Page 116 of Making a Killing

He frowns, but this time, he doesn’t look up.

‘But it still didn’t make sense. Because even if she had contacted you, why would you reply? I certainly wouldn’t, if I was you. I’d have run a mile. She caused you nothing but grief.’

He’s biting his lip. Ev reaches out and caresses the dog’s head and he blinks up at her.

‘Have you seen that great cartoon, Gary?’ she says. ‘The one with the dog at a computer and how he’s talking to a cat saying, “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog”? Well, it’s thesame with people, isn’t it? You don’t really know who you’re talking to.’

Jean and Phil exchange a glance; they know where this is going.

‘And then I remembered that when DC Stillwell and I were here last time, your mum mentioned that you’d been talking to a girl online. That she’d been helping you work out what you wanted to do job-wise, and showing you where to look for courses and stuff like that. And you know, it occurred to me suddenly that that sounded a lot like Daisy. Like Daisy would be if she were still here now.’

It’s the moment. Which way will he go?

The silence lengthens. The dog heaves a sigh then settles again, his head drooping on to his paws.

Gary swallows. ‘She said her name was Melanie.’

Jean reaches a hand and grasps his. ‘It’s OK, love. It’s not your fault, you weren’t to know.’

‘So what happened?’ says Ev gently.

He shrugs. ‘You know, like you said. We talked a bit.’

‘She must have seemed nice.’

Another shrug. ‘She helped me. She had a dog.’

‘But she wasn’t really Melanie.’

A pause, then a shake of the head. ‘We did Zoom but she kept saying the camera on her laptop was broken so I never saw her. And when I said I wanted to meet she always had an excuse.’

‘And that’s when you realized she was lying.’

He nods. ‘I just didn’t know why. I thought it must be something to do with me.’

He lifts his head and looks at her, his eyes full of pain, and she can see the same little boy who looked at her just like that eight years ago, and there’s a big part of her that can understand exactly why someone might want to kill Daisy Mason, because right now, she wants to do that with her own bare hands.

But she can’t leave it there, even if she wants to.

‘So what did you do, Gary?’

‘I did a search. On the picture.’

‘I see. And I guess that came back pretty quickly as being someone else. Not Melanie.’

He shakes his head. ‘She wasn’t even from here. Somewhere in America.’

Ev sighs. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have felt.’

He shrugs again. Whatever.

‘So what did you do then?’

He flushes a little now. After all, anyone can do a reverse image search, that’s not illegal. But what he did next might well have been.

‘I found this app.’

Silence again. It’s like drawing teeth.

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