‘It would be tragic news if it were true.’ I don’t try to hide the bitterness in my voice, and I see the puzzled look on Thea’s face. ‘Thea, my mother has been dead for ten years, and now Joel is trying to rush me back to Manchester. If I go, my trip is ruined. If I stay, I’m going to get sympathy from every person on this boat, and I don’t deserve any of it. I deserve their ridicule for being so easily manipulated.’

I rest my elbows on my thighs, dropping my head.

‘Please, Thea, say nothing to anyone. I’ve got to decide how to handle this, and right now I don’t have a clue.’

CHAPTER 11

11

‘Boss!’ Becky called across the incident room to where Tom was standing talking to Keith Sims. ‘Local officer has found a pair of shoes,’ she said as they both approached her desk. ‘He’s going to send me a picture he’s taken with his phone, but he’s not sure it’s going to be helpful.’

‘Why not?’ Tom asked, clearly hoping this was going to be the breakthrough they needed.

‘They were found under a shrub quite a distance from where Penny was found.’

Penny was the name the team had adopted for their victim, which Becky thought was as good a name as any, and infinitely better than Jane Doe. Just then her mobile pinged and she opened the message.

‘Bloody hell, I can see what he means,’ she said.

She turned the screen to face Tom and Keith. Penny’s clothes had appeared plain and old-fashioned for a woman of her age, but the shoes were something else.

‘Surely they can’t be hers,’ Becky said. ‘Penny was wearing baggy jeans and a long cardigan, and these are party shoes. She couldn’t have walked far in these.’

They were, in fact, just the type of shoes that Becky would have chosen until her pregnancy forced her into something a lot more comfortable. Pale pink, with peep toes and a thick wedge heel, they looked like shoes a girl might wear for a night out on the town.

‘No accounting for taste. Can we see the size?’

‘Yes, he’s sent an image of the sole too. They look very new from the lack of wear and tear. Continental size forty-one.’

‘Bugger,’ Tom said, his shoulders slumping. They knew that Penny’s feet were a UK size 5, which he had been reliably informed was a continental 38.

They stared silently at Becky’s screen for another moment.

‘If we are saying they belong to someone else, how likely is it that we find a body without shoes and then discover a relatively new pair of shoes abandoned in the snow in the same area?’ Tom asked.

He didn’t look like he was expecting an answer, and it didn’t make any sense to Becky either.