He nodded, trying to hide his surprise. ‘No problem.’
‘I did media studies,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘I know what youse are like.’
‘How are you doing these days?’
‘All right.’ She shrugged a little. ‘Getting by like everybody else.’
‘Keeping busy?’
‘I’m working, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I meant, more, psychologically. Do you have any techniques you could pass on for getting over something like this?’
‘You don’t get over it,’ she stated flatly, sounding much older than her years. ‘Laura was my best friend. I loved her and she’s gone. Not just gone, but taken. And no one knows why and no one knows who. It’s fucking chaos.’
‘The investigation?’
‘No. The world is fucking chaos. No meaning to anything if that can happen.’
Mal suppressed the sudden urge to high-five the girl. ‘That’s a very understandable way to feel. I’m sure that a lot of people can relate to that sentiment.’
Freya put down her mug of coffee, untouched, and ripped a sheet of kitchen towel from a roll. She dabbed at her eyes, as if wary of smudging her makeup.
‘Let’s talk of happier times,’ Mal said, covering his real motive underneath the guise of being kind, of caring about the victim. He didn’t even feel a stab of guilt. He had long ago made peace with the necessary deceit that went with his chosen profession. He was a conniving bastard, but he owned it, at least. ‘What was Laura like? I heard she was clever? Good at her schoolwork and that?’
Freya nodded. ‘She was a right swot. Always did the assignments on time, never skipped class. Well, hardly ever.’
Her eyes had flickered, like she was remembering something. ‘Had she started missing class sometimes? Maybe to meet someone?’
‘You mean, did she have a “young man”.’ Freya’s voice dripped with so much sarcasm she didn’t need the air quotes.
‘She didn’t, I take it. What about admirers? Anyone hanging about her, anyone you were worried about?’
Freya lifted her chin. ‘You sound like the polis.’
‘That bar where she worked. Did she have any trouble there? Before.’
‘Nah. Keith had a bit of a crush and half the regulars were eating out of her hand. She was lovely, you know. Just had a way with people so they liked her. She could get on with anybody. Any job, any age, didn’t matter.’
‘She was well liked.’
‘She was well loved,’ Freya corrected, emphasising the word. ‘Golden aura.’
Something about those words made something click in Mal’s mind. ‘You two were an item?’
‘Bingo,’ she said sourly. ‘I don’t care if you put it in your book. I want the world to know that my love was taken away from me. I’m proper fucking grieving. My mum doesn’t believe me, insists we were just friends. Round here isn’t exactly enlightened. Even with equal marriage and Graham Norton.’
‘How long had you been together?’
‘Properly?’ She slumped back in her chair, her voice dead. ‘Eight months.’
‘And was everything going well? No big fights?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you asking that?’ She sat forward again. ‘Are you suggesting I had something to do with her death?’
‘No,’ Mal said. ‘Of course not. Just trying to build up a picture of her last few days.’
‘Why? I thought this was a self-help book about overcoming grief?’
Fuck. In his haste to cut to the chase he’d forgotten his cover story. ‘It is. I’m just trying to get as full a picture as possible. It’s all relevant. What she went through is what you went through. Especially as you were so close.’
Freya seemed to relax again. ‘It’s funny you getting that. Being a bloke. Everything did happen to me, too. When she argued with her parents or whatever, it was like it happened to me, even if I wasn’t there. I’d hear all about it and I cared, I wanted to make everything better.’
‘Did she argue a lot with them? I heard they moved down south.’
‘Oh, yeah. They up and left her.’
‘I thought it was her decision.’
‘Not really,’ Freya said. ‘They made it impossible for her to go. Made it pretty fucking clear she wasn’t wanted.’
‘But they fostered her. They chose her.’
Freya looked at him pityingly. ‘You get money for fostering, you know.’
