No Good Reason (18 page)

With mounting urgency, she started to search for whatever might help identify Rachel’s companion. The clothes in the wardrobe were a mix of casual trousers, shirts, and sweaters, plus a couple of dresses kept separate to stop them creasing. Two empty, matching holdalls provided more evidence of a couple on holiday. Wondering at what point it had all gone so wrong, she shut the wardrobe and opened the nearest bedside cabinet. She pulled out a collection of guidebooks and maps, and then felt farther back until her fingers touched upon a purse. Four pound coins and a fifty-pence piece dropped onto the floor as she hooked out a collection of plastic cards: one debit card, two credit cards, Boots and Nectar points cards, and a driving licence in the name of Rachel Medlock. The mugshot was too small for Sanne to distinguish much detail aside from blond hair, but the notes section of the purse contained a larger photograph, folded in half and tucked away behind a ten and two twenties. In red pen, an inscription on the back recorded the date as 14th February and beneath it:
She said YES!

Sanne took a deep breath and unfolded the image.

“What the fuck?”

For a long moment, all she could do was stare. Then she grabbed the driving licence and set both images on the floor in front of her.

“Oh, no. Fucking
no
.”

A background of bright blue sky and a vast aquamarine lake had made the light perfect for the photographer. Rachel Medlock’s cheeks were pink with cold, but she was smiling broadly at the camera, her arms wrapped around a taller woman whose eyes Sanne recognised even without the bruising and the swelling she was accustomed to seeing.

“Nelson!” She ran to the top of the stairs, both photographs clasped in her hands. She could hear him hurrying down the hall.

“San? You okay?”

“You need to see this. Fuck. Fucking shit, we’ve got it all wrong.”

He met her halfway, and she handed him the images.

“That’s Rachel.” She pointed to the blue-eyed, fair-haired woman.

“Poor kid. She’s pretty, isn’t she?” He studied the larger photograph. “So who’s the other one?”

She wiped a hand across her face. Her glove came away wet. “The other one is the woman I found at the bottom of Laddaw Ridge.”

It took Nelson a few seconds to register that. She watched his jaw slacken as he scrutinised the two women again. Uncertain whether he was convinced, she pulled out the photograph they had used for the interviews.

“It’s difficult to see it, I know, but look here, at the shape of her face, her chin. I saw her eyes when she woke up, Nelson. They’re hazel, almost brown. Rachel’s are blue.”

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “There are two sets of dishes on the draining board. Were they both here?”

She nodded. “I think they’re a couple. They shared a bed, and you can just…Well, look at them.”

Nelson returned his attention to the lakeside photograph. He tapped his finger just above Rachel’s head. “Do you think she’s our perp?”

“No.” Sanne’s voice betrayed her, cracking on that one word. “I think he took them both. I think that when he came back and realised our woman had escaped, he moved Rachel somewhere else. That would explain why he started the fire where he did. We assumed he was destroying evidence of himself, but maybe he was blitzing the spot where a second woman had been lying.”

Nelson’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ.”

“The woman at the hospital tried to tell me,” Sanne said. “She wasn’t saying her own name, she was asking for her partner.”

“You couldn’t have known that, San.”

“No, I suppose not.” She shivered. “But all this time we’ve been looking for him, when we should have been looking for a second victim.”

“One will probably lead to the other,” he said, though he must have known as well as she did that the wasted days might have cost Rachel her life.

He tilted Sanne’s chin and made sure she looked at him. “You okay?”

“Yes.” She might not be okay later, when she was alone with time to think, but right now she just wanted to do her job. “We should call Eleanor, give her a heads-up.”

Nelson offered her his mobile. She managed a small smile and began to dial on her own phone.

“Wish me luck,” she said.

*

Sanne discovered a second pile of bankcards and store cards hidden in a sock in the wardrobe. She had often done that herself before going hiking: emptied her purse of everything but a few quid for parking and an emergency tenner. The cards were similar to Rachel’s, except that they belonged to a Ms. Josie Albright. Sequestered among them was a bus pass, complete with photograph.

There was nothing else of interest upstairs, no other helpful documents, no signs of a disturbance or a break-in, no indication that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. Satisfied that she had finished her sweep, Sanne met Nelson in the kitchen, where she swapped Josie’s pass for two unsent postcards he had found propped up against the toaster.

