The Wrong Mother

14

8/10/07

Sellers knocked on the back of the computer Gibbs was using. ‘Come on, we’re late.’

‘Don’t wait for me, or you’ll be even later.’

‘You don’t want to miss this one.’

‘Why? Something happened?’

‘I’ve just spoken to Tim Cook,’ said Sellers.

‘Is he still shagging that granny?’

‘I doubt it. They’ve been living together for nearly ten years.’ Silence. ‘You’re supposed to laugh at that. I suppose you haven’t been married long enough.’ No response. Sellers tried a new approach. ‘The dental records were a match. The two skeletons are Encarna and Amy Oliva. Were,’ he corrected himself.

Gibbs looked up. If Sellers was right, he might as well stop what he was doing. But since he’d got this far… ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

‘There’s more. Amy Oliva’s nanny finally-Why do I bother?’ Sellers broke off, impatient. ‘If you’re interested, stop surfing porn sites and come to the briefing. You know they can find out what sites you’ve logged on to?’

‘I’m in Yahoo Mail at the moment.’ Gibbs grinned. ‘Porn sites? How do you know about those, then?’

Sellers gave up.

Once he’d gone, Gibbs typed in his ID and password. Amy Oliva was dead. Her body had been found in Mark Bretherick’s garden. It was optimistic to assume she might have replied to the e-mail Gibbs sent her yesterday.

She hadn’t. The only new message was from Gibbs’ sister. He opened it, saw that it had to do with arrangements for Christmas and closed it again without replying. It was August. Christmas wasn’t until December. You had to draw the line somewhere.

Porn sites. He sniffed contemptuously. Sellers had to be one of those sex addicts he’d read about, like… was it Kirk Douglas or Michael Douglas? The HTCU lot probably had a file on Sellers twenty inches thick. Gibbs thought about Norman Grace, who wore pink shirts and thin stripy scarves wound round his neck. And slip-on shoes. Kombothekra had entrusted the hard disk of Geraldine Bretherick’s laptop to a man who dressed like a woman. Once, Gibbs had seen Norman in the canteen reading a fashion magazine. If he was gay it wouldn’t be so bad, but the dickhead was straight, had loads of girlfriends-fit ones, too. So what was he playing at?

Gibbs was about to get up when he had an idea. Another job for Norman. Come to think of it, he probably didn’t need Norman. He could have a stab at it himself. He went to the Hotmail site. When the sign-in box appeared, he typed in Amy Oliva’s e-mail address, amysgonetospain@hotmail.com. Then he clicked on ‘Forgot your password?’. If it was anything like Yahoo Mail…

It was. Gibbs smiled when he saw the security question: ‘Who wrote Heart of Darkness?’ He typed in ‘Blondie’ and swore under his breath when it didn’t get him in. He tried Debbie Harry, Deborah Harry and Debra Harry before remembering that the Blondie song was called ‘Heart of Glass’. Bollocks. He went to Google, typed in ‘Heart of Darkness’ and discovered that it was a book by a bloke called Joseph Conrad. He clicked back to the Hotmail screen and gave this name he’d never heard of a try.

Result. He had to create a new password for the account in order to read the messages, since he’d claimed to have forgotten the old one. He decided on ‘Debbie’. In honour of his wife, not Debbie Harry.

Amy Oliva had three new messages. Gibbs clicked on ‘Inbox’ and waited. His eyes widened when the next screen appeared. The unread communications were highlighted in yellow to distinguish them from the ones that had been opened. The first of Amy’s new messages was from Oonagh O’Hara. The second and third were from Great Western Hotels and the Halifax bank-junk mail.

Gibbs’ message, the one he’d sent from St Swithun’s yesterday, was the fourth one down. It wasn’t highlighted in yellow. He shivered, rubbing the back of his neck. He’d e-mailed a dead girl, believing her to be alive, and she’d opened the e-mail. Or someone had, probably the person who had killed her.

Gibbs looked at the names beneath his own. Oonagh O’Hara was a frequent correspondent, as was somebody called Silvia Ruiz Oliva-a relative, presumably. The rest was spam.

Silvia turned out to be Amy’s grandmother: her messages were all signed ‘Gran’. He read them all, finding them increasingly interesting as he took in the cumulative meaning. There had obviously been a family row. Silvia kept asking when she might see Amy. In one she had written: ‘Please tell Mummy that if she’s cross with me, I’m sorry.’ Gibbs scrolled down to see if there were any messages from Amy attached to the bottom of Silvia’s. There weren’t. He went to the ‘Sent Messages’ page. Nothing. Not a single message had been copied to the folder.

