“Did you recognise the person you saw?” asked Harper.
“There wasn’t a person,” said Patrick. “She just told you. She didn’t actually see anyone. It wasn’t there, there wasn’t anyone there.”
Harper stared at Patrick for a split second before returning her attention to Lauren. “But on the phone, Mrs Tranter, you said it was the same woman you’d seen in the hospital.”
“Yes,” said Lauren, “I—”
Patrick said, “This is quite a delicate subject, Detective. Do you think we need to explore this right now? Do you think my wife needs to discuss her mental-health issues with you, right now?”
Lauren was staring at Harper. Harper was convinced that, yes, Lauren did in fact want to talk about it. But her husband, clearly, did not want her to. Harper’s instinct, and her training, told her to ignore Patrick.
“Mrs Tranter—Lauren? Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
Lauren looked away. Her mouth turned down at the corners and she shook her head, no.
Hiding her frustration, Harper turned to Patrick. “So, Mr Tranter,” she said, “tell me what you saw.”
Irritation crossed his face. “I didn’t see anything, or anyone. I went outside and had a look around, more for my wife’s sake than anything. She was worried, and I wanted to make sure there was no one there.”
“But you didn’t think there was anyone there, before you went outside?” said Harper.
“No.”
“So why did you go running up the road without your shoes?”
“I told you. I wanted to make sure.”
Harper gave Patrick a long look. Why would a man rush outside barefoot if he was truly convinced there was nothing to chase? Shoes would only take a moment to find and put on. She narrowed her eyes. Patrick became uncomfortable under her scrutiny, crossing and re-crossing his arms and frowning. He reached down to scratch his foot where a bandage had been applied. Was this the story of a dedicated husband, making a sacrifice in the moment to appease his anxious wife? Or was this a man with something to hide? There was a veil over Patrick. She could smell his lies. In contrast, looking at Lauren was like looking at a glass of water. If she was trying to conceal anything, it was only her confusion, her shame.
Harper stood up. “If you don’t mind, Lauren, I’d like to see the exact spot where you saw the woman.”
“I thought I just told you,” said Patrick. “There was no woman.”
Harper smiled tightly. “You did tell me that, Mr Tranter, repeatedly in fact. I simply would like to make a routine check of the area, to put my own mind at rest. I trust you have no objections?”
“Well, I don’t see why you would bother yourself.”
“Nevertheless,” said Harper, “could you please show me, Lauren?”
* * *
Lauren stood in the doorway, clutching the babies. “A bit to the left,” she called, and Harper directed her torch towards the place she’d indicated. The undergrowth was flattened there, just as if a person had trampled it. Something had been here, quite recently, considering the freshness of the broken foliage. Patrick said he hadn’t entered the bushes himself, only checked from the pavement to see if anyone was there. But there was no evidence it had been done by a woman; it could have been a fox, or a dog, or some children making a den, but the fact of it supported the general theory that someone or something had been there; Lauren had seen something, even if it wasn’t what she thought. Apart from a few pieces of litter and a couple of scraps of dirty black fabric, there was nothing else to see. Harper climbed out of the ditch and walked back towards the house where Patrick waited on the doorstep. Lauren had gone back inside.
Patrick spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want his wife to hear. “I contacted the out-of-hours GP about tonight. They’ve told me to make sure Lauren gets a good night’s sleep. If she’s still anxious in the morning I’m to make an appointment. I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time coming all the way out here. I would have stopped her from calling you, if I’d known she was going to.”
Harper glanced back towards the bushes before she spoke. “Has it ever occurred to you, Mr Tranter, that your wife might be telling the truth about seeing this woman?”
He made a little explosive huff. “Don’t be ridiculous, Detective. I was here too and I didn’t see anyone. And that first time, in the hospital, no one saw anything then either. The psychiatrist—and surely he should know—said it was a hallucination. The fact she’s had another one is quite worrying.”
“More, or less worrying than there being a real person outside your house, staring in through the windows?”
“Well, that’s a stupid thing to say. Who would do that, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Mr Tranter,” said Harper. “But perhaps you do.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Patrick, and stepped backwards into the house before shutting the door with a firm click.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JULY 22ND
LUNCHTIME
When her phone pinged with the message alert, Harper almost didn’t bother to check it. It wouldn’t be Amy, it never was. A week had passed now, and she’d stopped kidding herself it was ever going to happen, which was totally fine with her. Best to keep things simple. She raised her binoculars to her eyes, made a note of the time and took a sip of water. She unwrapped an energy bar, then glanced at her phone and immediately lost her appetite.
How about a cuppa? I’m free now xx
At first, Harper wondered if Amy had made a mistake, if she’d meant to send the message to someone else. Then she thought, don’t be stupid, of course she sent it to the right person. That was just Amy’s style—she wouldn’t have even noticed that a week had passed, or for a moment suspected that Jo had been waiting pathetically for this text. Harper debated with herself how long she ought to leave it before sending a response. She lasted about thirty seconds.
Great. I’m on a job, but it must be time for a break.
Ooo anything good?
Surveillance. Nothing doing though. Where shall we meet?