“Definitely the same woman,” he said, holding the pass alongside the lake photo. “See the addresses on the postcards? Her parents live in Australia. Rachel’s are a bit closer, though. Up near Loch Lomond.”

“And the cards are dated seven days ago, which fits our estimated timeline,” Sanne said. The scribbled messages were standard holiday fare:
having a lovely time, weather is great, Josie got chased by a cow, Rachel fell into a bog, the fish and chips are amazing
. Nothing hinted at any kind of tension or relationship breakdown, and both women had promised to Skype their parents as soon as they were “back in civilisation.” They had booked the cottage for two weeks, which would explain why no one seemed to have missed them yet.

“Pity the parents,” Nelson said. “Should be getting these, and instead they’ll be getting a phone call from the boss.”

“Can’t imagine that, can you?” Sanne murmured. Everywhere she looked she saw traces of the couple: odd socks left to dry on the radiator, the
Guardian
newspaper spread over the kitchen table and scattered with crumbs, a note reminding them to buy stamps and milk. There was no outdoor gear in sight, which suggested they had gone for a hike, taking their boots, rucksacks, and raincoats with them. Had they been followed onto the moors, or had their assailant acted spontaneously once he had seen them up there?

A timid knock on the front door brought her out of her reverie. She hadn’t noticed the cars pull up, but she could hear their doors opening and voices calling to one another.

“There goes the neighbourhood.” Nelson placed the photograph and the pass on the kitchen table. “I think that was Mrs. Martindale trying to warn us.”

“Yeah, SOCO aren’t likely to knock.” Sanne went to the window in the living room. An SUV and a Crime Scene Investigation van were parked behind Nelson’s car. She saw Eleanor greet Mrs. Martindale with a distracted smile and head for the front door.

“Evening, boss,” Nelson said as Sanne joined them in the hallway.

Eleanor shook her head. A flush of stress coloured the tip of her nose. “You two certainly know how to kick up a fucking shit storm,” she said.

*

Nursing a bottle of water, Sanne watched Eleanor talking to an overweight man in a smartly pressed, navy blue suit. She didn’t recognise him, but from the way Eleanor deferred to him, he was probably one of the top brass, dragged out of his office just as he was contemplating going home, to come and stand instead on a muddy driveway in the middle of nowhere. He held up a hand, cutting Eleanor off mid-sentence to answer his phone. She waited for no more than twenty seconds before going back into the cottage.

“That didn’t look very encouraging,” Nelson said. Predictably, SOCO had requested that he and Sanne leave the house so they could begin to process the scene.

“It didn’t. Do you think someone’s head will roll for this?”

He ran a hand over his chin, scratching at his five o’clock shadow. “Who the hell knows? I wouldn’t want to be the one who has to stand in front of the press and admit that we only just realised another woman is missing, and that, by the way, we still have no idea who our perp is.”

A crunch of boots on gravel warned them of Carlyle’s approach.

“I’ve got a damn good idea who our perp is,” he said. His thin smile made his lips look purple.

Nelson settled onto the bonnet of his car, folding his arms. “Care to share with the rest of the class?”

Carlyle’s smile widened. He ignored Nelson and directed his answer at Sanne. “One lesbian in the hospital, one lesbian AWOL. You do the maths.”

Sanne blinked slowly and counted to ten before she responded. “You’re considering Rachel Medlock a suspect?”

“Obviously.” He frowned. “Although you’d expect it to be the other way around: the butch one on the run, not at the bottom of the rocks.”

Sanne felt Nelson shift closer to her, as if afraid she might go for Carlyle’s throat. She held herself perfectly still and started another count. While it was true that Josie’s hair had been shorter than Rachel’s, neither woman adhered to a butch or femme stereotype, judging by the clothing Sanne had examined.

“Most lesbian relationships don’t work like that, Sarge,” she said quietly.

“No?” He lowered his voice. “Hey, if you ever feel like giving me some pointers…”

She smiled sweetly, wishing she could knock his teeth out. “There’s not enough time in the world to teach you half of what I know.”

His face turned scarlet, his obvious discomfiture making Nelson chuckle. Sanne was grateful Nelson had left her to fight her own corner. He knew she was capable of holding her own against Carlyle.

