“Where does she work?” I asked.
“She’s a tattoo artist. Place in the city centre. Apparently, they specialise in vegan formulas, cruelty-free, all that jazz.”
“Very fitting,” I answered. “When did she say?”
“Said they open at ten, and she’s got a client in at eleven,” Mills told me.
“Ten it is,” I decided, and then sighed heavily. “Let’s look into some of those plant supplies you mentioned. See if we can find any particularly large shipments of Nerium that someone might have an interest in.” The very sound of the work made me tired, but it was a place to start before we had any further pointers. Mills nodded, looking no less enthused about the idea than I was, and as we made our way through the desks, Sharp appeared in her doorway, still in her coat.
“Mills!” She called. “A word,” and ducked back into her office. Mills looked at her to me with a frown, then shrugged, and wandered over, leaving me to trudge into our office and begin the gruelling work myself.
I slumped down at my computer, turning it on and spinning idly in my chair as I waited. As I spun, my eyes caught on the photograph on my desk, and the bleak feeling started to crawl its way back in, crashing in over my head. The computer came to life, and I jumped on it, distracting myself by looking at wallpaper that could be used in the hallway in the coaching house. Green, she had always wanted something green. I let myself kill some time that way, making myself keep proactive about her memory and the old buildings, and also putting off the Nerium research.
Mills came in a few minutes later, wiping the worried look off his face as he pushed the door ajar.
“All good?” I asked. It wasn’t often that Sharp spoke to him alone.
“All good. Just wanted to check something for some holiday I have booked,” he answered quickly, looking down at his computer so as not to meet my eye. I raised a brow, but didn’t push, and closed the tabs I was on to begin the tedious work at hand.
We looked in wholesalers, the people who stocked garden centres and florists, making benign conversation with people on the phone about any large orders they might have had from private customers. It was dull and boring, and rather fruitless, but every now and then, they mentioned a large order of something that wasn’t Nerium, but they were surprised enough about it that I wrote some of the names down, no doubt mangling the Latin in the process. After another such conversation, I put my phone down and struck a line through the name of the company on my list, looking over to Mills.
“Any luck?”
“Not really,” he muttered, pushing back from his desk slightly and rubbing the back of his neck. “Perhaps it was a bit of a long shot.”
“You never know,” I answered him. “One of them might have gone, why yes, sir, we did just have a large order for Nerium seeds. Bulbs? However, people buy them.”
Mills managed a wry smile, glancing at his watch. “It’s quarter to ten,” he told me. “We could walk. I rather fancy some fresh air.”
I nodded in agreement, happily switching the computer off and standing from my chair with a groan, my knees creaking as I stretched. We pulled our coats on and headed out the door, trotting down the stairs and out into the city.
It was a nice enough day, all told. Still, a crispness from the rain kept the worst of the heat away, and the sun shone happily in the blue sky, only a few clouds dancing around. The streets, however, were busy. Tourists milled around like flies, stopping in the middle of roads to take pictures of buildings or each other, or each other outside of those buildings. They tried to navigate the snickelways with their little guidebooks in hand and sometimes stood stock still, trying to get their bearings before moving on.
Mills and I stuck to the side of the road, passing through the crowds of shoppers and sightseers, over to the little side street that Lin Shui’s tattoo shop was down. It was a nice little road, the shop itself open and light, with a juice place to one side, a vintage shop across the road and bicycles chained along the walls with plants growing from hanging baskets and window boxes.
I pushed the glass door to the tattoo parlour open, a bell ringing above me and looked around, impressed. It was a clean, open space. The walls white, the light warm, sofas pushed against the side with brightly coloured cushions and stacks of magazines. A few images hung on the walls, and it was hard to tell which were tattoo designs and which were just art.
“Hi,” Lin Shui emerged from behind a curtain by the reception desk. “Long time, no see,” she added with a grin.
Now that she wasn’t dressed as a wounded animal covered in fake blood, it was easy to see what she actually looked like. She wore a long sleeveless black dress, letting the beautiful images on her arms free to be seen and a pair of old trainers that looked almost ready to fall off on her feet.
“Hello, again,” I answered. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to us again.”
“Thanks for coming here,” she waved us towards the sofas, and we all sat down. “I don’t think I’d want to come and see your police station.”
“Again,” Mills pointed out.
“Again,” she added with a funny, proud smile. “So, what can I do?”
“Do you remember we mentioned that Abbie Whelan had a research partner?” I asked her. “Sonia Petrilli?”
Lin nodded. “I do. Why?”
“She was murdered yesterday. We think the attacker is the same person.”
Lin’s face fell, and she
