‘Why?’
‘Because nice privileged people who go to the beach with their nice privileged kiddies don’t like to be around people like me. And I don’t like to be around them.’
Workman nodded. ‘What did you find?’ she asked.
Ruby jutted her chin. ‘Apart from a dead girl?’
Marilyn sensed Workman draw in a virtually imperceptible breath; realized, from the slight narrowing of her gaze, that Ruby had also sensed her discomfort.
‘What time did you find her?’ Marilyn asked, taking over the questioning.
Another shrug. ‘You fancy giving me that posh watch of yours and next time I find a strangled little girl I’ll be able to tell you to the second.’ She was looking directly at Workman when she said it. This time, to her credit, Workman didn’t react.
‘Estimate,’ Marilyn said.
‘What time did the café call you?’ Ruby muttered.
‘Five-thirty.’ He didn’t need to check the file to know.
‘So maybe I found her half hour before that.’
‘Half an hour?’ Even he couldn’t hide his shock. The café was ten minutes’ walk from the spot in the dunes where Jodie’s body had lain; significantly less at a panicked run. ‘What did you do in between?’
‘Walked, looking for treasure, like I said.’
‘Did you find any?’
‘This and that. Bit of cash, couple of other things.’
‘How far did you walk?’
‘Through the dunes to the end and back along the beach.’
‘Then you went to the café and told the manager about Jodie Trigg, and he called us.’
She nodded and leant forward, giving Marilyn a view of the pale swell of her breasts, the dark valley between, a flash of red lace too shiny to be real. He felt a movement in his trousers, a tightening. Yanking his gaze away, he focused on Jodie Trigg’s file, calling to mind the photograph of her inside it. Jesus, what the hell was wrong with him? He felt wrung out, crazily exhausted already and the little girl had been dead less than twenty-four hours. He knew that the feeling had less to do with the fact he’d been up all night, and more to do with the fact that the murder of a second child, two years to the day, so close to where Zoe Reynolds’ body was found, had kick-started every self-flagellating emotion he possessed. He needed a caffeine hit. He needed to bury his head in the sand while someone else sorted out this mess for him, found a child murderer and delivered him or her into the hands of the law with a file full of irrefutable evidence.
Only one of those needs was likely to be met this morning.
‘Do you want a coffee, Ruby?’
She shrugged and winked. ‘I’d fancy a coke more, DI Simmons.’ And not the fizzy kind.
Marilyn turned to Workman. ‘Do you mind going on a coffee run, Sarah?’
Workman shook her head and stood.
‘How do you like your coffee, Ms Lovatt?’
Ruby raised an eyebrow. ‘Ms Lovatt. I can’t remember the last time anyone called me that. Actually, I can’t remember the last time anyone called me anything other than bitch. Milk and two sugars.’ A pause. ‘Please.’ Her voice sticking on that last word as if it left a bad taste on her tongue.
Workman left the room and Ruby winked at Marilyn. ‘People are going to start talking, you and me alone in here, DI Simmons,’ she teased.
‘The only thing they’re talking about is Jodie Trigg.’ The statement sounded unnecessarily abrupt, even to his own ears.
Ruby shrugged and her gaze slid from his, but not before Marilyn caught the hurt that flashed in her eyes. Her carapace was no tougher than when he had first met her, nearly fifteen years ago, despite the act she was putting on. She’d been working on that act virtually since birth, and she’d got it to RADA standard by the time she was fourteen. She had been beautiful back then, he remembered, the first time he met her in that grotty interview room in Portsmouth Central Police Station. Beautiful and horribly damaged. She still was beautiful, if you could see past the pallid, sweaty skin, the hollowed-out eyes and the sullen expression. Still beautiful and still horribly damaged, no doubt. Damage like that didn’t heal. She was only in her late twenties, he knew, though her lifestyle and the drugs she took made her look a good fifteen years older.
‘Did you see anyone else out there on the beach?’ he asked, pulling his mind back to the present.
‘No.’
‘No one?’
‘When I got back near the café, there was a few staff leaving. It was closed by then.’
‘Anyone else?’
She raised her gaze to the ceiling, drawing an image to mind.
‘Someone running. A woman, running. A while before I found the girl.’
‘Near the girl?’
‘Yeah, pretty near.’
‘What was the woman wearing?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever the hell women who have the time and inclination to run wear to run.’
‘Colour?’
The eyes rising again. ‘Dark. Dark blue or black top and bottom.’
The door opened and Workman came back in, three vending-machine coffees balanced on a hardback notepad in her hand. She slid the notepad on the table and handed out the coffees.
‘What did she look like?’
‘Who?’
‘The woman,’ Marilyn said. ‘The runner.’
Ruby lifted a hand and pinched a strand of her hair, rolling it between her fingers. ‘Blonde, like me, ’cept hers was probably natural.’
She dropped her hand and snaked it across the table, palm upwards.
‘Do I get a cigarette with my coffee, DI Simmons?’
Marilyn’s gaze tracked from the rough skin on her slender fingers and hopscotched up the black needle marks on her forearm. Drugs, it was always hard drugs that the truly depressed took to anaesthetize themselves against life, nothing else strong enough, reliable enough, persistent enough. His gaze moved to meet hers and he shook his head.
‘We can’t smoke in here, Ruby. You know that. It’s the law.’
The hand snaked back. ‘For Christ’s sake, the law is a fucking ass. You know that.’
She was right. He did know that. His mind returned to
