His & Hers(44)

My phone rings, revealing my boss’s name, and I take longer than I should to answer it.

“Good morning, sir.”

Kissing arse always leaves an unpleasant taste on my lips.

I listen while the weasel of a man tells me everything he thinks I’ve done wrong with the investigation, and bite my tongue so often I’m surprised it doesn’t have a hole. He’d never say it to my face. Firstly, I doubt he could find his way out of his office to do so, plus it’s hard for him to look down on me in person; I’m considerably taller. The man suffers from stunted growth as well as intellect, but I wait until he has said everything he wants to say, then tell him what he wants to hear. I find this is the fastest approach to get management off my back.

“Yes, sir. Of course,” I say, promising to keep him in the loop before hanging up.

Priya looks disappointed.

“What?” I ask.

She shrugs but doesn’t answer. Her eyes judge me even if her words don’t. I think she overheard what the chief said: “This is a major fuckup by the Major Crime Team on your watch.”

Myself and the entire MCT unit all worked eighteen-hour shifts yesterday. They’ve hardly slept, but something about what he said still stings. For some reason, on some level, it does feel as though all of this might be my fault.

“Shall we?” I ask Priya.

“Yes, sir,” she says, returning to her normal, efficient self. A version I’m much more comfortable with.

Priya leads the way through a warren of corridors. I ignore all the colorful posters on the walls, and focus instead on her lace-up shoes as they squeak along the polished floor. The black brogues—which oddly enough resemble school shoes to me—are considerably cleaner than yesterday in the muddy woods, so much so that I can’t help wondering whether they are a brand-new pair. Her ponytail swings from side to side as it always does, a hair-shaped pendulum, counting down as we get closer to victim number two. I am in no doubt that the murders are linked.

I keep a couple of steps behind Priya all the way, pretending to follow, but this is a building I am already surprisingly familiar with. I used to get dragged here by my parents all the time, to see my sister perform in school plays. Zoe was never top of her class academically—too much competition for that at a school like this—but she was a terrific actress. Still is. Perhaps it runs in the family. I can no longer pretend to myself that I wasn’t here last night, or that I didn’t see the light in the window of the office we are headed toward. If I had behaved differently then, this wouldn’t be happening now.

When we step into the room, the sight that greets us cannot fail to shock. It’s still pitch-black outside, but not in here. The bright police lights make the room seem like a film set, with the victim center stage.

“Can we cover up these windows, please, before the press start posting pictures online?” I say, and several heads turn to stare in my direction.

There are a couple of uniformed officers I know, as well as some I don’t, and I’m pleased to see that Forensics have already arrived. It’s more or less the same target response team as yesterday, and they all seem a little shell-shocked. Looking at the crime scene, I don’t blame them.

“I thought it was best to wait for you, sir,” Priya says.

“Fine, well I’m here now.”

The school office is more like a miniature library. Bookshelves line the back wall, and there is a huge framed map of the world on another. I see a glass cabinet full of trophies, and a large mahogany desk in the middle of the room. The headmistress is still sitting in her chair behind it, but her throat has been cut and her mouth is stretched into a scream.

Even from the doorway, I can see the foreign object inside her mouth. Just like with Rachel, there is a red-and-white friendship bracelet tied around the victim’s tongue. Her head has fallen to one side, her black Cleopatra-style bob revealing gray hinges. Her hair hides half her face, but I still know who she is. I expect everyone here does. The head of the girls’ grammar school is both well respected and a little feared in the local community.

Helen Wang used to attend St. Hilary’s herself as a pupil, and was in the same year as Zoe, Anna, and Rachel. She went from being head girl as a teenager to being headmistress before she was thirty. A high-flying academic with an oversized IQ, and very little patience for people who didn’t share her view of the world. I know that she and Rachel were still friends, and it’s possible that Helen might have known about our affair. If she did, at least she can’t tell anyone about it now.

I don’t need a pathologist to tell me that a knife was used to slit her throat, that much is obvious, but those aren’t the only visible injuries on the body. The victim’s blouse has been undone all the way down to her waist, and the word LIAR has been written across her chest, just above her bra. The letters appear to have been made using a staple gun. There must be over a hundred tiny slivers of silver stuck in her white flesh, spelling the word like metal stitches.

I already feel out of my depth, but nobody else on this team can swim any better. One murder in Blackdown would have been unusual, but two is unprecedented. Even in London, I only worked on an active serial killer case once before. I look around the room, and get the impression that we’re all just trying to tread water, waiting for someone to rescue us. But they won’t. This is it.

I take a step closer and see the white powder on the tip of the victim’s nose.