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She picks up the bottle to pour their water.
‘Right, well, the series a couple before that was about the Camilla Rowan case. You know, the girl who was convicted of killing her baby, who’d been pregnant three times and no one knew, even though she was still living with her mum and dad?’
Stillwell nods slowly. ‘I remember. I think I watched that too.’
‘The thing is, after the series was broadcast, the baby turned up again, twenty-odd years later. Only to end up shot point-blank in the face, poor bastard. And the reasonweknow about it is that it happened in an OAP’s kitchen just outside Oxford. It was our case.’
‘Shit –’
Sargent reaches for her cutlery. ‘Infamousdid a follow-up special about it and wanted to interview Fawley, but he politely declined.’
She grins. ‘To think, he could have been the next Dermot Murnaghan. Only better looking, obvs.’
Stillwell lets out a long whistle. ‘And now the same lot are involved in this.’
‘It’s not just that,’ says Ev. ‘According to what Bradley says here, Robin Tierney was working on something in the UK, something with a potentially “explosive” new angle.’
‘You think that could have been the Mason case?’
Ev shrugs. ‘Well, it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? And as for “explosive”, a dead child who’s not onlynotdead, but actually colluded in her own disappearance and got her own mother banged up for life? Ateight years old? I’d say that ticks the box.’
Sargent puts her drink down and nods towards the phone. ‘What does Fawley say?’
Ev checks the screen. ‘He hasn’t replied yet – they’ve hit traffic on their way back from Heathrow. But Quinn’s just askedme and Gis to try to track down the producer at Dry Riser.’ She looks up. ‘I guess if anyone knows what Robin Tierney was working on, he does.’
***
‘Triona? It’s Barbie Markey. I’m still at the house.’
She looks down at the floor around her feet. At the soft blue glow of the Luminol that’s just starting to subside.
‘I think you can proceed with confidence on the basis that this is your crime scene.’
‘What have you got?’
Markey can hear the sounds of traffic in the background – Bradley must be in a car.
‘Significant bloodstain in the sitting room. I’ll send you a pic but it’s right by the front door. Someone’s done a more than passable job of cleaning up but flagstones like this are porous so you’re never going to get it all out whatever you do. There’s also a bloody great mirror with a spiky frame that looks to me like a good candidate for that wound we found on the side of Tierney’s head. I’m taking a mould.’
‘Prints?’
‘Not much. Like I said, someone’s put in some serious elbow grease here. And not just the perp. The cleaners have been in too. Twice.’
‘OK,’ says Bradley. ‘Will you be able to get DNA from the bloodstain?’
‘Maybe. Depends if they used bleach. It does the job but there’s no way the Stirlings wouldn’t have noticed the smell when they got back, especially in this weather and no windows open, so we may get lucky.’
‘Fingers crossed – thanks for letting me know.’
Markey glances across at Bell, who’s beckoning to be given the phone. ‘Bell found something too – I’ll pass him over.’
Bell takes the mobile. ‘Hello?’
‘What’ve you got, Bell?’
‘A mobile, Sarge, found it under the settee. Alistair Stirling says it’s deffo not theirs, and he can’t remember Robin having one like it either, but he hasn’t seen her for a while, so that doesn’t really prove anything. I’ve put in a call to the cleaners just to double-check it wasn’t left by them.’
‘Good call. Did you try turning it on?’