Body Language by A. K. Turner

Author:A. K. Turner [Turner, A. K. & Turner, A. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2020-11-25T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Cassie stayed late that day, catching up on the admin she’d allowed to mount up and devising a system to prevent any repeat of the terrible indignity inflicted on poor Mrs Palmer in the crematorium furnace.

But she felt jumpy, distracted, and on the walk home she gave in to the impulse to call DS Flyte: it couldn’t hurt to ask if she’d made any progress.

‘So, I spoke to the detective who attended your old teacher’s house after she was found. I’ve also had a good look through the report from the scene.’

Flyte’s uncharacteristically breezy tone felt wrong to Cassie – like it was a facade for something.

‘And?’ Cassie could feel her heart start to thump.

‘I’m afraid he found nothing whatsoever to suggest foul play.’

‘That’s it? I could have told you that.’

‘I’m not sure what more you expect me to do. I said that I would double-check the report, to ensure that nothing obvious had been overlooked – and that’s precisely what I did.’

She sounded irritable but Cassie sensed defensiveness. ‘So, you think he did a thorough job?’

A micro-pause. ‘That’s hardly for me to say.’

‘That’s a no, then’ – clutching the phone hard.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Flyte retorted. ‘It’s just . . . not my place to comment on a fellow detective’s actions.’

‘But you would have done things differently.’

An impatient sigh. ‘That’s not what—’

‘You know what I think?’ Cassie gave in to a surge of rage. ‘You think he missed something. But you’re not prepared to rock the boat.’

She hung up without giving Flyte a chance to respond.

Persuading Flyte to investigate the death had been her last throw of the dice – the final chance to get Mrs E a forensic post-mortem. And she had failed her. Picturing her body lying in a metal drawer Cassie felt a hot prickling at the back of her eyes.

Turning right around she headed back into Camden, bound for the Vibe bar. She deserved a serious drink and, who knows, she might even run into Tish-Tash. Fuck it, a line or two wouldn’t hurt either . . .

Then her steps slowed as a powerful sensation took hold of her. She wasn’t alone. There was nobody in sight but she felt sure that Mrs E was walking quietly beside her – a reassuring, invisible presence.

A memory came back to her. The chemistry lesson where Mrs E had demonstrated what happened when potassium encountered water. The lump of soft silvery metal had fizzed in the beaker for a moment before erupting in a shower of sparks and flame that brought shrieks and laughter from the class.

You set fire to my mind, Cassie murmured.

Fifteen minutes later, instead of getting pissed in the Vibe bar, she was lying face down in the chair at InkStains, her back exposed. Holding out her phone she showed an image to Kobe, who’d been her go-to tattooer for years.

‘It’s an equation that describes a chemical reaction,’ she explained.

‘OK, so . . . H2O is water, but what does the K stand for?’

‘Potassium. When you add it to water it ignites the hydrogen.

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