Текст книги "Scent of a Killer"

Автор книги: Kevin Lewis

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DI Hill nodded with a grin. ‘Right pain in the arse it is too, but more often than not it pays dividends.’

Anderson still had a smile as he turned away from Collins but it slowly started to fade from his lips. ‘Funny thinking back to that old case,’ he said wistfully. ‘Somehow I don’t think this one is going to be anywhere near as easy to solve.’

*

Ten minutes later the three officers, all wearing their protective gowns and masks, were following Dr Matthews into the chilly hospital mortuary. Just before entering the room Collins placed a swimming peg on the end of her nose, forcing her to breathe through her mouth. It made her look and sound a bit ridiculous, but the smell of decay was one she had no desire to get used to.

All three bodies had been brought out of storage and each one was lying flat on a stainless-steel table covered by a green plastic sheet. Matthews headed to the nearest table and stood on one side of it, inviting the three officers to stand opposite her.

‘We’ll begin with Raymond Chadwick,’ she said. ‘Now, as I am sure you know, there are usually five stages to the autopsy process: the Y-incision, followed by the removal of the organs, examination of the stomach contents, collection of samples, and finally examination of the head and brain.’

Matthews reached out and pulled back the green plastic sheet with a flourish to reveal the body underneath. ‘But, as you can see,’ she said, ‘most of that does not apply to the current cases.’

Chadwick had been straightened out from the foetal position and now lay flat on his back. He was completely naked and his skin had taken on a pale green-grey tinge. A brown, soupy fluid was seeping out from the base of his body. Collins noted with alarm that the tiny white maggots she had observed in his chest and neck at the crime scene seemed to have grown. ‘Aren’t they potentially destroying evidence?’ Collins said, pointing at the mass of white worms.

Matthews followed her gaze. ‘Potentially, but getting rid of them before I’ve carried out my examination would be far more damaging. It’s too cold in storage for flies to lay eggs, but if a body comes in already infested there really isn’t very much that we can do. In this case, the amount of raw flesh on the body has proved particularly attractive to the little blighters. We’ll wash him down when I’m finished, but I can’t do it now; otherwise I might wash away trace evidence.’

Collins frowned in confusion. ‘But I thought the theory was that the bodies had been kept in cold storage, Miller’s for at least two years. That doesn’t tally with this kind of decomposition.’

Matthews nodded. ‘Cold storage only slows down the process. It’s like putting a piece of chicken in your fridge. If you don’t eat it, it will still go off and start to smell after a few days. To stop the decomposition process completely you have to freeze the body. If you freeze a body, it will last more or less indefinitely. We only do that once we’ve carried out an autopsy. I can’t do anything with a body that has been turned into a block of ice. I can’t even get a tissue sample.’

Anderson coughed gently, a subtle way of asking Matthews to get on with it. She smiled politely.

‘The first thing I want to do is to confirm what might seem to be completely obvious but needs to be stated for the official record. In my opinion all three victims were murdered by the same person or persons. The tools used to sever the hands and head, as well as those used to open up the chest cavity and remove the internal organs, seem to be identical in each case.’

Matthews’s gloved fingers began to move across each area of the body as she described it. ‘The neck has been cut through the skin and deep tissues right down to the point of separation, which is between the fifth and sixth vertebrae. The sixth remains in situ and is deeply notched.’

Her fingers moved down to Chadwick’s chest. ‘The intercostals between the fourth, fifth and sixth ribs have been cut through, exposing the thorax. The pericardium is open, and the heart and lungs are missing. There is also an absence of thoraco-abdominal viscera.

‘All the skin cuts, particularly those at the neck and edges of the chest cavity, show distinct ecchymosis. Now I want to –’

Anderson held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry, you’re talking about bruising, right?’

Matthews flashed another smile. ‘Right.’

‘But surely that would only happen if the cuts were made while the victim was alive.’

‘That’s correct. And I’ve found similar bruising patterns on all three bodies.’

‘My God,’ gasped Collins. ‘You mean someone did this to them while they were fully conscious?’

‘Not necessarily. Alive doesn’t mean conscious. We can’t jump to any conclusions. We’ll have to wait for a full toxicology report before we know which, if any, drugs were in their systems. It’s possible they may have been sedated, but in any event they would probably have passed out from shock and loss of blood soon after the first incision?

