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Marsh nods, agreeing with Jamie. “Visitor logs came in twenty minutes ago from the prison. They didn’t have a clue Cole was her father. The governor is appalled. Multiple visits to Cole spanning a period of five years. They’ve been in contact a while. And calls out the other way. Texts to Maggie Clarke’s mobile from a number of burner cells. All cryptic, but he was communicating with her, that’s for sure.” While he’s been talking, Marsh has taken the packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and now turns them around in his hands. “Why nobody at Belmarsh was checking this shit, I’ll never know,” he mutters. “We’ll make sure there’s an inquiry. Shut it down so it never happens again.”
“So can we assume she has the same goal as Cole—to get to twenty? What number are we at?”
Marsh looks to the ceiling, counting. “Are we including Cole’s original victims?” Jamie nods. “So, four. Five at the dumpsite. Wayne Oxford, our Jane Doe at the park. And—” A quick glance Jamie’s way. “Pippa. Ellie. Plus the three he claims to have killed before. So, sixteen. Not …”
“Including Adam” is what he doesn’t say.
“So she’ll need to kill again,” Marsh continues. He opens the top of the cigarette packet, then closes it again. “And fast, now she knows we’re on her trail.”
“Guv? Do you want a cigarette?” Jamie asks with a smile, despite himself.
Marsh laughs. “Fuck, yes. I swear this case has aged my lungs twenty years in this last day alone. Can we continue this discussion on the roof?”
Jamie glances toward the window. The sun is setting, and he has a sudden urge to take it all in. To soak up something beautiful, in the face of such horror.
Sometimes getting space helps. To reflect. Alleviate the pressure. Even despite the minutes ebbing away, Jamie needs a moment to think.
He nods. “Lead the way.”
CHAPTER
66
ROMILLY FOLLOWS THE two senior police officers up the stairs to the fourth floor, leaving the team furiously working away on CCTV, ANPR—anything that might give them a lead.
Marsh pushes the fire door open at the top. When they were married, Adam would talk about coming up here for a smoke. She imagined it dirty, filthy fag butts covering the gravel, rain falling whatever the season, so she’s surprised when she’s confronted with the reality. Fresh, clear air. An uninterrupted view over the crowded city, the place she calls home. It’s comforting, and she takes a long breath in.
Next to her, Marsh selects a cigarette from the packet and lights it.
There’s silence on the roof. Marsh enjoys a drag in and blows out the smoke. Romilly closes her eyes and inhales it from the air, remembering later days in her marriage with Adam, her disapproval only making him double down on his self-destructive habit.
The smell, the memory, makes her miss him all the more. She’s gripped by a helpless desperation. She looks at her watch: he’s been out there for eight hours. They have to get him home. They have to.
Noise from the road below drifts up—straggling commuters on their way home from work. Voices, laughter. Normal lives, and Romilly feels an irrational wave of anger at the mundane nature of it all. How dare they continue their existence when hers is being destroyed. When Adam is out there, alone, dying, and they’re failing in their every attempt to find him.
“What did you know about her, Romilly?” Marsh asks.
Romilly sighs. “Not a lot. We weren’t close then, and we didn’t keep in touch after Elijah was arrested.”
Romilly squints at the sky, desperate to pull any memory from her addled brain. “I do remember her mother mentioning that she’d not been well. That she’d been off school for a bit. But she didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t ask. We should get her medical records—?”
“Already requested, Dr. Cole. On their way.”
“And the adoptive father’s dead.” Jamie pulls himself away from where he’s been staring at the sunset; he faces them both. “So no help there.”
Marsh nods in agreement. “He probably discussed where he was dumping his waste over the dinner table. Not knowing that Maggie would use it for a disposal of her own, months later.” He takes another long drag, then drops the butt onto the floor. “Fuck this,” he mutters. “We need to find Adam. I need to go home. Kiss my husband, call my kids.”
Romilly notices Jamie look at Marsh in surprise.
“I didn’t know you had kids,” Jamie says.
Marsh nods. “Two. Adults really. James is at uni, studying photography. Andy’s an engineer. Neither of them wanted to be cops.”
“Sensible,” Jamie replies.
“Exactly.” Then, quieter, Marsh adds: “She can’t possibly kill four more. She can’t.”
The three of them digest his words. Jamie’s standing close to the edge of the roof; Romilly to the side. Marsh had been pacing while he smoked and has come to a stop close to the exit, his back to the doorway.
