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it or he’d come over all woozy.
    “No, no I don’t.” Oliver was pale. Eyes hooded. Jaw muscles still flickering.
    Not good.
    “She wasn’t at work again today,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “Didn’t think anything of it. She’s pulled sickies before if she’s tired from working two jobs.”
    “Aww, fuck.” Langham sighed, the name glaring bright pink neon in his head now. “Not Cheryl from your office?”
    “Yep.” Oliver scooted his chair forward and rested his forearms on the desk. “I feel a bit sick.”
    Langham put his cookie back down. “I imagine you do. Dead or alive?”
    Oliver stared at the crumbs. “Alive when she spoke to me. Now? Fuck knows. No contact for an hour. She was…she was having a bath.”
    Langham picked up the cookie again, bit off a chunk and chewed. At times like this it was better to let Oliver get it all out. Difficult, though, for Langham to keep quiet, to not push for information. When people contacted Oliver while Langham was there, Christ, it was hard to keep his mouth shut and wait for Oliver to repeat what he’d been told. Langham was finding it tricky now, and far from wanting to appear as though he didn’t give a toss by eating a cookie, it would give Oliver a sense of normality and balance him. Prodding for too much too soon might make Oliver transfer a sense of urgency, of panic to the dead, which, in turn, might make the dead float off to wherever the fuck they’d come from. Who knew whether they got alarmed like they had when alive? Who knew what conditions were needed for them to even get through to Oliver in the first place? If the atmosphere changed, or the tension, they might lose their tether and not be able to say what they’d wanted to say. Waste of their effort. So, Langham kept quiet as much as possible.
    Oliver blinked, attention still on the crumbs. He seemed lost elsewhere, seeing something other than those crumbs. “Being bathed.”
    A frisson of unease snuck up Langham’s spine. Something was off here, he sensed it. Being bathed meant—
    “Bathed by that man,” Oliver said.
    Shit. He’d known they had a whacko on their hands, but Christ, if that killer was bathing them, washing them…
    Oliver cleared his throat. Stared at the crumbs as though each one of them meant something, formed some kind of pattern that only he could read. “The man who…”
    The man who’s taking the women.
    “In bleach,” Oliver said.
    “What the fuck?” Langham blurted, dropping the last bite of cookie. “Jesus fuck— Sorry. Sorry. Go on.” He resisted asking questions. Where is she? What does he look like? When was she taken? How long ago was she taken? Has he treated her okay? He almost laughed at that. Bathing her in bleach was a good indication the man wasn’t right in the damn head.
    “It stinks—of two things,” Oliver said. “The bleach is strong—I’d say he uses the undiluted kind, you know, the thick stuff, and lots of it. Plus, she shit herself.”
    “I’m sure any woman would be frightened.”
    It wasn’t unknown for a person to crap themselves in certain situations. Their bodies had a mind of their own when fear came into play. The person’s usual hold on their functions went out of the bloody window. Piss, shit, vomit, Langham had seen evidence of it all.
    “Yes, she literally shit herself,” Oliver said.
    “Oh. Fuck.”
    “That’s why she was in the bath. He took her from the Morrison’s field—she can’t remember when, said time has gone skewed—that he stabbed her dog then forced her into his car. She can’t remember what type, just that it’s brown.”
    Things were starting to make sense. He’d wondered where some of the dogs had gone from the previous cases. The man clearly liked the idea of getting rid of two bodies, one with skin, the other with fur. Did that have some significance? Did the woman have to have a dog with them in order for him to approach them? If that were true, that was something, at least.