Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow. Тилли Бэгшоу

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      ‘I understand that, Detective,’ said Nikki. ‘I’m not sure what I can add, that’s all. The session was positive, as I told you. Lisa seemed happy. She’d made a break from her boyfriend—’

      ‘Boyfriend? You mean her sugar daddy,’ Johnson interjected. ‘Willie Baden?’

      These were the first words the angry little man had spoken since he sat down. There could be no mistaking the leer in his voice. The idea of a beautiful young girl like Lisa offering herself sexually to a dirty old man like Baden clearly turned him on, or at least amused him.

      ‘Yes,’ Nikki said evenly.

      ‘But, to be clear, she didn’t have a “boyfriend”. She was sleeping with a rich old man, someone else’s husband, for his money,’ Johnson pressed the point, earning himself a dirty look from Goodman, as well as a horrified one from Nikki. ‘She was a high-class whore, basically. Isn’t that right?’

      ‘I don’t know why she was with him. It’s not my place to judge my clients, Detective,’ Nikki replied coolly, fighting down her distaste at this man’s unabashed sexism. ‘All I know is that in our session that evening, Lisa told me she’d taken steps to leave Willie, and she seemed to be feeling good about that. I’d say she left here in a happy, hopeful mood.’

      ‘Did she plan to meet anyone after her appointment? A friend, maybe? Did somebody pick her up?’ Goodman asked, glaring at Johnson as he resumed his questioning.

      ‘No,’ said Nikki. ‘She left alone. Typically, she drove herself to our sessions but on Wednesday she didn’t have her car with her.’

      The two cops exchanged glances.

      ‘Do you know why not?’

      Nikki shook her head. ‘No. Sorry. I only remember because it was raining, and she told me she was leaving on foot, so I lent her my raincoat.’

      Forgetting his anger for a moment, Detective Johnson sat up eagerly. ‘She was wearing the coat when she left?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Nikki.

      ‘Can you describe the coat, Dr Roberts? In as much detail as possible.’

      Nikki did so. It was a perfectly ordinary raincoat but both men seemed fascinated by it.

      ‘Thank you, Dr Roberts,’ Goodman said, smiling warmly. ‘That’s very helpful information.’ He had an intense way of speaking, Nikki noticed, a sort of flattering, micro-focus that made you feel as if you were the only person in the room. It wasn’t flirtatious exactly, but it wasn’t far off.

      By contrast, his partner was utterly charmless, firing off a few more questions without any sort of thanks, before both men took their leave. But even he, Johnson, had seemed excited by the raincoat revelation. Could it really be that important?

      Once they’d gone, Trey knocked on Nikki’s door.

      ‘I’m sorry, Doc. I didn’t know what to do,’ he said anxiously to Nikki. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want them to interrupt your session, but I think the older guy didn’t like that I made them wait.’

      Nikki put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s OK, Trey. You did everything right. How are you feeling? I know you cared about Lisa.’

      ‘I’m feeling OK, I guess,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘I mean, I’m sad. Shocked.’

      ‘Me too,’ said Nikki.

      ‘She was so beautiful.’

      ‘Yes. She was.’

      ‘Times like this, I wish Dr Douglas was here,’ Trey blurted. ‘You know?’

      Nikki looked pained. Trey hung his head.

      ‘Sorry, Doc. I shouldn’t have said that. Not to you.’

      ‘Of course you can say it, Trey,’ Nikki said kindly. ‘You miss him. I miss him too. I don’t want you to feel Doug’s name is taboo. He’d have hated that.’

      Later, after Trey had gone home, Nikki sat in her office alone for a long time, thinking.

      She thought about Doug, and what he’d have made of all this.

      She thought about Lisa, about the horror of her death.

      She thought about the angry detective, Johnson: She was a whore, sleeping with someone else’s husband.

      Nikki understood anger. Since Doug’s death, it had been her constant companion.

      Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the card that the other detective had given her. The civil one. Detective Lou Goodman.

       Lou.

      How long would it be, she wondered, before she heard from him again?

       CHAPTER SIX

      The Medical Examiner, Jenny Foyle, replaced the plastic sheeting covering Lisa Flannagan’s body and returned her attention to the two detectives. In her early fifties, with a short, unkempt bob of salt and pepper hair, a stocky frame and a make-up-free face, Jenny was no beauty. But she was smart, intuitive, waspishly funny and astonishingly skilled at her job.

      ‘So you’re saying only one of these stab wounds killed her?’ Mick Johnson asked.

      ‘The one to the heart. Yes,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘The others were all superficial. Designed to wound, to hurt, but never intended to kill.’

      Lou Goodman raised a groomed eyebrow. ‘All eighty-eight of them?’

      Jenny sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’

      Most people preferred Lou Goodman to his partner, probably because Lou was handsome and charming and, unlike Mick Johnson, rarely looked as if the thing he’d most like to do in the entire world was punch you in the face. But not Jenny Foyle. Detective Goodman’s charms were lost on her. A New York Irish girl herself, Jenny had always had a soft spot for Detective Johnson. True, he lacked charm and was no oil painting. But Jenny liked the big man’s permanently stained shirts, his gruff sense of humor and his take-no-prisoners directness. In a city that was all about style over substance, and a department in which political correctness had gone mad, the Medical Examiner had always found Mick to be a breath of fresh air.

      ‘So she was tortured?’ Mick asked her. ‘That’s basically what you’re saying?’

      ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ said Jenny. ‘She was tortured. Incapacitated, probably through terror as much as from her physical injuries. Then she was moved. And at a later time, killed. Then she was moved again to the dumping site.’

      All three of them paused for a moment to take in the plastic-covered shape that had once been Lisa Flannagan. A gorgeous young girl with her whole life ahead of her, reduced to a mutilated carcass.

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