Parker saw where she was looking, and grimaced. “Sorry. Like I said, everything is a mess here at the moment.” He stood up and moved around to the front of the desk. Heather, guessing he was about to put the evidence bags away, glared intently at the rock.

“Evidence collected from the school Fiona Graham worked at. Works at.” He sighed, going to put the tray out of sight. “The forensics is faster down here, so we’re doing what we can to fast track everything.”

“The rock, it’s— ”

“This? One of the presents from her schoolchildren.”

She wanted to snatch it up, to feel the weight of it. It was probably nothing. Hearts drawn on objects was hardly rare, but she couldn’t help thinking of the empty flowerpot in her mother’s garden. The crude renderings appearing on a murdered woman’s belongings. The note left in her bathroom. Hadn’t someone on the Internet claimed that the Red Wolf ate the hearts of his victims? A chill ran down her spine. Part of her wanted to point this out to Parker, to leap on something that smelt like a clue, but at the same time she couldn’t help seeing herself through his eyes: a recently bereaved woman, raving about her mother’s terracotta plant pots. She’d sound like a crazy person. And if he thought she was crazy, he might not let her talk to Michael Reave again, and with that would vanish any chance of her getting some answers about her mother.

“Found anything? I mean,” Heather cleared her throat. “I mean, do you think the killer sent Fiona Graham a birthday card?”

Parker shrugged. “Violent criminals have certainly done weirder things. And naturally, we have to check everything. Which is why …”

He raised his eyebrows at her, and Heather remembered the bag on her lap.

“Oh yeah. Well.” She pulled the photo from the front pocket, glancing at it quickly before she handed it over. On the way to the station she had started to worry that her hunch was ridiculous, that she was seeing things in the photo that just weren’t there, but the stone heart on Parker’s desk had changed all that.

“Hmm. We have the photo of the photo you sent, but as you can imagine, it’s better to see it in the flesh.” He smudged his thumb across the surface. “It certainly feels like a real photograph.”

“You think I’d fake it?” Despite herself, Heather was slightly amused by the idea.

Parker glanced up. “You’d be surprised at the weird stuff people do, Miss Evans, especially around cases like this. Do you know where this was taken?” Parker was frowning at the photo now, looking troubled. She had half expected him to immediately dismiss it, but he was turning it around in his hands, looking for a date that wasn’t there.

“As best I can remember, a little summer fete somewhere outside of London.” Parker glanced up at her. “I know, but you can see how old I was. Having said that,” she tipped her head to one side slightly, trying to picture her infrequent childhood day trips. She couldn’t stop thinking about the roughly scratched shape of the heart. “We tended to go to Kent or Essex on days out. Southend maybe. Places like that.”