Helena gave him a sympathetic smile, pushed herself off the desk and straightened her jacket. Poor old Devon had been dumped by his girlfriend of the past year just weeks ago, and while he didn’t seem outwardly broken-hearted, she had the sense he was feeling the loss far more keenly than he was letting on. She’d take him aside, maybe for a drink, at some point and have a chat, but there was too much work to be done at the moment, and now with this added complication … she shook her head slightly as she crossed the room, weaving her way between the desks piled high with scruffy stacks of paperwork. She was starting to get a feeling that there was something strange about the disappearance of Danny O’Connor, especially with the revelation about the job that never was, but without a body he was still just a missing person, and right now she had more important things on her mind, namely two actually dead men whose murders may or may not be connected, and a distinct paucity of leads. With a sigh, she reached her own desk and sat down, pushing aside a plastic container of half-eaten mozzarella and tomato salad and tapping her keyboard to wake up her computer screen.
The files for both sets of forensic results were open on her desktop and she flicked backwards and forwards disconsolately between them for the tenth time. There was nothing there, basically; the killer had either been very careful or very lucky, leaving no trace of his identity on either of the victims. Or her identity, Helena thought. No assumptions, not at this stage, even though right now her money was on a male killer. Although no murder weapon had been found in either case, both Mervin Elliott and Ryan Jones had been attacked with some considerable force with some sort of heavy object – both, it had now been confirmed, had died from their head injuries. Both were young, fit men, and it seemed unlikely that a woman would have been able to take either of them down so easily. Although … Helena thought about some of the women she saw at her local gym, on the rare occasions when she chose indoor exercise over running. Those bodybuilder types, the ones who entered those Miss Bikini Fitness contests or whatever they were called – they’d definitely be able to take a man down if they wanted to. So, don’t rule anybody out, she thought. It was far too early in the investigation to start doing that. Keep an open mind, about all of it.
She stood up again and crossed the room to the incident board, hands massaging the aching small of her back as she walked. Maybe she’d ask Charlotte to give her a back rub later, if she was still awake when she got home, she thought, then smiled wryly to herself, realizing how unlikely that was. Her wife, head teacher of a fairly challenging city centre secondary school, came home from work as exhausted as she did.
‘Will you be home for dinner? Or is that a stupid question?’ she’d asked sleepily as Helena had tried to slip noiselessly out of bed at six that morning, wanting to get a run in before what would undoubtedly be another long, frustrating day. She’d leaned across and kissed Charlotte softly on the forehead. She smelled of rose oil and sleep.
‘Sorry, did I wake you? And honestly … I don’t think so. This is a tough one, and I’ve got nothing to go on, Char, nothing. Probably better to assume I won’t be home for dinner for the foreseeable. I’ll make it up to you when it’s all over, promise.’
‘Yeah yeah. Heard that before.’
Charlotte had squeezed her arm and rolled over, eyes closing again, and Helena had dressed quickly and headed out into the dark, frosty morning, guilt nibbling at her guts. Charlotte was patience personified, but sometimes she wondered how long that would last. The job, as poor Devon had recently discovered, was a relationship killer. And Charlotte wanted children – well, they both did, really, but with them both being so busy …
Helena sighed. Charlotte would never put pressure on her, she knew that. But there’d been a few comments recently, a few occasions when babies had suddenly come up in an unrelated conversation. She’d changed the subject, dodged the discussion, but she couldn’t do that forever, she knew that. Maybe, when this was all over …