‘She’s had a look, but Ben dragged her off to the post-mortems. I wanted to be useful in the meantime and try and come up with a lead, but you know how rubbish I am with Facebook and Instagram, it’s not my thing.’
‘Yeah, I’ll take a look, but you have to mind Ava if she wakes up, and you also need your work laptop so you can save anything I find, and you have proof. Have you brought it with you?’
‘It’s in the car.’
‘Go get it then.’
Cain saluted her. ‘Yes, boss.’ Then shoved almost a full slice of pizza into his mouth.
‘You’re still a complete pig.’
He gave her a thumbs-up, afraid he might choke if he tried to talk, and went out to the car to grab his laptop.
FORTY-ONE
The full moon was lighting up the night sky. It was peppered with glittering stars as Morgan and Ben left the mortuary. There was a crisp chill in the air which made a change from the damp rain that had been pouring on and off for days. Neither of them spoke, both processing the two post-mortems. Lauren’s had been bad, but Lynsey’s badly decomposed body had been terrible. The stench had permeated everything Morgan was wearing. As they got into the car she finally spoke.
‘We have to go home and shower, get changed.’
Ben looked at the clock on the dashboard. ‘We’re calling it a night, all we know is that both sisters were killed in the same manner, by the same method, with identical weapons, and Declan found two fibres under Lynsey’s nails, but they could be from inside of her car or tent. This brother is likely responsible, but we have to have a break. I mean we’ve been at this for over fourteen hours, and I can no longer think straight.’
And as eager as Morgan was to trace this mystery brother, she knew Ben was right. There was a pain behind her eyes that signalled she was about to get an awful headache if she didn’t take a breather, because she was dehydrated and hungry on topof everything else. ‘I agree. Should I phone Cain to see if he’s found anything interesting?’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’m sure he would have called us; I have no missed calls, do you?’
She looked at her phone. No missed calls, no messages, no messenger notifications and it struck her how lonely she was. Her teenage self had a close group of friends, and their phones had non-stop pinged day and night with messages about the usual teenage rubbish. Who fancied who, what were they wearing to youth club, did anyone do their homework. It made her sad that most of those friends were now dead, taken far too young, and she only really had Ben, Declan, Cain, Amy, Wendy – when she wasn’t annoyed with her – and Theo who messaged her now, and it was mostly work related. Wendy occasionally asked her out for drinks or to go get food. Declan messaged to gossip, and Theo messaged about anything. She supposed she should be grateful that she had this many friends and colleagues she cared about, because at one point she had shut herself off from everyone. First after Sylvia’s death and then Brad’s, which had hit her even harder.
‘Penny for them?’
‘What, ugh. Sorry, was just thinking about life and the people I’ve lost.’
‘Oh, that sucks. It brings it back all of this, doesn’t it? It’s like we can never really shut off the depressing parts; they are always there, lingering at the back of our minds ready to take us down the rabbit hole all over again.’
She reached out and squeezed his fingers which were icy cold. ‘It’s a lot at times.’
‘I can put you through for some counselling or you can self-refer.’
‘Don’t you dare, I’m not that depressed. I tried it once, it was awful. Telling a stranger how crap your life is when they haven’tgot an inkling of how things really are and never will because they haven’t experienced the awful stuff that you have. No, thank you.’
He nodded.
‘I’m with you on that one. I went a couple of times after Cindy because Tom, our old DI who I miss more than anything, made me go. He said he’d drive me there himself if I didn’t go voluntarily. I wonder how he is? It’s too long since we’ve seen him. When this is over, we should arrange to go for a meal.’
Morgan liked Tom, he’d been a good DI. Kind, supportive, funny, always on his team’s side. Unlike Marc who flitted in and out like a butterfly and you could never gauge his moods.
‘Yes, we should.’
‘Do you think these murders are over with now all three sisters are dead?’
Ben shrugged. ‘It would be cool to think so, wouldn’t it? A relief really.’
Morgan agreed. ‘I wonder if Stan found anything on the genealogy sites?’
‘Surely he’d have let us know. I haven’t heard from him either so I’m assuming not.’
‘Hm, depends how good he is at that kind of thing. Amy would know within a couple of hours.’
‘She would, I miss her.’