He opened one of Oonagh’s messages. Nothing out of the ordinary, if you didn’t count the fact that its recipient was no longer living when it was written and sent. He read to the end, then breathed in sharply when he saw that Amy’s original letter hadn’t been deleted. Gibbs scrolled down further and found, beneath Amy’s section, another message from Oonagh, probably one that was also in the inbox. Beneath that, another message from whoever was pretending to be Amy. A lengthy back-and-forth correspondence, all trailing from this one message. Oonagh’s e-mails, Gibbs noticed, contained the odd spelling mistake. Amy’s written English was faultless.

Stepford had interviewed Oonagh O’Hara yesterday and she’d told him she hadn’t heard from Amy since last May. Clearly she was lying. Or rather she believed she was lying. In fact, she’d told the truth: she had been exchanging letters with Amy’s killer, not with Amy.

Gibbs raced through the messages. At the end of each of her letters, before signing off, Oonagh had written, ‘Hows your mum?’ or ‘Is your mum okay?’ In one she’d gone further and said, ‘How are things with you and you’re mum?’ Twice, after enquiring about Encarna Oliva, Oonagh had written ‘Hows Patrick? ’ and once, ‘Hows Partick?’

Had Encarna Oliva left her husband for another man? Had Patrick worked at the bank with her? Or maybe he’d been a friend or colleague of her husband’s, someone Angel Oliva had worked with at Culver Valley General Hospital. There were some women, Gibbs knew, who’d think nothing of shagging their husbands’ mates. Gibbs thought it was inevitable that one day Sellers would try to bed Debbie; he was training himself to dislike Sellers in advance, so that when it happened he’d be prepared.

Amy’s replies to Oonagh’s e-mails were chatty but bland, full of news about watching bullfights and flamenco dancers. Clichés of Spain. Lies. Despite her e-mail address, Amy Oliva never got to Spain. She never got further than the garden at Corn Mill House. Interestingly, she-her killer, Gibbs corrected himself-had not once answered Oonagh’s enquiries about Encarna and Patrick.

Why had Oonagh O’Hara lied about when she’d last been in touch with Amy? There was nothing secret or personal about any of these e-mails. ‘Something weird’s going on,’ Gibbs said aloud.

He was on his way out of the CID room when the phone rang. It was Barbara Fitzgerald, the head of St Swithun’s. ‘Hello, Christopher,’ she said warmly, once Gibbs had identified himself. ‘I’m just phoning to let you know I’ve e-mailed you a full list of everyone who went on the owl sanctuary trip last year. I did forget a few names, as it turns out.’

Gibbs thanked her.

‘Is there… any news?’

‘No.’ He didn’t want to be the one to tell her that another of her pupils had been murdered. Nor did he want to talk, knowing what he was withholding; guilt made him more brusque than usual and eventually Barbara Fitzgerald gave up.

Feeling unsettled, ashamed of his cowardice, Gibbs navigated his way back to Yahoo Mail. He entered his ID and password, and was waiting for his inbox to appear when he realised his mistake. Barbara Fitzgerald didn’t know his Yahoo address; she would have sent the list of names to his work e-mail, the address from which he’d e-mailed her earlier. Dick-brain. He was about to log out of his Yahoo account when he saw that he had a new message. From Amy Oliva. No amount of blinking made it disappear.

Gibbs double-clicked on the envelope icon. The message had been sent from a Hotmail address, but a different one: amysbackfromspain@hotmail.com. It was only three words long, three ordinary words that worried Gibbs more than an overt threat would have. He got up and left the room, not bothering to sign out of his account.

Meeting room one for a team briefing? What was wrong with the CID room? Charlie had always found it perfectly adequate. She broke into a run as she turned the corner. By the time she got there she was out of breath. She knocked and opened the door. Sam Kombothekra, Simon, Sellers and Professor Keith Harbard sat in silence on comfortable blue leather chairs that looked as if they belonged in the executive row of a multi-screen cinema. Harbard was eating a muffin, dropping crumbs on the carpet around his feet.