* * *
Mal wasn’t in any great hurry to drive down to Wiltshire, but he had committed to digging around and felt a dogged determination to see it through. Besides, cases had sent him on far longer journeys in the past and eight hours on the motorway wasn’t so bad with the right music playing.
It was significantly warmer when he stepped out of the car in the pretty town of Devizes. However, it had been getting busier and more congested on the roads, too, so living down south was definitely a trade-off. He would take freezing cold over crowds of people any day of the week.
Laura’s parents lived in a semi-detached cottage towards the historic town centre. The building opened directly onto the street but the well-tended window boxes hadn’t been nicked, which either meant an exceedingly low crime rate or that the Moffats put out new ones every week.
Mal generally didn’t phone ahead, but he had checked that they wouldn’t be away on holiday by pretending to be a cold-caller for PPI recovery. Now he was here, his back cracking from the long drive and diesel fumes from the motorway still lingering in his lungs, he wasn’t at all sure it would be worth it. In his experience, the last people to know anything at all about an eighteen-year-old girl would be her parents. And these ones didn’t even live with the girl in question.
Still, he rang the doorbell and gave his prepared spiel to Mrs Moffat, showing his fake warrant card and hoping there wasn’t CCTV around recording this most illegal of deceptions.
‘Do you want to come in?’ She stepped away into the house without waiting for an answer. ‘My husband’s not here, I’m afraid. He’s at work.’
‘That’s all right,’ Mal said, following her inside and shutting the front door.
In a living room that was the polar-opposite of Freya’s kitchen, so clean and tidy it looked as if was never used, Mrs Moffat perched on the edge of an armchair. ‘Sit down, please.’ She waved at the matching sofa.
Mal mimicked the way Mrs Moffat was sitting. Both to reassure her that he wouldn’t stay long and to, hopefully, engender trust. He opened his black notebook, the one that could belong to a police officer, a reporter or a traffic warden, and turned down the offer of a cup of tea.
‘May I ask when you last spoke to Laura?’
Mrs Moffat took a deep breath as if readying herself for a horrible revelation. Then her shoulders slumped and she said, ‘Four or five months. At least.’
‘Had something happened between you?’
‘We’ve been over all of this already,’ she said. ‘Why do we have to keep answering the same questions? It’s so hard.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ Mal said, ignoring the needles of guilt. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’
Mrs Moffat went very still. ‘Has there been a development in the investigation?’
He nodded. He knew it was immoral to lie, to raise this poor bereaved woman’s hopes, but that hope was the best way to ensure her full cooperation. And if she wasn’t a poor woman, after all, but a suspect, then it would alarm her. A stone-cold professional would be warned, of course, but anyone less than that would just be wrong-footed, maybe into making a mistake. ‘We have a new lead on your daughter’s killer.’
Her eyes darted to the door, as if she was worried her husband would return. Mal filed this away and pushed, very gently, on his original question. ‘I had the impression that there had been some kind of disagreement between you and your daughter.’
‘Me?’ Mrs Moffat shook her head. ‘Laura and I got on very well. I mean, the early years when she fi
rst came to live with us were tough. Everyone warned us that they would be, but nothing quite prepares you…’ She stared past Mal.
‘If you could take me through the events which led to you and your husband moving to England, and Laura staying in Scotland.’
‘Of course.’ She took another steadying breath. ‘Truth is, there had been some friction between Laura and her father. Normal teenage stuff, though, nothing too major.’
‘But you were still on good terms?’
She nodded tightly. ‘As good as we’d ever been, yes.’
‘You weren’t close?’
‘Do you have children?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s complicated. More so when they come to you as fully-formed people. There’s only so much you can do…To mould, to teach…’ She trailed off and looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap.
‘How old was Laura when she arrived?’
‘Eight. Very serious little thing. Very intense. I thought that if we gave her time and love she’d warm up, but she never really did.’ She looked away. ‘I know how bad that sounds. Believe me.’
‘You did the best you could and you gave her a better life than she would’ve had otherwise, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’
Mrs Moffat looked at him, surprised.
