Chapter Eighteen

Phyllida Flyte's early morning visit left Cassie fuming. It felt as if their relationship had rewound to a time before they'd overcome their mutual suspicion to cooperate on cases and become almost-friends. Almost-lovers even.

After work she took a bag of washing down to the laundrette and went over the morning's encounter again as she loaded the machine. It dawned on her that Flyte had simply been putting on the tough cop act. It must be difficult for her being a freshly minted civilian after all those years in the police and she could hardly act chummy in front of her minder, the ginger gorilla in the brown suit.

She'd brought along some acetone and a bottle of nail varnish and once her clothes were lazily churning in a machine, cleaned off her old chipped polish and started to apply a fresh coat with practised strokes. Replaying Flyte's questions about whether there were any signs of violence on Bronte's body she wondered whether she was just going through the motions as part of her IOPC remit. Or did she suspect there was something off about the suicide conclusion?

The laundrette was empty, and as Cassie focused on each long stroke of varnish, the only sound the chug-chug of the washer, she drifted into a meditative state. Bored with her go-to black she was trying a new shade called Hades, the darkest red – the colour of long-dried blood. She pictured Bronte's nails, which had been painted black.

After finishing the second coat she was waving her hands about to speed up the drying process when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. A face, reflected in the half-open glass porthole of one of the machines. Bronte, one side of her face a livid purple, her lips moving angrily.

What the .?.?.?!

She jumped up, twisting to check behind her. Nothing . Her heart going like a drum machine, she looked back at the glass porthole. The face had gone. But the image was still imprinted on her retina: Bronte had looked furious. Furious with her .

She must have clenched her fists in shock because on her right palm she saw a scatter of dark-red varnish, like the dried blood of a bad graze.

Like the abrasion on Bronte's palm, which Curzon had dismissed as an injury sustained in the fall .

Cassie knocked on the door of the lady who did the service washes. ‘Sorry, Bella, I need to leave my stuff. There's something I forgot to do.'

*

It was dusk by the time she reached the mortuary, and making straight for Bronte's drawer in the body store Cassie unzipped her body bag to the waist. She half expected her to be wearing the expression she'd glimpsed in the glass – not fury, perhaps, but definitely exasperation, like Cassie was being unbelievably stupid. But her still, waxwork features looked neutral above the locket with the filigree cross which Chrysanthi had put around her daughter's neck.

‘Look, Bronte, I need to check you over again, OK?' After pulling on some gloves, Cassie took her right hand – cold as sin but pliable again now that rigor had long passed – and turned it over. The black-red abrasion on the right palm and extending up the inside of the fingers was just as she remembered. Reaching for the left hand she turned it palm upwards, and angling it into the harsh fluorescent light, she thought she could make out some lighter grazing there, too.

What had come to her in the laundrette after ‘seeing' Bronte was the idea that these injuries weren't as Curzon had suggested – sustained by chance during the fall – but the result of Bronte deliberately grabbing hold of something to save herself, however briefly.

Cassie turned the hand palm down and examined the black-painted fingernails: the varnish had largely survived the fall. Soaking a hank of cotton wool with some nail polish remover, she started to clean the middle fingernail of Bronte's right hand.

Her breathing grew faster as the layers of black gradually started to surrender, revealing the natural nail beneath.

Thirty seconds later, staring down at the varnish-free nail, she felt suddenly light-headed.

The pear-drop reek of the acetone clawed at her throat, the gurgle of the fridge grew oppressively loud, and she felt herself free-falling into the familiar state that was both dreamy yet hyper-real. She looked down at Bronte's face.

‘ I don't want to die .'

The words seemed to shimmer off the still, waxen face – sounding plaintive but not desperate. And anything but suicidal.