She just had to hope that it was indeed all in her mind, an unfounded bout of paranoia fuelled yet again by the fear that she hadn’t seen the last of the demon from her past.
She needed a distraction so she fumbled in her handbag for her phone and earplugs. Then she started listening to her favourite Ed Sheeran tracks as she set off again. It was still only six-forty-five so at least she wasn’t going to be late.
The dental clinic was around the next corner. On Thursday evenings she did the cleaning after the place closed for business. It was one of several private jobs she did to supplement the income from the company that employed her on a part-time basis. The clinic paid her £30 to clean the floors, polish all the surfaces and wipe the insides of the windows. It was easy money and came in handy.
The clinic had already been closed for half an hour by the time Sophie got there. But as usual Claudia Myers, the young manager, was only just preparing to leave.
‘Hi there, Miss Cameron,’ she said with her usual bright smile. ‘How are you today?’
‘I’m fine, thank you, Claudia.’
At twenty-three, Claudia was half Sophie’s age but twice her size. The girl blamed her obesity on the fact that she had type 2 diabetes. But if it bothered her she never showed it and she always struck Sophie as one of the happiest people she had ever come across.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Claudia asked, a frown tugging her eyebrows together. ‘You look flustered.’
Sophie shrugged. ‘That’s because it’s still pretty warm out there and I’ve been walking fast.’
Actually the truth is I’ve got myself in a state because I think someone has been following me.
‘Well, you’ll be glad to know that we finished earlier than usual today,’ Claudia said. ‘So I’ve done quite a bit of tidying up myself. I even managed to go round with the hoover so you only need to mop the floors.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ Sophie said. ‘That’s what you pay me for.’
‘I know, but I had to hang around because I’m meeting a friend in the pub across the road. It gave me something to do. And speaking of pay, I’ve left your money in the usual place.’
Claudia picked up her shoulder bag and headed for the door. But before stepping outside, she turned back to Sophie and said, ‘By the way, how is that girl of yours? You told me last week that she wasn’t very well.’
‘Oh, she’s absolutely fine,’ Sophie said. ‘It was just a tummy bug and it only lasted a few days. I’ve left her at home watching one of the latest teen movies.’
‘Well, be sure to give her my regards.’
‘I will.’
After Claudia had gone, Sophie set to work. She went to the utility cupboard and took out what she needed. It wasn’t a big clinic. There were two treatment rooms, a small office, a unisex toilet, a waiting room and a carpeted reception area.
It took Sophie an hour to get through it and she finished up back in reception where she sat on the leather sofa to drink a glass of water from the cooler.
A bunch of magazines and a copy of the Evening Standard were spread haphazardly across the coffee table in front of her. It looked untidy so Sophie put the magazines in a neat pile and checked the date on the newspaper. It was a day old so she picked it up to put in the bin with the other rubbish she’d collected.
But as she did so the paper fell open at a page dominated by three large photographs of a man, a woman and a toddler in a high chair. It was the photo of the man that jumped out at her.
‘Oh, dear God, it can’t be,’ Sophie gasped out loud.
But a moment later, after checking the caption beneath the photo, the cold reality of what she was looking at caused a wave of panic to wash over her. And even before she began to read the words on the page, she knew that her life was about to implode yet again.
Over an hour had passed since DC Fellows had called Anna to tell her they had a probable ID on the victim. Since then the team had gathered more information and they were now ninety-nine per cent sure they knew who she was.
There would have to be a formal identification process, of course, but Anna was already working on the basis that the body on the common was that of twenty-three-year-old Holly Blake.
It was good news in the sense that it gave the investigation a jump start. But the bad news was that her identity alone was going to ramp up the pressure on the team from the word go.
‘The media will be all over it just like they were with the nursery investigation,’ Anna told her detectives after racing back to headquarters. ‘So brace yourselves. And let’s just hope it will be an easy one to solve.’
Anna had returned to Wandsworth in the pool car with DI Walker, leaving DC Sweeny to look after things at the common. She had wanted to put everyone in the picture and assign tasks as quickly as possible, and preferably before the press got wind of what was going on.
The wheels of the investigation had already been put in motion. A whiteboard had been set up and on it was pinned a photograph of the victim downloaded from her Facebook account, plus images of her body in the undergrowth taken from Walker’s phone. In addition there was a map of the common showing roads that went around it and through it.
As Anna stepped up to the board, the room fell silent, save for the ringing of a couple of phones. The nine detectives who were present were poised to take notes and ask questions.
Anna tapped a finger against the photo of the woman. In it she was smiling at the camera, white teeth glistening, a sparkle in her bright blue eyes.
‘This is Holly Blake,’ she said. ‘A freelance model aged twenty-three. She was reported missing by her mother yesterday because she hadn’t been seen or heard from since Tuesday. She bears a striking resemblance to the young woman found naked on Barnes Common earlier this evening. But that’s not all.’
Anna moved away from the whiteboard to a large TV monitor mounted on a stand. She nodded at DC Fellows, who took it as his cue to bring the screen to life remotely from his desktop computer.
The image that appeared was of Holly Blake’s Facebook profile and there was a montage of photographs showing her in various outfits and poses. She was quite beautiful, Anna noted, and it looked as though she had been brimming with life and confidence.
Anna pointed to one particular photo which showed Holly standing on a beach in a bikini. She was glancing back over her shoulder while poking her tongue out at the camera. The photo suddenly filled the screen and Anna drew everyone’s attention to the tattoo between her shoulders.
‘The young woman on the common has an identical tattoo in exactly the same place,’ she said. The picture was replaced by another one showing Holly cupping her bare breasts in her hands. Anna indicated the silver ring on the middle finger of her left hand. ‘She also has a silver ring exactly like this one and on the same finger. I therefore have no doubt in my mind that it’s Holly Blake whose murder we’ll be investigating.’
Anna turned back to her audience and took a long breath before continuing.
‘DI Walker and I will go see her parents straight after this briefing. They live in Pimlico. While we’re doing that I want DS Prescott and DC Niven to check out Holly’s flat. We have an address in Camden.
‘I’ll come to what we know about Holly and her family in a moment. And it’ll be pretty obvious to all of you why this is no run-of-the-mill case. But first let me put you in the picture regarding