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  Tanya shook her head. “Not until the TV appeal and that surprised us all, seemed like a spur of the moment thing, but I guess we should put it in the mix, it’s a good point. You would have thought he’d have said something, there was no engagement ring in the evidence, just this little silver one.” She picked up the small plastic bag and turned it to catch the light.

  “She wouldn’t have the dress though, would she?” Sue said, “I mean if they were so near to a wedding that she actually had the dress he’d have said so, I can’t believe he wouldn’t. You only get them a week or so before. There’s nothing on his Facebook page, or hers, it would have all been there, wouldn’t it?”

  Paul spoke again, quieter this time, “Could be it’s a family thing. My wife’s mother kept hers I think. She’s got a sister, younger. I think the plan is to use it again. Mind you she’ll have to get some of the lard off her backside first.” He laughed, but when nobody joined in he lowered his head, embarrassed, and sipped at his coffee.

  Tanya wrote a couple of notes on the board, names beside the images, Sue for the dress, Paul for the church. She nodded at him, “Will you make it a priority to find out what you can about the grave? It’s old I know, but we need to know who’s in it and what have you. Maybe someone’s bride is in there, the vicar is expecting someone to come and look at the church records, it might give us a hint. Why was she put there? Why was the body arranged like that? Surely, that’s got to tell us something. And there’s this.”

  She held up an evidence bag, jiggling it to catch the light. “It looks like that stuff you put on Christmas trees, what do you call it?”

  “Tinsel.”

  “Thanks Dan, yeah. Tinsel. Apart from the usual stuff, fag ends, bits of paper, dead flower stalks, this was the only thing that was a bit out of the ordinary.”

  “Where was it?” Kate stood and leaned over her desk to have a closer look.

  Tanya turned to look at Kate as she spoke, “It was near the top of the grave, by the cross. I don’t know if that means much, it could simply be a bit of rubbish, but the graveyard is well kept, the grass cut regularly and all that. So, for the moment this is a mystery. There must have been hundreds of weddings over the last few years, but surely not many that go wrong in some way. So, bear that in mind when you speak to the vicar, Paul. We’re looking for someone being jilted I guess, anything we can think of going horribly wrong, that might turn someone, make them so bitter that they could do something like this.”

  She continued, “If we get an idea about how long ago the dress was sold that’ll possibly help. It’s the only thing we have to go on. What was the reason for him to pick on Sarah, did he know her – it’s likely – we’ll have to get a list of recent boyfriends, see if any of them proposed, were turned down and are bitter enough for this. But that doesn’t explain Millie. We just need to keep at it until something shakes loose. At the moment anything and everything is worth exploring so don’t hold back, any ideas at all, let’s share them.” Tanya paused and waited for them to answer.

  “Something I did think was a bit odd.” Sue had walked to the board, she pointed at the close up of the dress laid out on a table in the lab. “I mean, a wedding, it’s about the dress, yes, but it’s not just that, it’s the shoes, the headdress, flowers, garters, all sorts of things. The dress is the main thing I guess, but if you were trying to recreate a bride – well I don’t know, wouldn’t you do the whole thing, especially the flowers, a veil perhaps? They’ve spent some time haven’t they, taken a huge risk to make this tableau…” She pointed at the picture of the girl on the grave, and shrugged. “Just thinking aloud, but to me it seems like half a job. She’s barefoot, no bouquet, do you see where I’m going with it?”

  “Something else to bear in mind, Sue. Okay go home now, back in as early as you can make it tomorrow, let’s get on with this, yeah?”

  Chapter 18

  Before she left, Tanya rang the mortuary. She intended to leave a message, a reminder that they had another girl at risk, but a woman answered. She confirmed Simon Hewitt was still there but point blank refused to let her speak to him.

  “He’s busy, he needs to get home. It’s been a long day.” The receptionist sounded cranky, tired. “We’re all busy. Somebody will let you know as soon as he has something to tell you.”

