Page 34 of Fortune's Ashes
‘He’s not come back, Emma,’ she told me, without preamble. ‘Alan Cobain is still dead.’
I exhaled. I wasn’t really surprised but I was very, very disappointed. ‘Alright.’
‘We might have the time of death slightly wrong. He might still—’
‘No. I was there. It’s been over twelve hours. He’s not a phoenix.’
‘There’s only one,’ she said simply.
I rubbed the back of my neck. ‘Yes. I guess there is.’
There was a momentary pause. ‘There’s something else.’
Something about her tone made me stiffen. ‘Go on.’
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ Laura said, ‘but you’re my friend and you deserve to know.’
That sounded ominous. ‘What is it?’
‘The killer threw petrol over him before setting him alight, petrol that was brought to the premises in a jerry can. The crime scene techs found a few strands of hair stuck to the side of it and asked me to do an initial comparison with Cobain’s hair. It’s not a match. The working theory is that the hair they found belongs to the killer.’
I immediately brightened. ‘That’s great! Do the hair strands include the root?’ I knew that it would be incredibly difficult to test for DNA if they didn’t.
‘They do.’ Laura still didn’t sound happy. ‘And they’ve already gone for testing, so if they match any existing records it shouldn’t be too long until we know.’
As far as I was concerned, this was nothing but good news. ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘The hair that was found is straight, dark brown and about twelve inches long from root to tip.’
Oh. I suddenly knew why Laura was anxious. ‘My hair is straight, dark brown and about twelve inches long.’
‘Yes.’
I drew in a breath. ‘I wasn’t there, Laura. The hair can’t be mine. But the fact it’s been found is a good thing – it’ll help to clear me.’
My unshaken confidence seemed to reassure her. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘You were still worried, though,’ I said slowly. ‘I didn’t kill him. I’ve never met the man.’
‘I don’t think you killed him, Emma. I’d never think that.’ She hesitated once again. ‘But other people might jump to conclusions, you know?’
I shrugged: that was on them. I hadn’t been inside that flat and I hadn’t thrown petrol over Alan Cobain and set him on fire, so the hair strands couldn’t be mine. Once they were properly tested that would be proved.
Suddenly I went cold. Except my hairbrush had been missing from my desk last night, and a window left wide open at the back of building. Somebody could have snuck in, taken my brush and—
I shook my head vigorously. No. That was stupid. I was seeing shadows where there were none. ‘It’s not going to be a problem,’ I reiterated. ‘Thanks for telling me what’s going on. I’ll let you get back to work.’
‘Take care,’ she said. ‘And make sure you eat a decent breakfast. You can’t exist on nothing more than caffeine, not now.’
‘Already done,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got this.’ Most of it. Okay, some of it. I wrinkled my nose. At least a tiny part. Maybe.
ChapterThirteen
Lukas appeared on Laura’s doorstep at exactly midday, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d been waiting around the corner until the appointed hour. I also couldn’t help noticing the flash of relief in his black eyes when he saw me. No, I hadn’t run away, not this time. I knew I had to face the music.
‘Come in,’ I said quietly and stepped back. He hovered in the hallway until I motioned towards the living room. He went in and sat on the sofa, then picked up the same cushion that Buffy had been hugging to herself earlier and started to fiddle with it.
‘I heard the news,’ he said gruffly. ‘About Cobain.’