Inspector Proust stood in the corner of the room by the water cooler with a mobile phone pressed to his ear, talking too loudly about a DVD player that was ‘too complicated’. Had he phoned a shop on the other side of the world to complain?

‘What’s going on?’ Charlie asked.

‘We’re waiting for Gibbs,’ said Sam.

The Snowman interrupted his phone call to say, ‘Round him up, will you, Sergeant?’

Charlie realised he was addressing her. Bloody cheek. ‘I can’t stay, sir. I need one of you to come with me. I think I’ve got something that’s going to help you.’ She didn’t dare ask for Simon. Not in front of everyone.

‘Off you go, Waterhouse,’ said Proust. Charlie could have kissed him. ‘Don’t let it take too long, Sergeant.’

‘I feel like the kid whose mother turns up two hours early to collect him from the party,’ said Simon, following Charlie down the corridor.

She smiled at him over her shoulder. ‘Did your mother do that?’

No reply.

‘She did, didn’t she?’

‘What’s this about, anyway?’

‘By the time I’ve explained…’

They marched the rest of the way in silence. Charlie stopped outside interview room three and Simon walked into her. She grinned determinedly as he leaped back, alarmed by the unexpected physical contact.

She opened the door. A broad-shouldered woman with short spiky dyed hair and a pained expression on her face sat behind the table. She was wearing black tracksuit bottoms with pink stripes down the legs, pink lace-up pumps and a tight pale pink polo-necked jumper that clung to the rolls of flesh around her middle. ‘This is Pam Senior,’ Charlie told Simon. ‘Miss Senior, this is Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse. I’d like you to tell him what you’ve just told me.’

‘All of it?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘But… I can’t sit here all day, I’m self-employed. I’m a childminder. I thought you’d have told him already.’

When Charlie didn’t respond, Pam Senior sighed and started to talk. A woman she didn’t know had turned up on her doorstep last night, she said. Late: eleven o’clock. She’d introduced herself as Esther Taylor and said she was the best friend of a woman whose children Pam sometimes looked after-Sally Thorning. She’d demanded to know what Pam had done to Sally, and tried to force her way into Pam’s house.

‘She called me a liar, accused me of all sorts-pushing Sally under a bus, but I didn’t, I swear! Sally must have told her I did, though, and now she reckons Sally’s disappeared and I must know something about it. She was threatening to go to the police. ’ Pam’s nostrils flared. She sniffed several times. ‘So I thought I’d better come here first and tell you I’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing. What she’s saying’s slander, and that’s illegal, isn’t it?’

‘Under a bus?’ said Simon. ‘Are you sure that was what she said? Where do you think she got that from?’

‘Sally did have an accident with a bus, in Rawndesley a few days ago. I was there, I saw it. Well, I didn’t see it happen, but I saw a group of people all gathered round, so I went and looked, and it was Sally. I tried to help her, offered to take her to hospital to get checked out, but she wasn’t having any of it. She accused me of pushing her and shouted at me in front of everyone.’ Pam’s face reddened as she remembered the incident. ‘We’d had a bit of a row before, because of a mix-up over childcare arrangements, and I’ll admit I was furious with her, but… what sort of person does she think I am, that I’d do that?’

‘So you didn’t push her?’ said Charlie.

‘Of course not!’

‘And you didn’t see if anyone else pushed her?’

‘No. I told you. I’ve been upset about it all week. I was just starting to feel better-Sally left a message saying she was sorry, and I thought it was all over-and then this Esther Taylor woman turns up. She tried to barge into my house. Look.’ Pam held out her hand so that Simon could see it shaking. ‘I’m a wreck.’

‘Tell him the rest,’ said Charlie.

‘I managed to keep her out, slammed the door on her.’ Pam touched her throat. ‘She started yelling outside about Mark Bretherick, asking if he was the one who… who wanted Sally dead. I can hardly bear to say it, it’s so awful. I read the local paper every night, so I recognised the name. That was what freaked me out the most.’ She pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of her tracksuit trousers; it had the initials PS embroidered on it. It had been ironed, Charlie noticed, and folded into a neat square.

‘Do you know Mark Bretherick?’ asked Simon.

‘No!’

‘Did you know Geraldine or Lucy Bretherick?’

‘No, but I know how they died, and I don’t want anything to do with it!’

An odd way to phrase it, thought Charlie. ‘But, according to you, you haven’t got anything to do with it,’ she said. ‘You don’t know the Bretherick family. You’ve never known them.’

