Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(15)

‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ she asked.

‘Unfortunately, this isn’t a personal call. I saw your name on an urgent request for developing a camera film.’

‘Yes. How soon can you get it done?’

‘It’s already done. I’ve scanned them in, and I’m just emailing the photos over to your work email. I’ll get the hard copies over by snail mail.’

‘Thank you. I should buy you a drink sometime.’

‘Here’s hoping,’ he said.

Erika heard her phone beep. ‘I think I just got your email.’

‘Okay, I’ll let you go. Merry Christmas,’ he said and rang off.

She opened his email and scrolled through the attached photos. They were mostly taken from the tree opposite Marissa’s bedroom. There was a series of photos taken at night through Marissa’s bedroom window, where she was fresh out of the shower and wearing a towel, then naked and pulling on her underwear. There were also three photos, taken from above, of Marissa’s body lying in the snow. And three more at a lower angle, which looked like they were taken at ground level, close to, or inside, the front garden.

‘Joseph Pitkin, you lying little shit,’ said Erika. She walked over to the front gate of Marissa’s house, where the frozen blood in the front garden was rapidly being covered by fresh snow. She could see up into the tree, with its thick bare branches. ‘Was that your regular spot, to spy on her, Joseph?’ Erika looked at the photos again, and saw that Lee had included a message at the bottom of the email:

The owner of this camera uses ILFORD DELTA 100 Professional 35mm film. They could be using a darkroom to process photos. Lee.





She was about to return to the van, when she caught an acrid smell of burning plastic. She looked around, and saw that at the end of the alleyway leading down to Joseph Pitkin’s house, smoke was rising into the sky.

Erika hurried down the alley towards it, the smell growing stronger. By the time she reached the back wall of the Pitkins’s house, thick black smoke was billowing into the air from behind the line of evergreens. She climbed up on to the wheelie bin, finding it much easier in the borrowed trainers, and pulled herself up onto the wall. Through the trees, she could see Joseph in his long coat, huddled over a burning oil drum. On the snowy ground beside him was a box of papers. He picked up a handful and dumped them into the drum, a shower of sparks and flames floating up into the dark sky. The windows in the house behind him were dark, and he was only lit by the glow of the flames.

Erika dropped down softly onto the strip of earth between the wall and the line of trees and stepped through. Joseph heard her feet crunch on the snow as she came towards him,

‘Stop what you’re doing. Right now,’ she said. He grabbed at a spade propped up against the oil drum, but she moved faster and grabbed it from him. She thought he would attempt to run, but he sank back onto the snow with his head between his hands as she put in a call to McGorry.





Nine





‘Loads of these photos are of Marissa,’ said Erika, sifting through the box of photos on the snow beside the oil drum. She held up a black-and-white shot of Marissa performing in a burlesque gig. McGorry was picking up several which had dropped onto the snow. The fire inside the drum had died down, but it still beat out warmth into the cold evening.

‘Talk about a Kodak moment!’ said McGorry, holding up a photo of Marissa striking a pose on a stage wearing knickers and nipple tassels, and removing a long black glove with her teeth.

‘I don’t need silly comments. Just bag them up,’ said Erika. She looked back at the house. The lights were now on in the kitchen, and two uniformed officers were standing over Joseph, who was sitting in a chair. One was talking to him, the other was taking notes, and Joseph was crying. ‘Do you think those tears are real?’

‘He is a mummy’s boy,’ said McGorry.

Joseph had now lost his cool, and was pulling at his hair. He stood up, shouting at the officers. One of them pushed him roughly down into the chair, which almost toppled over, and started shouting back. Erika pulled off her latex gloves and lit up a cigarette. They weren’t able to salvage anything from the fire, and inside the drum was a blackened lump. She needed to move fast, and make up her mind whether or not she wanted to bring Joseph in for questioning. He had told them his parents had gone round the corner to visit their friends for a quick Christmas drink. She checked the time. It was coming up to 8 p.m. She took a deep drag on her cigarette, and her phone rang. She moved down to the end of the garden, and saw it was Marsh. As she silenced the ringing phone and put it back in her pocket, she accidentally dropped the lit cigarette. It rolled across the snow and under the line of trees. She pulled her phone back out and activated the torch, training it under the trees. She found the cigarette, tucked under one of the evergreens, still lit. She also saw that a small square of soil had been disturbed towards the end of the row of evergreens. It hadn’t been like that earlier in the day. She called back to McGorry to bring the spade propped up against the oil drum.

‘Look,’ she said, when he joined her. ‘The ground wasn’t disturbed when we came over the wall this morning. Get digging.’

She trained the light on the ground as McGorry began scraping at the soil. He only had to dig down a few feet before he uncovered something small and grubby, wrapped in plastic. Erika pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves and squatted down beside the hole. She shook off the soil, and gently started to unwrap several layers of plastic bags, thinking she was going to find a block of cannabis resin. The final layer of plastic uncovered an iPhone with a pink bejewelled case. Written across the back in clear Swarovski crystals was the name, ‘Marissa’.