Anderson scratched his chin. ‘When it comes to the removal of the head and the hands, do you have any idea what the killer used?’

Matthews picked up one of Chadwick’s forearms and examined the bloody stump. ‘We’re going to do a further procedure after the main autopsy to remove the radius and ulna of each arm, along with the exposed cervical vertebrae, to make a better determination. My initial thoughts are that it looks like the work of a small saw. There are serrations visible and you wouldn’t have those with a knife or an axe.’

Collins joined the conversation. ‘Would that be something specifically medical? A specialist instrument of some kind?’

‘Possibly, but to be honest there are a number of craft tools and kitchen implements that would do the job just as well. However, a straight-bladed knife was used to do this.’

She pointed to the mutilated genitals. Collins noticed that both Anderson and Hill winced visibly as they gazed at the remains of Chadwick’s manhood.

‘What we’re trying to get at,’ said Anderson, looking away from the victim’s crotch, ‘is whether we’re talking about someone with medical or surgical training.’

‘I can’t give you a definitive answer, I’m afraid, but my instinct would be to say yes. Surgeons tend to make very bold, clean incisions through tissue. Experience teaches them exactly how much pressure is needed and they will often go through the skin one layer at a time. An amateur cutting open a body for the first time is likely to either over– or underestimate the amount of pressure needed. That might lead to multiple-entry incisions – hesitation marks – or possibly to damage of the internal organs or ribs from pressing down too hard.

‘I haven’t found anything like that in this case, but that isn’t totally conclusive. Surgeons are taught how to open up a body in a way that allows life to be preserved. If the intention is to kill, the level of skill needed drops away dramatically. Your average family butcher would know enough anatomy to accomplish what has been done here.’

Anderson had moved down towards Chadwick’s feet. ‘What are these marks here near the ankles?’

‘I was just getting to those,’ said Matthews as Hill and Collins moved down the table to get a better look. ‘They’re from ligatures. Identical marks appear on all three bodies.’

The marks were dark brown in colour and had a vivid plum-red band on either side. The skin had broken in parts, and yet more maggots could be seen slipping around in the wounds. ‘The width of those marks – that’s the width of the rope or cable used,’ said Matthews. ‘You’ll notice they don’t circle each ankle completely but are in fact confined to the outside part of the legs. This indicates that a single ligature was used to bind both ankles.’

‘The marks are raised on the side nearest the ankles,’ said Anderson. ‘Does that mean the ligature was uneven? Is it something we can identify?’

‘Actually, it means that at some point the victims were suspended upside down or dragged along the ground with their entire weight supported by their ankles.’

Matthews called over an assistant and together they raised Chadwick so that his back was visible. ‘There are also marks across the top of the shoulders and on the buttocks; these seem to indicate that at some point the body was dragged along the ground, probably around the time it was placed into the car. Once again, the other two bodies have similar marks. I’ve taken samples of the grit embedded in the skin to help isolate a location.’

Once they had finished with Chadwick, Matthews showed the team the similarities on the bodies of Edward Miller and then the unknown third victim.

‘You haven’t said anything about cause of death yet,’ asked Anderson.

‘Without the heads I’m reluctant to make a firm statement, but it seems that all three died in the same fashion. From exsanguination.’

‘They bled to death,’ said Collins flatly.

‘Exactly. There is very little blood left in any of the bodies and it must have gone somewhere. The severing of the neck would have opened up the carotid artery but there are also blood stains on the outside of the skin of the chest. Your crime scene, wherever it is, is going to be awash with blood.’

There was a pause while the members of the team took in the new information.

‘Is it possible,’ asked DI Hill, looking up from his notebook, ‘that all this has been done deliberately in an attempt to make it impossible to carry out a proper autopsy?’

Matthews shook her head slowly. ‘I really don’t think so. Although it’s going to make it almost impossible to determine a precise cause of death, there is no doubt that this is a murder we are looking at. That kind of subterfuge would only really be necessary if you were trying to fake a suicide or something like that.

‘Besides, this kind of thing is more common than you think. Jack the Ripper took out his victims’ organs; so did Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Chase and several others. Having said that, however, none of what has happened goes any way towards making my job easier.’

Collins slowly walked around the table holding the body of the third victim, the first of the group to do so. ‘What’s this mark here?’ The others gathered around and saw that Collins was pointing to what appeared to be a pale smudge on the outside of the man’s thigh, though it was partly obscured by a patch of dried blood and the fluids leaking out of the body.