‘Nobody is blaming you,’ he said, not at all sure that was true. He hoped it was. There was true evil in the world, so many terrible things, he didn’t see why someone who tried their best to make a family and give a kid a normal life should get grief.
‘But I couldn’t love her,’ she said suddenly. ‘Not really. Not deep down inside in the way you’re supposed to. People talked about how they’d walk in front of a lorry to protect their kids and I never felt that.’
Mal didn’t know what to say. It was an extreme way of measuring love, but very effective. Would he have walked in front of a lorry for Euan? Yes. He wished he had done.
‘Forgive me, but I still don’t understand why you were estranged. It all sounds very amicable.’
‘There’s more, but… I can’t tell you. It sounds mad.’ She was shaking her head.
It took Mal a moment to realise that she meant this literally. As in ‘insane’. ‘Is this something you didn’t mention earlier? To the investigating officers?’
‘I did,’ she said defensively. ‘At first. But I could see the look in his face – the first policeman I spoke to – so I didn’t say it again. He didn’t believe me. He thought I was in shock, I think.’
‘I’m different,’ Mal said. ‘Try me.’ He resisted the urge to lean forward.
She raised her chin, as if readying herself for a battle. Then she said, ‘Laura could do things. When she was little she’d move stuff around her room. One time I opened the door to tell her to go to bed, it was past her bedtime, but she was in there. She was lying down with the duvet pulled up but she wasn’t asleep. She was watching her toys moving about on the floor.’
‘They were moving without anyone touching them?’
She nodded.
‘Okay. Anything else?’
‘Just ‘okay’?’
He nodded. ‘Was that the only time?’ He was keeping outwardly calm while his mind was reeling. Telekinesis in humans was a myth. His father had never encountered a true case in all his years of hunting. Which meant that either things in his world were changing or he didn’t know as much as he thought he did. Or, most likely, Laura Moffat hadn’t been entirely human.
‘No. I asked her not to do it in front of her friends, other adults. We were frightened it would get her singled out, picked on. Or something worse.’
‘Good call,’ Mal said. ‘People aren’t generally great with the inexplicable.’
She looked at him appraisingly. ‘You don’t seem very shocked.’
‘I’m pretty much unshockable.’
‘Right. Well, she did it to annoy me, she knew it worried me and she used it. Not at first, but as she got older. Then she got hormonal and moody.’
‘That sounds like normal teenage stuff.’
‘With flying objects,’ she said. ‘Not normal and not even a little bit funny. My husband couldn’t cope. He shouted at her, kept setting all these rules. I told him that it was a mistake, that if he kept coming down hard on her she’d rebel, but he wouldn’t stop. He was just frightened, I know, but the damage was done.’
‘Did he hit her?’
‘No!’
‘Never?’ Mal pressed. ‘Not even a smack?’
She sighed. ‘He tried to smack her once. He just lost his temper and lashed out. Just to smack, you know, but she lifted him to the ceiling and left him there for half an hour. After that, he avoided her as much as possible. As soon as she turned sixteen he said she had to move out. He didn’t say it to her, he didn’t speak to her if he could help it. But he said it to me. Said we had to. That we weren’t safe, that she’d turned on him and she could turn on me, that we didn’t know what she was capable of.’ Mrs Moffat looked down at her hands. ‘That’s when we started making plans to move away.’
‘How did Laura take the news? Was she upset?’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘We didn’t tell Laura.’
He sat back, half admiring their gumption, their sense of self-preservation. ‘You did a flit?’
‘She was round at her friend’s house. Freya. We’d been planning it for a while, so we packed up the essentials and left.’
‘Did you leave her a note?’
‘Yes.’ She was wringing her hands. ‘I know how bad this sounds. I know you’ll think we were terrible. I left money. I said I’d phone her in a little while but it was hard to find the words.’
‘How long before you rang?’