Tell me where you are, I’ll come to you. Exciting!
Before she could think about it properly she fired off the street name in reply—but as soon as she pressed Send she wanted to take the message back. She had parked on a side street in town, in a spot within sight of the office of a company called Strategy Outsource Marketing. Patrick Tranter’s car had been in the car park there for the past fifteen minutes. She really wasn’t sure if she wanted to explain to Amy how she’d come to be there, or exactly what job she was on. Ah, maybe she won’t ask, thought Harper.
Ten minutes later, Amy knocked on the passenger-side window.
“Darling,” she said, and when she’d settled herself inside and handed Harper a hot cup of coffee, “what’s happening? Who are we looking for?”
The perfume Amy wore was sweet and floral, something like lily of the valley. Harper thanked her for the coffee, a feeble effort at stalling.
“Well?” said Amy, not acknowledging the thanks.
“I’m just keeping an eye on, um, someone. Someone’s car, anyway. He’s gone inside that building.”
“A suspect?” said Amy, blowing into the hole in the top of the takeaway cup. She rummaged in her bag, brought out a packet of walnuts and offered one to Harper, which she took.
“Not really a suspect, more a person of interest.”
Amy lowered her coffee and gave Harper a hard stare. “What are you doing, Joanna? You absolutely have to tell me. I won’t leave until you do.”
There was a pause. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you …”
“So tell me.”
Harper thought about it. It was so pleasurable to give Amy new gossip; Harper could picture the way her face would be lit from within as she leaned in to listen. But, from twenty years of service Harper was hard-wired to keep police business to herself. As Amy waited, she tapped her shiny blue nails on the gearstick. Harper’s profe
ssional reluctance to share fell away. This wasn’t actually, after all, official police business anymore.
“You have to promise not to say anything,” said Harper.
Amy mimed zipping her mouth shut.
“I mean it, Amy. If anyone finds out about this, I won’t just be slapped on the wrist. I could be in real trouble.”
“I completely promise. You can trust me. It’s off the record, entirely.”
All playfulness gone, Harper could see that she was sincere.
So, Harper told Amy about the visit to the Tranters’ house two days before. Amy listened, her eyes gleaming as Harper recounted how she’d become convinced that the husband was lying about something, but also that Lauren was scared and vulnerable and quite possibly mentally unstable. She added that the bushes had been trampled, and although that in itself didn’t prove anything, it bothered her.
Like the shadows on the tape bothered her.
Amy sat up, remembering. “This is the abduction case from the hospital, isn’t it? The false alarm?”
Harper nodded.
“But you just said there was someone hanging around outside their house, which would indicate someone is out to get them. So was it a false alarm or not?”
“In the hospital they told me the mother was having a psychotic episode. But when I spoke to her at the time, I don’t know. I believed that something had happened.”
“I remember. You were upset. Because of the babies thing.”
Harper looked at Amy. “Yeah. I told you that I …”
“Have a weird thing about babies, I know. It’s a sensitive subject for you.”
Maybe she’ll ask me now, thought Harper. For a few seconds neither of them said anything.
“Anyway,” said Harper, “I’ve been told by my boss to leave the case alone. Which is why I’m here on my lunch hour, and not on work time.”
“You don’t have a lunch hour.” Amy cast her eyes about the car. “And, I don’t see any lunch.”
It was true, there was no such thing as a lunch hour at the station. You ate at your desk. All of the computer keyboards had a film of supermarket mayo and a dusting of crisp crumbs. “Well, I’m on my way to the shop, if you must know. We are allowed to do that.”
Amy considered this information for a while. “None of this actually explains why you’re here. Precisely here, right now, watching that car, which I am assuming from what you’ve said, belongs to Tranter. How did that come about?”
“Oh, that. Well, I was going to check the trampled bushes again, in the daylight, just to see if there was anything I’d missed. As I pulled up near the house I happened to see Patrick getting into his car. So, I followed.”
“Makes sense. Nothing better to do. On your way to the shop.”
“Right.”
“And, it’s a lovely day for it.”
“Yes,” said Harper, with less confidence.
“For a bit of freelance snooping.”
“Well, I don’t see it quite like that—”
“Not that I’m judging. Lord knows, that’s my entire existence. Oh wait, who’s this?”
A thin woman with dark hair approached the entrance to the office car park. She removed a mobile phone from a small red handbag and pressed on its screen, then held it to her ear. After a short conversation, she put the phone back in her bag and leaned on the bonnet of Patrick Tranter’s car with her arms folded.
Harper looked through her binoculars at the woman, who was very pale and dressed in a long black T-shirt dress and flip-flops. Probably in her early twenties, the woman seemed as if she’d been crying, and her dark hair was greasy and limp. But, it was clear she was a naturally beautiful girl, even with puffy eyes and without make-up.
“I think this must be a friend of Mr Tranter’s.”
“She doesn’t look too friendly to me,” said Amy, before popping a walnut into her mouth and crunching down on it. Patrick appeared at the office door and pushed it open. He walked across the car park towards the woman and stopped several metres away from her, his fists shoved deep in his pockets. “She looks as if she might scratch his eyes out.”