  “Tonight?” Tanya asked.

  “Probably not tonight. Have you any idea what it’s like down here? I said, as soon as we have something.”

  “I’ll send one of my team over there in the morning.”

  “You can do that if you want but it won’t speed things up. I’ve already told you twice.”

  “Well, thanks for that.” She slammed the phone back into the cradle. “Bitch.”

  She glanced up, Charlie was watching from the doorway, grinning. She laughed. “I know, it’s not her fault and everybody’s busy but there’s Millie, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah. Look we’ve done all we can for now. There are people looking at the CCTV for the area, though to be honest, out in the sticks there isn’t much. You’ve got the team sorted for tomorrow. We might as well go home.”

  “Yes. Go on, you go. I’ll just finish up here.” With a wave of his hand, he’d gone.

  She went through it all again, stood in front of the boards, raised a hand to touch the picture of Sarah, nothing helped. She gathered up her things and left.

  * * *

  The house was quiet, calm, but she couldn’t settle, there was a nagging pain behind her eyes and her shoulders were tense and tight. She tried some stretching exercises. It helped a bit. She made tea, poured it away after the first sip, made toast and ate it standing by the window peering out at the damp road. Thoughts whirled and replayed over and over. What she needed was a time-out. She needed to think about something else, clear her head.

  She had been back in the house for just over a month now, waiting to be assigned, helping out in the Missing Persons division until this case had come up. It was her big chance and she couldn’t screw it up. She wouldn’t screw it up, but obsessing was unhealthy and pointless. She had done all that she could, now she had to wait for other people, frustrating as that was.

  Upstairs she had arranged to have new wardrobes fitted around two walls of the spare room. Once her tenants had moved out she had brought in the decorator and joiner, planned just what she wanted to take it back, make it hers again, and she needed the storage space. She had started the job of sorting and moving her things before she had the call from Bob Scunthorpe to join the Operation Archer team and she had dropped everything to read about it, catch up before she met Charlie Lambert, but now it would be a mindless sort of task to get back to.

  She looked at the boxes and the suitcases. There was too much, she knew she bought too much. It was so easy with the internet available twenty-four seven and she didn’t try very hard to fight the temptation to shop. It was no-one else’s business and she refused to feel guilty. She went in and flung open the doors, there were sensor lights, shelves, cupboards, drawers, all new and clean. It had cost an arm and a leg, but it had been worth it, it looked like something out of a magazine. She smiled.

  After an hour sorting, re-hanging, and discarding, she was satisfied; calmed, and tired. There were three bags of things for the tip. She’d stick them in the boot of the car and chuck them when she had time. Her work clothes were separated from the leisure wear, colour co-ordinated, organised. Her bags and shoes in plastic covers. She was satisfied. The niggle of the case had been there in the background, but her headache had gone, she felt less wound up. A long hot shower washed away the grime and the tension and minutes after she climbed under the duvet she was asleep.

  Chapter 19

  “Amanita virosa.”

  “I’m sorry?” Simon Hewitt was on the phone. He had a smooth voice, calm and soft. It was pleasant listening to him after the harridan that had answered the call. It was the same woman as yesterday, short tempered and defensive, who had made her wait to be conne
cted. Tanya had tutted and sucked her teeth.

  “She’s a bit of a bitch but she runs the place like clockwork.” Charlie had told her. “She’s not so bad once you get to know her and for heaven’s sake don’t get on the wrong side of her, you’ll never get through to anyone.”

  Now that she had him on the line the pathologist seemed to be speaking a foreign language.

  “Your poor lady. She died of poisoning. I was going to give you a call, thought I’d give you time to get organised.”

  Was that a complaint? Tanya glanced at her watch. Half past eight, the team were all in, everyone was working, so probably not; he was just being kind, considerate. She jotted down what she thought might be the correct spelling, or at least near enough to be able to Google it. “Where do you get that then? Is it one of those designer drugs?”