‘Well, obviously this Esther Taylor knows something about them, or Sally does, and I don’t want anything to do with any of them. I don’t want to be attacked in the middle of the night when I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong!’

‘All right,’ said Charlie. ‘Try to calm down.’

‘What did Esther Taylor look like?’ Simon asked.

‘About my height. Short, blonde hair. Glasses. A bit like the blonde one out of When Harry Met Sally, but uglier and with glasses.’

‘She didn’t look anything like Geraldine Bretherick? Do you know what Geraldine Bretherick looked like? Have you seen her photograph in the paper?’

Pam nodded. ‘No, this woman looked nothing like her.’

Charlie watched Simon watching Pam. What was he waiting for? She’d answered his question.

‘Actually…’ Pam’s hanky was taut in her lap, her left and right hands waging a subtle tug of war. ‘Oh, my God. Sally looks like Mrs Bretherick. I didn’t think of it until you just said… Why did you ask me that? What’s going on?’

‘I need Sally’s address and telephone number and as much detail about her as you can give me,’ said Simon. As Pam spoke, he frowned and nodded, committing her words to memory. Charlie made notes. Simon looked surprised only when Pam mentioned that Sally Thorning’s husband, Nick, was a radiographer at Culver Valley General Hospital. Once he’d got all the information he could out of her, he left the room.

Charlie followed him, closing the door on Pam’s questions and demands. She was expecting to have to chase after Simon, but she found him standing motionless outside the interview room. ‘What?’ she said.

‘I think I saw When Harry Met Sally. She said, “the blonde one out of When Harry Met Sally”. Which is Sally, obviously, because Harry’s the man.’

‘I’ve seen it too. After a hopeless start, they get married and live happily ever after,’ said Charlie pointedly.

‘You’re called Charlie. Charlie can also be a man’s name.’

‘Simon, what the fuck…?’

‘I know where I’ve seen the name Harry Martineau.’

‘The man who lives in the Olivas’ old house?’

‘No. He doesn’t exist. That’s why no one’s heard of Angel Oliva at Culver Valley General, the hospital where Nick Thorning works.’

‘I’m completely, utterly lost,’ said Charlie.

‘Jones is the name. Jones: the most ordinary name in the world.’

‘Simon, you’re beginning to frighten me. Who’s Jones? The killer? The man Sally Thorning met in the hotel?’

‘No. Come on, we’ve got to get back to the briefing.’

‘I’ve got my own work to do! I can’t just leave Pam…’

Simon strode down the corridor. Charlie found herself running after him. As always, she wanted something from him that he was not making readily available. It wasn’t her case, it was nothing to do with her, but she needed to know what he meant.

They hadn’t got far when they saw Norman Grace from HTCU hurrying towards them. ‘I was on my way to find you,’ he said to Simon.

‘What have you got?’

‘You were wrong…’

‘That’s not possible.’

‘… but you were also right.’

‘ Norman, I’m in a hurry.’

‘The name’s Jones,’ said Norman, and Charlie’s skin turned cold.

‘I know.’ Simon broke into a run.

Not so much as a thank you. Charlie shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Norman. ‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet.’

‘Can you tell him I’m hanging on to the Bretherick hard disk for the time being? There’s more, but it’ll take me a while to get it into a presentable state.’

Charlie nodded, and was moving away when Norman touched her arm. ‘How are you, Charlie?’

‘Fine, as long as no one asks me how I am,’ she said, smiling.

‘You don’t really want that. You don’t want people not to care.’

Charlie ran down the corridor, hoping she hadn’t missed anything, wondering if Norman was right. Would she prefer everyone to forget about last year? To treat her exactly as they had before?

She found Simon round a corner, on his mobile phone. He was telling somebody that he needed them to come to Spilling, saying that as soon as possible would be great. He gave the address of the nick. Charlie had never heard him sound so eager or grateful. Jealousy wasn’t an issue; it was obvious he was speaking to a man. Simon never sounded so unguarded when he spoke to women.

‘Who was that?’ she said once they were on the move again.

‘Jonathan Hey.’

‘The Cambridge don? But… Simon, you can’t just invite your own expert to the party without checking with Sam first. What about Keith Harbard?’

‘Harbard knows nothing.’

