R O B I N S O N
Somehow or other, Annie thought, the mysterious Mary had slipped away into the morning and disappeared. She could be anywhere by now: anonymous in the London crowds, on a train to Edinburgh or Bristol. Had the murder been premeditated? If so, the odds were that she had worked out an escape route. If not, then she was working off her wits. But a stranger doesn’t just walk into a care home, ask to take out a specific patient and then slit her throat. She had said she was a friend, and whether that was true or not, there had to be some connection between this Mary and Karen Drew. To have any hope of finding Mary, they first had to discover as much as they could about Karen and the people she had known before her accident. It was best not to assume too much yet. While there were no signs of a struggle, it was also possible that Mary wasn’t the killer but had been another victim.
What if Karen had been killed and Mary abducted, or killed and dumped in the sea, or somewhere else?
Annie cursed the lax security at the care home, but to be realistic about it, Grace Chaplin had been right. What, or whom, did their patients need protecting from? They were harmless, incapable of moving and, some of them, even of speaking. Why on earth would anyone want to kill one of them? That was what Annie and her team had to find out.
Annie noticed DS Liam McCullough, the crime scene coordinator, detach himself from the group of white-suited figures, and she called him over. They had met on several occasions before they started working together, as Liam was a close friend of the Western Area CSC, Stefan Nowak, which made for a less strained relationship, Annie found. SOCOs could be annoyingly possessive of their crime scenes, and tight-arsed about any information they gave out, but with Liam in charge, Annie’s job was just that little bit easier.
“Nearly finished,” McCullough said, walking over to her, that lopsided grin on his face showing a mouthful of ill- fitting teeth.
“Find anything useful?”
“We won’t know what’s useful until later,” McCullough said.
“We think the killer might be a woman,” Annie told him. “At least it was a woman who took the victim out of Mapston Hall, so that’s the theory we’re working on at the moment.”
F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
5 9
“Thanks for letting me know. It doesn’t make much difference now, but it’s good to bear in mind.”
“I don’t suppose you found any footprints?”
Liam pulled a face. “In this grass?”
“Thought not. Fingerprints?”
“Plenty on the wheelchair. Don’t worry, we’ll be every bit as thorough as Western Area.”
“I have no doubt,” Annie said. “Any traces of a car parked in the vicinity?”
“None that we could find.”
“Okay,” said Annie. “I didn’t expect anything. We’ll have to send out a house-to-house team.” She looked around the bleak, windswept stretch of coast. “Not that there’s really anywhere for them to go.”
“We did find several hairs on the victim’s blanket,” McCullough said. “No doubt some belong to the staff at the care home, and perhaps some to other patients, but you never know, the killer’s might be among them.”
“The person who dealt with our suspect at Mapston said the woman’s hair was hidden under a hat.”
McCullough smiled. “Haven’t you ever noticed how hair gets just everywhere?”
“I expect you’re right,” said Annie, who had noticed a short black hair on her sleeve on her way there, as if she needed reminding about last night. “What about the marks on her ears and neck?”
McCullough pulled a face. “Seagulls,” he said. “Postmortem, thank God. That’s why there’s no blood.”
“I suppose that she was killed here, in the wheelchair?”
“Yes. I consulted with the doc on that. Lividity is as you’d expect if that were the case, and there’s enough blood on the grass around the chair to bear it out. She was killed where she sat. We haven’t finished spatter analysis yet—the grass makes it difficult—but we’ve photographed and videoed every square inch.”
“Okay. Well, carry on, Liam. And thanks for the update.”
McCullough doffed his imaginary cap. “No problem. I trust you’re in charge of this inquiry?”
“Detective Superintendent Brough’s the official SIO.”
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O B I N S
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“So we send everything to you?” McCullough smiled.
Annie smiled back. “Might as well. But do it discreetly.”
“My middle name, discretion. Bye, ma’am.”
“See you,” said Annie. She shivered as a gust of wind blew in from the sea and a seagull glided over her. She walked to the edge of the cliff and stood as close as she dared on the treacherous, slippery grass, looking down. The tide was well up now, the crashing waves dizzying and magnetic. She could understand how people had been drawn to jump into moving water, hypnotized and seduced by its sinuous swirling motion. Feeling a twinge of vertigo, she glanced at the empty wheelchair. It would have been so easy just to push it that extra foot or so, onto the rocks. No fuss. No blood. Why go to the trouble and mess of slitting Karen Drew’s throat?
Unless, Annie thought with a sinking feeling, it was done to make some kind of statement. In her experience,
