Skin

36

The girl in the estate agent’s was a bit like Keelie. Or, rather, a bit the way Keelie might have looked if she hadn’t, at some point in her teenage years, stumbled on the delights of crack cocaine. This girl had powerful swimmer’s shoulders and her body seemed too tanned and muscular for the navy suit she’d squeezed it into.

‘Mrs Mahoney?’ She typed in the reference number from the letter. ‘Obviously I can’t tell you very much about our correspondence. It’s confidential. But I can tell you whether she’s a client.’

Caffery put his warrant card on the table.

She peered at it. ‘Police?’

‘Police.’

A nervous laugh. And then, in the knee-jerk way honest people often did, suddenly she was spilling out facts like water. ‘Yes, well, I do remember her, of course. She was wanting something in the region of, uh, five to eight hundred. There’s a property to sell – we’re due to value it on, um…’ she searched the screen ‘… tomorrow.’

‘You may as well cancel that.’

‘I see.’

Caffery was sure she didn’t. Didn’t see at all.

‘Well, if I…’ She turned the computer screen to face him. ‘Is there anything here that could help you?’

The two men leant closer. The screen was filled with email correspondence. Nothing out of the ordinary: Lucy’s requests for information on property. The agent’s replies.

‘What’s the date on that one?’

‘Last Sunday.’

It was the day Lucy had gone missing. She’d been arranging house viewings on the day she was planning to kill herself?

‘Are we the first to visit? No other calls from the police about Ms Mahoney?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘They wouldn’t have come here,’ Mahoney’s voice was subdued, ‘because none of these were in her mailbox. I should know. I spent hours going through her emails. She must have deleted them.’

Caffery didn’t answer. He was thinking about the search history on Lucy’s computer. Hollyoaks. Pot Plants. Body Toning. Now he thought about it, those searches had never fitted with his impression of Lucy. They sounded more like the sort you’d invent for a woman you didn’t know much about. To disguise the fact that the cache had been emptied.

And then it came to him. An idea, hard and complete, the way ideas often did. The suicide note Lucy had been found with hadn’t been handwritten. It had come from a computer. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to wonder why it wasn’t on her computer at home.

‘Come on.’ Caffery pushed back his chair and got to his feet. ‘Let’s have another look at Lucy’s computer.’