When he was in this sort of mood, Charlie knew there was no point contradicting him. If he thought Hey was that much better than Harbard, he was probably right. It wouldn’t stop Proust from taking one look at the second sociology professor to land at his feet and despatching him back to Cambridge without refreshments or an explanation.

Poor Jonathan Hey. What a fool, saying yes to Simon Waterhouse.

‘“Change it back”?’ Proust surveyed Gibbs from across the room. ‘Is that supposed to mean something to us? Change what back? Change it back to what?’

‘The password,’ said Gibbs. ‘It must be. To get into Amy’s Hotmail I had to change it. Whoever set up the account must have tried to get in using the old password and failed.’

‘And worked out that you changed it? How would he have known?’ said Kombothekra.

‘Intelligent guess. I sent a message to Amy’s Hotmail address, so he knew I knew about it. He wants us to see how clever he is. Look at the new e-mail address he created, not more than a few minutes after I broke into his old one: amysbackfromspain@hotmail.com. He’s trying to be witty.’

‘Or she,’ said Keith Harbard. ‘Gibbs is right about the wit; to me that suggests a woman.’

‘Have you never read Oscar Wilde, Professor?’ Proust enquired.

‘He’s not that clever,’ said Sellers. It sounded as if he might have been talking about Harbard; Gibbs suppressed a smile. ‘ “Change it back.” How can we? We don’t know what the old password was.’

‘He knows that,’ said Gibbs impatiently. ‘It’s a threat, isn’t it? He knows he’s giving us an impossible order.’

Harbard nodded. ‘It’s part of the game. Either it’s a guarantee of punishment with a bit of psychological torture thrown in-she appears to be giving you a chance but it’s not a real one because you can’t possibly know her original password-or she’s inviting you to think about what the password might have been. Maybe it was her name.’

‘That’s a point,’ said Kombothekra. ‘Thanks, Keith. I’ll get on to Hotmail.’

‘In the meantime, reply to the message,’ said Harbard. ‘She’ll be flattered. Tell her you can’t think of a way forward, that you need her help with the task she’s assigned you.’

‘Psychological expertise as well as sociological,’ muttered Proust. ‘Buy one, get one free. Unlike you, Professor, I don’t care about our perpetrator’s inner demons or what makes him tick. Give me his name, tell me where I can find him and I’ll be happy. Let’s concentrate on information, not speculation. We’ve identified the two skeletons-that’s a good start.’

‘Harry Martineau and Angel Oliva have become top priority,’ Kombothekra told him. ‘Nobody at Culver Valley General Hospital can remember a heart surgeon called Angel Oliva, and their records suggest he never worked there. So either Martineau was lying or Oliva lied to Martineau.’

‘We’re still checking,’ said Sellers, ‘but it looks as if no child or teacher at St Swithun’s knows a William Markes. Cordy O’Hara’s new ride’s called Miles Parry.’

‘The nanny.’ Kombothekra nodded at Sellers.

‘Yeah, I’ve spoken to Amy Oliva’s former nanny. The number in the anonymous letter was the right one. She didn’t get back to us sooner because she’s in Corsica on her honeymoon, back tomorrow evening. But even before she told me that I recognised her voice on the phone.’ Sellers tried not to sound proud of his own achievement.

‘Have you knobbed her?’ asked Gibbs. Behind his hand, so only Sellers could hear, he began to whisper, ‘All right, love, wipe yourself, your taxi’s here…’

‘ Corsica?’ said Proust. ‘Why does that sound familiar?’

‘Her name’s Michelle Jones,’ Sellers told him. ‘I knew her voice from interviewing her after Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick’s bodies were found. She was in Corsica then too-I interviewed her on the phone. She was Michelle Greenwood before she got married.’

‘The Brethericks’ babysitter,’ said Proust. ‘The one who selfishly arranged a holiday with her boyfriend for the May half-term last year.’

‘That’s right,’ said Kombothekra. ‘She was also Amy Oliva’s part-time nanny, so that’s another connection between the two families.’

‘Unfortunately, when I spoke to Michelle I didn’t know we were going to draw a blank at Culver Valley General, so I didn’t ask about Mr Oliva,’ said Sellers. ‘I’ve left another message for her.’

‘What about this bank where Mrs Oliva worked?’ Proust asked.

‘I’m going today,’ said Kombothekra. ‘I’m hoping someone there can tell me about Patrick.’