‘Three months.’ Her voice was quiet and she didn’t look at Mal. ‘It got away from me and then it had been so long I was scared to speak to her.’
‘By which time she’d moved in with Freya.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Her voice changed, became sour. ‘If I’d known that we could’ve sold the house straight away.’
‘Saved yourself some cash,’ Mal said, his sympathy receding.
She pulled a face. ‘We’re not rich, it’s not easy paying for two houses.’
‘How did the phone call go, when you did speak?’
A long look. ‘How do you think?’
‘Fair enough. Was that the last time you spoke to your daughter?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was barely a whisper.
‘Do you know if Freya knew? About her abilities.’
‘I have no idea.’ She shook her head for good measure.
‘She never mentioned them to you, never came to you for advice?’
‘We weren’t close. Freya was a bad influence.’
‘Freya was a bad influence on Laura?’
‘She gave her ideas. Confused her.’ Mrs Moffat’s lips pursed and Mal lost a little more of his sympathy.
‘You didn’t approve of their relationship?’
‘They weren’t in a relationship,’ Mrs Moffat said very quickly. ‘They were friends. That’s all.’
Mal nodded his understanding, wondering how much of this woman’s distaste for her daughter’s sexuality had coloured her opinion of her abilities. ‘So Laura was different in more ways than one. That made you uncomfortable. Did you fight about it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She got up. ‘I think you should leave.’
‘I think you should sit down,’ Mal said, mildly enough. She sat. ‘When you spoke to Laura, did she sound frightened?’
‘No, of course not. If she had I would have done something.’
‘She sounded normal?’
‘She was angry. That we’d left.’
‘Anything else? Did you talk about how she was getting on? Her life?’
Mrs Moffat closed her eyes. ‘She talked about Freya. She knew it annoyed me and she was just trying to get back at me. Which was fair enough, really. I was in the wrong. I deser
ved it.’
Mal didn’t say anything, didn’t want to stop the flow of words.
‘She was worried about something. I thought it was her college work. She was working in the bar in the evenings and didn’t feel like she had enough time to get everything done. She drew, you know. Art. I didn’t like a lot of it, but she was talented.’
When she stopped speaking, Mal asked if he could see some of Laura’s work.
‘I don’t see what difference it would make. How can that help?’
‘All the same,’ he said. When Mrs Moffat didn’t move, he added pointedly, ‘If you don’t mind.’
She got up and left the room and Mal settled in for a long wait. She must’ve known exactly where to look, though, as she was back in a couple of minutes. ‘Her old portfolio. These folders cost a fortune.’
She unzipped the A2-sized leather folder and began spreading work out on the coffee table. There were charcoal sketches of horses and birds, studies of heads and beaks and movement. Mal knew exactly nothing about art, but they looked good. A blue sheet with strong black lines caught his eye, although it took him a moment to identify the subject of the picture: a face dissolving into the background. Underneath that was a watercolour study of seashells, and under that a piece of canvas with oil paint layered in thick swirls. They looked utterly different, as if each piece had been done by a separate artist. ‘Are these all hers?’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Moffat said. ‘We’re not artistic.’
‘Laura said this one was her brain when she had a migraine.’ She pointed at the swirls.
‘Did she get those often?’
‘Monthly. Linked to her hormones, the doctor thought.’
‘Did she take tablets for them?’
Mrs Moffat pursed her lips again. Shook her head tightly. ‘She said they made her feel disconnected. Said she couldn’t concentrate for days after. To be fair,’ she added, ‘when she did take them they knocked her right out. She’d sleep for twenty hours, no problem, then be all woozy.’
‘Did she have them every month?’
‘At least once a month, usually more.’
‘Did she act strangely after them?’
‘She seemed a bit downbeat, sometimes she would refuse to leave the house, even when she was feeling better. She cancelled plans with friends, didn’t want to go into school, that kind of thing.’ She sighed. ‘She was like a different girl.’
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