  He laughed, but she wasn’t offended, it wasn’t that sort of laugh. “No indeed. Far older than that and totally natural. The common name is Destroying Angel and it’s a fungus.”

  “Fungus, like erm…” She couldn’t think of an example that wasn’t disgusting, she remembered adverts for treatment of nail fungus, bathroom mould, and anyway was that fungus?

  He filled the silence, “Many people would say they were toadstools I suppose, but that’s not strictly true. It’s a common misconception that mushrooms are edible, and toadstools are not. Anyway, that’s what poisoned this lady. They are very common, grow in deciduous and oak woodland pretty much all summer, they are rather sneaky in that they do look a little like what you might call a supermarket mushroom, the sort you have with your breakfast, but no, these little blighters are not so innocent. Not innocent at all. They account for a number of deaths from poisoning each year. You have to really know what you’re about and far too many amateurs take to the woods with a nice little wicker basket which they happily load up with all sorts of problems. If you know what’s what, there are quite specific differences of course.”

  “So, she could have eaten them by accident?”

  “Well yes, she could have done, but that would be a little strange don’t you think? She would have been ill about ten hours later, maybe a little more. Very ill. Stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhoea, feeling very poorly. I doubt she would have been setting off on holiday, it doesn’t really fit with your timeline. Unless her kidnapper took her while she was ill, held her somewhere even though she was in great distress; an odd scenario I would have thought. Of course, you will probably want to question her family, anyone who ate with her in the hours before her disappearance, but to be frank, assuming they had the same meal, they would be dead by now or at the very least extremely ill.”

  “Could she have been given them without her knowing?”

  “It’s possible yes, in a drink maybe, something with the right flavour, not coffee but maybe herbal tea, a stew, a soup, maybe even in a salad or sandwich. You don’t need much, one cap is enough and if it was chopped small, well you wouldn’t notice it in a mixture of other flavours. I suppose whoever took her must have fed her and then it was just too late. I don’t know whether this will make you feel better or worse to be honest, but it would have made no difference when you found her.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Once she had ingested the poison she was, in effect, doomed.”

  “What if she had been given treatment though? If we’d found her sooner?”

  “I’m afraid not. There is no antidote, there is no treatment. Once in a while, if the problem is diagnosed quickly and the patient’s blood can be filtered through charcoal, the kidneys dialysed, maybe a liver transplant performed, and with a huge amount of luck, people have been saved but realistically, even these days, there is not much that can be done, recovery is a very, very long hard road and one would never be quite the same again.”

  “Would she have suffered, Doctor Hewitt?”

  “Call me Simon, please. Yes, I’m very much afraid she would, it would have been extremely unpleasant for her. I’ll send you my report but apart from that there isn’t much more to say. Her stomach was empty, no chance of deciding just what she had eaten to get the poison into her system. There was evidence of vomiting and diarrhoea, kidney and liver damage in keeping with my other findings, just what was to be expected. Nothing under her nails, which had been damaged, maybe by clawing to escape from somewhere. They were cleaned and then painted afterwards, presumably when she was dead. The varnish wasn’t chipped you see. As you surmised at the church she had been washed in bleach, her clothes, her hair everything. She hadn’t been tied up, not abused sexually or beaten. She was a fit young woman, nothing unusual.”

  “Except she was dead?”

  “Basically yes, except she was dead.”

  “I’ll let you get on, Inspector. If you need anything else, please give me a call.” He laughed, “If you can get past Moira.”

  Tanya turned to her screen, Googled the mushrooms, and decided after reading about them that she would never go picking mushrooms in the woods. She would even be a bit wary of the ones in the supermarket. She turned to Charlie. “God, Charlie, we’re on the edge, all the bloody time.”

  He waited for more but there wasn’t any. Tanya just turned back to her computer.

  Chapter 20

  “I’ve got an appointment with Bob Scunthorpe at half past ten.” As Tanya pushed away from her desk, slurping the last of her coffee, Charlie glanced at his watch.

