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Deakin speaks quietly. She looks at him. After a pause he turns toward her, but in the white suit and mask she can only see his eyes; she can’t tell his expression.
Cara doesn’t answer. Without acknowledging it, she had wanted to put distance between her and Noah. Something last night felt like it had strayed into unknown territory, but seeing his confusion now, she knew she’d been wrong. She should have brought her partner with her. She shouldn’t have risked Griffin being here, and now her brother had seen the unimaginable, and he had gone God knows where.
“I’m sorry, Deaks. I wasn’t thinking.”
He nods, a small movement, and her transgression is forgiven. And the mood is interrupted as a voice calls for their attention from the far side of the room.
They both go over.
“Oh, fuck,” Noah mutters.
It’s a large chest freezer.
“I’m never going to look at white domestic appliances in the same way again,” Cara says. “Go on then, open it.”
They all crane forward, ready for what they’re about to see. But when the SOCO pulls the lid up, it’s empty. Cara breathes a sigh of relief.
Then her mobile rings, a loud break in the stillness, making her jump. She looks at the screen. It’s Griffin.
“Boss,” he says. And with that one word she knows it’s business. “We need you. There’s been another one.”
CHAPTER
36
JESS FLITS BETWEEN channels on the television. Next to her, the laptop shows the BBC News. Like the true crime programs she watched in the past, she’s addicted to finding out more about this case. She watches the coverage of the press conference from the day before again, this time looking closely at DCI Cara Elliott. Griffin’s sister. She can see the resemblance—the height, the confidence, the intense expression.
“The Echo Man,” she repeats to herself quietly. It feels strange that the reason she’s met Griffin is because of this killer. He killed Mia. He killed Patrick. A dark truth that bonds them.
She stretches, and feels the skin on her back tense, then crack. She reaches around and tentatively touches the scab, skin destroyed from being pushed up against the wall by Griffin.
He’s been gone all day. They haven’t spoken about last night—about what they did, about what she told him. For that, she’s grateful. She’s not sure what she thinks about it all—what she thinks about him. She knows there are things he’s not telling her. And same with her. But she trusts him. More than she’s trusted anyone for a long time.
She picks up Griffin’s laptop, flicking around other news sites, looking for updates, but it seems they’re not reporting anything new. Then her fingers hesitate over the keys. She’s never been a big one for social media, but now she’s apart from her daughter, she needs some connection. She needs to see her face.
She opens up Facebook. She ignores the usual banality and meaningless jabber of so-called friends, and clicks on her personal page, selecting the “Photos” tab. There’s not much there, but it’s enough.
Alice.
She clicks on the thumbnail of one of the most recent. It’s a selfie from a walk at the beach, sun shining in the background. Jess is laughing, Alice has her face close to the camera, too close, her nose wrinkled, her deliciously chubby cheeks red and healthy. Jess remembers that day. It had just been the two of them, free to wander and do as they pleased without Patrick’s watchful glare.
Jess goes back, then scrolls down to the earlier photos. Alice as a baby, just born, lying peacefully in Jess’s arms. Jess seems half awake, bloated, blotchy, but Alice’s gaze is fixed on her face. It’s always been that way, as if through her daughter’s eyes, her mother can do no wrong. Jess knows her daughter is flawless—a mother’s blinkered prerogative—but unlike the rest of the world, Alice has only ever thought her mother is perfect.
Jess feels tears threaten, and she clicks away. Now here’s Nav, holding baby Alice, beaming like a proud father. She remembers Nav posted this picture on Facebook himself—the comments underneath from adoring women were quite something to behold. She took the piss at the time, which Nav took with his customary good grace, but his devotion toward Alice has never changed. Jess wondered what would happen if he got married, had children of his own.
As if sensing her thoughts, the laptop pings, and a message appears at the bottom right of the screen. Navin Sharma, it says, then: Where are you??
With a jolt, she realizes the computer must have flagged that she’s online, and she shuts the laptop lid quickly. How could she have been so stupid? If Nav saw it, what if the police had too? What if they tracked her back here?
She remembers the last time. She remembers the fear, the uncertainty. Being bundled into the back of a police car, her hands cuffed behind her back. The blood. The tears. Patrick shouting. The flashing lights of the ambulance. But there’s nowhere else for her to go this time. Nowhere else to run.
She shuts off the television and the lights. She sits in the darkness in silence. And she waits.
CHAPTER
37
THE RAIN POURS in sheets, flooding the roads. The car sends up great plumes of water as Cara drives, her foot flat to the floor.
