Moreover, he would never forgive himself if this little girl’s killer escaped justice as Zoe’s had. One ghostly child remonstrating with him in the early hours was already one too many. He held up his hand to silence the chatter and still the jostling.
‘The body of a young girl was found in the sand dunes at West Wittering beach by a passer-by late this afternoon. Dr Ghoshal, the Home Office pathologist, estimates her to be nine or ten years old.’
Shouted questions:
‘Who found her?’
‘Where exactly was she found?’
‘How long has she been dead for?’
‘How was she killed?’
He noticed a few elbows connecting with ribs as they vied for the best spot. No raised hands or other such decorum, the press pack aptly named. Stray dogs being tossed a roast chicken would behave better. Ignoring the questions, he pressed on:
‘We have not yet identified the child and so far no one has come forward to tell us that their daughter is missing. My first priority is to identify her.’
Questions coming thick and fast:
‘What does she look like? Hair colour, eye colour—’
‘How are you going to identify her?’
‘What kind of family do you think the kid comes from if no one has noticed she’s missing?’
Fair question that one, but he ignored it too. It wasn’t his job to speculate or criticize. His ex-wife would fall about laughing if she caught him casting judgement on bad parenting on television.
‘How was she killed?’
‘Are there any suspects?’
And then the question, the one he knew would come:
‘Do you think that this second girl was murdered by the same person who murdered Zoe Reynolds? It’s too much of a coincidence, surely, otherwise? A couple of hundred metres from the spot where she was found, two years to the day?’
Two years ago, to the day.
The visceral memory of coming upon Zoe’s strangled body, that vile doll lying beside her, black felt-tip marks around its neck aping the strangulation bruises on Zoe’s. The image visited him often, with unrelenting clarity, as the image of this second little girl’s body would no doubt visit him also.
Another dead child. Another doll.
The same doll – make and model – he was sure of it. The doll’s image was something he’d never forget. It had been so lifelike, but at the same time not, like one of the countless bodies he’d seen on dissecting tables, a lifelike carcass without life or soul. The doll’s eyes, particularly, had stuck in his mind. Brown – the same colour as little Zoe’s eyes.
And the doll found beside this child?
Green.
It hadn’t occurred to him at the time, back on the beach, but both the child and the doll had green eyes. He saw them now in his mind’s eye: the child’s eyes a deep sea green, already clouding over, the doll blinking its glassy green eyes at Burrows as he lifted it with gloved hands and slid it into an evidence bag.
Brown to match Zoe’s eyes. Green to match this second little dead girl’s eyes. Jesus, what the hell am I dealing with? Had that detail been in the press? Would a copycat know? Or was it just coincidence that the dolls’ eyes matched the girls’?
Coincidence?
Whatever he was about to tell the press in an effort to defuse tension around the possibility of a double child murderer being on the loose in this sleepy seaside town, he didn’t believe in coincidences.
The restless increase in volume from the press pack brought him back to the moment.
‘It is far too early to make any judgements as to whether the murder of this little girl and the murder of Zoe Reynolds, two years ago, are connected. However, I would like to speak with Zoe’s parents and would ask them to get in touch with me as a matter of urgency.’
Holding up a hand to signal that the impromptu press conference was over, receiving a barrage of new questions in reply, he backed up the stairs, still facing them. Never good to turn your back on a journalist, unless you want a knife between the shoulder blades.
‘We will hold a full press conference in due course to update you all properly on the progress of this case,’ he concluded. ‘Now if you will excuse me, I have a child murder to solve.’ A second child murder …
9
Carolynn turned the taps on full force in the downstairs cloakroom, though Roger would know that the rush of water was to mask another sound, the guttural sound of her retching. Her stomach heaved and she vomited again, a stream of hot bile the colour of buttercups running over her fingers. Sitting back on her haunches, she sucked in a breath, locking on to the feeling of the cold floor tiles against her legs, holding that sense of chill calm in her mind as her stomach heaved again, heaved and settled.
Pushing herself to her feet, she reached for the hand towel, catching her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she did so. Lollipop. A pasty, wan, lollipop. She and her friends used to laugh at women like her, women they called lollipops because their heads were so ludicrously oversized on their emaciated bodies, rail-thin models who posted pictures of themselves on Instagram clutching plates of pizza in an attempt to convince people that they really did eat. Just as she now kept the fridge filled and cooked meal after meal
