“He was. He denied it, but it was bloody obvious.”
“Did it make you angry?”
“I didn’t do anything to her, if that’s what you’re asking. I gave her an earful and told her not to darken my door again. Justified, under the circumstances.”
“You didn't see her again?”
Rosie shook her head. “Nope.” She pursed her lips. “How did she die, anyway?”
Yvonne’s answer was slow and deliberate. “Her throat was slit.”
They sat on the tiny wooden bridge over the stream at Carding Mill.
Yvonne could feel perspiration on her forehead and wiped it with back of her hand, wishing she’d brought a hat.
Tasha dangled her legs over the side, feet not quite touching the water. “So, why are we back here? It’s a long way to come to buy me lunch. Wait, you don’t think we'll spot the killer, do you?”
Yvonne pulled a face. “No, silly.” She giggled. “Though you said he could be a photographer, didn’t you?”
“You’re pulling my leg…” Tasha narrowed her eyes.
The DI poked her in the ribs. "Yes, I’m pulling your leg."
“So, why did you ask me here on a Saturday?”
“To buy you lunch and bring you up to speed.”
“I knew it.” Tasha laughed. “Work. I know you so well.”
“Three victims, that we're aware of, Tasha. All killed using different methods. One was shot with a crossbow, another had their throat slit, and the last one was strangled. All, within the space of three years. I get the feeling he’s preparing us for worse to come.” Yvonne sighed, leaning back on her hands. “Am I reading too much into things? I mean, it can’t get much worse, can it?”
“The depraved can sink to surprising depths. He’ll continue to escalate until you catch him.” Tasha clenched her bottom lip between her teeth, hissing out air. “I’m sorry, Yvonne, that’s probably not what you want to hear. He’s enjoying taunting you. Well, maybe not you, as such, but the police in general. He’s an attention-seeker, your guy. He’s not going to stop of his own accord.”
“One of our suspects met two of the girls through his work. He’s a teacher, but he isn’t big on art. He’s got no paintings on his walls and nothing about him screams artist. His partner is a little scary, though.”
“I don't think your perp is a female, Yvonne. The sheer physical work involved in the killing and processing of the victims, makes that unlikely. Besides, a female serial killer is a rare beast.”
"I wasn't implying it was Rosie. Her husband, however..."
Tasha nodded. "Give me what you have on him next week and I'll look it over."
Yvonne checked her watch. “Time to eat.” Her knees creaked as she rose. “I brought you here for lunch, you know.”
Tasha grinned. “I believe you.”
“I had dinner with Wyn earlier in the week.”
“You did?” Tasha stifled a frown as they approached the cafe. “How did it go?”
“It was okay. He’s good company and funny. The suit wasn't right though.”
“He wore a suit?” Tasha raised an eyebrow. “Boy, he’s serious.”
“Nooo.” Yvonne shook her head. “He kissed me…”
“No way.” Tasha stopped in her tracks. “Did you kiss him back?”
“No. It didn’t feel right. I stopped him, but I’m worried that I’ve spent too much time on my own. Maybe no-one will ever be right for me again.”
“It’ll happen for you, Yvonne and you’ll know if it's right. You can’t force something like that.” Tasha gave the DI’s hand a squeeze. “You work too hard. You can’t begin a relationship until you slow down. What you need is a holiday romance.” Tasha winked. “I’m available in August.”
It was the DI’s turn to raise her eyebrows.
Tasha grinned and held a hand up. “I’m joking, Detective Inspector.”
13
Desire
He observed as she selected two oranges, feeling them for firmness and putting them to her nose to savour their vibrant scent. Perspiration itched his upper lip.
He stepped back whenever she looked up. Not that she'd noticed him. He was several aisles away, ensuring enough distance to be just another face in a crowd. One shopper among many.
Placing the oranges in her trolley, she continued to the next aisle, taking the time to read labels and compare prices. He liked that.
He wondered if she calorie-counted. Her figure suggested she might. Slim, but not skinny. Firm, but not muscular. Just the way he liked a woman.
Her bun, drizzled loose, blonde tendrils around her nape, giving her a gentle air. A soft blouse hugged her torso, but not too tight. Skirt, long enough to cover her knees. Shapely legs ended in small heels. She had style and grace.
His basket filled with unwanted items. He would feign impatience at the till and leave it behind. He was here for her. Only her.
She stopped to speak to someone she knew. A male. Smiling, her face animated.
When they continued talking, he checked his watch and gritted his teeth. They’d been conversing for over a minute. She was no different. No different to all the others. She would be fickle like the others.
His knuckles glowed white around the basket handles. Muttering under his breath, he began imagining her destruction.
As Yvonne crossed the supermarket carpark, and opened her boot, she sensed eyes on her back. She swung around, her heart racing. She saw other shoppers going about their business, pushing trollies or placing bags in the boots of their cars. Nothing out of the ordinary.
She chided herself for being silly and fired up her engine.
The lunchtime bar had quietened down. People had eaten and imbibed their fill, many of them heading back to work.
