The two elderly people on the bed were holding hands. Matching gas cylinders sat on the floor on either side of the bed, each with a tube leading to a bag firmly fixed in place with parcel tape. The pressure of the gas after all breathing had ceased had caused both bags to split, and Tom could see the features of the man and the woman through the clear plastic, where it had settled onto their faces. The wrinkled polythene clung to the protruding noses, to the lips where they had breathed their last breaths, and to the tears he was certain he could see on the old woman’s cheeks.

In the wide corridor behind where Tom and Jumbo were still standing, the crime-scene team were suited up ready to enter the room, waiting for formal confirmation of life extinct, although there was little doubt in anyone’s mind.

The young paramedic spoke quietly to Tom, confirming both Thea and Garrick Atwell were dead.

‘As I was checking her pulse, I noticed a piece of paper protruding from under the old lady’s pillow. Thought you might like to know,’ he added, his voice hushed and slightly croaky. For men used to far more bloody scenes, these two deaths seemed to have affected them all with their sense of hopeless surrender.

Tom looked at Jumbo and raised his eyebrows. The big black man nodded and signalled with his eyes for one of his team to retrieve the note. He placed it inside a clear plastic bag and brought it back to Tom.

Tom took it from him. It didn’t say much, but it seemed to have been written by Thea.

Please rescue Judith and transfer her remains to their rightful place. Don’t think badly of him. He didn’t mean to do it. He went too far, but only because he loved her and wanted her to stay.

Tom read it again, out loud, to Jumbo. ‘Judith was her sister,’ he added for the crime-scene manager’s benefit.

‘Sounds like we’ve got a body to find somewhere, that’s clear enough. It would have helped if she’d told us where to look. I wonder how he killed her.’

‘At least one of them was quite a specialist in drugs,’ Tom said. ‘I would guess he had the knowledge and she administered them. Maybe that’s what she means by “He went too far”. We’re not going to know until we find her body, I don’t suppose.’

‘So the husband killed her, and the wife’s been living with that dreadful knowledge ever since.’

It said a lot about their lives and their jobs that Jumbo neither blinked nor commented when Tom responded, ‘He’s not her husband; he’s her brother.’

CHAPTER 68

68