As Eleanor left the cottage and began to walk over to them, Carlyle fired a parting shot. “Just because they’re gay doesn’t mean they’re special, Jensen. Cases like this, nine times out of ten it’s the boyfriend. Or, in this instance, the girlfriend.” He turned to leave, calling back in a singsong voice, “You don’t want me to be right, but I am.”

Nelson waited until he was out of earshot before speaking. “Ignore him. He’s a prick.”

Sanne was proficient at ignoring Carlyle, but part of what he’d said had hit home. She wondered whether she really was following the evidence in believing Rachel a victim rather than a suspect, or whether other factors—including her own sexuality and preconceptions—were clouding her judgement. There was little about Josie’s abduction that would point to Rachel being the culprit, though. The use of drugs, the knowledge of the local caves, the prolonged torture, and the sheer physicality required to subdue Josie initially—all seemed to suggest a premeditated crime by a male perp, not a woman of slender stature who was writing light-hearted postcards in the hours before she disappeared.

Sanne shuffled over to make room for Eleanor, who slumped beside her on the car bonnet, plucked her water bottle from her hand, and drained half of it.

“What a fucking mess,” she said, screwing the lid back on. “You two get home. There’s nothing more you can do here tonight. Team briefing is at six a.m. sharp. I’ve pulled everyone in from leave and rest days, so we’ll have an overnight team to start following up on leads. Rachel’s parents are on their way from Scotland, and the shit will be hitting the fan with a live press conference in about an hour.”

“Did you manage to speak to Josie’s parents?” Nelson asked.

“Yes. They’re trying to arrange flights.”

Sanne raised her head, though she couldn’t look Eleanor in the eye. “Is Rachel a suspect?”

Eleanor sighed. “I think we’d be remiss not to consider that, but from what we’ve already established, it seems unlikely. Her parents are devastated. They’re coming to sit with Josie until her own family can get here. According to Josie’s mum, the two were inseparable—Rachel was the reason Josie stayed in Scotland when the rest of the family emigrated—and she wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of Rachel being responsible. They’ve been together for eight years and got engaged in Italy this last Valentine’s Day.”

Sanne chewed on her lip, thinking of the women’s gleeful embrace by the lake, “
She said YES!”
commemorating the moment in red ink.

“Ready to call it a night?” Nelson said.

She nodded, though the thought of going home to an empty house filled her with dread. As he unlocked the car, she dug out her phone. Earlier she had sent Meg a text, apologising for missing tea and promising to catch up with her soon, but now she typed a second message. With the phone balanced on her knee, she reached for her seatbelt, glancing down at the draft text as she did so:
Can I stay with you tonight?

“Fuck it,” she whispered. The words were swallowed by the noise of the diesel motor kicking in and the tyres spinning on the driveway. She snatched up the phone and pressed
Send
.

*

Meg set down her book at the first sound of a car pulling into her driveway. The heavens had opened, and she could barely distinguish the hunched figure through the downpour, but she recognised the shape of the car. She watched with concern as Sanne, seemingly oblivious to the storm, trudged toward the front door. Although the unexpected text had already set Meg’s alarm bells ringing, it was the sight of Sanne’s beaten down demeanour that made her run for her keys and yank the door open before Sanne had the chance to knock.

“San?”

Sanne raised her head. Rain was beading on her eyelashes and dripping off her nose, and her eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion.

“I brought you these.” She held out a soggy bakery box, but when Meg put an arm around her, guiding her into the hallway, her face crumpled and she started to cry.

Abandoning her questions, Meg pulled her into a tight hug. Sanne’s body, initially rigid with resistance, gradually relaxed as Meg murmured soothing nonsense and ran her fingers through strands of sodden hair.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Sanne sniffled but stayed snug in the embrace, and the tremors that had been wracking her eased. It was a long time before she took a shuddering breath and pulled away slightly. “I ruined our scones,” she said, the words hiccupping through her tears. At some point, the box had fallen unnoticed to the floor.

Meg laughed, relieved to find an outlet for the tension. She knew it took a lot to make Sanne drop her guard to such an extent, but this wasn’t the time to delve into the reasons, not while Sanne had the potential to bolt.