Joe went silent at these words. Then with a snort of contempt he threw up his arms and stormed out of the room.
‘ I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ Ruth apologised.
‘ It’s okay. He’s upset and angry,’ said Danny.
Danny rolled over in bed. Sweat started to dribble where her thighs met. The bed was hotting up the more she was unable to sleep.
And the next image that came to her mind was the meeting she and Henry had had with the pathologist who had performed Claire’s post mortem. His name was Baines and it was apparent he and Henry knew each other well.
‘ Quite a few things of interest to you, H,’ Baines said. ‘Go on then.’
‘ Old sperm in her uterus — probably about four days. On its last legs, or flippers, as you might say.’
‘ Wow,’ Henry said.
‘ Mmm, she was not a virgin. Probably hadn’t been one for some time, by all indications.’
Danny closed her eyes. ‘She was eleven years old.’
Baines nodded.
‘ Anything else?’ Henry asked.
Baines opened his mouth and reeled off other interesting things which were lost on Danny who sat through the rest of the meeting numb, the voices of the two men simply a meaningless background to the physical sickness she was feeling on Claire’s behalf.
Suddenly Danny cut back into the conversation. ‘Can you pinpoint exactly how old the sperm is, Doctor?’ she demanded to know.
Her eyes flipped open. ‘Damn,’ she said out loud to the bedroom ceiling. ‘Why the hell can’t I get to sleep? What have I done wrong? Come on, God, tell me.’ She flicked off the duvet and went to the loo again.
Myrna stood by the door of the restroom next to her office and knocked tentatively.
‘ Some towels for you,’ she called.
There was a murmur from the other side of the door which Myrna took to be some form of permission to enter. She opened the door and stepped in. The shower was hissing and steam rose towards the extractor fan. Through the frosted glass Myrna could see the naked, but indistinct shape beyond, soaping down.
‘ They’re just outside the shower door.’ She dropped them onto the floor.
Another murmur was the response.
Myrna retreated from the restroom. Back in the office she sat on her leather chair and tried to work out what the hell was going on. On the desk-top lay the newspaper the female had been carrying. It was soaking wet, near to deterioration. Myrna considered tossing it into the wastebasket. Before she did, she unrolled it carefully.
It was a five-day-old edition of the British Daily Mail. Not an unusual sight in Miami, where British newspapers were common on the streets and sold at many stores. Myrna flattened it carefully so the sports headlines were uppermost. She turned the paper over and read the news headlines.
The irony of it was that, through snoring loudly, Danny woke herself up. She cursed. She had been to sleep and then, fuck it, she had woken herself up. This, she thought, was going to be one of those nights.
She rolled over, tugged the duvet tight around her head and shut her eyes. It was one o’clock. In six hours she had to be up. Six hours
… if only she could get six hours, that would be bliss — almost a normal night’s sleep. Six lovely hours…
The restroom door opened and Myrna looked up.
The sex-chatline telephonist, who had been a vital witness against Bussola, the girl by the name of Tracey Greenwood stood there, one of the bath towels folded around her, another smaller towel around her head. Myrna had to admit she looked a thousand times better than she had done an hour before when Myrna had brought her into the office.
‘ Hi. How are you feeling?’
‘ Okay.’
‘ You should really go to hospital.’
‘ I’m fine, nothing’s broken; you didn’t run into me, I jumped onto your bonnet.’
‘ Bonnet?’
‘ Bonnet — hood — you know.’
‘ Oh yeah, I see. Bonnet’s English.’
‘ Yeah, summat like that.’
Myrna stood up. ‘Come on, sit over here.’ She pointed to the sofa. ‘I’ve got some coffee on, but I’ve only been able to find some cookies to eat. There’s not much food around the office.’
‘ It’s okay, I’m not really hungry.’
The girl pulled the bath towel tight and tottered across the office to the sofa. Myrna watched her out of the corner of her eye whilst she fixed two cups of steaming coffee from the filter machine. The girl was deadly thin, her legs seemingly no fatter than a ballpoint pen; her shoulders protruded bones and her arms were like twigs, dry-looking and capable of being snapped. She looked anorexic and like a drug addict. The mainline marks on the inside of her arms and the backs of her knees were prominent. Some had scabs on them, where blunt, rusted or pre-used needles had been inserted. It would not be long before she was dead.
Myrna handed her a coffee. She took it gratefully, hands a-quiver. She piled numerous lumps of brown sugar in then added cream.
Myrna drank hers back. She lowered herself down onto the opposite end of the couch.
The girl sipped her sweet brew. Her eyes traversed the office and the view across Miami. ‘Nice office,’ she commented.
‘ Thanks.’
‘ I suppose you’re wondering why I threw myself at you.’
‘ You could say that.’
A massive shiver suddenly convulsed the girl’s whole body. She almost spilled her coffee. ‘Oh God,’ she gasped, ‘I really need a fix.’ She looked hopefully at Myrna.
‘ Coffee’s as far as I go.’
‘ I really wanted to see Kruger.’
‘ He’s dead.’
‘ I know.’
‘ So why have you come?’ Myrna demanded because she suddenly remembered that Kruger’s death might have been prevented if only this girl hadn’t disappeared. ‘You’re partly responsible for him dying. If you’d stayed and testified in the first place, Bussola might still be in the can.’
‘ No way. Don’t try to pin that one on me.’
‘ Okay — so I ask again: why are you here?’
‘ I know something,’ she said. A look of horror crossed her face and remained there. Myrna studied her carefully and thought the girl’s expression was the result of seeing something so painful that even its memory brought back terror. The girl’s head flicked quickly towards Myrna; her opaque, lifeless eyes produced tears which tumbled down her white cheeks. ‘I know something,’ she repeated with a sob of anguish. ‘Something terrible.’
Danny was in a sort of dream-filled twilight zone, somewhere between sleep and deep sleep, images of fifteen years ago zipping through her mind. She was walking towards a door. From behind the door were voices. Angry. Raised. Arguing. Danny was in uniform. Her police car was parked behind her. There were white chippings underneath her feet, scrunching as she walked. She got closer to the door. The voices became louder. A man and a woman. The words had meant nothing to her. Merely jumbled. A big disagreement, possibly the first stages of domestic violence.
At the time she only half-listened to what was said, yet the words must have lodged themselves into her mind subconsciously. Like someone half-seeing a number plate and subsequently dredging it out of the recycle bin of the memory whole and complete.
But the mind is a curious organ. Often it stores things the owner doesn’t even know are there. The skill is in the process of recall. Sometimes it is a skill which can be acquired. Other times it is pure luck or circumstance which is the catalyst.
And that night it was a dream, because Danny had fallen asleep thinking about poor Claire Lilton… and the coincidence was that fifteen years before she had visited Joe Lilton’s home on the outskirts of Blackburn to do a firearms enquiry and had stumbled into a domestic dispute, but at the time had not really heard the words which were being said as she walked to the door of the house.