‘Will you come in for dinner?’

‘You mean for some moral support? I’ll go home and get showered first.’

They kissed and she got out of the car. Her cottage was a five-minute walk from Johnny’s house. When she got in, she clicked on her iPad for any updates and saw an email from Ted. She opened it and saw that it was an invitation to attend a forensic conference with him at Lancaster University. There were to be several guest speakers and he suggested grabbing dinner with his other daughters, June and Amber. She replied and said she’d check her diary, and if she was able to, then she’d love to. They’d met once before. It had been a success and Kelly liked both of the women. They were like their father: easy going, calm and kind, unless they were bickering. Maybe that’s why Ted thought that her relationship with Nikki could be salvaged, because they merely bickered. But he didn’t see underneath it. He probably assumed that all sisters squabbled. His daughters both lived in Lancaster with their partners, and so Ted saw them frequently. She hadn’t asked why there were no grandchildren; it was none of her business, but she knew that Ted would have loved some. For now, Josie was fulfilling that role.

In his email, Ted also confirmed that the curved knife at Mary’s house couldn’t have been the second blade; the shape wasn’t right. He had yet to comment on the athame. The problem was that all athames were different, precisely because they were ornamental, and they hadn’t found an example at Mary’s or Fred’s.

As she went upstairs to get a shower, she chomped on a cereal bar grabbed in haste from the cupboard. She called Eden House and spoke to the duty officer for the evening, tasking him with finding out what happened to a missing boy in 2003 whose mother was called Edna Beverley. She’d already dialled the number and listened to a dead tone. The phone had obviously gone out of use.

He called back as she stepped out of the shower, soaking wet and ill prepared to take a call. She wrapped a towel around her anyway and answered, trying to dry her hands at least.

‘Guv, the boy’s name was William Beverley and he was never found, I’m afraid. He was twelve at the time. The case went cold in 2009.’

She hung up with a heavy heart and promised herself she’d look into the case first thing in the morning.

Chapter 32