Chapter 7

Raider hears the tone of Helena’s message and leaves his water bowl to put his head in my lap. This act of solidarity – after his care of her too – helps me recover somewhat from her strange and brutal snub. And she hasn’t responded at all to the ‘important thing’ Raider found in her courtyard. I remind myself that I didn’t initiate contact between us. Until yesterday, I didn’t even know who she was.

But why push me away so forcefully? It’s her private life and she’s entitled to keep it that way but why do I sense she’s being secretive? I wish something about her message wasn’t niggling at me.

Anita’s parting word interrupts: ‘You!’

With shaking fingers I search for an image of Electra, finding her all smiles and elegant at the opening night of the play. The resemblance hits me but as I zoom in I reel back in shock. It really could be a photo of me. The shape of our eyes. The curve of our eyebrows. The straight nose. Even the soft curls in our fair hair, the widow’s peak on our foreheads.

My doppelganger.

The word sends me to one of those sites where you can post your mugshot and find your lookalike anywhere in the world. ‘Look, we’re twins!’

But I click it off and close my eyes.

I don’t need another double, for pity’s sake. Right now I’m the living duplicate of a dead woman. Electra would be my age if she was still alive. The likeness caused Helena’s memory to zap back in shock. Does that mean she didn’t know I resembled her niece before she contacted me? The jolt of recognition could explain her desire to shove me away so sharply, once she’d survived our polite morning tea.

With tentative fingers, I open the doppelganger site again and browse the couples who’ve connected with each other. As I read their stories, all brimming with excitement, a wave of relief washes over me. It’s quite common to have a carbon copy of yourself somewhere. The frequency is comforting. It’s not weird or creepy. It’s just a fluke. And Electra isn’t around anymore.

Now I even feel sad that Electra has gone. I look at the close-up again. She looks radiant on her opening night but something happened and she died in tragic circumstances. And I lost my doppelganger.

I’m so used to being the only child of parents without siblings. No cousins or extended family. Only my father’s great aunt Daphne who died when I was quite young. If Electra and I had met, it might have been fun. Why did she drown?

My next thought is to ring Sim and update his expectations about Helena before he calls me. He’s a good sounding board for issues, if a little inclined to wring the most out of any ironic moments.

“You sorted the biggest memory lapse of her life,” he says, “before she shared the life story she’d promised. Right there on the step of the very door you’re no longer to darken.”

“Call me efficient.”

“What a dud deal. And I’d just finished drafting an agreement for her to sign – to allow you to use her private life.” He sighs. “How about Death by Deception? Will it still fly?”

“Molly Crane’s story is all about insects and forensic science, but I’ve already invented a twist with a tripwire – and a murderer.”

A jilted boyfriend is probably too predictable … Mistaken identity because she had a doppelganger?

Stop it.

“You can’t have an entomologist of any kind,” Sim is saying, “so take the Molly character out of the bog.”

“I’m calling her Holly Spain,” I say.

“Too similar.”

“OK. Kelly …” I cast around for a surname that feels right. “Field.”

“Good. And bring in a nerdy young male in a different scientific field.”

Sim loves to act like an editor. He can be trusted to spot problems – and he’s always right – but his ideas to solve them are rubbish. The partnership works because he spots, I fix. And if I’m to leave Dr Loxton out of it, I can’t even have a forensic scientist anywhere near the centre of the story.

“Someone who dabbles in the local folklore?” he suggests.

If I mention werewolves to tease him, he might lose it like Anita. It’s my day for being kind in the face of stiff provocation.

“Thanks, Sim. Leave it with me and Piper. We won’t give up on Death by Deception. But wait a while before you commission a cover design, OK?”

He thinks the pressure of a finished cover makes me write faster.

It doesn’t.

With the dust and Dalmador slobber removed, the flash drive comes up like a bought one. Did Raider pick it up from the floor of my car after finding it earlier and dropping it there? He might have picked it up in the dog park before we saw Helena but it’s unlike him not to share it straight away. Or did he find it another time and it’s been rolling around in the car for a while?

Baxter would say: ‘It’s weird that it’s turned up now – and what Dr Loxton said sucks – but at least now you can open it without a guilty conscience.’

I push it into the USB port on my laptop.

It’s password protected.

I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror, ignoring thoughts of Electra and talking aloud to my reflection.

“Repeat after me: Anything to do with Dr Helena Loxton is none of my business.” Then I murmur like a subversive teenager, “Unless I fictionalise it until it’s unrecognisable.”

I return to my laptop, spurred to rebel.

