Part 1 (2/2)

'Tarot? You're not going all Glas...o...b..ry on us, are you? Going to tell us all our futures?'

'Of course not.'

Isabelle put down the pot and picked up the second card. It showed a tall woman holding a large, transparent star at arm's length. She seemed to be gazing through it at the clouds and the sun. Her tangly dark hair, flecked with grey, hung long down her back. Isabelle gave a small, embarra.s.sed smile. 'That's not me, is it?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, honestly, Sally you're a bit too flattering with the cleavage, if you don't mind.'

'If you look through them all you'll see lots of faces you know.'

Isabelle shuffled through the paintings, stopping from time to time when she recognized someone. 'Sophie! And Millie too. You've painted us all the kids too. They are beautiful beautiful.'

'I was wondering,' Sally said tentatively, 'if I might be able to sell them. Maybe to that hippie shop in Northumberland Place. What do you think?'

Isabelle turned and gave her an odd look. Half puzzled, half amused, as if she wasn't quite sure whether Sally was joking or not.

Instantly Sally knew she'd made a mistake and began hastily pulling the cards together, a blush of embarra.s.sment racing up her neck. 'No I mean, of course they're not good enough. I knew they weren't.'

'No. Don't put them away. They're great. Really great. It's just that ... Do you really think you'd get enough from them to help you with the you know ... the debts?'

Sally stared down at the cards. Her face was burning. She shouldn't have said anything. Isabelle was right she'd make hardly anything from selling the cards. Certainly not enough to make a dent in her debt. She was stupid. So stupid.

'But not because they aren't good, Sally. They're brilliant! Honestly, they're great. Look at this!' Isabelle held up a painting of Millie. Little crazy Millie, always smaller than the others and surely not a product of Sally, with the choppy fringe and mad, s.h.a.ggy red hair, like a little Nepalese street child. Her eyes as wild and wide as an animal's just like her aunt Zoe's. 'It's just great. It really looks like her. And this one of Sophie it's lovely. Lovely! And Nial, and Peter!' Nial was Isabelle's shy son, her older child, Peter Cyrus his good-looking friend the h.e.l.l-raiser and the favourite of all the girls. 'And Lorne look at her and another of Millie. And another of Sophie, and me again. And-' She stopped suddenly, looking down at one card. 'Oh,' she said, with a s.h.i.+ver. 'Oh.'

'What?'

'I don't know. Something's wrong with the paint on this one.'

Sally pulled it towards her. It was the Princess of Wands pictured in a swirling red dress, struggling to hold back a tiger that strained on a leash. Millie had been the model for this one too, except that something had happened to her face on this card. Sally ran a finger over it, pressed it. Maybe the acrylic had cracked, or somehow faded, because although the body and clothing and background were as she'd painted them, the face was blurred. Like a painting by Francis Bacon, or Lucian Freud. One of those terrifying images that seemed to see beyond the skin of the subject right through into their flesh.

'Yuk,' said Isabelle. 'Yuk. I'm glad I don't believe in this stuff. Otherwise I'd be really worried now. Like it's a warning or something.'

Sally didn't answer. She was staring at the face. It was as if a hand had been there and stirred Millie's features.

'Sally? You don't believe in stuff like that, do you?'

Sally pushed the card into the bottom of the pile. She looked up and blinked. 'Of course not. Don't be silly.'

Isabelle sc.r.a.ped the chair back and carried the pot to the hob. Sally pulled the cards into an untidy pile, shoved them into her bag and took a hurried sip of wine. She'd have liked to drink it all at once, to loosen the uneasy knot that had just tied itself in her stomach. She'd have liked to get a little squiffy, then sit out in the sun on deckchairs with Isabelle the way they used to back when she still had a husband and the time to do what she wanted. She hadn't realized how lucky she was back then. Now she couldn't drink in the sun, even on a Sunday. She couldn't afford the good sort of wine Isabelle drank. And when lunch was finished here, instead of the garden she was going to work. Maybe, she thought, rubbing the back of her neck wearily, it was just what she deserved.

