“Hello, you.”

Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Davies of the North Wales Police. Another recent addition to her life and, without question, the most welcome complication of all.

She listened for a moment.

“So there’s no match. That’s disappointing.” The DNA results were in on the skeletal remains found in the spa ductwork, he’d told her, but unfortunately they did not match anything on file.

“We have to find out who she was and how she came to be there,” Penny told him. “You will keep looking, won’t you?”

Davies reassured her, and after they said their goodbyes, Penny hung up and looked at her watch.

There’s so much still to be done, she told herself as she opened the front door, reaching in her pocket for her gloves. And what with Christmas still to sort out and the spa to get up and running, there’s no time to dwell on anything else, even an unidentified body.

And today, being Thursday, she’d have to make sure everything in the shop was ready for her most demanding client.

She checked to make sure she had her house key, pulled the door behind her, and set off for her salon.

Two

Evelyn Lloyd picked her way slowly down the path that led from her bright red front door to the street, lifting her feet up and placing them down carefully with each cautious step. Although the cold rain of the past two days had eased into a light, misty drizzle, the overnight temperature had dropped below freezing and yesterday’s shallow puddles had become today’s invisible patches of smooth, slippery black ice. Like most people her age, she was desperately afraid of falling. One moment you’re perched atop a kitchen chair reaching for a can of peaches and the next minute you’re laid out on the linoleum with a broken hip. She’d mourned the loss of several dear friends over the past few years and for one or two of them, a nasty fall had meant the beginning of the end. Just yesterday she’d sadly crossed two names off her Christmas card list. No, in this weather, she was taking no chances.