Marilyn bit down on his impatience. He had learnt, over many years, that Dr Ghoshal couldn’t be rushed, but at times like this, that knowledge didn’t make dealing with the reality any easier.
‘It is a myth that chewing gum takes seven years to move through a person’s intestine and be expelled, but obviously some of the ingredients, such as mint oils, or softeners like vegetable oil or glycerine are very easily digested and quickly excreted, while others – like the gum base, which is usually made from natural or synthetic polymers – can remain in the stomach for an extended period of time.’
‘How long?’
‘How long is a piece of string, DI Simmons?’
Christ. Marilyn felt his will to live ebbing away.
‘Each manufacturer has its own recipe for the gum base, with the aim of achieving the perfect degree of elasticity—’
‘How does this help me, Dr Ghoshal?’ Marilyn cut in again, his tone firm. He rubbed a hand across the base of his neck, vainly trying to massage away the stress that had lodged itself in his shoulders while he waited for Dr Ghoshal’s measured reply.
‘The gum that Jodie had in her stomach also had traces of the following: Helianthemum nummularium, Clematis vitalba, Impatiens glandulifera, Prunus cerasifera and Ornithogalum umbellatum. Do those names ring any bells, DI Simmons?’
85
‘Carolynn. I … I’ve been looking for you.’ Though Jessie fought to keep her voice even, she sounded a lot like Carolynn when she’d masqueraded as ‘Laura’, adopting the phony sing-song jollity of a game-show host.
‘I hope you don’t mind that I came to your cottage without asking you, but friends don’t usually mind, do they?’ Carolynn’s voice, in contrast, was one that Jessie had never heard before: calm, measured, confident.
She met Carolynn’s smile with one of her own, a rictus smile that she knew must look twisted and horrible.
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘Of course I don’t mind.’
‘I love your cottage.’ Carolynn’s gaze moved admiringly around the room, a frown flitting across her face as it passed over Jamie’s photograph. Was the frown driven by the fact that the photograph was of a child, Jessie wondered, or because that dirty smear of chocolate ice cream around Jamie’s mouth contrasted so starkly with the spotless room surrounding it? Or both, perhaps?
‘It’s so chic and calming,’ Carolynn continued, her gaze moving back to Jessie’s, no issue with holding eye contact now. ‘Exactly how I imagined it would be.’
She looked different too; cool and stylish, entirely at home in this environment. She was wearing make-up, Jessie realized, lots of it, expertly applied: a smooth layer of foundation, blusher highlighting her jutting cheekbones, thick black mascara accentuating her lashes, and blue eyeshadow that highlighted the deep brown of her eyes and matched the dress she was wearing. It took Jessie a second longer to realize that the dress was hers. The sky-blue silk dress that Callan had bought her for her last birthday. She had worn it to dinner that evening, without underwear, to tease him. They had wandered into the garden of the hotel after dinner, sat on a chair on the patio and taken a laughing selfie, before walking deeper into the garden and making love on the dark lawn.
Get it off, she wanted to scream.
‘You look amazing, Carolynn,’ she murmured.
‘Thank you.’ Carolynn laughed, a tinkling, carefree sound. ‘It’s lovely to wear clothes that aren’t made from lycra for a change.’ Tilting her head, she gave Jessie an odd little smile. ‘It’s yours. Didn’t you recognize it?’
‘Wow. No, I didn’t. It never looks that good when I wear it.’ The words felt bitter on her tongue.
In the moment of silence that followed, Jessie heard another sound, that barely audible moaning again. Carolynn didn’t react, didn’t seem to have heard. Had she imagined it? She flinched as Carolynn’s chill fingers found her arm and squeezed, just lightly, tensed every muscle to stop herself from snatching her arm away.
‘How about some wine?’ Carolynn asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Wine, Jessie.’ Carolynn cocked an eyebrow theatrically. ‘I found a bottle in one of your cupboards and put it in the fridge. Sauvignon. It’s your favourite, isn’t it?’
Jessie nodded dully.
‘See, I am a good friend because I remembered. I remembered you saying.’
86
‘Well, Dr Ghoshal, if I wasn’t thinking that gum in the stomach of a dead child would be a very odd place to find such a thing, I’d say that the bell those names are ringing is flower-related,’ Marilyn said.
A moment of silence. ‘And you’d be right, DI Simmons. Flowers is right.’ Dr Ghoshal sounded unaccountably impressed. ‘Flower essences, to be precise.’
‘But why the hell would Jodie Trigg have gum in her stomach that contained flower essences?’
‘Have you ever heard of Dr Bach, DI Simmons?’
Marilyn racked his brains. ‘I can’t say that I have, Dr Ghoshal.’
The impressed note had vanished from Dr Ghoshal’s voice, replaced by a tone of condescension. Business as usual. ‘Doctor Bach was a homeopath and bacteriologist who developed a range of remedies – alternative medicine, if you like – inspired by homeopathy. The remedies were derived from flowers and evidently Dr Bach let his intuition guide him as to which flowers had healing powers and which did not. He found that when he treated the personalities and feelings of his patients with his flower-based remedies, their physical distress would be alleviated naturally as the healing power in their bodies was unlocked and allowed to work.’
Sounds like a quack version of Jessie Flynn, Marilyn thought. ‘That all sounds like gobbledegook to me, Dr Ghoshal. What relevance does it have to my case?’
‘Rescue Remedy,’ Dr Ghoshal said simply. ‘It’s the most famous of the Bach remedies, made up of five flower essences, including—’
But Marilyn had already tuned him out. Rescue Remedy. An image had risen in his mind. An image, a feeling, a soft kiss on his cheek, a pale hand fumbling inside a jacket pocket.
Take a lot more than this to rescue me, DI Simmons, but I gotta start somewhere.
87
As she stood in the kitchen watching Carolynn
