Nine Lives, Anita Waller [best interesting books to read .txt] 📗

opened up the files she had spent all day collating, asked Alexa, the tiny round machine she found invaluable, to play her some piano music, and settled down to work.

Six names were on her list, all men who had been given long sentences in twenty-fourteen, and were out in the community once more. There were no women, and she wondered if she hadn’t looked in the right place.

By the end of the evening Beth was at the hot chocolate stage, and satisfied that she had a core list of eight – seven men and one woman who came into the particular time frame. There had been others she could discount – too infirm, too elderly, residing out of the country, and she ruled out anybody living too far north or too far south. She closed down her laptop, blew out the candles and made her way upstairs feeling satisfied with the work she had done, and more than satisfied that she had kept Evan out of her home and at the same time turned it into a warm, comfortable haven.

She checked the road as she closed the curtains, then checked again before getting into bed. There was no sign of her ex-partner, and sleep came easily for the first time in weeks.

It was almost eleven before Erica and Frannie went to bed. After eating their curry-topped jacket potatoes they talked – Frannie explaining what had happened at the meeting, how they would check on the children causing them concern for one more week, then it would be decision time as to whether they would be taken into care or left with their inadequate parents.

‘How do you feel about it?’ Erica had seen the quiet times when the children had been on Frannie’s mind, and she knew it was a really difficult decision they would have to make as a group.

‘It’s a poisonous atmosphere these children live in, but it’s going to devastate the mother if we remove them. The father is a horrible man, never seems to be sober, and controls everything. If we could remove him and put him in care it would solve everything. We could give the mother the support she needs to get her clean of both alcohol and drugs, which in turn would make the lives of the children so much better, but that’s not how it works.’

Erica nodded. She had seen the same scenario so many times, felt the same anguish Frannie was feeling at the unfairness of a situation. ‘And everyone is of the same mind?’

‘Everybody is of the mind that we should kill him, painfully, and then give the help that’s needed. But we’ve all agreed in principle that it can’t go on for much longer, so we’ll have a meeting in seven days, and if nothing has changed we have to get those children to a place of safety. We’ll sort visitations out once they’re settled. The appointments will be carefully monitored, and there’ll have to be massive lifestyle improvements before these children are allowed back to the family home. So, lovely lady, how’s your case progressing? Anything you can talk through with me?’

Erica laughed. ‘I can talk anything through with you. I think we’ve been together long enough to know that trust is a major component of our relationship. If only there was something to talk through…’

‘It’s not progressing well?’ Frannie frowned at her wife.

‘It’s progressing marginally because two of the girls who share that student accommodation have been killed, so we can see the pattern. We’ve removed the other two to the safe house so hopefully that’s stopped him, even if it’s only temporarily.’

‘It’s definitely a he, then?’

‘I think it has to be. The terrain on the banks of the Porter is pretty rough in places, and to be carrying a body in that area isn’t going to be easy, so I’m not convinced a woman would have the physical strength for it.’

‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, Erica, but if you saw some of the women who go to my gym, you’d change your mind about that. The women who work mainly with the weights are proper tough cookies, could easily carry a body. But you’re right, carrying it on a slippery riverbank is different to picking up a weight and lowering it to its resting place on a block.’

Erica sighed. ‘I know. This killer hasn’t been off my mind for five years now. He or she might have gone quiet, and I know there’s a reason for that, but they’re back and I have to find who it is. We start tomorrow with interviews. We need to find out what the connection is that led this fuckwit to our girls, and let’s face it, the one thing they do have in common above all else is the university.’

‘Fuckwit. Love it. Professor Fuckwit of Sheffield University. It has quite a ring to it.’ She clasped hold of Erica’s hand. ‘You’ll find him, I know you will. You’re not a lowly DS anymore, Cheetham, you set the rules. Go get him.’

12

Erica was getting out of bed when the telephone rang. She grabbed at it hoping to silence it before it woke Frannie who finally seemed to have dropped off to sleep. They had both had a disturbed night, and she knew Fran didn’t have any early meetings scheduled. She slipped quietly out of the bedroom before speaking.

‘Morning.’

‘Morning, ma’am. It’s PC Fisher, front desk.’

‘That’s fine as long as you’re not ringing me to tell me we have another body.’

There was a moment of silence, and she guessed he was trying to decide whether she was joking or not.

He decided she wasn’t. ‘Sorry, DI Cheetham. A dog walker has reported finding a body. A female. He says she’s naked, so I guess she’s yours.’

‘Where’s the body?’

‘A bit downriver from where everybody was yesterday. The man who rang it in is a bit shaken up, but he says he can see the police tape around the previous site. Who do you want