Her practised fingers found the sitting room light switch and flicked it on.
The room looked as she had left it, a shrine to her OCD. Closing the front door softly, shivering slightly at the blast of cool air the movement forced into the room with her, she slipped off her sandals and arranged them on the shoe rack, touching her flat hand to the heels to level them – once, twice, three times. She stopped and felt the electric suit surge. She counted on in her head, tapping flat hands to the shoes’ heels until she reached seven, lucky seven, glancing up to survey the room as she performed the ritual to ensure she was still alone. Of course I am. But some lingering sense of nervousness made her check anyway.
As she padded barefoot across the sitting room carpet to the kitchen, her gaze was snagged by Jamie’s photograph on the mantelpiece. She stopped frozen to the spot in the middle of the room, her breath trapped in her throat.
The frame had been moved, just a fraction – she saw that immediately. The only thing on display, she always centred it exactly in the middle of the mantelpiece, equidistant from either end and parallel, to the millimetre, with the wall behind. Both Callan and Ahmose knew her sensibilities regarding Jamie and they never touched it.
As she moved closer, the silence surrounding her absolute but for her stressed breath hosing the air, the overhead light picked out a smudge on the glass.
A fingerprint. Too small to be that of a man.
The only person she trusts is you, Dr Flynn. So where do you live?
82
‘There was no trace evidence of poison, illegal or prescription drugs or other toxins in Jodie Trigg’s stomach contents,’ Dr Ghoshal continued. ‘So she was not sedated prior to being murdered and wasn’t under the influence of alcohol. Neither did I find any prescription drugs, alcohol or other toxins in her blood, and there were no needle marks on her skin, so she wasn’t a regular drug user or a drinker.’
‘She was nine.’
‘Nine-year-olds drink and take drugs, DI Simmons.’
He was right, Marilyn reluctantly conceded, ignoring the condescending tone. He had seen enough of it when he’d worked in Brighton as a young detective: kids hanging out on the beach, mainlining fortified wine or cheap cider, sniffing glue and popping Es. The same, albeit on a significantly smaller, milder scale, in Bracklesham and Selsey. But from what he had learnt, Jodie Trigg wasn’t that kind of child. The only accelerated development she showed was an overly mature sense of responsibility, due to her situation.
‘We found partially digested sausage, potatoes, carrot, peas and an apple in her stomach. Lunch, given the time of death. I don’t think she had any breakfast on the day she was murdered.’ That hint of emotion again in Ghoshal’s voice.
‘OK. Thanks for all that, Dr Ghoshal,’ Marilyn said, trying to quell the disappointment in his own voice.
Everything the pathologist had said so far was basically tick-box, nothing there that would lead him to a killer. The only significant information, as far as he was concerned, was the confirmation that Jodie Trigg, and hence Zoe before her, had been murdered by a woman – a blonde woman, if Workman and Cara’s kite-surfing millionaire’s long-distance, high-speed vision was accurate.
Not enough.
‘In addition to the partially digested food, there was also a piece of masticated chewing gum in the deceased’s stomach,’ Dr Ghoshal continued.
‘Schools often have tuck shops.’
‘Indeed they do, DI Simmons. But I doubt that a school tuck shop would be selling this kind of gum. This one is interesting …’
83
A sudden shiver ran down Jessie’s spine, a strong sense that she was no longer alone. She spun around, her eyes finding both doorways into the sitting room, the front door and the kitchen door snapping from them to the bottom of the stairs, to the spaces where someone small could crouch and hide – behind the sofas, under the coffee table – there weren’t many in her Spartan sitting room, her brain knowing almost before she’d finished checking that her sitting room, so familiar to her, was empty. Knowing that she was definitely alone in here.
She breathed out, sucked a long draught of air into her lungs, willing herself to relax. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Roger’s taunt; Ahmose’s absence; the fingerprint on Jamie’s photograph, which could have been hers but she was sure not. Too much had been odd.
Soundlessly, she moved to the bottom of the stairway, and looked up. A light shone from her bedroom, so faint that she hadn’t noticed it from elsewhere in the sitting room. Her bedside table lamp, perhaps, or the light in her en-suite bathroom?
And now that she was standing here, she could hear a barely audible rumbling. Low and complaining. The wind? No, because the noise sounded as if it was coming, not from outside, but closer, from within her cottage, within this room. But who or what, and from where?
‘Ahmose.’ Her voice, barely there, was threaded with fear and she hated herself for it.
Moaning? Now that she really listened, it sounded as if someone, close by, was moaning. Her gaze found the door to the understairs cupboard.
‘Ahmose? Is that you?’
No, of course it couldn’t be, not in that tiny space. As she moved towards the cupboard, her heart was slamming so hard in her chest that she felt as if it would punch its way out of her ribcage.
‘Jessie.’
Jesus.
She spun around. Carolynn was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
‘I wondered when you’d come,’ she said, smiling.
84
‘All chewing gums consist of a gum base, humectant—’
‘Humectant?’
‘Moisture retainer,’ Dr Ghoshal said. ‘They also contain flavouring, such as mint oils, sweeteners – either natural or synthetic, depending on the brand.’
‘And this gum?’
‘Natural. A good quality, if any gum could be called good quality—’
‘So what does that tell us?’ Marilyn cut in.
‘Let me finish, DI