'Mum? Mum! Mum!'

Both women turned. Millie stood in the doorway, red-faced and out of breath. Her jeans were covered with gra.s.s stains, and her phone was held up to face them both.

'Millie?' Sally straightened. 'What is it?'

'Can we switch on your computer, Mrs Sweetman? They're all tweeting about it. It's Lorne. She's gone missing.'

2.

At the police station, just two miles away in central Bath, Lorne Wood was all anyone could talk about. A sixteen-year-old pupil of a local private school, Faulkener's, she was popular and fairly reliable, according to her parents. From the get-go, Sally's sister, Detective Inspector Zoe Benedict, hadn't had even a speck of confidence that Lorne would be seen alive again. Maybe that was just Zoe too pragmatic by far but at two o'clock that afternoon, when one of the search team beating the undergrowth next to the Kennet and Avon ca.n.a.l found a body, she wasn't in the slightest surprised.

'Not that I'd ever say ”I told you so”,' she murmured to DI Ben Parris, as they walked along the towpath. She kept her hands shoved in the pockets of the black jeans the superintendent was always telling her she shouldn't wear as a warranted officer with a duty to the image of the force. 'You'd never hear those words come out of my mouth.'

'Of course not.' He didn't take his eyes off the group of people up ahead. 'It wouldn't be in your nature.'

The site had already been cordoned off, with portable screens fixed in place across the path. Hovering outside the screen were ten or twelve people barge owners, mostly, and already a member of the press, dressed in a black waterproof. As the two DIs pushed their way through, warrant cards held up, he raised his Nikon and fired off a few shots. He was a sure sign that word was getting out faster than the police could keep up with, thought Zoe.

An area of nearly two thousand square metres had been cordoned off, away from the eyes of the public. The path was loose, chalky gravel giving way on one side to the bulrushes of the ca.n.a.l, on the other to a tangle of undergrowth cow parsley, nettles and gra.s.s. Officers had left a gap of about fifty metres between the screens and the inner cordon, limited by police tape. Thirty metres or so past that, in a part of the undergrowth that formed a natural tunnel, stood a white tent.

Zoe and Ben pulled on white forensic suits, tightened the hoods, and added gloves. They ducked into the tent. The air inside was warm and packed with the scents of crushed gra.s.s and earth, the ground crisscrossed with lightweight aluminium tread plates.

'It's her.' The crime-scene manager stood a foot inside, making notes on a clipboard. He didn't look up at them. 'No doubt. Lorne Wood.'

Behind him at the end of a walkway the crime-scene photographer was circling a muddy tarpaulin, taking video.

'The tarp's the type they use to cover firewood on the barges. But no one on this stretch of ca.n.a.l is missing one. The guy threw it over her. To look at her you'd think she was in bed.'

He was right. Lorne was lying on her back, as if asleep, one arm resting on top of the tarp, which was pulled up to her chest like a duvet. Her head was lolling to one side, turned up and away from the tent entrance. Zoe couldn't see her face, but she could see the T-s.h.i.+rt. Grey with 'I am Banksy' across the chest. The one Lorne had been wearing when she'd left her house yesterday afternoon. 'What time was she reported missing?'

'Eight,' said Ben. 'She was supposed to be on her way home.'

'We've found her keys,' said the CSM, 'but still no phone. There's a dive team coming to search the ca.n.a.l later.'

In the corner of the tent a technician dropped a pair of black ballet pumps into a bag. He put a red flag in the ground, then sealed the bag and signed across the seal. 'Was that where they were found?' she asked him.

He nodded. 'Right there. Both of them.'

'Kicked off? Pulled off?'

'Taken off. They were like this.' The CSM held out his hands, straight and neatly together. 'Just placed there.'

'Is that mud on them?'

'Yes. But not from here. From the towpath somewhere.'

'And this gra.s.s the way it's been flattened?'

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