‘Or Gleason. We know Gleason was here. He could have killed her?’
‘Not got the same reputation, though. I can’t see Gleason doing it. Let’s stick with Stone. But he ropes Gleason in to help him get rid of the evidence.’
‘Yes. Ditch the body, torch the car. But then the hit and run blows the thing wide open.’
Janine stopped, put a hand up to stop her hair blowing in her eyes. ‘We know the car was nicked Monday night, why didn’t they dump it sooner?’
‘Enjoying the ride?’
‘Could be – or maybe it was the other way around. What if they took the car, planning to flog it? As long as Harper never twigged they could clear what, ten, twelve grand?’
Richard nodded.
‘Then while they’ve got it, later that night, early morning, Rosa comes into the picture. Stone tries it on, she tells him where to go, he throttles her. They bring her here, get rid. Sometime after that they hit Ann-Marie.’
‘Then we pull them in but they walk, vanish as soon as they get a chance,’ Richard said.
‘And things go sour between them. Stone kills Gleason. Gleason knows far too much. Stone can’t trust him to keep quiet; Gleason’s a bag of nerves, a walking time bomb.’
‘So Stone spins him some story, takes him to the tunnel and shoots him.’
They reached Richard’s car. Janine looked back to the riverside, narrowing her eyes against the cold wind. ‘If the tyre prints match we need to see if forensics have got anything for us from the car.’
She got the news by five that afternoon. Blood in the boot. She’d expected it but the confirmation made her back crawl. Now they just needed to see if it was Rosa’s.
When Marta had told the others that Rosa was dead, that she’d been murdered, Zofia crossed herself and Petra swore.
‘I knew it was something awful,’ Petra announced.
‘But why,’ Zofia asked, horror vivid in her eyes, ‘why would anyone do that?’
‘She wanted to leave,’ Marta said.
‘But who…’ Zofia was never very bright.
‘Someone stopped her.’
‘You think the boss…?’ Petra caught on.
Marta raise her eyebrows a fraction. ‘It makes most sense to me.’
‘The bastard, the lousy prick.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Zofia looked nervously at them.
‘What can we do? Nothing. Keep our traps shut and carry on.’ Inside, Marta felt sick with fear.
‘There must be something…’ Zofia carried on.
‘And end up like she did?’ Marta shouted.
Zofia shrank back, her eyes filling. She was only seventeen and emotionally even younger. A soft egg, as her babka would say. The men liked that, the schoolgirl looks, the naivety. The sadists liked her best of all, her cries were so real, her pleas rang so true.
