Cut You Dead (Dr. Samantha Willerby Mystery #4) - A J Waines Page 0,37
the card and asked the assistant to take good care of it in case it was needed by the police.
I hastened back along the main road, my head buried in my notebook, unaware of everything around me. I nearly charged straight into a letterbox and missed barging into a traffic warden by a couple of centimetres. I was comparing dates, trying to work out exactly what the pattern was.
The salon visits didn’t tally: Hazel had a professional cut five days before she died, Charlotte four, and Lorna six days before. Situated in disparate locations in London, there didn’t seem to be any shadows lurking over the stylists who’d tidied up the victims’ hair.
Giovanni was the only one who’d been a hairdresser in 2010 and I couldn’t imagine him exerting brute force against anyone. He probably weighed less than me with celery-thin arms – not the type to pump iron at the gym. I couldn’t see him pinning Charlotte down with a pillow or dragging Lorna’s body onto a train track.
But there was another pattern: not only was the hair of the three women secretly snipped off at the back, but it took place exactly seven days before they were each murdered. If that wasn’t the signature of a serial killer, I didn’t know what was!
I stabbed Fenway’s number into my phone straight away, but reached only his voicemail. I drew in a breath, then snapped my mouth shut and let the air go. In my fizzing state, my thoughts batting around like a pinball, I couldn’t trust myself to leave him a clear and concise message. It would merely come out garbled and hysterical, no doubt reinforcing how misguided Claussen had been to get me onboard in the first place.
I put my phone away and strode on in the direction of the park at Primrose Hill. After a few strides, my elation waned even further. All I had was a pattern of dates and an unknown stalker who had hacked off the victims’ hair. Someone who had remained off the police radar for nearly ten years. How the hell was I going to find out who that person was?
29
I had ground to make up with Miranda after letting her down on Friday night, so I texted from a bench halfway up the grassy slope on Primrose Hill to say I was on my way to see her. I could get there on foot in under thirty minutes. She got back to me explaining she was busy at CCAP and instructed me in capital letters not to turn up before three.
With time to kill, I decided to try Fenway again, only this time I’d put my thoughts down in an email with exactly what I wanted to say.
It took three goes to put together a sensible and dispassionate message outlining what I’d uncovered, namely two cold murder cases with unmistakeable similarities; that of Lorna Sullivan and Charlotte Walsh. I ended with the slightly more contentious part:
I think I’ve found evidence that a hair fetish could be involved and that there are distinct signs of the same pattern in the recent death of Hazel Hart.
I pressed send before I could change my mind and my message disappeared from the screen.
My heart was pattering when I got to my feet. The ball was in his court. Now things might actually start to shift.
I headed towards the edge of the park, kicking the potpourri of long-fallen leaves strewn under every tree. Periodically the sun broke open the molten sky, highlighting the muted colours below, from amber to muddy brown. There was a mournful fragility about the scene; dead leaves, the light vacillating before it darted for cover behind the next cloud.
I was surprised when another officer, DI Lynda McBride, got back to me on Fenway’s behalf. She explained he was heavily involved in an internal investigation and advised me to keep him updated with any breakthroughs.
‘This is a breakthrough,’ I insisted.
‘Right…’
‘When will he be available?’ I asked, not unreasonably.
‘It won’t be today. He’s snowed under.’
‘Is there anyone else I can speak to about this?’
‘No, it should be him. He’s the only person dealing with it at the moment.’
The conversation was beginning to take on a resounding similarity to countless other fruitless calls I’d made recently to my bank about an overpayment drawn on my account.
‘Oh, wait,’ she added, ‘he did have a message for you.’
At last, something concrete.
‘It says here you mustn’t interview anyone involved without his prior consent and must always be accompanied.’