I ran over to where she was sprawled out on the floor, a broken phone just inches from her outstretched hand and gently rolled her to one side, moving her hair from her face so that I could press my fingers against her neck. Be asleep, I prayed, gritting the words between my teeth. I could feel nothing. No slow, steady pulse, not even the whisper of one. Her skin was cold, almost grey without the life running through. I sat back on my haunches, dragging my hair back from my face and stood up, swearing loudly and punching the bench.
“Call it in,” I ordered Mills, shaking my injured knuckles. “We’ll need Lena.”
He nodded, stepping away from me and pulling his phone from his bag. I turned my back on Sonia and stormed from the greenhouse, up through the gardens and the growing rain, straight into the building and towards Dr Quaid’s office. He jumped in his seat when I shouldered the door open.
“Inspector Thatcher.”
“I need all of your employees to stay exactly where they are,” I ordered him, “and the names of anyone else who has been in or seen today.”
“Why?” he scrambled up from his seat. “What? Is something wrong?”
“Sonia Petrilli is dead,” I told him shortly.
He blinked like an owl, sinking into his chair, clutching his heart. “Sonia? Surely not. I just saw her, only a couple of hours ago, before lunch!”
“Where?”
“The kitchen,” he pointed to the door. “She was getting herself some tea, said it was getting nippy out there.”
“Please stay here, Dr Quaid, and please instruct everyone else to do the same. We have a team coming in, and we’ll need statements from all of you.” He nodded hastily, his eyes already beginning to well with tears. I nodded and walked away, opening the front door and propping it there with a chair from the entryway before striding back outside.
Mills was outside the greenhouse, pulling a pair of gloves onto my hands and offering me another pair.
“They’re on their way,” he told me. “The staff?”
“I’ve told Quaid that they need to stay put. We’ll need statements from them all.”
“Christ,” Mills muttered. “We probably only missed him by an hour or so.”
Or so. He didn’t say what we were both thinking that we’d missed them by a hair, that they’d slipped from us like a fish. Or, I thought grimly, staring up at the house, growing foreboding in the clouds and rain. They were still here somewhere.
“Such a dismal thing to happen in a place like this,” I muttered. “You would think this sort of thing happens around gardeners.”
“There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers and grave-makers: they hold up Adam’s profession,” Mills muttered. I looked at him.
“What’s that?”
“Hamlet,” he answered, turning around to look at the greenhouse. “My dad’s favourite.”
We didn’t have to wait long, stewing as we were in the rain. Before long Crowe emerged, followed like a queen bee by her team down to where we stood. She had her suit on to the waist, and she hauled it up over her shoulders as she reached us, a sad, sorry look on her kind face.
“Always nice to see you boys,” she said, “whatever the circumstance.” She gave Mills a pat on the shoulder before stepping into the greenhouse. Mills and I left her to it, heading up the house where some uniformed constables, and Smith, had arrived and had rounded up the employees, researchers and students in their lab coats and spectacles and safety goggles, already working their way through the statements. We joined them, taking some statements from the older researchers who all had the same things to say.
“I saw her last at lunchtime, in the staff room. She seemed fine, a bit busy.”
“I’ve been upstairs all day, Inspector. Last I saw her was getting a coffee this morning.”
“I gave her a wave as she walked to the greenhouse, but I haven’t spoken to her.”
“I was in the greenhouse down by the perennials. I haven’t seen her all afternoon.”
They spoke to us in various levels of shock, grief, surprise. Some crying, others struck numb by the news. There was more emotion amongst them than there had been with Abbie. Perhaps because they were all right here when it happened, they had seen her only earlier, had waved at her, smiled at her, maybe one or two even flirted with her before she retreated outside. Someone knew she was out there. Something got out and then away without being seen. I spotted Smith across the way, in a very deep conversation with Dr Quaid, and was grateful that she was shouldering that particular burden.
“Thatcher,” someone called. I turned around to find Crowe hovering in the doorway. She nodded to me and leaving Mills with the small group of people he was talking to; I followed her outside to where Sonia had been covered and lifted onto a stretcher. We stood outside on the paving stones; the rain kept off our heads by the overhanging roof.
“What are we looking at?” I asked her.
“At first glance, a very similar situation. She’s got a puncture mark on her neck, here,” she poked my neck in the corresponding place.
I inhaled deeply through my nose and pinched my eyes shut for a moment. “You think our killer perfected their recipe?”
“It’s likely. I’ll talk to Dr Olsen, get her opinion whilst I complete the autopsy.”
“Thanks, Lena. Time of death?”
“Nothing exact,” she told me, “but she’s been there a while, a few hours or so.” She rested a hand on my arm. “You wouldn’t have gotten in here in time, Maxie. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“We thought she was a suspect,” I told her, staring out at the rain.
“She could have been. At least now, however horrible it is,” she added in a hesitant voice, “you’ve got a homicide on your