‘Let’s see.’ Matthews gathered up a soft sponge and began gently wiping the area.

‘Just an area of discoloration, mild scarring, possibly the result of childhood eczema.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Collins. ‘The pattern seems a bit too regular.’

Matthews picked up a magnifying glass from a nearby desk and examined the area again. ‘I think you’re right. It looks like an incredibly faint tattoo. My guess is that this man underwent laser-removal treatment. It usually takes about five or six sessions to get rid of the tattoo completely so he must have had one or two procedures still to go. That’s a good spot.’

Anderson looked from Matthews to Collins and back again. Collins could feel herself starting to blush as she spoke. ‘It might be possible to reconstruct the tattoo. Even without knowing exactly what it is I can use it to eliminate hundreds of names from my list. Better still, if we get something we can put out to the media we might get lucky.’

Matthews nodded. ‘I’ll have the patch of skin removed. I’m sure we can get the pattern to show up more clearly under certain kinds of light. Bravo, Detective Inspector Collins.’

Anderson’s face remained stern as he nodded in Collins’s direction. ‘Good work. Get a copy out to the press a.s.a.p. and let’s see if we can give this poor bastard a name.’

Matthews explained that X-rays showed none of the bodies had any broken bones, other than those caused by the opening up of the chest cavities. External examination of the bodies had failed to reveal the presence of needle marks or puncture wounds, though it was possible that the relevant areas of skin had been removed.

As Matthews spoke, Collins looked at the three bodies around her, her eyes fixed on the marbled fat and muscle on the inside of the open ribcages. All three victims had been turned from men into carcasses. It was an image she was finding impossible to get out of her mind.

‘How long did you say it would be for the toxicology reports?’ asked Collins.

‘I did an initial test with the equipment we have here,’ explained Matthews, ‘but nothing came up in large-enough concentrations to be detected. That makes me think it’s unlikely we’ll find anything but I want to be absolutely sure. The spectroscope at the FSS HQ is a lot more sensitive but it will be at least a week before they can run any of the samples through it. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.’

The examination over, the three officers made their way out of the mortuary, ready to head back to the incident room. Collins was the last to leave and looked back at the figure of Jessica Matthews through the glass window in the centre of the rubber-edged double doors. The pathologist’s plan to help get Collins into her senior officers’ good books by telling her about the faded tattoo, which Collins could then ‘discover’ during the autopsy, seemed to have worked like a charm.

Matthews glanced up and saw Collins looking over at her. She smiled and, raising a blood-smeared gloved hand, gave her a thumbs-up sign.

7

The three teenage boys emerged from the school gates half an hour after most of the other pupils had left. They had been held behind in detention but the time they had spent struggling over maths problems had done little to dampen the rowdy behaviour that had got them into trouble in the first place. The noisy trio jostled and teased one another as they lazily made their way home.

‘They’re not going to expel us,’ said Nick, the tallest of the three, shaking his head slowly. ‘And even if they do I don’t give a fuck. The only reason I go to school at all is so I can hang out with you two. If we get kicked out, we’ll just hang out somewhere else.’

‘You can; I’ll be dead,’ said Chris, the youngest. ‘My mum will fucking kill me if I get kicked out again. I’ll be on the streets.’

‘If that happens,’ replied Nick, slapping the flat of his hand on the back of his friend, ‘you can always come and live with me!’

‘What, in your shithole of a house?’ gasped Alex. ‘No one in their right mind would ever want to live there.’ The three boys burst into fits of giggles. They were a few streets away from the school and still giggling when they first spotted the girl.

She wore a pair of skinny jeans and a cream summer blouse. Her lips were bright red with lipstick and her eyes lightly painted with black mascara. Her hair was blonde, moving gently with the breeze.

‘Here, look at that. She’s well fit,’ said Alex.

‘No way, she’s a tramp,’ said Nick.

‘And a brass,’ added Chris.

‘What, you think she’s on the game?’

‘Well what’s she doing, then? Ain’t no bus stop there.’

She was leaning back against a low wall, her elbows resting behind her, one leg folded up beneath. Two thin white wires led down from her ears and into an iPod fixed to a clip on the side of her belt. Her eyes were closed and her head bobbed gently in time with music none of the boys could hear. A soft smile was on her lips.

