Talking to Strangers by Barton Fiona

Author:Barton, Fiona [Barton, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Thriller, Women Sleuths
ISBN: 9781473561991
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2024-07-24T14:00:00+00:00

45

Elise

Friday, 21 February 2020

ELISE WHISTLED SOFTLY TO herself when she opened the email and the image filled her screen. It was the last person she had expected to find when the techies ran the vigil footage through facial-recognition software.

But Annie Curtis had been in the crowd. She’d come back to the scene of her child’s murder. Elise rocked gently in her chair while she tried to imagine why the grieving mother had returned. Not for Karen, she thought. This wasn’t nostalgia for haircuts or highlights. The killing must have reawoken all sorts of terrible memories. And drawn her back to the place they were created.

‘What made you come?’ she murmured to the face creased by grief, hair lank and as lifeless as the eyes.

Elise pulled up a photo of Annie Curtis from the days following the murder of her youngest son. She’d only been thirty-three, according to the newspaper reports, but she looked twice that.

Caro put her head around the office door. ‘Can you put one of your special rockets up the lab? We need to know what we’ve got from Karen’s shoulder. Fibres from the glove might help us find the make and nail the wearer.’

‘Yep,’ Elise said, only half listening. Then sat bolt upright. Oh God, had she told Caro about Kiki’s call? About the blue gloves at Noel Clayton’s? She scrambled back through every exchange they’d had since lunch. But there were gaping holes she could no longer fill. She’d forgotten if she’d forgotten. Elise slumped down in her seat, exhausted by the effort required to stay in the saddle.

‘Noel Clayton has got blue gloves,’ she murmured, as if she could sneak the information under the wire and into Caro’s consciousness.

‘Yes, you said,’ Caro retorted, peering over her shoulder, and Elise felt a burst of relief in her chest. ‘What are you looking at?’ Caro asked.

‘The mother of a child murdered in Knapton Wood sixteen years ago. Do you remember little Archie Curtis? And his treehouse?’

Caro nodded. ‘God, was it Knapton Wood?’

‘Yep. And we’ve identified Annie Curtis as one of the women who showed up at the vigil. This was her at the time of the killing.’

‘Really? Let’s see. God, she looks destroyed. I suppose she was. How did you ID her?’

‘Digital magic upstairs. My neighbour Ronnie told me the family moved away immediately afterwards. They used to live in the road at the back of the wood – Yew Tree Lane. It must have been unbearable to see the scene of crime every day. No one heard from them after they went. But Annie Curtis came back this week.’

‘So sad,’ Caro said, and Elise could hear the anyway … coming.

‘Anyway,’ her sergeant said. ‘They caught the bloke, didn’t they? And we’ve got a lot on our plate already …’

Me, she means me. That I can’t cope with more than one thing at a time. Elise forced her hunched shoulders down, away from her ears.

‘Doing it,’ she chanted and lifted her phone. But as soon as Caro left, she put it down and woke up her screen again.

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