“She took a lot of photos back then, and she was an artist, too. She found it a very inspirational place, I guess. What did it mean to you, Michael? What did it mean to my mum?”
“Lass, I understand your pain over your mum, I really do,” said Reave, his voice slow, a soft parody of compassion. “You want to understand what she did. But perhaps there’s no understanding something like that. No understanding the fear that makes you eat your own babies, or the fear that makes you kill yourself.”
Heather said nothing.
Images of whytewitch’s paintings were next, and the one of the figure in the red coat emerging from the woods went skittering across the slippery pile, almost landing in his lap. Michael Reave looked down at it, and abruptly he was yanking on the chain around his wrists, pulling hard enough that Heather felt the bolted table jump under her hands. She yelped and scrambled back even as Reave was standing, still repeatedly yanking on the chain, apparently trying to pull the whole thing up by the roots.
“That’s enough.”
DC Turner’s hand was on her shoulder, gripping it none too gently, and before she really knew what was happening, she was being propelled out of the room. Just before the door slammed shut, she saw the two guards moving in toward Reave, and she caught the expression on his face; he was furious, points of color high on his cheeks. And then the view was cut off.
“What …?”
Abruptly, Heather realized her legs weren’t holding her up properly, and she fell against the wall. DC Turner was glaring at her and rubbing the back of his neck.
“I think that’s going to be your lot, Miss Evans.”
“I … what happened?” It was difficult to breathe—she felt roughly the same as the time a car had turned a corner unexpectedly on Peckham high street and nearly run her over. His sudden eruption from calm boredom to violent rage had made her dizzy.
“You pissed him off.” Turner shrugged. “You can’t predict people like that, love, so don’t feel bad about it.”
“But we were getting somewhere!”
“It costs money, stuff like this. Did you know that? I didn’t expect you would.” He curled his lip, then made an effort to arrange his features into a sympathetic expression. “Me watching over you, those guards in there. We’ve all got better things we could be doing—me especially, given we’ve got another nut like him on the loose.”
“Hey, you people asked me to do this.” Heather pushed herself away from the wall. “Where is DI Parker? I want to talk to him about it.”
Turner laughed and gestured down the corridor. “Now, DI Parker definitely has better things to be doing than talking to you, I’m afraid. It’s time to go.”
“Can I at least get those printouts back?”
Turner sighed dramatically again, and Heather wondered how well he’d be sighing if she slammed her elbow into his nose. The incident at the newspaper loomed large in her thoughts—the sound of gagging, blood dripping onto a biscuit-colored carpet—and she clenched her fists instead.
“If he hasn’t torn them up, you’re welcome to them.”
An hour or so later, as Heather sat in a bar in Lewisham nursing a shot of whisky to calm her nerves, DI Parker called. She cleared her throat and answered, willing herself to sound cool and professional.
“I was sorry not to see you today, DI Parker. Belmarsh is a lot more appealing with you in it. Plus your mate Turner is a waste of skin.”
“How did it go? With Reave?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
There was a beat of silence before Parker replied.
“You’ve got to expect him to be temperamental. Difficult to understand. But even how he reacts to things can be useful to us.”
“He knows more about my mother’s death than he’s telling, I’m sure of it.” Heather picked up the glass of whisky, picturing her mother’s face briefly, creased and stern, as it often was. “I’d like to keep going, if that’s possible.”
Parker made a noncommittal noise. “Our priority has to be your safety.”
“Aw, I’m touched. But he’s chained to the table, and you’ve got your giant blokes there. What could he do?”
“Not all damage is physical, Miss Evans.”
Heather took a sip of whisky, grimacing against the burn in her throat. She thought of the morgue, and her mother’s broken body. She hadn’t seen it, of course—ultimately the body had to be identified with her dental records and the engraved wedding ring still on her finger—but it was funny how little phrases stayed with you, particularly when you had a vivid imagination. Her mother’s bones, shattered into lethal shards; her mother’s hair, heavy with sand and pieces of rock. Physical damage. Organic material. The bar, just starting to get busy, dipped and weaved around her as if she was on the deck of a boat, and she forced herself to focus on Ben Parker’s voice. He was speaking again.
“… no way to know it’s related, but it smells like it is to me. It’ll be in the papers by now.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“A woman called Fiona Graham appears to have been taken by force from her house. There are reasons to believe this is our copycat again.”
“Fiona Graham?” Heather blinked. It was like being dunked in cold water. “I feel like I know that name.”
“You do? Where from?”
“I’m not sure.” She willed herself to remember, but despite a strong sense that she’d heard the name before, no other details came to mind. “I’ll have to think about it,” she finished lamely.
“If you do remember, let me know.”
“Sure. Listen …” She bit her lip. The familiarity of Fiona Graham’s name had brought back some of the tight excitement to her stomach despite her unpleasant afternoon at the prison. There were clues here, pieces to a larger puzzle, and she just had to get them all lined up to get her answers. Maybe, in fact, she was the
