In the narrow garden, a rotary dryer sagged under the weight of washing, limp in the cool night air, and someone had planted a few perennials, most of them wilted from neglect. But it was the child’s pink bicycle leaning against the concrete steps leading to the door that tightened Marilyn’s throat. He plucked at the knot of his tie to loosen it, the result fruitless, the constriction in his airways undiminished.
Before he knocked, he glanced over his shoulder at Workman. Her expression was detached, her gaze fixed resolutely on what would have been his back, if he hadn’t turned unexpectedly and caught her eye. She wasn’t the only one who appeared devoid of emotion. As he turned back to knock, he met his own faint reflection in the rectangle of mirrored glass set into the door panel, recognized the studied expression of neutrality that he’d become so adept at fixing to his face when the situation required it.
The woman who yanked the door open before his fist had connected was a little over five foot tall, heavy in a solid, shapeless way. Her dark hair, pulled into a tight ponytail, was dyed a few shades too dark, accentuating the paleness of her skin. ‘Indoor’ skin, Marilyn found himself thinking, despite her living right by a stunning beach. Green eyes – the little girl’s eyes, Jodie’s eyes, Marilyn recognized immediately – ringed with red, met his. He raised his warrant card and Debs Trigg stepped back from the door, her face collapsing in on itself.
She had called the police when she had discovered Jodie’s bed empty and unslept in, and seen Marilyn’s appeal to identify the dead child on a news channel. She must therefore have had a strong suspicion that the murdered girl was her Jodie, but their poker-faced presence at her door was the final big nail in the coffin of her hope.
An animal yelp of pure pain rooted Marilyn to the spot. Jack-knifing on to the sofa, Debs Trigg scratched clawed fingers down her cheeks, raising bloody red weals in their wake. Workman shoved past Marilyn, knocking his shoulder in the cramped space, and caught Trigg’s wrists.
‘Don’t, love, don’t do that. Please don’t hurt yourself like that.’
He should have stepped forward himself, he knew, should have grabbed her wrists himself, but from the moment he had set eyes on her all he could think of was Zoe Reynolds, his mind spinning back to Carolynn on her knees in the beach car park cradling Zoe’s limp body and howling, and later, sitting opposite him in the interview room at Chichester police station, so composed by then, so closed-down. He had been wholly unable to see anything in those dark eyes, or to decipher the secrets buried in the brain behind them. A second child was dead because of his ineptitude.
His gaze moved past Debs Trigg and Workman to the photograph of Jodie on the shelf behind the sofa, a ten by eight colour shot of a laughing child, arms spread wide, wind flapping her yellow summer dress around her thighs, the white sails of yachts in the background. Unmistakably West Wittering beach. Unmistakably the little girl he had seen dead this morning, a chain of bruises around her neck, that vile doll by her side, the last chink of uncertainty closed. Heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking and his responsibility. His fault. His failure.
It took Debs Trigg a long time to stop crying. Marilyn and Workman had exchanged tense glances and he had resumed staring through the nets at the blank white backside of the static caravan next door while Workman did her best to comfort the distraught woman. Slipping his mobile from his pocket, Marilyn fired off a quick text to DC Cara, asking him to chase the family liaison officer pronto. The sooner he could escape from this hellhole of emotion and get back to investigating little Jodie’s death, the better for all concerned.
Rising from the sofa, Trigg scrabbled for the packet of Superkings on the table and lit a cigarette, sinking back beside Workman, hunching her shoulders and folding an arm across her chest – defensive body language, Marilyn recognized, inwardly allowing himself a brief, cynical smile at the knowledge and terminology he had absorbed from Jessie Flynn.
‘It’s definitely her, isn’t it?’ she muttered, on a stream of smoky breath. ‘Definitely?’
‘We’ll need you or a relative to formally identify her, but yes, we’re pretty certain that the girl found this afternoon in the dunes at West Wittering is your daughter, Jodie,’ he said, in the businesslike tone he resorted to when faced with emotionally charged situations. ‘She was wearing a navy-blue school unform, white shirt, navy jumper and trousers. She also had a pendant necklace, with two sets of footprints engraved on it, around her neck.’
Hauling smoke into her lungs through pale lips, Trigg nodded, tear-stained eyes fixed on the floor. ‘She loved that necklace. Found it on the beach one day when she was walking home from school, she did, a couple of months ago. I told her she should hand it in, but—’ she broke off with a shrug. ‘You know, and she loved it an’ all, so I just let her keep it.’
Workman pulled a black notebook from her pocket and Marilyn noticed her shift sideways, expanding the space between her and Debs, subtly re-establishing a professional distance. She made a note about the necklace in the book.
‘I need to ask you a few questions, Mrs Trigg,’ Marilyn continued. ‘To help us with the investigation.’
‘Miss. There isn’t a Mr – though I think you already worked that out, didn’t you, Inspector?’ She took another tense drag of the cigarette. ‘Ask away.’
‘Why didn’t you report Jodie missing earlier?
‘I was at
