With his left hand he undid the package, enjoying the feel of the smooth waxed paper on his skin. The veal looked thick, plump, and of good quality. He picked up one of the pieces of shin and added it to the sizzling pan. There was room for one more; he could fry them in two batches. But as he picked up the second shin of veal he noticed something underneath the third piece that seemed out of place, a slither of red meat amongst the white. He nudged the veal away, reeling back as he did so. Sitting on top of the last piece of meat was a tongue, its stump bloody and raw. For a moment he thought the deli must have given Nic a different piece by mistake; perhaps one of the counter staff had thrown it in for free with her order. He took a step nearer and looked closer, fear rising up inside him.

The tongue was not from a cow, pig or any other animal. It was unmistakably human.

12

Kate looked around her mother’s garden, at the jagged line of wire that ran along the top of the wall like a sinister garland. The house was protected by one of the best security companies in the city, and outside the gates Josh had stationed an unmarked police car. Yet still Kate did not feel safe.

‘You can stay here as long as you like, you know that,’ said Kate, catching her mother’s eye in the distance, as she looked up from one of her rose beds. Hope waved across the garden at the two women. ‘In fact, I think my mother has fallen in love with you already.’

‘Thank you, that’s so kind,’ said Cassie. ‘But there’s only a limited amount of time I can leave Moisie. Ron loves cats, but I miss him, you know?’

‘Like I said, he’s welcome here too.’

‘He’s so used to being a house cat that I think this -,’ she said, gesturing at the expanse of lawn and gardens, ‘would freak him out. Although I can’t see it I can tell it’s beautiful by the birdsong. That and the way your mother talks about it.’

‘To be honest I think it’s the only thing that has kept her going since my father died.’

‘I’m sorry. When did he – pass away?’

‘Two years ago now.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘Yes, it was,’ said Kate, running her hand through her hair. ‘But it helped in other ways too. Made me do some serious thinking and helped me make some changes to my life.’

‘Such as what?’ asked Cassie gently.

Cassie felt Kate’s hesitation and immediately hoped she hadn’t offended her.

‘Kate, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. Really you don’t need to –‘

‘No, no. It’s fine, honestly.’ She took a deep breath. ‘After dad died I suppose I felt I had to take stock of my life. I wanted a child, desperately, and at the same time felt like I couldn’t carry on as a forensic artist. Putting face to death was just too much for me. I know it sounds silly, but sometimes when I sat there in my lab, late at night, moulding the face of a killer out of a piece of clay, I felt like I was giving birth to evil.’

She took a sip of her mint tea, suddenly self-conscious of the sound of her swallow.

‘Was it like that with Gleason?’

Kate nodded. ‘I’ll never forget the moment he came to me. I suppose it helped because you gave me such a detailed description, ten times more accurate than I would have got from a sighted person. The fact you felt the contours of his face meant that my job was so much easier.’

Kate watched as tears slid down Cassie’s pale cheeks.

‘You had only just woken up after surgery and you were still a bit groggy. The medics were set against it, they said you were too weak, but you were insistent, remember? And over the course of those two hours you managed to give me a perfect description. You were so determined, so brave. I brought a couple of lumps of clay and a bowl of water with me and you helped me sculpt his face. I had to lift your fingers you were so weak, but your mind was strong, so strong.

‘I went away and worked through the night. It was five or six in the morning when I suddenly got the sensation that I was looking into the face of a monster. I felt physically sick. In fact, I think I was, in the basin of the lab. It was as if I had created something unspeakable. I had to shower, get that feeling that I had been polluted off my skin. But no matter how hard I scrubbed that sense was still there, underneath me, inside me. Soon after, the nightmares started. I saw Gleason’s face staring out of the darkness at me. Felt the stickiness on my skin. Dreamt that he was pushing a tongue made of clay into my mouth. Night after night I woke up screaming. God knows it must have been hard for Josh. And it carried on like that until Gleason was sentenced and imprisoned.’

She suddenly became aware of herself. ‘Sorry, listen to me babbling on about myself. God, Cassie. I know it’s nothing compared to what you went through. I must sound so pathetic.’

‘There’s no need to apologise. It must have been hard for you. I never realised.’

‘And why should you have done? You were going through so much yourself. That was the last thing I wanted to burden you with.’

‘And what does Josh – sorry, Detective Harper – think? About what is happening now, I mean.’

‘He thinks it could be some psycho Gleason met in prison. Perhaps someone he helped. And in exchange his friend would act out some sort of sick plan at a later date.’

‘Jesus.’

‘But don’t worry. If that’s the case it’s only a matter of time before he’s caught. Harper and his staff will be working through a list of the inmates at the prison who were inside at the same time as Gleason and who have subsequently been released. There can’t be that many of them and all of them should be easily tracked down.’

The two women didn’t speak for a few moments. Cassie cleared her throat and shifted slightly in her seat, moving towards Kate.

‘You know you said you were pregnant. When did you find out?’

‘That’s the frightening thing. Whoever took and killed that baby knew about it before I did.’

‘What?’

‘I only did a test after I had found the child in the sea.’

‘And nobody else knew you were trying for a child?’

‘Well, only the people at the fertility clinic, and, of course, the father – Detective Harper. Josh. But by the way we’re no longer together.’

‘I see.’

Just then Kate’s cell rang. She looked at the caller I.D.