Nine Lives by Anita Waller (best english books to read .txt) 📗

the search – this body hadn’t arrived by boat, or over a bike’s handlebars. It had to have been transported in a car, and in the dreadful muddy conditions surely it would be apparent where a vehicle had been.

Erica ducked inside the tent and saw Ivor with his hands moving Clare’s hair. For a second she felt sick. Ivor looked up as he heard her.

‘I was going to send somebody to find you,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’ He moved Clare’s head slightly to one side, and Erica leaned over him. There was a small mark on her neck, almost invisible.

‘Injection?’ she asked, and Ivor nodded. ‘It is. I bet we find Propofol when we do the tox screen. She, like our earlier victim, has been strangled with tights and that’s probably the cause of death, and I would say she’s been dead around ten hours.’

‘She went missing sometime last night,’ Erica confirmed. ‘Told her friends she was going to the gym but we haven’t checked yet whether she actually arrived there. I’ll find which gym it is, and go there later. I’m needed here for a bit longer, everybody’s wet through and I reckon they need to see me around at the moment. Ian Thomas is squelching wherever he walks.’

‘It can’t rain for ever,’ Ivor said.

‘You sure? Can I have that in writing?’ She touched his shoulder, and ducked out of the tent. Ian was standing on the bank, staring across the river. ‘The levels aren’t dropping at all, are they?’ he said, as she came up behind him.

‘Not in any way. We’ve had confirmation that Susanna Roebuck was positioned in the pocket park, but I think at some point during the night, when the river was running really high, it spilled over into the park, and took her body. That’s what the park is there for, to act as a flood defence, so it did its job. It’s why she ended up under the station, and not posed. Thank God she was caught by those big stones, or we would probably never have found her.’

‘So we can call off the search of the lower levels and concentrate up here?’ Ian asked.

‘I’m calling it that way. I don’t have a vast team to bring in, so we have to find out how he got Clare here.’

‘You’ve ruled out it being a woman?’

‘I haven’t ruled anything out until we get some sort of a clue. Logistically, and because men are stronger, it looks as though it’s a man because the bodies aren’t simply chucked out of a vehicle, they’re actually carried and manipulated. Conversely, it’s not about sex. It wasn’t about sex five years ago, and it’s the same now.’

‘You think it’s definitely the same person?’

‘I do. And I also think our other two girls are in danger, so I’m having them moved to a place of safety, along with two officers in attendance all the time. Five years ago he or she stuck rigidly to girls with the letter L for a Christian name, this time he’s picked girls living in the same house. It’s definitely an obsession, the bodies in his mind have to be linked in some way. We have to make sure he has no access to Becky and Katie. As soon as they hear this is Clare, they’re going to make the connection and they’re going to be scared. Until this is over and we’ve got the killer locked up, they have to be out of circulation.’

‘Clare’s dead as well?’ Katie’s face registered her shock, and she turned to Becky. They clutched each other’s hands, and looked towards Beth.

‘What’ve we done to cause all this?’ Becky sobbed.

‘Nothing, you’ve done nothing wrong,’ Beth said. ‘We want to move the two of you to a safe house, so please pack everything you’re going to need. We’ll be staying here with you until DI Cheetham makes the arrangements, and then Will and I can get you transported there. We’ll make sure your parents are notified. Nobody can know where you are until this is over.’

‘So Clare didn’t go to the gym?’

‘We don’t know anything yet. We have to sort out the different stages of an investigation, and I imagine the main part of tracking how Clare came to end up at Ringinglow will begin tomorrow. I can start with you two while we’re waiting for confirmation of where you’ll be going, and I’ll be contacting the university to let them know the situation. What time did Clare go out last night?’

‘She set off to grab a taxi around half past six because she wanted some thinking time, said she was only going for a couple of hours and she would have a taxi back. Then we got a text to say she was staying over at Zoe’s. We didn’t worry because we knew she was safe. The text came from her phone.’

‘Can I see it?’

Becky handed her phone to Beth, and the DS took a screen shot before sending it to her own phone.

‘So you didn’t actually speak to her after she left here?’

‘No, we didn’t.’

‘You rang Zoe this morning?’ Beth flipped over to a new page in her notebook.

‘I did,’ Becky said. ‘I knew Clare had an appointment at the uni for ten, and her stuff she needed was here. Zoe knew nothing about it, she said she hadn’t been to the gym for several days. That’s when I knew we had to tell DI Cheetham.’

The rain pounded on the windows, and Beth heaved a huge sigh. She thought of her colleagues out on the riverside, searching for clues of any sort, and knew this was the worst possible weather for finding anything.

Katie lifted her head. Her cheeks were wet with tears. ‘This can’t be happening. Is it the same person who’s killed Clare?’

‘We don’t know.’ Beth’s voice was gentle. ‘However, the circumstances are much the same, so it looks as though it is. DI Cheetham will be going to Doncaster this afternoon to speak to Clare’s