  “Okay.”

  “Can you make sure everyone’s bang up to date, working on the tasks, got the paperwork sorted, all that stuff? Just in case.”

  “Just in case?”

  “Well, you know, just to make sure we’re not missing anything. That there’s nothing we should have done that we haven’t. I don’t want to leave any loose ends for him to tug at.”

  “I don’t see what there could be.”

  “I suppose not but I just feel as though we’re not moving very quickly, it seems stalled somehow. We haven’t found where she was kept, why she was taken, why she was left where she was. We didn’t save her, had no chance to really, and we still have Millie completely vanished.”

  “But, I don’t see how anyone else could have done more than we did. We had nothing to go on, no ideas at all and then, she was only found yesterday. I did everything I should have done, before you came, when she was still just a missing person.”

  Tanya turned to look at him. “I wasn’t criticising, Charlie, not for a minute, please know that. I just want to make sure this is watertight. I want to be certain there’s nothing that they can pick at later when they look at what we’ve done.” She turned without waiting for an answer and swung out of the office and down the corridor.

  Charlie looked through the office window at the murder board in the other room. He couldn’t think of anything more that they should have done but Tanya was right, it hadn’t been enough.

  * * *

  Tanya liked Bob Scunthorpe, he’d helped her in the past when she’d been a Detective Constable working with a difficult inspector. He smiled when she came in, offered her a seat and a coffee. Tanya sat but refused the drink. He pulled a thin brown file towards him across his desk, flipped it open and then raised his eyes to look at her. “Unfortunate.”

  “Yes sir. Very sad. Not the outcome we would have hoped for.”

  “Quite. How are you coping with it?”

  “Well, as I say, not what we would have hoped for. It was grim telling her boyfriend.”

  He nodded. “Never easy, good that you went yourself. Can you handle this, Tanya?”

  “I’ve worked on five murders, sir. The last one was the woman in the river. The fingers cut off. We had a good result on that one, the case seems pretty sound, shouldn’t be any problems when it comes to trial.”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “Inspector Stanley’s last case, we miss him. You were with him a fair bit I think. We were friends, Tony and I.”

  “Yes, he helped me prepare for my promotion, he taught me a lot, I felt as if I
was learning from one of the best.”

  Bob smiled. It was a bit of flannel, but she had meant it.

  “Sir, I’m going to solve this. She was only found yesterday. Until we get all the reports back there’s not too much to go on, but I’ll find whoever did this and I am going to work very hard to get Millie back safe and sound. They seem like a good team, I think they were a bit put out at first, understandably, but I don’t see any major problems and Detective Inspector Lambert has been very professional. It must have stung, me coming in but he’s been very supportive.”

  “I suppose you could say, sir, that it’s always been a murder.”

  “How’s that?”

  “As soon as she was given the poison, this Amanita virosa.”

  He glanced at the file, ran his finger down the page, and nodded.

  “As soon as she was given that, it was a murder, she just wasn’t dead yet.” As she said it, it sounded awful to her ears. It was too late to take it back. She bit her tongue.

  “Good point, nasty but true. Right.” He flipped the file closed. “No problems with Kate?”

  “No sir.” Tanya shook her head.

  “Good, she has had issues in the past. She isn’t far from retirement, sometimes that makes it difficult for officers working with younger colleagues of a higher rank. It’s good if she’s settled with you.”

  Tanya made a mental note: Keep an eye on Kate. Make sure she’s happy.

  The Chief Inspector pushed the file aside. “I have faith in you Tanya, Tony always spoke highly of you.” He noticed her smile, gave a small lift of his head in response. “Tanya, don’t let pride get in the way. If you need help; if you find you’re floundering, my door is open. There’s no shame in requesting assistance. Okay?”

  “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Good luck.”

  Tanya nodded.

  “I think that now you must make the missing woman a priority. Sarah Dickinson is dead, it’s unfortunate but make Millie Roberts a priority. Let’s see if we can save her.”