Chapter 47

47

Back on the beach, Elin's phone is loudly trilling.

She's half expecting it to be Will, wondering why she hasn't gotten back to him, but it's a number she hasn't seen since before her career break.

Mieke , one of the forensic pathologists. "I'm finishing up Bea Leger's PM. Wounds are consistent with a fall from that height and cause of death is from the head injury, as you'd probably guessed, but there are a few things that might be of interest. I've found something a little odd: a trace residue of a powdery substance in her mouth; it's collected around her gumline, very small amounts on some of her teeth."

A powder.

Elin tenses. There's no way of knowing if it's the same substance she saw near Seth's mouth, but if it is, then it definitively links his death with Bea's. "Any idea what it is?"

"Can't say until we get the analysis back from the lab, but it looks to me like limestone powder. I've seen it before, a quarry worker. His machinery tipped over and took him with it. We found something similar on him."

"Could she have picked it up in the fall?"

There's a pause. "I'd say no. The powder is specific to the quarrying process, working directly with the limestone itself. It implies it hasn't been processed, so it can't be from a post-production environment, such as a factory."

"Right," Elin says, and as Mieke speaks, something occurs to her, something she hadn't given a thought to until now.

The quarry on the island.

Will had referenced it a few times, described how the old school had been constructed from limestone quarried on the island. He'd repurposed some for the build—in the interiors, the reception and communal areas.

Mieke continues: "I suspect she picked the powder up from somewhere or someone. Some kind of transfer."

Elin mulls it over, Seth's potential involvement in Bea's death.

It's possible that he could have transferred the powder somehow. But if that's the case, why would he have been in the quarry? Somewhere to stash the drugs?

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Hard to see probably, initially, given the lividity, but I'm pretty sure we've got some bruising on her arms. The pattern is faint, but it looks to me like fingermarks. I need to take a proper look, but..."

Elin pulls in her breath: fingermarks that might have resulted from pulling Bea Leger over that balustrade.

"I'm taking from the pause that this makes things more complicated," Mieke says softly.

"A little. Let me know if you find anything else."

Saying goodbye, Elin thinks it through, a chill working up her spine. The evidence is overwhelmingly pulling her in one direction: Bea Leger didn't simply fall. She, too, was murdered.

If that's the case, then Mieke's observations might be one of the few leads Elin has to understand what and who is behind these deaths. Once she's spoken to Will, they need to go to the quarry.

Despite what had happened with the rock a few moments ago, her unease with the island, the thought gives her a sharp frisson of excitement, the same she'd had on the beach.

Every fiber in her body is jangling with energy. She feels alive. Vibrantly alive.