Private London (Private 4)

Inside was the laptop that the optician had placed there earlier. DI James reached in took it out and put it on the desk. There was nothing else in the safe.

Kirsty eased the laptop open and pressed the power button.

The computer’s desktop display appeared. A coastal scene – somewhere near Dover, by the looks of it.

The desktop was remarkably uncluttered. Kirsty probably had fifty or sixty icons on her machine’s desktop.

She used the track pad below the keyboard and clicked on the Windows symbol. The system was a few years old and running Vista by the looks of it. Kirsty went to the start function and clicked on recent documents. It revealed a drop-down menu of about ten jpegs. Kirsty clicked on one and a picture filled the screen.

After a moment Kirsty swallowed dryly and nodded to her colleague.

‘Well, there’s your motive,’ she said.

Chapter 85

THE SUN WAS still high in the sky that Sunday.

But it was late afternoon, almost evening, now and a light wind had picked up. The caretaker was doing his final rounds in the cemetery and it would soon be time to lock up.

He looked across at a lone figure, the only visitor left in the park. Kneeling in front of a child’s plot that had a large white marble headstone. Disproportionately large compared with the tragic smallness of the plot. It was more than a headstone, it was a monument in the grand Victorian style.

Fresh flowers had been laid there every day for the last month. Some parents looked after their children in death better than others did in life, the caretaker thought to himself as he glanced at his watch. He’d give it five minutes and then he’d have to lock up. Sad world, he thought to himself for the umpteenth time, in which you have to lock a cemetery against the ravages of vandalism and mischief.

The inscription on the gravestone read: ‘In loving memory of Emily Jane Lloyd: she danced through our lives all too briefly, and now she dances with the angels. 14/2/2000 – 19/3/2009.’

There was a small lidded chalice at the front of the plot among the stone angels and the vases of flowers. The surgeon leaned forward and raised the lid.

If the caretaker had been able to see what was inside the chalice, he would have had far more troubling thoughts about the state of the world than those caused by mere vandalism that he’d had earlier.

The surgeon opened a small handkerchief and removed the object inside. A scarred, burned piece of flesh. A human finger. Or part of it. The surgeon put it in the pot among the others and closed the lid, replacing the container back with the other objects adorning the shrine to the dead girl.

The voice was a soft whisper, almost a chant. ‘Just one more to go, my darling.’

Chapter 86

HANNAH SHAPIRO WAS dressed now.

Tight jeans tucked into knee-length chocolate-brown boots, a sweater, her hair tied back, make-up on. The transformation was amazing.

She was rubbing her right wrist, still red from the rough abrasion of the rope she had been tied with. Attention to detail. You have to admire that.

‘We know it was a set-up, Hannah. Tell us now what we need to know and it’ll go easier for you.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve made a mistake, Mister Carter.’

Mister Carter. Just like the mechanical voice had called me on the telephone. It had been her all along, laughing at us. Laughing at me.

I remembered the younger Hannah once more, sitting next to me on the flight over, discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald and teasing me. I realised the past wasn’t just another country, as another novelist once said. You can travel to another country but the past is a whole different life.

‘Where have they taken your father, Hannah?’ I asked.

She shrugged.

I felt like taking two steps forward and backhanding her across the face. My god-daughter had been hospitalised because of her. She’d had us dancing around like puppets while she jerked the strings and it made me angrier than I had felt for a long, long time.

She must have s

een something in my eyes because she stepped back a pace.