‘Yesterday, I went to see another parent who’d lost their child,’ he said, standing up stiffly and walking over to the picture of Taheera. ‘I watched the light go out in her father’s eyes. I’ve thought about your theory that it’s a family thing, a so-called honour killing, but when I saw him, I saw that whoever took her life, took his too.’
She waited, but he didn’t say any more. The silence between them was broken by the electronic whir of the projector lens opening up. She started the laptop again and eventually an image formed on the screen. The girl’s arm and the finger-shaped bruises filled the frame. She clicked forward to an enhanced image of the prints, clicked again and added an electronic Post-it note that said ‘pigskin’.
‘Gloves?’ Khan said.
‘Standard gardening gloves. No fingerprints.’
‘Like the ones in the potting shed that Chloe Toms had access to?’
‘Yes. But clean. The pattern’s the same, but the ones I took from the potting shed left traces of soil behind, which were easy to see under the microscope. This glove had never been used for gardening.’
She clicked on to another image. It could have been the wavy edge of a conch shell. When she zoomed out it became a section of the fatal wound across Taheera’s throat.
‘That’s some sort of oil, you see? It’s been picked up in the light source treatment. It may take a couple of days to run all the tests, but yesterday I discovered that the manufacturers use a specialist petroleum-based oil to finish new knives, whereas your average gardener buys an off-theshelf, vegetable-based honing oil. There’s no dirt or rust in the wound, which also suggests it was a brand-new knife. Like this one.’
Lizzie put the open pruning knife, in its clean plastic bag, on the table in front of Khan. He shuddered slightly.
‘A new knife and new gloves?’
‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘I’ll get someone to phone Halsworth Grange to find out whether Bill Coldacre has been to the garden centre recently. He might have provided the girl with new equipment, she’s only just started after all.’
‘You still think she did it?’
Khan shrugged. ‘She didn’t deny it.’
‘So she’s spoken?’
He shook his head. ‘Either she’s mad, or clever, I can’t decide. I was in there for four hours with her yesterday and she didn’t utter a word. She wouldn’t answer any questions, but she did draw this.’
He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.
‘Who is it?’ Lizzie said.
‘I don’t know. It’s not a great work of art. I’ve got one of the constables putting it through EvoFIT to see if it throws up a name.’
‘Do you think she saw this person?’
‘Hard to say. But she drew it with her right hand.’
‘So you believe me?’
‘Possibly.’ He rubbed his beard and she could see how tired he was. ‘Yesterday, I was being harassed by the duty solicitor and her probation officer to either charge her or let her go. The probation officer said we could have her recalled to prison if we think she’s breached her licence. The sighting of her on the Chasebridge estate would give us enough to get her locked up.’
‘She seems very vulnerable.’
‘More vulnerable than Taheera Ahmed, who’s dead?’ he said. ‘More vulnerable than her grieving family?’
Lizzie flicked through her slide show and avoided eye contact with Khan. She couldn’t get Chloe Toms’ numb expression and bony ribs out of her mind.
‘I’m not an ogre, Lizzie,’ he sighed. ‘You’re right. We haven’t got enough to hold her. When I came back from the restaurant last night, I arranged her transport and she went back to York.’
‘To the hostel?’
‘Yes. At least we know where she is. I’ve asked the North Yorkshire force to keep an eye on her and let us know if she does anything unusual. Thanks, by the way, for dinner, I appreciated it,’ he was rubbing his beard again. ‘Once she’s over the shock, we’ll try again. I’m sure she knows something.’
Lizzie was relieved, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. She still had to put the notes from Donald’s work into the next slide show. This promised to be a long briefing, with three cases to cover. Two homicides and an arson attack had sent Doncaster’s crime statistics into orbit and Commander Laine wasn’t happy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Doncaster
Sean pressed the alarm but nothing happened. He put his ear up to the mesh of the speaker but there was no sound; he doubted whether it was connected to a control room. It was cool in the lift. The hairs on his arms and legs were bristling. The floor was damp and stank of piss. He looked up at the ceiling and tried to work out which section was the escape hatch. If he was in a James Bond movie, he would push it open and climb out. He shivered. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the lift had stopped between floors. It must be something to do with Terry Starkey. They’d worked out where he’d gone and decided to trap him. He didn’t think thick-necked Gary’s hips would fit through the hatch, but Starkey’s might.
He listened to the building. A door banged quite close, somewhere above him, and he heard the sound of a young child, giggling.
‘Bye bye, dada,’ said the voice.
‘Come on cheeky!’ A woman spoke, only feet away.
The lift had stopped just below the tenth floor. He could hear the wheels of a buggy squeaking and then coming to a stop. There was a pause.
‘Bloody thing,’ the woman said.
Sean wondered if he should call out.
‘It better not be stuck again.’ The wheels of the buggy squeaked and someone was banging on a door. ‘Lift’s broken. Here, Dave, give us a hand down the stairs, I can’t manage her and the buggy.’
There was a man’s voice, indistinct from behind the door of a flat, then the sound of the door opening. Sean didn’t want them to go down the stairs, he didn’t want them to leave him, trapped where Starkey could find him.
‘Hello! Can you hear me?’ he called.
‘Hello, hello!’ The toddler’s voice sang out in reply.
It sounded as if the adults weren’t there. Perhaps the man needed to get dressed, perhaps he was arguing about having to help. The toddler kept repeating ‘hello’ and it seemed like an age before he heard anyone else.
‘I’m going to go down that housing office and I’m going tell them,’ the woman was saying.
Sean took a deep breath and shouted. ‘Hey! I’m stuck in the lift. Any chance you could call the emergency number for me? I’ve got no signal and the intercom’s not working.’
But before she could answer, the lift mechanism whined into life, as if his words had undone a spell. It shook and lurched upwards. The doors slid open and Sean stood, in pants and socks, in front of a young woman, her little girl and a man in a Doncaster Rovers T-shirt. All three stared at Sean. Nobody spoke. Suddenly the door to the staircase was flung back. There was nowhere for him to hide.
‘Come on!’ Saleem said, breathless in the open doorway. ‘Let’s get up on the roof. We’ll be safe there. I came back to talk to you and I saw Terry Starkey’s lot running round in circles. They’ve been up and down the stairs and now they’ve gone back outside. They’re looking for you, aren’t they?’
Sean nodded, his muscles flooding with relief. He followed Saleem to the stairs and gave the young family one last look but they’d already turned away. The woman was pushing the buggy into the lift and the man gave her a peck on the cheek, as if this was the beginning of any normal day.
Twenty minutes later Sean was being driven away from the Chasebridge estate. It might have been PC Gavin Wentworth’s driving, or it might have been relief, but Sean was feeling very sick. He opened the window and gulped the morning air.
‘Steady on, mate,’ Gav said, laughing. ‘You’ll catch a cold dressed like that.’
Gav had been laughing, on and off, ever since he’d set eyes on Sean crouching on the roof next to the air vents in nothing but socks and boxer shorts. Alerted by Saleem’s shout of: ‘Oi, copper, up ’ere’, Gav had taken the lift and by the time he’d arrived, the boy had disappeared, but not before showing Sean the control panel, in its not-so-locked cabinet on the roof, in case he ever needed to stop the lift again. On the way down they’d hammered on Jack’s door but there had been no answer. He’d either gone out or passed out.