We do, but we have to be careful how we go about them. Kyle’s in a fragile state.
We didn’t want to overwhelm him, so Eli and Freya are in the kitchen making tea while River and I ease into the interview. So far there’ve been no shouts from the other side of the small bungalow, so I presume Freya and Eli have yet to kill each other. Even on my meds I’m fidgety. My eyes keep checking the door, my thoughts drifting to Freya. I’m pretty certain, after River kidnapped Freya to his room the other night, that he’s on board with making her ours but Eli is still an unknown. He’s… volatile.
I’d be happier if Oz was with them, but he stayed back at the house to go through some new footage we’d got from the park where Posy was found. Besides, the fact that River and Freya are on steadier ground seems to have made Eli back down for now.
River slips a photograph of Camilla out of a folder and places it on the coffee table, facing Kyle. “Do you recognize this woman?”
Kyle wipes his hands on his fatigues and sits forward. He studies the photo like it’s a blueprint. Like maybe he can find his wife’s killer in the contours of Camilla’s face. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, no.”
River takes the photo back. “That’s okay. Her name is Camilla Banks. We know you’ve been on tour for the past three months. Is it possible your wife knew Camilla?”
Kyle screws up his face. “I guess. Not well though. We’d FaceTime as much as we could. She was struggling to settle in here, it was a big change, and we don’t know many people in the area. If she’d made a friend, she would have told me.”
Military families move a lot for work, but I get a brain itch. Oz’s mom calls it intuition, River calls it a gut feeling. The scientific explanation is that my subconscious has picked up on signs my conscious brain has missed. “If you have no family or friends nearby, why did you move here?” I ask.
“Uh.” Kyle leans back on the sofa and runs his hand over his mouth again. “I guess there’s not much harm in telling you. We kept it pretty quiet because Eleanor’s family situation is complicated, but we came out here to be closer to her. To Eleanor. She’s Posy’s sister.”
River looks up from the folder. “Our records show Posy was an only child.”
Freya slips back into the room then and hands a steaming mug to Kyle.
He smiles in thanks and wraps his hands around it. “She is and she isn’t. Posy was adopted. Eleanor is her biological sister. They found each other on Ancestry last year. 100% DNA match. Surprised the hell out of us.”
Freya freezes on her way out. She starts moving again after a heartbeat, but I know she’s put together the same thing I have.
“They were identical twins,” River confirms.
Kyle nods. “Spitting image. I took their first photo together. Said it looked like someone had pressed copy and paste.” Kyle grinds the heel of his hand into his eye. “Sorry.”
I catch River’s eyes. “Camilla was a twin. Identical.”
“Is that why this happened?” The mug trembles in Kyle’s hands. “The killer, this Maxwell person, you think he’s targeting twins? Why would he do that?”
“We don’t know yet,” River says, “but this changes things. Knowing the connection between the two victims could help us find him.”
River and I ask the rest of our questions to cover our bases, but we’ve already found what we’ve been looking for. Oz and I have been scouring through Camilla and Posy’s lives for days trying to find a connection. They looked nothing like each other, led completely different lives, there was nothing to connect them. Until now.
The question is, why is Arthur Maxwell suddenly targeting twins?
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Oz
I REPLAY THE video for the one thousandth time. I don’t get screen fatigue in the same way as most people, computers have always just felt natural to me, but seriously, even I am reaching my limit on how much longer I can watch this video.
The park on the screen is dark, lit only in an orange haze from a couple of street lamps. The navy van is barely visible against the backdrop of the field. It drives past once, then disappears off camera. I click the trackpad and drag the little round button across the line, skipping ahead until the van comes back on screen.
This is ridiculous. I run my hand over my beard, huffing into my palm. The footage is from a doorbell cam belonging to a house across the street from the park where we found Posy. The Uniforms noticed it while canvassing and the family were more than happy to share the footage. But it’s useless.
I’ve done everything I can to enhance the video, but the lighting is too bad and the angle is all wrong. It doesn’t show the playground so I can’t even be sure that the van is the one Maxwell used. But it appears around the right time and doesn’t stay for longer than ten minutes.
My eyes are gritty, like I’ve got sand in them, and my shoulders ache from being hunched over my laptop. I shouldhave gone into River’s office, used that baby soft faux-leather chair of his, even if he does get snippy when we adjust the height.
I crack my neck and groan in relief then I force myself to close the laptop.
There’s nothing more I can do and while we haven’t got a number plate, I’ve at least managed to narrow down the make of the car. It’s not much but hopefully Freya and the guys will have gotten something useful out of Posy’s husband.
I rap my knuckles on the top of my laptop in frustration. I’d thought having Freya on board would make a difference this time, but the case is grinding to a halt like it always does. Arthur Maxwell is a psychopath, but he’s also got genius level IQ, higher than Jude even, and he knows how to hide.