It was only as they got a little closer that Nick had a revelation.

‘Shit, that’s Sophie Collins.’

‘She doesn’t look like that when she’s got her uniform on.’

‘But she looks like a fucking brass!’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Nick put his finger to his lips and his two friends stopped speaking as the three drew almost level with the girl. Her eyes were still closed as Nick reached out and tapped her on the shoulder.

Sophie smiled lazily and spoke with her eyes still shut. ‘You took your time,’ she said, stretching her arms up above her head. Then she opened her eyes and instantly realized her mistake. ‘Oh, what the hell do you want?’

‘Hey, Sophie, what you doing here?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Why you all dressed up? You meeting your boyfriend?’

‘Piss off.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Chris. ‘Mr Glover?’

The boys laughed. Glover was the physics teacher notorious for his bad teeth and powerful foot odour.

‘I told you to piss off.’

‘I bet she’s waiting for a customer,’ said Alex.

‘Or her pimp,’ snorted Nick.

‘Yeah, how long you been on the game for, eh, Sophie? Not getting enough pocket money? How much for the three of us?’

‘I ain’t paying for it,’ said Alex. ‘You don’t know where the slag’s been.’

Sophie’s eyes narrowed with anger. ‘Who you calling a slag? What the fuck are you three talking about, you little shits? Why don’t you fuck off before my friend arrives and kicks the living daylights out of you?’

‘Check her bag,’ shouted Chris. ‘I bet it’s full of condoms.’

Before she could protest Alex had darted forward and snatched the handbag from her shoulder. She moved towards him but he immediately threw it high over her head towards Chris, who caught it neatly.

Sophie turned and advanced on him but he threw the bag across to Nick. Sophie spun on her heels. ‘Give it back, give it back, you bastards, give it back.’ There were tears of frustration building up in the corners of her eyes.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Nick softly. ‘Didn’t mean to upset you.’ He held out the bag towards her. Sophie hesitated, then stepped towards him, her arm outstretched. She was just inches away from her bag when Nick’s face exploded into a mischievous grin and he tossed the bag back to Alex.

‘Gotchya,’ he hissed.

The impromptu game of piggy-in-the-middle continued for a few moments, Sophie getting increasingly upset as the boys teased her relentlessly. Then there was a sudden screech of tyres and the sound of a horn, long and loud, as a jet-black Ranger Rover mounted the kerb at speed, screeching to a halt just inches from Nick’s knees.

The driver’s door flew open and Jack Stanley leaped out, his face alive with rage.

‘What the fuck are you little bastards playing at?’

The three boys stood frozen to the spot like rabbits caught in the glare of headlights. Stanley walked up to Nick and snatched back the handbag. The boy made no sound other than a faint whimper.

Stanley glanced over at Sophie. ‘You all right, Princess?’

She was trying to tidy her hair, which had become dishevelled after all her running around. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Okay, get in the car. I’ll sort this lot out.’

Sophie clambered into the passenger seat while Stanley grabbed Nick by the scruff of the neck and dragged him towards the other two boys, both of whom were stiff with fear.

Stanley’s breathing was heavy and laboured, like a bull winding up ready for the charge. He stared at each of the boys in turn, moving his face so close that they could smell the mixture of stale coffee and tobacco on his breath. ‘If any one of you three even so much as looks at Sophie again, I’ll make sure that the very last fucking thing you see on this earth is my face. Do you understand?’

The three boys nodded meekly.

Minutes later Stanley and Sophie were driving through South London, safely hidden behind his tinted windows, grinning like a pair of Cheshire cats.

‘The look on Nick’s face. Honestly,’ giggled Sophie. ‘I thought he was going to wet himself.’

‘Yeah. I get that a lot. So, how long have we got?’

‘A good few hours. Mum thinks I’m heading to a friend’s house so that we can do our homework together.’

‘You know you are going to have to do your homework.’

‘What? You’re kidding me.’

‘If this is going to work, you can’t fall behind with your schoolwork.’

‘Anyway, I’ve already done my homework.’

‘Well, then, you won’t mind me checking it.’

‘You know much about simultaneous equations?’

Jack’s face quivered slightly. ‘I … er … so, you thought that kid was going to wet himself, eh?’

‘Pathetic.’

Sophie rolled her eyes before leaning forward and plugging her iPod into the car’s stereo system. For the rest of the journey the pair sang along to their favourite songs.

