Free Path of Needles by Alison Littlewood Page B

started quickly shaking her head. ‘Wait a minute– are you saying there’s a picture of a dead body in there? I don’t want to see it.’
    Cate paused. ‘I realise this is all rather untoward, but you really may be able to help us. Cases like this – they can be open to many interpretations, and those interpretations will influence the lines of enquiry that are taken. This is – well, let’s say it’s a different interpretation. I think it’s worth looking into, even if it comes to nothing.’
    Alice frowned. She had no idea what the girl was talking about. Interpretation of a murder? What did that even mean? She shook her head, but somehow she didn’t stop the policewoman when she slipped a single picture from the file and laid it on the table. She kept the rest covered.
    Alice didn’t want to look at it, but it was impossible not to let her gaze creep over the picture. She could see a pale, hazy figure, a splash of colour surely too bright to be blood. She was seeing it in fragments, individual details, small things her mind could take in, nothing more. Then her eyes went to the girl’s face and she swallowed. The girl looked pitiful. Her skin was stark against the bright red lips and black hair – ebony was the word that came to mind, and that did make her think of something.
    ‘What part?’ she asked. It came out more sharply than she’d meant; she supposed it was shock, from looking at the photograph. Death – at least this kind of death – was something she saw on TV or read about in books; it wasn’t something that intruded into her life. Now she was seeingfor herself that it could be brutal and merciless, torturing and maiming before it ended.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Cate sounded puzzled, and yet a little hopeful too.
    ‘You said something was sent to her mother. What was it?’
    Cate paused before she answered. ‘A bottle,’ she said. ‘A bottle of her blood.’
    Alice frowned. ‘Strange,’ she said then, ‘No. No, it’s stupid. It looks – it can’t be.’ She pushed the picture back across the table, covering it with her hand. She had looked at it – been exposed to it – for nothing. ‘It’s almost like something out of a fairy tale,’ she said, ‘but the blood – no, it doesn’t really fit. And the dress isn’t really the right colour. The hands – no.’
    ‘It reminded you of something.’
    ‘Only for a moment. The way she looks, her hair black, and all—’ Ebony , she thought. ‘It looks a little like Snow White, when she was sent out into the forest with the huntsman, but it isn’t quite right – it doesn’t quite fit. And – for a start, if that was how it was meant to be, the bottle of blood would have been stoppered with her toe.’
    The sight of the policewoman’s face froze her. After a moment she said, ‘There was a stopper.’
    ‘I can’t say, Miss Hyland.’ Cate’s reply was quick, but her tone told Alice everything.
    ‘There was, wasn’t there? Only you didn’t expect me to know.’ Alice crossed the room and picked up a satchel bythe door. She opened it and leafed through the papers inside. ‘Where is it? “Cinderella” – “Hansel and Gretel” – no.’ She pulled out a sheaf of notes, riffled through them and sighed in exasperation. ‘It doesn’t matter. I know the variant. It’s Italian, I think. The queen orders Snow White to be taken out and killed by a huntsman because she’s jealous. She’s no longer the fairest of them all, and we all know how she hated that. And she orders that part of the girl is brought back, to prove she’s dead. Of course, the mirror was really the stepmother’s, but—’
    Cate broke in, ‘She ordered the huntsman to bring her a bottle of blood?’
    Alice nodded. ‘Stoppered with the girl’s toe, yes. In Italy, anyway. That’s where that variant came from, I think.’
    ‘Variant?’
    ‘That’s right. Fairy tales date back centuries. They’re from the folk tradition; they were never really