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She had introduced him to the Marshes simply as ‘Tim’ and taken him up to her room and closed the door. She wondered whether they thought she and Tim were having sex. It couldn’t be helped. When she’d called the previous night, Marvel hadn’t wanted Danny and Alan alerted to the fact that they were under suspicion. He had asked her if she felt OK about remaining in the house and she’d said ‘yes’, because to say ‘no’ would have made her look weak. Actually the thought of staying there made her feel sick inside, the way she used to feel right before walking out of the wings in school plays. But being here with Tim doing his thing was fine. She hoped she would feel the same way once he left.

Tim had found a latent print going out of the window, underneath the visible one she’d first spotted. He had photographed the visible print with a Polaroid camera so that she could match it to the Marshes’ shoes. She would have to do that in secret.

Secret stuff connected to a murder inquiry should have been exciting, but the thought of sneaking into Alan and Danny’s bedrooms and going through their shoes made her feel slightly ashamed. They were bereaved; they were nice enough to her; Danny was quite fanciable in a lost-dog kind of way. She wished she didn’t have to treat them as suspects while eating their cornflakes.

* * *

‘She’s great,’ said Reynolds as he hung up on Kate Gulliver.

‘We’ll see,’ grunted Marvel and flushed an old coffee filter down the Portaloo in the mobile unit.

‘She says,’ said Reynolds, then flicked back and forth through his notebook before finding his place. ‘She says the fixation on the elderly is almost certainly a product of resentment of a parent or parents.’ He looked up at Marvel, who rolled his eyes and made a little sound that said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

Reynolds was undaunted. ‘Gary Liss had to give up his job to nurse his father, didn’t he?’

‘And Peter Priddy had to give up his inheritance to pay for his mother’s care,’ countered Marvel. He didn’t know what it was that drove him to take issue with Reynolds even when he agreed with him. He hoped the spirit of debate was good for the investigation, but had a sneaking suspicion that it was not. He needed to try to curb that propensity for unmotivated bolshiness.

‘Well yes,’ said Reynolds, made generous by his fleeting contact with what he considered to be a similar intellect. ‘But her hypothesis is that it might go beyond material deprivation and into the arena of physical or emotional abuse.’

The arena of physical or emotional abuse. The arena! Seriously, sometimes Marvel just felt like punching Reynolds and getting it over with. He wished now that he had spoken to Kate Gulliver, who was also ridiculously self-important, but at least he’d now be the one imparting information to Reynolds, instead of the other way round.

‘So Liss could have been beaten by his mother and is now killing other people’s mothers in revenge. In layman’s terms.’

‘Right. Or fathers. Remember Lionel Chard.’

Marvel did. And that did put a new spin on things. Serial killers generally worked within certain parameters when it came to victims. Boys, or teenaged girls, or prostitutes with green eyes. The sex of the victims was often immutable.

‘So if Liss is a serial killer he’s changing his parameters, or had different ones all along.’

‘Right.’

‘Changing parameters and method.’

‘Yeah,’ said Reynolds less confidently. ‘Maybe two killers? Working together? We’ve got the footprint at the Marsh house.’

Marvel made a face that said he wasn’t in love with that theory.

‘Or maybe it’s not a serial killer at all. Kate says some elements feel more like the work of a spree killer due to the compact time frame and the number of—’

‘She’s reaching,’ interrupted Marvel.

‘So are we,’ said Reynolds defensively.

‘You’ll be saying next that Liss had permission from Peter Priddy and Alan Marsh to kill!’

Reynolds looked wounded. ‘I’m just trying to run through every possibility, that’s all. I’m just trying to help.’

‘I know,’ sighed Marvel, which was as close as he’d ever come to apologizing to Reynolds for anything – even that time he’d run over his foot with the Ford Focus.

Encouraged, Reynolds continued to postulate. As he opened and closed his mouth like one of his precious guppies, Marvel stopped listening and started thinking.

He had felt lost on this case, but now they had a bona fide suspect. Few things pointed to a killer like fleeing the scene of a murder. It was a hard action to justify and Marvel felt relief spreading through him like liquor.

Gary Liss.

Finally!

A male nurse. Statistics showed they were not unlikely serial killers. Boredom and distaste masquerading as mercy.

Although poisoning or neglect were the usual methods employed by nurses who killed.

And Yvonne Marsh had never been in the care of Gary Liss.