‘Ask about William Markes too,’ said the Snowman. ‘And Angel Oliva. Why not? Let’s brandish all our names wherever we go and see what we get.’ Proust would be going nowhere apart from back to his office. Saying ‘we’ instead of ‘you’ was his concession to the idea of the team.

‘I spoke to the Brethericks’ postman this morning,’ said Kombothekra. ‘He says he saw someone in the garden of Corn Mill House last spring, and he remembers it was while the Brethericks were in Florida because Geraldine had told him they were going away. He went to try and get a closer look, but by the time he got to the part of the garden where he’d seen the person, he or she had gone. Postie had the rest of his round to do, so he didn’t look much beyond that spot. When the Brethericks got back, he told Geraldine he’d seen someone. She looked a bit puzzled, but said that whoever it was hadn’t done any harm-there’d been no break-in. But here’s the really interesting part. I asked him if he’d noticed anything else, anything at all that was unusual while the Brethericks were in Florida. At first he said no, but when I urged him to think hard, he did remember something: a red Alfa Romeo parked at the bottom of the lane outside Corn Mill House’s gate. He said the car was there on at least three occasions while the Brethericks were away.’

‘Bright, is he, this postman?’ said Gibbs. ‘Didn’t he make the connection between the car and the man he’d seen?’

‘He didn’t,’ said Kombothekra. ‘On the day he saw the killer, the car wasn’t there.’

‘Maybe our man decided to walk that day.’

‘Person,’ Harbard reminded them all. ‘Remember, the evidence points to a woman.’

Gibbs scowled at him. He’d made his point, why did he have to keep making it? What evidence was he talking about? Gibbs knew a man’s crime when he saw one.

‘So Encarna and Amy Oliva were murdered and buried while the Brethericks were in Florida,’ Proust concluded.

‘They were buried then,’ said Kombothekra. ‘We don’t know when they were killed, but it was after Friday the nineteenth of May last year. That was Amy’s last day at school and Encarna’s last day at work. Neither of them said a word about leaving to schoolmates or colleagues. The sudden move to Spain, with no notice, was a surprise to everyone.’ Kombothekra raised his eyebrows.

‘The headmistress of St Swithun’s, Mrs Fitzgerald, was informed by e-mail after the fact,’ said Sellers. ‘Apparently Encarna Oliva was apologetic about the lack of notice and enclosed a cheque for a term’s fees in lieu.’

Proust was making disgruntled noises. ‘When did the Brethericks fly to Florida?’ he asked crossly.

‘Sunday the twenty-first of May last year,’ Kombothekra told him.

‘All right, then, Sergeant. Encarna and Amy Oliva were murdered at some point between the evening of Friday the nineteenth of May and… Sunday the fourth of June, when the Brethericks returned from Florida. If you must split hairs.’

Kombothekra looked as if he might be thinking about standing up for himself. ‘Mark Bretherick was telling the truth,’ he said. ‘He spent the fortnight working at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee. I think we have to release him, keen though he is to hang around and tell me how wrong I am about everything.’

‘That law firm Geraldine phoned, asking for a divorce and custody lawyer,’ said Sellers. ‘What if it wasn’t Geraldine who phoned? It could have been another woman who didn’t want to give her real name.’

The door banged open and Simon Waterhouse appeared with Charlie Zailer behind him. ‘Has the full list come through yet from St Swithun’s, the owl sanctuary trip?’ he asked.

Gibbs closed his eyes. Shit. Barbara Fitzgerald’s e-mail. Amy Oliva’s message had been such a shock, he’d forgotten about the list. ‘I’ve got it on my e-mail,’ he said. ‘Didn’t get a chance to print it.’

‘Is there a Jones on it?’

‘Michelle Greenwood is now a Jones,’ Sellers told Waterhouse. ‘Lucy Bretherick’s babysitter-she’s just got married. She also worked part-time as a nanny for the Olivas.’

Waterhouse laughed and smacked the wall with the flat of his hand. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘I’m going to count to five, Waterhouse…’ the Snowman began.

‘No time, sir. We need to find Sally Thorning.’

‘Who?’

‘And Esther Taylor.’ He turned to Charlie. ‘Can you do that?’

‘Unlikely, since I’ve no idea where she is.’

‘I have,’ said Waterhouse. ‘Pam Senior said she threatened to go to the police, didn’t she? She’s here. Maybe she’s got no further than reception, but she’s here. At the nick.’