Terry Mason was aware of her presence, having glanced at her several times during the previous twenty minutes.
He finally approached her, wiping his hands on his trousers and smoothing the sweat from his brow with a sleeve.
“Do you want anything?” He placed his pad and pen on the table.
She noticed a tremor in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me that it was you, who accompanied Nicole Benoit to the Long Mynd on the day she disappeared?”
He sat next to her, flicking a glance to his left and right. “I didn’t harm Nicole.” He rubbed his lips. “I would never have hurt her.”
“Then why keep that from us?”
“I didn’t want you assuming I had anything to do with her disappearance.” He sighed. “Not just you, there are my friends and my employer. The newspapers would have dragged my name and my family through the mud.”
“What about beforehand? Before you knew someone had hurt her? Why didn’t you speak to police when she first disappeared? You must have been aware that people were looking for her? You had vital information.”
“I didn’t. I don’t.”
“You'd spent hours with her on the very day she vanished.”
He stared at the table. “Do you think I haven’t gone over it all, again and again, in my head?”
“What happened that day, Terry? Tell me. Start from when you met her that morning.”
He placed his head in his hands. “I had it all planned. My fancy picnic and all the trimmings. Bottle of champagne, picnic blanket, the works. I’d bought a necklace and a ring. The boxes burned a hole in my pocket, I was so desperate to give them to her.” He looked Yvonne in the eye. “I wanted to propose. I loved her so much. I loved her from that first night. At the gig.”
“Did you propose? Did she turn you down? Is that what happened?”
He shook his head, his eyes unfocussed. “We ate the food. She told me she loved it and that no-one had ever gone to that much trouble for her, before. I took out the box containing the necklace and gave it to her.”
“What was her reaction?” Yvonne tilted her head.
“She said it was beautiful, but…”
“But?”
“I noticed confusion in her eyes and lost
my confidence.”
“Did you give her the ring?”
“No. I left it in my pocket. I decided that I would take her up to the top of Long Mynd, to Boiling Well. I felt, if we walked up there, the setting and the world at our feet… I hoped it would give me the confidence to offer the ring. And, up there with those stunning views, she'd be more likely to accept.”
“What happened then?”
“I got on my bike and headed towards the upper carpark. I checked, and she was following. I tethered my bike and set off up the path, on foot.”
“What if she hadn’t followed you? What then?”
“I’d have gone back to get her.” He shrugged. “I wanted it to be an amazing surprise.”
“Where was she, when you observed her last?”
“She was on her bike, following along the road beside the stream, a few hundred yards down from the carpark. I was already heading up the hill, on my way to Boiling Well.”
“Her killer buried her near Boiling Well.”
“I know. I read it in the paper. They buried her in the place where I had waited for over an hour.”
“What did you suspect had happened to her?”
“I assumed she had given up on the chase and gone home.”
“Did you look for her?”
“On the way down, I kept my eyes peeled. But, I didn’t see her.”
“She tethered her bike near the car park.” Yvonne’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me you didn’t see it?”
He shook his head. “I read about the bike in the papers, a few days later. I knew something was wrong. She wasn’t answering my calls. I dropped by her place a few times and they hadn’t seen her. I thought she might have gone home to France, until her family made an appeal for her, on the news.”
“You still didn’t come forward.”
“I thought they'd arrest me and I had nothing useful to tell the police.”
“Did she call out to you?”
“I don't think so. If she did, I didn’t hear her. I mean, she did when I rode off from the picnic. But, not after that.”
“Did she scream? Cry out?”
“What, when I left?”
“Anytime?”
“No.”
“What about others? Did you notice anyone else?”
“I did, and I didn’t.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, there were others around. Families and such. But, I wasn’t paying them attention. I couldn’t describe any of them to you. I couldn’t even have done that in the car park. Passersby could have been trees or bushes. My thoughts were all on Nicole and wanting her to marry me.”
“Forensics are checking for fibres on the remains that were founds. Will any link back to you?”
“No. At least, if they do, it would only be because we ate together.”
“Did you kiss?”
“No.”
“The necklace you gave to her-”
“Did you find it?” His eyes widened.
She shook her head. “We didn't recover the necklace, but I’d like a full description and the till receipt, if you still have it?”
“I didn’t steal it, if that's what you think?” His words were forceful, his forehead furrowed.
“I didn’t say you did. However, your necklace could help to convict her killer.”
“So, you believe me when I say I didn’t kill her?”
“We’re keeping an open mind, Mr Mason. I may ask you in for a formal interview. On record.” Yvonne put her pen down.
“Will you arrest me?”
“It’s possible. As I say, you didn’t disclose being the last person to see her and, if we match fibres to you…”
"When did you realise it was me?"
"That was with her that day?" Yvonne placed her pocketbook in her bag. "I didn’t."
Dewi was waiting for her at the station. “How did it go with Terry Mason? Was your hunch correct?”
She nodded. “He was with Nicole on the day she disappeared.”
“Are we bringing him in?”
