Die Twice by Simon Kernick Page A

the rest of the staff to see if anyone else knew Miriam Fox and might be able to give us any relevant information.’
    â€˜The majority of the clients aren’t here at the moment. Most of them attend local schools, or are supposed to anyway. Those who are in the building now are the ones who have special learning needs, and require one-to-one tuition. They might not be too helpful.’
    They weren’t. There were seven of them altogether and we interviewed them one at a time in Carla Graham’s office, with her present. Two refused to answer any questions at all with anything more than yes or no, and of the rest only one claimed to have heard of Miriam Fox, and that was Anne Taylor, the youthful legal expert I’d met earlier. She said that she’d known Molly ‘a bit’ and that Molly and Miriam had been friends, even though Miriam was older. Anne had seen Molly with Miriam a couple of times while out in the evenings (she denied knowing that either of them had been prostitutes), but claimed she’d never really spoken to Miriam beyond the usual pleasantries. ‘She seemed a bit stuck up,’ she told us. ‘She thought she was better than anyone else.’
    And that was it. Carla made some effort to get her charges to speak, but it was a losing battle. They weren’t going to tell the police anything, not if they could help it.
    After that we interviewed the other members of staff present, four of them altogether. Two of them recognized the photo of Miriam and identified her as a friend of Molly’s, but once again, neither had had any meaningful contact with her so couldn’t, or wouldn’t, add any further information.
    â€˜I don’t know how much help that was,’ said Carla when we were finished.
    â€˜It’s difficult to tell,’ I said. ‘That’s the thing with murder inquiries. It can often be a long, slow process and it always involves talking to a lot of people. Most of the time you don’t hear anything significant, but just occasionally you do, even if you don’t notice it at the time.’
    â€˜Well, I hope you’re successful. It’s worrying thinking that there’s some maniac out there who could easily kill again.’
    â€˜We’ll catch the perpetrator. I’m sure of that.’ I stood up, and Malik followed suit. ‘Anyway, thanks for your assistance this morning. It’s appreciated.’
    â€˜I’ll show you out,’ she said, getting to her feet and leading us out of the office.
    At the double doors, I shook hands with her while Malik nodded briefly and walked out. ‘We’ll need to come back and speak to the other clients at some point,’ I told her.
    â€˜Of course. It would help if you could phone ahead, though. I’d like to be here when you come.’
    She had nice eyes. They were a deep brown colour, with laughter lines round their edges. I would make sure she was there when I came back. ‘I’ll do that. It’ll probably be sooner rather than later. It’s important to close every avenue of inquiry.’
    There was a sound of hysterical yelling and shouting from one of the rooms down the hall. It sounded like one of the female clients was experiencing a lack of customer satisfaction. In reply, we could just about make out the calm, measured tones of one of the social workers. It was greeted with another blast of abuse. Talk about a hiding to nothing.
    Carla Graham sighed resignedly. ‘I’d better go and see what all that’s about.’
    â€˜You certainly have a difficult job to do here,’ I told her.
    â€˜We’ve all got difficult jobs to do,’ she answered, a rueful smile playing about her lips, and turned to go.
    â€˜I think you had a bit of a thing for her,’ Malik said, when I joined him outside.
    I grinned. ‘She’s an attractive woman.’
    â€˜A little bit old.’
    â€˜For you maybe. Not for