and MacNeill had a little chat. I want to see him face to face.’
Sanders was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was resigned, changing the subject. ‘Have you got anything at all to go on otherwise?’
Eve filled Sanders in on their trip to St Andrews. ‘There has to be a reason why he’s waiting a week between. There’s a message he’s trying to send us. How he’s killing them. A reason for everything, even the harlequin on the box he sent. We can’t see it yet, but we bloody need to, and fast.’
‘Any word on what happened to Jenkins?’
‘They found her body at her flat, hands still bound in venetian-blind cord, no sign of forced entry. MacLean reckons she’d only been dead a matter of hours when the tongue was delivered. But she’d been missing since Monday night. It appears the bastard kept her tied up during that time.’
‘Have you found the dealer she met with about Lexie?’
‘We found out that she met a guy at the Highland Hotel for a meal the night she was killed. Her boss says she phoned in on her way home, around nine p.m. He says she was all excited about the Lexie story. That she typed it up before phoning him. Filed it there and then. But she also said that the story was so much bigger than that. That there was more to come.’
Eve let that sink in before her next revelation. ‘And then she phoned me. But I didn’t answer. She left the same message as what she’d told her boss.’
‘What? Eve …’ Sanders’ expression said what Eve hadn’t stopped thinking herself. If only she’d answered the phone.
Eve swallowed. ‘No one heard from her after that. We managed to get a description of the dealer from the waiter that served them. No CCTV on the premises, but I’ve got the team trawling cameras in the surrounding streets and the route to Jenkins’ home. Maybe we’ll get a hit. A search of her flat found nothing related to what she was working on. She was obviously storing it in her head overnight.’
‘And do you think—’
‘I don’t think for a minute he’s our guy.’ Eve stood. ‘But, whoever he is, I believe he’s somehow connected to all this. Anyway, I better get going.’
Eve stood, had an overwhelming urge to say sorry again. But she stepped away instead, crouched to get the paper still lying on the floor and looked at the front page again. ‘Don’t worry. I think this is about me, not you.’
Eve looked at Archie. ‘You take care of her.’ Archie’s lips twitched. She turned once more to Sanders. ‘I’ll be back to see you soon.’
Eve saw herself to the door, not wanting them to see the doubt on her face. She hoped this was about her. But she had no idea why it would be. She wasn’t linked to the first two women who had been killed. She had no idea who they were or who was targeting them. But that person knew her. Her life. It wasn’t some game. Nor were the lives of the women who had lost theirs.
Her life, and someone had got too involved in it. Eve lifted her coat collar against the wind as she walked to the car, shivering as she did, nothing to do with the cold air. What was going on? She was supposed to chase the bad guys and they were supposed to run. But this time it looked like someone was coming for her and, although she’d never say it out loud, it scared the shit out of her.
Chapter 26
Thursday, 21 November
Johnny MacNeill Snr’s fat bald head gleamed like a polished bowling ball beneath the glare of the strip lights as the massive bulk of him rocked on a chair which remained upright, somehow defying gravity. His solid thick arms were stretched out in front, handcuffed wrists and clasped hands resting on the edge of the table separating him from his visitor.
Eve worked her tongue behind closed lips, trying to draw water into a desert-dry mouth. She hadn’t expected fear. Rage, yes, but not fear. Anger had always been her go-to whenever she thought of the man in front of her, but that had
abandoned her as soon as she walked into the Peterhead Prison room.
Eve’s eyes were fixed on MacNeill’s as her guts churned. She would not show weakness, never had, but it was proving harder sitting opposite the person responsible for ripping her life apart and leaving Sanders for dead. She felt shame for being scared – like she was failing Sanders again: a loyal partner trapped within a body that might as well be made of stone.
Beyond MacNeill’s mountainous frame, a warder stood by the door in the corner. The room was bright and modern, the new-build a far cry from the old Peterhead Prison, which now served as a popular tourist attraction. Eve could think of better places to go on her time off.
She was still assessing whether the pale, skinny runt of a warder would be of any use to her if things were to turn nasty. When she looked at MacNeill, the sight of the smirk on his flabby cracked lips turned her stomach.
Eve spoke for the first time. ‘Looks like your appetite hasn’t suffered in here.’ In all the imagined conversations she’d had with MacNeill, that was never her opening. Still, she was relieved there was no tremor when she spoke.
‘Takes a lot to put me off my grub.’
Eve clenched her fists beneath the table. From what she knew of MacNeill, nothing had ever troubled the man. Nothing apart from what had happened to his son, that is.
‘How’s Johnny Junior these days?’ Eve took perverse pleasure in seeing MacNeill’s oversized, tattooed hands flex within the metal shackles, dimpled knuckles whitening beneath faded ink.
‘You don’t ask about my son.’
‘I think I just did.’ Eve was warming to her theme, an image of Sanders kept in the forefront of her mind, awakening the rage.
MacNeill’s jaw was grinding, several chins wobbling beneath black stubble. ‘Doing about as good as that lady friend of yours.’
Barely contained fury, the words hissing through gritted teeth. She leaned back in her chair, keeping eye contact, relaxing her posture. ‘And that about sums it up, doesn’t it? Tit for tat. Payback.’
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