Sophie was so absorbed in the music that she hardly noticed the roundabout route Jack was taking or the numerous precautions he employed to ensure they were not being followed. He did it as a matter of course, whether his sources said he was being watched or not. Better safe than sorry was a philosophy that had served him well over the years and he saw no reason to change it now.

But even if Sophie had noticed she wouldn’t have cared much. For the first time in her life, she felt complete. She was smiling inside and out. She had finally found exactly what had been missing during all the years with no father in her life. Someone to champion her, someone to look after her, someone to fight her corner. Someone with big strong arms that she could snuggle up in. Someone who made her feel completely and utterly safe and protected.

The door to DCI Anderson’s office swung open and the senior officer leaned out and scanned the incident room. ‘Hill,’ he barked, ‘can I borrow you for a mo?’

DI Hill put down the pile of papers he was sorting and wove his way through the maze of desks and filing cabinets. By the time he pushed open the door of the office, Anderson was back behind his desk, hovering over a handful of photographs.

‘I want you to go back and see Miller’s widow,’ he said without looking up. ‘I know it’s a rough time but we need to ask her a bunch of follow-up questions. I’ve managed to get hold of a few pictures of Chadwick, his car and some of the places he used to hang about. I want to see if she recognizes anything. It’s a bit of a long shot, but we need to know for sure whether there’s any connection between our victims. I’m sure you treated her with every sympathy the first time around, so she’ll feel comfortable talking to you again.’

Hill nodded. ‘No problem. But I can’t do it until the morning – I’m seeing Miller’s mother and sister in an hour or so … unless you want me to cancel.’

Anderson frowned momentarily. ‘That’s what I get for not checking the action logs. No, stick with your plan. I’ll get copies of the snaps for you to show the relatives and put someone else on this job.’

Anderson followed Hill to the door of his office. He looked around the incident room until his eyes fixed on a dark-haired woman with a bored expression on her face as she tapped entries into her computer.

‘Collins! Come into my office when you have a minute.’

*

Sandra Miller lived in a small three-storeyed terraced house that was on the edge of a trendy new development in Thamesmead. She opened the door and led the way into the compact ground-floor kitchen. Collins sat down at a breakfast table in the far corner and watched while the widow made tea for them both. Miller looked thoroughly exhausted and seemed to be moving in slow motion.

‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,’ Collins began when Miller finally joined her at the table. ‘I don’t think I’ll need to take up much of your time. I can only imagine what you are going through right now, and I don’t want to make things any more difficult for you than they already are.’

Miller smiled weakly. ‘It’s so weird. I just don’t know how to feel. We were together for fourteen years. Those first couple of years, I used to say I was full of sunshine whenever I was with him. He was the love of my life back then. But those feelings never last, do they? People change. You end up wanting different things.’

She paused for a moment, lost in her thoughts, before continuing. ‘When he went missing, I guess I always knew it was possible that he had died. I thought I had accepted that I’d never see him again. But now that I know he’s dead for sure, it’s come like a bolt out of the blue. I’m all over the place.’

Miller eyed Collins carefully while taking a noisy slurp of her tea. ‘Am I a suspect?’

The question took Collins by surprise. ‘Do you think you should be?’

‘They questioned me when he went missing, of course. And then that whole business with Leroy. I thought maybe you’d found something that implicated me.’

Somewhere deep inside, Collins’s senses were tingling. It was screamingly obvious that Sandra Miller was not being treated as a suspect and that this meeting was entirely informal. They were talking in her kitchen, not at a police station, she was not under caution, and Collins had come without any back-up. There was only one reason that Miller would have asked a question like that: she had something to hide. And from that moment on Stacey Collins was absolutely determined to find out exactly what it was.

‘So far as we can tell, you were the last person to see Edward alive, so that means you’re vital to the inquiry. The reason I’m here is to find out if you can recall something that might help us when it comes to tracking down your husband’s killer.’

Collins spent the next ten minutes employing the softly, softly approach, trying to ease her way into the more sensitive questions by starting out with innocuous ones: how Sandra and her late husband had met, where they had worked, what hobbies they had and so on. Only once she felt sure her subject was sufficiently relaxed did she show her the photographs given to her by DCI Anderson.

‘Do you recognize this man?’

