‘It’s by Jenny Hunter Groat. It was a gift from a friend.’
‘What an excellent friend,’ Kristin muses, caught up again in the certainty and bravery of the lines, the combination of black and walnut inks. She remembers herself. ‘Oh, I’m very sorry – I’m Kristin Gutmunsson.’
As she extends her hand, she notices the woman taking in her white hair, her ID on its lanyard. Only a moment’s hesitation before the woman transfers her file folder to her other hand, and shakes.
‘Linda Brown. It’s nice to meet you.’
‘Ah.’ Kristin steps back from the quote, the door. ‘Then this is your office and I’m blocking your way.’
‘Not at all. I was just about to join the lab group and talk about nightclub stamps.’
‘That seems like another conversation to which I could contribute very little.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Linda Brown smiles. ‘You might surprise yourself.’
Kristin sees Linda Brown’s expression alter. There is a shift of awareness between them, an acknowledgment that must be spoken aloud.
‘You’re Simon’s sister,’ Brown says gently.
‘I am,’ Kristin admits.
This is the part Kristin so often struggles with – when she reveals the connection, and people step back and move away. She braces for it.
‘Will you return to the lab with me?’ Brown says, and she gestures with her file in that direction.
‘Oh,’ Kristin says, and as she takes a breath, she realizes that she really can’t return to the lab. ‘I …’
She justcan’t. Every muscle and tendon and nerve ending – every particle of her being – rebels at the thought. It’s something about the idea of pieces of dead bodies under microscopes, and another gnawing fancy: the idea of Simon being cut up and examined in the same way.
The pressure under her ribs is very strong now, and her entire consciousness just … doesn’t want to be here, or to go back in there. It affects her so deeply, she finds it hard to form sensible words to express herself.
‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’ She lifts her chin and floats her gaze around, looking at nothing. ‘I believe I’ll just stay here, and …’ She swallows. ‘I think I’ll just stay here and look at your lovely illumination.’
Linda Brown pauses. Then she steps forward and reaches pastKristin for the door handle. ‘Why don’t you come on through to my office. You can sit in there, if you’d like.’
‘Oh,’ Kristin says. ‘I certainly don’t mean to—’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Brown says, and she opens the door fully so they can both go inside.
The office itself is rather like the woman: neat and warm and practical. There is a desk lamp providing low light; the desk itself is mahogany, with a pale leather blotter. More equipment that Kristin doesn’t recognize occupies niches on wall shelves. A wooden filing cabinet has a number of framed certificates above it. Brown places her file folder on the blotter and motions to a chair beside the desk.
‘Please, sit. Glass of water?’ Brown offers, and pours from a carafe on a side shelf, into a paper cup.
‘Thank you.’ Kristin settles herself into the chair. Of all the awkward encounters she has had with strangers who know her name, this is somehow one of the least awkward. She accepts the water gratefully. It does make her feel slightly better, enough to maintain conversation. ‘So what are you going to say about nightclub stamps?’
Brown pours herself a cup of water too. ‘That I’ve identified stamp traces on the wrists of two of the girls. I think they both attended the same nightclub.’
Kristin blinks at her wonderingly. ‘Well, that’s very important.’
‘I believe so, yes.’ Brown sips as she stands. ‘It also confirms what Miss Lewis suggested, that the girls are being taken in a social setting.’
Brown comes closer, and sets her cup carefully to one side of the desk so she can open the file and slide out a piece of paper. The paper bears two line drawings absent their original human skinbackgrounds. One is only a fragment, with a barely decipherable image, but the other clearly shows a pair of angel wings.
‘You said only two of the girls had this stamp?’ Kristin leans forward to examine the drawings. At the edges of the file folder, a few glossy victim photos are peeking out, as if they want to see too.
Brown nods. ‘For a while, I wasn’t sure if Patricia Doricott had the same stamp, but I tried different filters and found enough remnants to get an impression. I couldn’t get an impression from the wrist of the second girl, Marilyn Preston. It’s possible that a club stamp was worn away.’
‘He’s deliberately wiping it off,’ Kristin realizes.
