As she opened her eyes to first light the next morning, Janine felt a skinny arm brush against hers. Tom had joined her during the night. Now he smiled at her, his eyes alert. She leant over to kiss him and he squealed. ‘Watch out, you’ll squash Frank.’
Oh, for pity’s sake. ‘Tell him to shove over, then.’
‘Frank can fly,’ Tom said seriously. ‘He’s like me, ‘cept he can fly.’
Janine grunted.
‘You know in heaven,’ Tom said, ‘do you stay with your family?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, would Dad be with us?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What if you had two Dads?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘And Tina? Would she go with us?’
Relentless logic. Janine had had enough of this conversation. ‘I think the idea of heaven is that everybody’s happy and everybody gets on.’
Tom turned to her, his face suddenly taut with anxiety, his eyes huge. ‘Mummy, I don’t want to die.’
She felt her heart clutch and she reached out to hug him. ‘Oh, darling, nobody wants to die. You won’t die for a long, long, long time.’
‘How do you know?’ he demanded. He didn’t mention Ann-Marie, didn’t need to.
‘I just do,’ she insisted. ‘Nearly everybody lives to be older than Grandma and Grandpa. And you will. And heaven will have all your favourite things in and all the people you like.’
‘And Frank?’
‘And Frank,’ she agreed.
Butchers caught her before she left home to tell her that they had confirmation on the blood from the boot of the car. It was Rosa’s.
Finding each piece of the puzzle brought mixed feelings for Janine: the thrill of success, of making headway and the more melancholy acceptance of what it betrayed of the victim’s last hours.
The relatively small amount of blood indicated that Rosa had already been dead when she had been placed there – her heart no longer pumping. Janine mentally ticked off what they knew so far: Rosa Milicz’s battered corpse had been carried in the boot of the stolen car, she had been put in the river at the dye works, Gleason had been there and most likely Stone. The men had stolen the car from Harper, Stone’s boss, and later they had accidentally killed Ann-Marie. After being questioned and released, someone, in all probability Stone, had shot Gleason. There was still a long way to go but they were moving in the right direction.
She rang Richard and shared the news. ‘I’ve postponed the briefing. I’m going to pay a call on Harper,’ she told him. ‘He must have known Rosa was here illegally. I want to see what he has to say for himself. Do you want to meet me there?’
