‘For a while, but then they went,’ Kelly replied.

‘Could they have taken the body?’ Sabih suggested.

Kelly smiled uncertainly. ‘You’re kidding. Why? What for?’

‘Could they?’ Sabih pressed.

‘I suppose,’ she hesitated. ‘But I’ve seen a lot of distraught, grieving families and these two men loved that woman. They’d never have done anything untoward. She meant a lot to both of them.’

Harri hoped Kelly was right. She couldn’t believe the man she’d dated was capable of such a thing, but she had to be sure.

‘Is there a camera system?’ she asked, looking around the canteen. She caught sight of a couple of CCTV cameras hanging from the walls.

‘Yes, but they say the one outside Beth’s room malfunctioned the night she died.’

Harri and Sabih exchanged a glance, and she saw the gleam in her former partner’s eye.

This was a case.

She’d started the investigation, but now she didn’t want it to be a case. She didn’t want to know Ben wasn’t the man she thought he was. Even if he didn’t love her, she still loved him and she didn’t want to discover a love so pure had been birthed by a twisted man.

‘We’d like to take a look,’ Sabih said.

‘I can put you in touch with hospital security,’ Kelly replied.

Harri thought back to her conversation with Dr Abiola and how she’d reacted to the suggestion Beth might have been exposed to a toxin.

‘Can lymphoma be caused deliberately?’ Harri asked.

‘I suppose so,’ Kelly replied. ‘Certain substances are capable of triggering it. Are you suggesting . . . no . . . why would anyone want to do that?’

Harri looked at Sabih. They knew from bitter experience there were dozens of possible motives, but they left Kelly’s question hanging.

Sabih bounced out of the hospital, his arms animated, his fingers clicking in time to an imagined beat. She hadn’t seen him so lively since the night he’d been attacked near the railway tracks. The night her life had been ruined. The night his had been saved. She was happy for her old partner and pleased to have played a part in breathing life back into him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me her body went missing?’ he asked.

‘Dramatic effect,’ Harri replied. She couldn’t help but be uplifted by his mood. ‘I wasn’t sure lymphoma could be caused deliberately, so I didn’t want to—’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Sabih interrupted. ‘Don’t give me that. You could google that. You were just stringing me along, but now here we are. We’ve got a lot of missing pieces but it looks like there’s cause for interest at least.’

‘Right,’ Harri said. ‘Why else would someone steal a body?’

‘Organ harvesting,’ Sabih joked darkly. ‘To conceal the cause of death, of course. I bet Ben Elmys had access to the kind of toxins Kelly mentioned. The husband probably did too.’

‘True,’ Harri acknowledged as they made their way back to her car, but she didn’t like how this was shaping up. She’d had these thoughts in the abstract when she’d been convinced something or someone would come along and tell her she was unhinged and that her suspicions were unfounded because Ben Elmys was a good man.