“We will be speaking to him again, Dewi, but I don’t really think he’s a killer, or a stalker or a psychopath. And I believe him when he says that he loved her. However, I don’t get the reason he didn’t talk to police at the time and, the fact he was with her the day she disappeared, makes him a top person of interest. Get on to the lab. Ask about fibre evidence. I’ll speak to Tozer and see if we can carry out a reconstruction at the Long Mynd. Mason said there were families present. Perhaps, we can stir their memories.
“Right you are, ma’am.”
She closed the door and kicked her shoes off in the hallway. Keys and bag dumped on the table, she stretched and yawned before removing her coat and placing it on a peg.
Weariness pervaded every nerve and fibre and the small of her back was a pure ball of ache. It felt good to be home alone.
Switching on the local news, she crossed the lounge to her kitchen. A cold glass of oak chardonnay beckoned. It might help clear he head, still clogged with the twists and turns of the case. She needed this time to unwind. She needed time.
The soft down-lighting in her bathroom was both welcoming and comforting. Steam rose from the bath as the hot water gurgled in. Another sip of chardonnay and she tugged at the band holding her ponytail, allowing her hair to free-fall around her shoulders and relieve the tightness at the back of her head. She’d had that tightness all day.
She let her blouse and skirt fall in a crumpled heap to the floor and crossed over to the sink, to brush her teeth in her underwear.
A minute later, she was humming the soft strains of a blues song she’d heard on the radio and taking in a lungful of the pine and eucalyptus scent, emanating from the foaming water. She closed her eyes to savour it.
He had to adjust the focus on his Tamron lens. The automatic motor couldn’t quite handle the competition between the woman and the crisscrossed wood of the window frames.
He’d enjoyed watching her slip out of her clothing, in a world of her own, swaying to the tune in her head. He wished he could hear as well as see her.
His heart beat faster, his fingers forming circular patches of damp on the camera body. He licked his lips, pushing away the hair from his temples and tucking it behind his ears.
‘Click.’
She swayed with her eyes closed, head falling back towards her shoulders.
‘Click.’ He imagined being in there with her. Taking a hold of her. Crushing that pretty mouth with his own; kneading the bones beneath her pale skin as he pulled her tightly into him.
He cursed under his breath at the steam which intermittently faded his view as he followed the lines of her slim curves with his lens.
She bent to agitate the water, and he had to adjust himself, relieving the pressure in his trousers. A groan came from deep within his throat.
Yvonne turned off the taps and grabbed two thick towels from the shelf, placing them within easy reach of the bath. She dragged her hand through the foamy water, checking the temperature, before crossing to the window and closing the blind.
14
Fibres
Callum handed her a fresh report from the lab. “Just in, ma’am. Looks like they found something on the clothing of Nicole Benoit.”
Yvonne flicked open the folder and spread the contents on her desk, her eyes at once drawn to the close-up photographs. They showed the smooth-edged, magnified hair. She muttered under her breath, “Thank you, God.”
They had confirmed the hair as being human, but it was not the victim's. Accompanying the brief report was a DNA trace.
“Thanks for this, Callum. Has someone run the trace through the offender database, yet?”
“It has, ma’am, and nothing came up.” Callum placed his hands in his pockets. “But, at least we now have something we can compare to suspects.”
“This is superb news. Can you ask the lab to rule out all SOCO personnel, just as a precaution and, also, we’ll need hair and
a DNA sample from the chap who discovered the body. Let’s make sure it’s not his.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
“Anything back for the other victims, yet?”
“Not yet, but it won’t be long now. They were typing up the report on Sharon Sutton’s remains, when I telephoned them yesterday and they mentioned possible fibre evidence.”
“This gets better.” Yvonne pursed her lips. “Let’s keep the momentum going.”
Yvonne drummed her fingers on the desk, clicking her tongue and sighing, as she waited for someone to answer the phone. This was one time when she hoped Hanson wouldn’t be too busy.
“Roger Hanson.” He sounded gruffer than usual.
“Hi, Roger. It’s Yvonne. I hear they've found foreign fibres on the clothes of Sharon Sutton?”
“Sharon Sutton…” There was the sound of shuffling papers. “That’s correct. They isolated two black trouser fibres. However, they weren’t on her clothing. They were wedged in the hole drilled through the pelvis, trapped between the wire used to attach the femur to the pelvis, and the edges of the hole.”
“So, what are we saying? Do we think the perp’s trousers were up-close and personal to the pelvic bone?”
“Pretty much. Like, maybe he was… dancing with the bones?”
“Dancing with the bones?” Yvonne frowned. “We do get the weird ones, don’t we?”
“You can say that again. I've run a trace on the fibres and we think we’ve narrowed down the manufacturer and rough date of purchase. That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“Several, country-wide, off-the-rack, high street stores were selling them at the time.”
“Oh.”
“Hm. Still, it’s another piece of the puzzle. We’ll just keep working on it. If they purchased the trousers new, it would have been around two years ago.”
“What about Katie?”
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