Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [50]
He turned over the next photo and held it up, too. ‘This is a close-up of her left hand. The same thing was written on both palms. It appears just to say “I’m like Emma”, or it could possibly be part of a longer message. The same person probably wrote both, and the characters are noticeably better formed on the left palm. Since Lorna was right-handed, the current theory is that she wrote this herself.
‘Why, and what it means, we have yet to discover, but I need to know of any connections she had with someone of the name Emma.’
The next photo was a studio shot of Lorna when alive. ‘This is the photo that will be released to the press. To fill you in, Lorna Spence turned twenty-three on 6th February. She was five two, single, working as an administrator for the Excelsior Clinic. So far, no relatives have been traced.’
Marks scanned the room. No one looked at all vacant now. Good.
He then added the salient points he’d recently gleaned from Goodhew and assigned various tasks to the team. Goodhew was, as usual, pretty damned unreadable, but Marks had noticed his interest peak as Bryn O’Brien’s name was mentioned. He quickly assigned O’Brien’s interview to Kincaide, then informed Goodhew that he would be spending the day studying Lorna’s phone bills and bank statements.
Goodhew opened his mouth to speak, but Marks raised his hand in a halting motion. ‘Is there something you don’t understand, Gary? Perhaps the idea of sitting in the office and not moving at will is a bit alien to you?’
Goodhew shut his mouth again, and strummed his fingers on his knee a couple of times, probably in frustration.
Marks remained silent, letting the room settle, then dismissed the team. ‘My mobile will be switched on.’ He paused, making sure he had Goodhew’s full attention. ‘I need to know every development. Understood?’
Goodhew nodded. The other officers filed past him. He could hear them breaking into conversation once they hit the corridor outside.
Marks glanced at his subordinate’s notepad. The spider doodle had progressed, and some of the hoops it juggled now contained names. He saw ‘Excelsior’, ‘Richard Moran’ and ‘Bryn O’Brien’ written in neat capitals. The other hoops remained blank.
The spider’s body had ‘Lorna’ written clearly in the middle.
NINETEEN
Goodhew wasn’t the only one to think that a pre-emptive strike might be the best way forward.
Bryn had unlocked the garage at 8 a.m. that morning, but after forty-five minutes, he already found he had done nothing so far but fight the urge to bunk off. On one hand, with his father taking a month off to do some decorating, and only himself to answer to, it was never going to be an escape of Ferris Bueller-style proportions, but on the other hand . . .
He thought it over carefully.
On the other hand, there would be no joy in hanging around here, waiting for the inevitable visit from the law. He could see how that would go, probably with the unsubtle arrival of two uniforms in a marked car, generating enough local gossip to knock the business back further than a couple of days’ skiving ever would. Better, then, for them to catch up with him somewhere away from work.
Or, better still, for him to do the catching. And that was when he relocked the workshop and began walking towards Parkside police station.
He pulled a pack of Benson & Hedges from his pocket, and lit up without breaking his stride. One packet usually lasted him all week; three per day wasn’t much of a habit. But this wasn’t ‘most weeks’ and, as he came within sight of the station, he was using the remains of the first cigarette to light his second.
He left two messages at