‘Sorry, I just?—’
‘Hey, it’s okay. It can happen to anyone.’ Morgan smiled at him. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you out.’
He didn’t argue with her. When she held out her hand, he took it and she pulled him to his feet, walking him out of the room and into the corridor.
‘If you take some deep breaths, it helps a lot, in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. I do that a lot.’
He looked at her. ‘You do?’
She nodded. ‘I do, it helps to regulate your breathing and keep you feeling a little calmer. It’s helped me in so many bad situations, you should try it. Sit out in the fresh air and take a few, you’ll feel better in no time.’
‘Thanks, I’ll still feel like a dick though. I made a right idiot of myself.’
Morgan smiled at him. ‘Can I give you some advice? Maybe being an undertaker isn’t the right job for you.’
This made him laugh. ‘It isn’t, I never in a million years wanted to do this, but I got finished from my job working in the kitchen at a hotel and my dad said I should go help my cousin for a bit because he was short-staffed. I thought he meant answering the phone, cleaning up, washing funeral cars, you know, that kind of stuff. I’d have run a mile if I’d realised he’d bring me to something like this. That poor woman, I won’t ever stop thinking about her.’
Morgan sighed. In the space of twenty minutes he was the second person to have said as much, and she made three: as horrible as the circumstances were, at least Lauren would never be forgotten.
EIGHTEEN
Ben came rushing out of the door, almost falling over Jackson. Morgan was stripping off the gloves and shoe covers.
‘Officers have just PNC’d the car found at the scene.’ He lowered his voice, nodding at her to walk with him so Jackson couldn’t hear. ‘It belongs to a Lynsey Williams.’
Morgan felt her mouth open wide. ‘Shit.’
Ben nodded. ‘What the hell is going on? I’m losing my mind over this. If the body inside is her, that’s all three of the Williams sisters murdered.’
‘But why?’
He shrugged. ‘We better find out and fast.’
They jogged to get to his car. Task Force were all getting out of a huge van. Ben lifted a hand in their direction, then called out to Al, ‘Can you oversee the removal of the body, there’s an officer inside too, but she said she’d not done it before on her own.’
Al nodded. ‘No worries, where are you guys off to?’
‘Another body.’
Al’s eyes opened wide. ‘For real?’
‘Unfortunately, I’ll keep you updated.’
‘Christ, at this rate we’re going to have to recruit the army to help carry out the searches.’
They got into Ben’s car, and she typed the directions into the satnav that the control room operator had emailed to her. ‘I hope this is a mistake. That they have it all wrong, because the consequences are too much to think about if this is Lauren and Lydia’s missing sister.’
‘It would make sense though, wouldn’t it? She hasn’t been heard of since just after Lydia’s body was found. That’s odd, isn’t it? It would explain a lot if she was dead too, and maybe she killed herself over the grief at losing her sister because I don’t recall seeing her at Lydia’s funeral.’
Morgan shook her head. ‘Scotty said she was pissed at her sister for starting vlogging too, but I can’t see her doing something like that.’
‘Unless she killed Lydia and felt bad.’
‘That doesn’t explain who killed Lauren though, does it? Unless she did that and went straight to the woods and took her own life.’
‘No, I’m just trying to think out loud.’
She smiled at him. ‘Sorry.’
