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“Could be,” Ross agrees. “Or just a forensic countermeasure. What do you want to know?”
Adam shakes his head. He doesn’t want to be here, looking at the dead body of his friend. With every fiber of his being, he wished for a different outcome.
Ross starts examining the body, pushing up the long nightdress to expose her legs. He ignores Adam and starts talking.
“Cannulae went in here and here and here,” he says, pointing to the marks on her arm and identical holes on her feet. Adam can’t help but see the needles, long, thin, and sharp, resting in her veins.
Adam looks away quickly. He feels his vision swimming and leans back against the nearest wall. He consciously tenses his muscles, pushing his hands into fists.
Ross continues his examination of the body. “Bruises on her wrists and ankles, probably from restraints. And the exsanguination looks extensive.”
Adam nods. Ross is still talking, but he’s not listening. He feels sick; a loud buzzing starts in his ears. His balance wobbles as the room starts to spin.
“This is what I suspected for Wayne Oxford,” the pathologist continues, “but the wounds to the arms obliterated any definitive signs. He must have inserted needles there too, planning to bleed the body using that method, before defaulting to the anterolateral laceration.”
Adam clears his throat. “Time of death?” he whispers. His tongue feels sticky and big in his mouth.
“Still some rigor present. But the body’s stone cold. So over eight hours ago.”
Adam can’t bear it anymore. He rushes out, hanging off the banister as he runs down the stairs, feeling the eyes of everyone on him. He knows what they’re thinking, feels their judgment.
He didn’t find her. That bastard killed her, drained every single drop of her blood, then left her here.
He failed.
CHAPTER
37
ADAM STANDS OUTSIDE Jamie’s house for five, ten minutes, the time ticking past without him noticing. Anyone watching would have seen a man thinking: his head bent to the floor, his hands by his sides, motionless in the darkness of the winter evening. But nothing is at rest inside his head. Emotions swirl: the guilt, his failure, the grief for Pippa. Anger for what she must have gone through.
He straightens up, takes his phone out of his pocket and barks orders at the team back at the station, then turns toward the patrol car waiting at the curb. He gets in, gives them an address and they leave. She has to know, and he has to be the one to tell her.
* * *
Adam tells the car not to wait and rings the doorbell. When it’s opened—his own old front door—a strange man is looking at him. The man is dressed in a gray tracksuit, but one of those posh ones that looks like it was tailor made. It hugs his broad chest, shows off his narrow waist. Even though it’s February, the man has a tan straight from the South of France in August.
For a brief moment the man smiles, welcoming. Then it fades.
“You’re Adam,” he says. His voice is gruff.
“Yes. Is Romilly in?”
She appears behind him; her eyes are red rimmed. She looks like she’s already been crying, but one look at him and her face drops further.
“Oh, Adam,” she says. The man moves out of the way as Romilly ushers him in the house and into the living room. “You found her.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. She’s dead. She died. He killed her.”
He knows he’s barely making sense, that he could have expressed it better. But seeing Romilly changes him from a police officer to a normal man. A human, who wants to be comforted and talked to with understanding and care.
Romilly starts to cry, standing in the middle of the room. Adam reaches out automatically but stops as her boyfriend pulls her close and she cries into his chest.
Adam stands awkwardly next to them. This used to be him. His house, his wife.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I should go.”
But Romilly stops him. “No, don’t,” she says. She pulls away from her boyfriend and hurriedly wipes her eyes. “Sit down. Please?”
