She leaned closer to him and smiled. ‘I have a very comfortable couch and my cat would love a slumber party.’
Ebony meowed as she ran over to her dinner bowl and crunched on a chunk of dried food.
‘I just love sleeping on a couch.’
Gina poured the tonic over the gin and passed him a glass. He took a sip and cocked his head to one side while shutting one eye. ‘There’s a lot of gin in there, Gina.’
‘There certainly is.’ She took a swig. ‘It’s been a long day and I need to sleep – the gin will help. Why are you here?’
‘Can we sit?’
She nodded and followed him into the lounge. He’d lit a small fire and the log had just taken hold of the flames. They both sat in the dark room, staring at the flames that danced away.
‘You don’t trust me, I know you don’t. I understand why you wouldn’t trust anyone. I needed to come here and remind you of what you have on me and the power that secret holds.’
She scrunched her brows and gave a small laugh. ‘You haven’t killed anyone.’
‘I threatened to set a suspect up with a crime he hadn’t committed and I did it to keep him off your back.’
‘Is this about Stephen?’ Terry’s brother, the man who was so similar to her abusive ex-husband.
‘It still plays on my mind. You know me, I’d had a clean career up to that point. Only you know that I threatened to pin an unsolved historical murder on him by creating evidence.’
‘But there was no real evidence. You couldn’t have followed it through.’
‘He didn’t know that and he still doesn’t. What I’m trying to say is that this bit of information could absolutely ruin me; pension, reputation, the lot. You could arrest me at any point and I’m sure Stephen would happily shout about the injustice of it to all who would listen. I will keep your secret forever and I know you’ll keep mine. I just wanted you to trust me, that’s all. I want you to know, I’m on your side.’
She shook her head and placed her gin glass on the coffee table. ‘Those two things aren’t in the same league, are they?’
‘No, my crime was well calculated, yours was a result of years of abuse. I know who’d be demonised more. I know who would have a harder time in prison. The abused wife against the corrupt DCI.’
He was right. She’d never thought of things that way. He slipped off his shoes and put his feet up on the sofa, lying on the cushion as he watched the logs crackle. The glow of the flames flickered in his irises. She slipped her own shoes off and curled into his body, allowing him to spoon her. He placed his large hand over her shoulders and placed his chin on her head as he kept her warm. Soon the fire would burn out and a chill would bring them back to reality.
She shivered as she thought back to Avery and her daughter. With her alarm set for five thirty, she’d be back at the station soon, sifting through all the new leads, if indeed there were any. A gentle snore filled the room. It had been a long day. Gina wouldn’t be sleeping through that but, equally, she didn’t want to leave him to go to her cold bed upstairs. Her phone flashed. It was a message from Bernard. Carefully, she slid her arm out of Briggs’s embrace and selected the message. Finally, they had their forensics link between the two murder scenes.
Chapter Forty-One
‘So, that’s the state of things,’ Gina said as she added Samuel Avery to the board under Francesca Carter’s photo. Everyone in the room now knew of her daughter’s involvement with this man. Wyre had almost offered her deepest condolences. She grabbed a pain au chocolat from the packet that Jacob had brought in and she took a bite. Briggs brushed past O’Connor and PCs Smith and Kapoor, before catching Gina’s gaze for a second.
He sat at the head of the table. ‘Bernard, can you kick off? I know you have something to say.’
Bernard flicked through the many pages of his report. ‘All findings so far have been emailed to you all. As you all know, we are still working through evidence gathered at Cleevesford Manor and the clearing. We are trying to compare as much as possible to evidence collected at Francesca Carter’s house and we now have a link. The size nine shoe impression that was discovered just outside Francesca Carter’s back fence is a direct match to a partial print we found in the clearing in the woodland at the back of Cleevesford Manor. The Cleevesford Manor print was the hardest to distinguish. As it was only a partial print, we had to scrutinise it closer but a person’s gait is quite unique, there is a slight wearing at one side of the shoe. The print at the Carter household was deep and a cast was taken, giving us all dimensions.’ He reached into his folder and pulled out a photo of the cast with measurements and dimensions overlaid. ‘See that wear on the sole? It is an exact match of one of the partial prints found at the clearing. Same make, same size.
‘There’s something else. We recovered a couple of visible prints on the slabs by the gate of the Carter’s garden. It looks like the perpetrator had stepped on the grass, leaving prints leading from the garden. The visible prints show us a splayed softer version of this person’s footprint with the impression just coming through lightly. When magnified there is pattern to the print, such as that of the material used on boot covers. The covers are again a common brand, the same as those used by estate agents and tradespeople when they work in our homes.’
‘So our perpetrator went well prepared?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Anything else for the time being other than what we’ve received in your initial findings report?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll keep ploughing on and I’ll keep feeding you any new information. I know budgets are tight but we’ve been working around the clock. One of my colleagues messaged me with this news in the early hours. I’m back onto it as soon as I’ve finished here.’
‘Thank you. Smith, any news on Samuel Avery, Phillip Brighton or Edward Powell? All three were not where they should have been at the time of Francesca’s murder.’
‘Uniform have reported that Edward Powell arrived home in the early hours.’
‘I want to speak to our groom. We’ll head back to the Powell household after we’ve finished here. Wyre, O’Connor, can you keep trying to find out the whereabouts of Samuel Avery and Phillip Brighton? As we know, Avery turned up at the Cleevesford Cleaver to see my daughter, Hannah, at ten in the evening last night. I want to know what he was doing before that.’