If Dead by Deception can’t have an entomologist helping analyse the corpse, the body of the fictional Kelly Field needs to be ‘fresh’. As soon as a dead body hangs around for a while, savvy readers know there’s been insect activity. Forensic pathologists doing autopsies are mostly skilled to deal with insect traces themselves but I now have to avoid anything that might inspire Dr Loxton to sue. It’s why Sim vetoed it.

The tripwire and wildlife camera ideas mean that Kelly’s dastardly murderer can return to the scene of the crime quite quickly in his jute-wrapped shoes and dispose of the evidence. He can send the message to the family on Kelly’s phone about her lone camping trip before dropping the phone into the bog. He can then expect her body to remain undiscovered in the restricted area for a month but the kid who’s got his eye on her bike becomes suspicious, discovers the body and sounds the alarm.

Exit the need for any experts on Wolf Weevils, bog-flies, or mire-maggots to other crime novels.

Except what was Kelly doing at the bog?

Gah! Molly Crane was an entomology student! How did I forget that? At the moment, it’s the reason Kelly was alone at the mire. Is there another reason she was there?

“Raider, I need to talk through Piper’s plot.”

He knows this routine. He’s a good listener. I often resolve plot knots when I’m explaining them to him and even though he now has his own social media page – with more fans than me – he never shares any spoilers. He leaves the floor rug, ready to bend his attention to Piper, and he’ll be hoping that her Boxador Bandit gets more than a walk-in role.

“I’ll start the brainstorming,” I say. “Dogs. Dog walkers, Baxter, camera clubs. I’ve got it! Kelly Field was a member of a photography club. She was at the mire to take photos for their weekly theme.”

Raider senses my escalating excitement and barks.

“What’s the theme for the photos?” We’re not there yet. “She was a bit of loner like Molly and she liked to take photos in wild lonely places. She told someone else at the club that she was going to the restricted area to get a shot of something special, perhaps at sunset – and that person set up the tripwire. Perhaps he was jealous that she takes better shots than him. Some males are that fragile.”

Another bark.

“Not canines, humans.”

As I do a quick search for an animal that might need a protected area, I wonder if there are rivalries in entomology circles that might be strong enough to lead to murder. Pressure to make a break-through discovery perhaps, or territorial arguments over observation sites? But that’s not my subject.

I find the perfect creature.

“Here’s a small wading bird called a Dunlin,” I tell Raider. “It breeds in the ‘magnificent mires’ of Devon. Let’s make a restricted area for them. An entomology-free murder.”

Raider starts sniffing at my phone on the table.

“Take photos? Ah, ring Baxter! Good idea. He’ll be able to give me a quirky photography theme for Kelly’s trip to the mire.”

I message Baxter first and he rings straight back.

“A theme that would take a photographer to a lonely bog,” he says. “It can’t be too obvious or everyone will go there and she needs to be alone so she can get murdered.”

Baxter has a way of cutting to the chase.

“Reflection!” he cries. “That’s the theme. Or ‘Reflect’ is better. More active. That’s got a lot of meanings and things to photograph – someone thinking, a mirror, a shop window. A puddle with suspicious shoes!”

“That’s joining two themes in one photo.”

“Getting creative, Tiggy. Like writing.” I can hear the grin in his voice.

“And water in the bog,” I say, “getting that mirror-like quality at dusk. It’s perfect, Baxter. She goes there late in the day to catch the light, even hoping to snap a Dunlin wading. Thank you.”

“I think we’ll use ‘Reflect’ for our next theme at the club,” he says.

“Does your club have a name?”

“Spectrum. Everyone voted for it.”

“Good choice.”

Just as I’m about to hang up, Raider puts his nose on the table and pushes the flash drive towards me.

“Raider’s just reminded me. He found a flash drive this morning. I think it might have been in my car. It’s password protected.”

“It could be mine,” Baxter says. “It’s common practice in the PI business, Tiggy. Confidential information, photographs, and recordings. To protect clients’ data. Some flash drives even have GPS so you don’t lose them.”

“Shouldn’t it be labelled? This one isn’t. Are you missing one?”

“I can’t reveal my methods. Sorry. But I’d better come over and look at it. This afternoon.”

Sounds like it’s his.

We hang up and I look at Raider. “Thanks for getting me to ask him about the stick.” I stop. The glint in his eye is as fishy as today’s lunch. “Did you know all the time the memory stick belonged to Baxter and you let me think it was Helena’s? By giving it to me right outside her house? And you let me drive all the way to Barnstaple on an ethically dubious surveillance expedition without even a sheepish hanging of your head?”

His double-woof seems to say, ‘Give Bandit a bigger role in Death by Deception and I’ll do better.’