‘We’ve found something.’

70

Southampton Common looked bleak and sinister under the grey clouds. A suitable place for a killer to roam, DC Lucas thought to herself. She was new to Southampton and still didn’t know it well, so she’d brought as many uniformed officers as she could muster. Good, honest guys who knew every inch of this terrain and could be her guides.

Fanning out, they set about their task, stopping joggers, mums, businessmen, even council workers cutting the grass, asking them what they were up to and who they’d seen on the Common that morning. The vast majority were baffled by the questions, others were taciturn and suspicious, afraid of getting dragged into something that was nothing to do with them. It was an exhausting and potentially fruitless endeavour – so many people used the Common during the course of the working day. But he was here somewhere.

The mobile signals had sprung to life just under forty-five minutes ago. If Lucas hadn’t had to face down DC Sanderson, she would have been here even sooner, but she was still pleased by the speed of their response. She now had six CID officers in addition to herself and fifteen uniformed officers combing every inch of the Common. They might get lucky, they might not. But something in her waters told Lucas that they would be lucky today.

She had ventured off the beaten track now, walking away from the body of the search party into the denser undergrowth near the Wildlife Centre. It was oddly beautiful here, despite the grey sky that framed the woods. The trees were old with characterful hanging branches and thick foliage. And they were full of birds, who called to each other as Lucas picked a careful path deeper into the woods.

Crunch.

Lucas froze, her senses suddenly alert. She cast around her, but couldn’t see anything.

‘Police. Who’s there?’

Still nothing. A silence that seemed to go on for ever, then:

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Where was the sound coming from? She strained hard to hear, but, finding it impossible to locate the cause, made a snap decision and plunged through the foliage to her right.

Suddenly it happened. A figure bolted. The crunch, crunch had obviously been him creeping away, but now he was in full flight. Lucas was after him in a flash, sprinting over the forest floor and hurdling fallen logs in pursuit. Lucas had always been a good sprinter and she needed every ounce of her ability now, as the fugitive darted gracefully under branches and round bushes, intent on escape. He knew the forest far better than her, so while he seemed to glide unimpeded through the woods, Lucas was whipped by thorns and branches, scratching the skin from her face and arms. The trees were thinning now, however, and Lucas spotted her chance.

Cutting off the corner of the wood, she raised her speed a notch further. She was taking a calculated gamble that the man she was chasing would bear left on leaving the sanctuary of the wood, heading for the busy city centre rather than exposing himself to capture on the open ground of the Common.

Sprinting free of the woods, the man turned sharply left and sprinted for the park exit. Wham! Lucas took him down, wrapping her arms round his legs, bringing him down hard on the concrete pathway. She was swiftly up on her feet and pressing him hard up against the park noticeboard. He was already cuffed and compliant by the time the other officers arrived to assist.

Lucas’s pulse was racing, but her triumph was short-lived. The ‘man’ she was chasing turned out to be sixteen years old. A teenager with a taste for soft drugs and two decent-sized baggies of cannabis in his pocket. What he didn’t have, it soon became clear, was any mobile phones.

Cursing, Lucas turned him over to uniform and returned to the hunt. Another twenty minutes had passed and it was clear to her now that unless their killer had a pathological desire to be caught, he would be long gone.

71

Helen stood on the lip of the trench, as the team continued their excavations. Their ground-penetrating radar had picked up two bulky forms buried deep below the beach at locations that were only a stone’s throw from each other. Helen’s whole body was rigid, hoping she was wrong, but fearing that they had found what they came for.

‘It’s a young female.’

The words were simply said, but affected everyone who heard them. Some things you never get used to and the loss of young life was always particularly upsetting. Helen lowered herself into the trench, taking care not to impede the team’s efforts or trample on potential evidence. As with Pippa, the cold sand had done a good job of preserving its charge. There was only slight decomposition and the young woman looked as if she had simply gone to sleep four feet below the beach. Strange that people who have met their ends in such awful circumstances could look so peaceful.

Using fine tools and brushes, the team had now revealed the woman’s face and the damp black hair that framed it. Helen examined it closely. There were two small holes in her right nostril, but, as with Pippa, the jewellery had been removed. Any make-up there might have been had also vanished, the moisture and movement of the sand effectively scrubbing the young girl clean. There was a stark simplicity to her face, the features proud and undisguised. It was beautiful, but also crushing. Helen had seen the photos, read the files, and looking down at the face below, she had no doubt in her mind that she was now looking at the remains of Roisin Murphy.

Helen was tempted to leave Roisin now. The rest of the team were at the other dig site, twenty odd yards away, disinterring another form, and it was important to establish as swiftly as possible whether she was their other missing girl – Isobel Lansley. Yet something made Helen pause. It’s strange the connection you can make with someone you’ve never met before, someone whose life has been snuffed out months, possibly years, ago. But Helen wasn’t alone in wanting to cleave close to the poor girl, now that she had been discovered. Her family had been searching for so long, hoping against hope that she was ok, wondering if Roisin would ever return to her baby boy. The uncertainty was over now – they would never see their bubbly, troublesome daughter, mum and friend again. She had been let down by those around her and cruelly let down by life and – though there was nothing that could be done for her – it seemed wrong to abandon her now.

It didn’t make much sense, but no one would leave the trench until they had delivered the young woman from her tomb. There was something tender about the way the team eased her shoulders and arms from the sand. It was obviously done to preserve both the evidence and the scene, but it was oddly moving, a final act of kindness in a brief, brutalized life. Helen made a mental note to thank the team later for their professionalism and care.

Already Helen’s mind was scrolling forward, drafting the words she would use to tell Roisin’s family the terrible news, but what she saw suddenly banished all such thoughts. Roisin’s left shoulder and arm had now been fully exposed and the sight of it made Helen’s blood run cold.

There, standing proud on her bare, pale shoulder was a small bluebird tattoo.

72

Ruby looked at her reflection, but saw a stranger staring back. On the back of the improvement in their relationship, Ruby had persuaded her captor to leave the main lights on during the day and had pushed her luck still further by asking for a mirror. He had refused of course – there was no way he was going to give her glass, or anything else that might be fashioned into a weapon.