Page 78 of The Unforgiven

I gave Wrigley a grateful look and headed off to collect Lachy, who was talking to one of the CSIs. She looked like she was getting fed up enough with Lachy’s babbling to consider sticking him in the canal for a significant length of time, so I decided it was me doing him a favour rather than me avoiding watching Jenna and Nate do something with skin and a glove.

“Boss wants us to go for a walk.”

Lachy looked at me like it was the last thing he wanted to do. The CSI looked grateful.

“Where too?”

“Try and work out how that body got in the canal.” I pointed towards the fencing. “Let’s start by looking for gaps in that.”

We headed up to the tow path on what was the most desolated stretch of water I’d seen in the last couple of weeks. Overgrown with weeds and ivy, parts of it flattened by feet, it had no obvious secrets to give. We scoured along the sides, finding broken bit of fencing onto the back of the disused industrial park, under a compulsory purchase order and left vacant for the last half a decade.

“They could’ve driven up here and fit through the gaps in the fencing anywhere along here, dropped onto the tow path and down towards the river. I bet if you did that at night, no one would see you.” Lachy pointed through a particularly big gap.

“I bet no one would see you if you did it at midday. This part’s like a ghost town.” I shivered, feeling suddenly cold. “I haven’t noticed anything underfoot.” I’d been watching where I walked,hoping to find a cigarette end, or a discarded tissue, something – anything.

Lachy put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the trees, a mixture of oaks and sycamores. “I don’t think we will. Our killer’s done his research on forensics and crime scenes. They know how not to leave a footprint, unless those size tens were theirs.”

“She could’ve been killed here, like Brooke was. Stabbed and then pushed into the water.”

“Would you have come for a walk here? Even with your boyfriend?” Lachy looked around us. “You’d have to be into some pretty weird shit to think this was a romantic setting for a walk, or you were looking for a place to get high and pass out. How did he entice the women? He’s not whipped them off the street, has he?”

The ‘he’ was still bothering me.

“Who would you meet up with somewhere unfamiliar? If you were meeting a friend, where would you go?” I needed to go about this a different way.

Lachy thought for a moment. “The pub. A bar or restaurant. Somewhere there was food or drink. Drink if I was going to be nervous.”

“Who would you be nervous with?”

“A date. If I was taking someone out on a date, I’d be meeting them somewhere public, that they’d feel comfortable.” I was reminded that he was a really decent guy.

“What if it was someone you knew?”

“Still a pub.”

“Something healthier. Or maybe someone who didn’t drink or you were meeting too early for a pub?” I was thinking about the Aberwyn girls. “Someone you were meeting who you hadn’t seen since you were a kid.”

Lachy looked around again. “Not here. There’s nothing scenic about going for a walk here, but you’re right. If the women knew their killer, they could’ve had an arrangement to meet for a walk.”

“Or, my dog’s had puppies, do you want to see?” You trust someone, you trust what they say.

“My answer to that would always be yes. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

We carried on walking further, trying to get a sense of location. “Unsurprising. We know one thing – all these places were scoped out beforehand. Everything is well planned.”

“Not opportunistic. You don’t think it’s anything to do with incels, do you?” Lachy looked at me like I was an alien.

“I think it’s to do with the victims. If this is Dolly, we have to re-look at the women – and Aberwyn. Everything comes back to there, and I can’t shake the fact that the knife used to kill at least three of the women is connected to the murder of a man in the same hospital that a girl called Kelly-Anne was in. Then we have the Kelly-Anne in Morgan’s photos, who would be the same as hospital Kelly-Ann. What are the chances of it being the same person?” The strings were pulling together.

“We need the surnames of the other three girls then.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned to look at the canal from the pathway we were on, over shrubs and trees, down to concrete.

I crept up on Lachy, gently putting my hands on his back as I didn’t actually want him to fall and it would be so easy here.

He turned around frowning. “If the killer was Dean Hobson, they wouldn’t have met to go anywhere like this. They were meeting someone they knew.”

“And someone they didn’t perceive as a threat. But how were they communicating? We’ve gone through all of Morgan’s messages and social media, and emails, and there was nothingto follow up on.” We turned around, starting to head back, none the wiser if we’d covered an area where our killer had been to dispose of the body in the water. “Unless they arranged it in person, or a phone call – but from different numbers.”

Lachy nodded glancing at the canal, looking for any signs of disturbance in the bank on the way down or around the reeds and abandoned scooters and bikes. “Our killer has a list. He finds the target on it, befriends them - ”