shrugged her shoulders. ‘No, I wish I could. Is it relevant to the case?’
Gina cleared her throat. ‘I can’t say anything just yet as it’s relating to an ongoing investigation. All I can say is we need a name. One more question, how did the shovel end up against your wall? Is that where you leave it?’
‘What shovel?’ Sally took another sip of her tea and moved a strand of hair from her mouth.
‘The one against the back of your house.’
She stood and looked out of the window. ‘I have no idea how that got there. It’s not even my shovel. I’ll confess to not having any gardening tools, we have a gardener for all the church grounds, but he hasn’t been for two weeks. That shovel wasn’t there yesterday. I don’t want to stay here.’
The woman rubbed her eyes. Gina could understand her fear. ‘Forensics and uniform will be here soon. I can make sure that after we’ve left someone drives by and keeps an eye on the church and vicarage. Would that help?’ Gina knew the budget would be blown but at the moment, she wanted Sally to be reassured that they could protect her. She swallowed. Maybe she wasn’t safe. ‘Do you have anyone you could stay with?’
‘My sister lives in Redditch. I could travel into work from there. I’ll call her and write her phone number and address down for you, in case you need to ask me anything else. I don’t want to stay here at night, not at the moment.’ The dog made a whining noise and lay back on her boot. ‘Yes, Jerry. We’re going to stay with Auntie Elaine.’ She patted the dog’s head.
Gina’s phone beeped. She checked the message from Wyre.
‘We have to get back to the station. Please try to remember who mentioned that verse about the lion, we really need to know who said it.’
Sally stared at the wall and scrunched her brow. ‘The more I think about it, I’m sure it was on the Sunday a couple of weeks ago. I have a list of names somewhere. I’m doing a charity run to raise money for the roof in a couple of weeks and I was taking names of sponsors. I think the list might be at the church but I’m not sure. Can I get back to you when I’ve found it? I’ll start searching when you leave but there are so many nooks and crannies, it could take a while.’
‘Please do. Call me as soon as you’ve found it.’ Gina placed one of her cards on the table as she reread the message on her phone.
After Gina had guided an overworked Keith from forensics in the direction of the hole and shovel, she led Jacob back to the church car park. ‘We’re onto something. That message was from Wyre. They’ve just been to Cherie Brown’s house, the one who hosted the Halloween night dinner party. Her husband has called saying he arrived home this morning to find their house wrecked. She’s missing. We need to get over there now.’
Chapter Sixty-Three
Cherie stared at her phone.
Meet me at the haunted pond. You know, where we used to tell scary stories when we were kids. No one can know you’re coming. I have to tell you something and it can’t wait. Someone is trying to hurt me and I know who. Hurry. Penny.
Cherie turned her phone off, glad that Christian could no longer ring. She took a swig from the bottle and stared at the sky as she leaned back on the bench. She inhaled the stench from the murky old pond. This was where she was meant to be: the hangout. A place where the adults could never find them, set back from the estate by the nature pond that had long given up on nature. It was home to trolleys and plastic wrappers. They’d called it the haunted pond on account of Penny thinking she saw a lady in the lake ghost emerging from an upturned bike. They’d all laughed at her back then. No wonder Cherie hated Halloween with all the fear it brought with it.
She fell to the floor on her knees, bending to see the underside of the bench.
Cherie loves Isaac. It was still badly carved in the wood. She’d also tried to carve two cats – love cats, but no one else could tell what they were. She’d fancied Isaac back then but not now. For a short while she thought there might