Sandra took the picture and held it directly in front of her. It showed Raymond Chadwick wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie, holding up a glass of champagne and toasting the photographer. It had clearly been taken at some kind of upmarket social function.

‘No. I’ve never seen him before.’

‘There’s another picture here,’ said Collins, ‘a little more formal. It’s from his last passport.’

Miller took the second print. This one showed Chadwick stony-faced staring directly at the camera. It looked a little like a police mugshot.

‘I really don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. Should I have?’

‘I need you to think very hard about it. It could be important.’

‘Do you think he killed Edward?’

‘Actually,’ said Collins, ‘he’s another one of the victims. His body was found along with that of your husband.’

‘Was he married?’

Again the question took Collins by surprise. ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

Miller’s eyes flicked upwards and to the left before she spoke. Collins spotted it right away and knew that whatever was said next would be a lie. ‘I just wonder how his wife is coping,’ said Miller. ‘I mean, this is something you never really think you’ll have to go through. Losing someone like that. I don’t know anyone else who it’s happened to.’

Collins could sense that a part of Miller was desperate to open up, to get things off her chest. She moved towards her and placed a reassuring hand on her arm to encourage her to go on, hoping she would eventually reveal the truth.

‘What I can’t work out is how I’m supposed to feel,’ Miller continued. ‘What I’m supposed to feel. I don’t know if I’m doing it right. I don’t think I feel sad enough; I don’t think I feel enough grief. To be honest, I just feel relieved.’

Collins nodded. ‘Sometimes it takes a little while to sink in. It’s the shock. You’ve been in limbo for a long time, and now that’s over a kind of relief is quite natural. We have some very good family liaison officers and victim support can be –’

‘No, it’s not that,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s that I don’t feel any guilt, I don’t feel any sadness.’ She looked at Collins, her face deadly serious. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

Collins held her stare for a few moments, silently urging her to continue.

Miller nodded wearily. ‘In the end I couldn’t take it any more. The lack of intimacy. He wouldn’t even so much as hold my hand, let alone kiss me or make love to me. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone that you love lying just a few inches away from you in bed night after night and knowing that they don’t have even the slightest interest in you?

‘I’d actually been to see a couple of solicitors about getting a divorce, but I don’t think Edward would have consented. He wasn’t interested in me as a wife, but it suited him socially to be able to say that he was married.’

Collins understood instantly. There were countless married men she had come across over the years who were habitually unfaithful but had no intention of ending their marriages. They went from one fling to another – usually with younger, easily manipulated women – but would never allow any relationship to get serious. The fact that they had a wife at home who would take them to the cleaners in the event of a divorce was always the perfect excuse. The affair would continue until the other woman finally accepted she was on a hiding to nothing and walked away. The man would then move on to his next victim. He would, in essence, have the best of both worlds.

‘Was he seeing someone else?’

‘He was always on the lookout. I wasn’t his type any more.’

‘You told my colleague that you thought he was trying to replace you with a younger model.’

Miller snorted with laughter. ‘He was trying to. Bars, clubs, lonely hearts. Even those contact magazines.’

Collins sat back and took a good look at Sandra Miller. Although her hair was in need of a wash and she was dressed shabbily and seemed tired, her skin was like porcelain. Her hands were also flawless and wrinkle-free. She was slim, toned and petite. Scrubbed up, Collins reckoned she could easily pass for a student.

‘You’re not exactly old yourself.’

‘Too old for him,’ she said quietly.

‘How old is that?’

‘I’m thirty-two.’

Collins frowned as she did the calculation in her head. Miller guessed what she was up to and gave her the answer she was searching for. ‘We got married just after my eighteenth birthday. He was thirty-two.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘My mother was horrified.’

‘That’s quite some age gap.’

Miller suddenly sat forward. ‘When we first got married, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We had some amazing times back then.’

‘So you think Edward wanted to re-create those early days by finding himself a younger woman, someone who reminded him of the way you used to be when he first met you?’

Miller began shaking her head furiously. ‘No, no, you don’t understand. I always looked very young for my age. Always. Up until three years ago I still had to show ID before I could get served in the pub. People who didn’t know us, they thought I was his daughter. That’s how young I looked. And he loved it. He absolutely loved it. That was the point. The whole point. I was so naive back then that I couldn’t see it myself, not for years and years. You see, he never wanted to be with a woman. He wanted to be with a girl. A little girl.’