“Who do you think she is?” said Harper, lowering the binoculars.
“Why don’t we find out? Let’s do a stroll-by.”
“Oh, I can’t. He knows me.”
“I’ll go,” said Amy, and hopped out of the car before Harper could protest. She skipped jauntily down the road in her huge sunglasses, curls bouncing, and for a long moment Harper took her eyes off the couple and watched the journalist. By the time Harper returned her attention to Patrick and the mystery woman, they were on the move too: he had her by the arm, and was escorting her along the road, towards where Harper was sitting in her car. They passed Amy without so much as a glance, but a split second later Patrick’s head snapped up sharply as he recognised Harper’s car. She turned her face away but it was too late; she’d been seen.
She closed her eyes for a second and swore under her breath, hoping that Patrick wasn’t the kind of man who would report her to the boss.
* * *
“He says you were harassing him,” said Thrupp.
“That’s a bit strong,” said Harper. “I was just sitting in my car. What evidence does he have?”
“He says he saw you drive by his house yesterday, and then today you were watching him at his place of work. Is it true?”
“No. Well, yes. I did drive by, yesterday and today. But I wouldn’t call it harassment. It doesn’t meet the criteria. I was doing police work, general investigation, information gathering. He’s a person of interest.”
“A person of interest? To a case I have already told you is not a case?”
“He was behaving suspiciously.”
“Fortunately for you, Mr Tranter isn’t interested in pressing charges or making a formal complaint.”
Harper pulled a face. Of course he wouldn’t press charges—there wasn’t nearly enough to make a case that would stand up in court.
“But I think, for you, an internal disciplinary is now in order. You were warned.”
Harper was silent, awaiting her fate. She felt surly, like a kid in the headmaster’s office.
“You’re desk bound, Joanna. No going out, not even to get lunch. You can go to the canteen like everyone else.”
This was the perfect punishment for Harper, and he knew it. She tried to appear unbothered, but couldn’t help but ask, “For how long?”
“Until I say so. From now on, if you’re not in the office every day from eight until five, you better be at home with an impressive illness and a doctor’s note. Now get on with those bloody reports.”
After Thrupp left the office, Harper turned unwillingly to her task. She wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to stay nice, no matter how much Thrupp wanted her to be sorry about her past mistakes, and to be grateful for the risks he’d taken on her behalf.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A branch of mountain ash tied over the cradle protects girls against fairy abduction, as according to ancient superstition the first woman was created from the mountain ash. A branch of the alder tree protects boys, as the first man was created from the alder tree.
Irish traditional
AUGUST 7TH
THREE WEEKS AND FOUR DAYS OLD
EARLY MORNING
The front door slammed and for a few seconds there was no sound. Then, the distant beeping of the car being unlocked, the car door opening and shutting, engine igniting in a low growl, gravel and grit twisted under tyres as Patrick drove away. The clock on Lauren’s phone told her it was seven thirty-nine, and those numbers meant only that it would probably be almost twelve hours until he returned. In the brief absence of noise, a particularly egregious phrase he’d used in a recent conversation occurred to her, rudely by itself: “Marketing requires networking, darling.” Going to a bar after work, in his world, was essential for business. She was too tired to argue.
A few nights before his return to work, he’d m
oved into the spare room. He hadn’t wanted to, he said, but he couldn’t sleep with the windows shut. She couldn’t sleep without them being firmly locked.
“If you insist on leaving the windows open, anywhere in this house, at night,” she said, “we’re going to need a lock on the inside of the bedroom door so that I know we’re safe in there, at least.”
He’d got in the car, driven directly to the DIY shop and brought her three to choose from. She chose them all.
“Three locks?” he said.
“Yes.”
Although he looked at her then in a way she couldn’t fully interpret, he fitted them without complaint.
The locks made her feel safe enough to nap when it was dark outside, but the physical barrier it created between her and Patrick underlined their separateness: they were no longer a team. There was no point trying to wake him in the night, to watch over the babies or to help; it was easier just to get on with it herself, to stay awake when she needed to, and to sleep only when she and the boys were secure. For Patrick’s part, he’d dropped off his caring cliff: I care, I care, I care, I would care but I simply do not have the time or energy to care anymore, mostly because of all that caring you just made me do. He implied, in both his speech and his actions, that baby-rearing was exclusively Lauren’s department, and always would have been, obviously: the roles were pre-determined; man/woman, breadwinner/homemaker. The gut-punch of dismay was unexpected. Why hadn’t she realised before now that he was so old-fashioned? Would she have married him, if she’d known? It seemed too much to try to argue, to wriggle out from under the weight of it all.
So, she would cope, because it wasn’t a choice. Patrick was encouraging, even if he wasn’t there very much. He sent regular “Love you’ texts. And he always said, when he eventually did come home, what a great job she was doing, even as he let his eyes wander to the piles of unwashed clothes, the half-empty tin of beans with a spoon sticking out, the unopened mail on the doormat. Even as he whispered urgently into the phone to his sister so that the moment he hung up, Lauren’s phone pinged with a message from Ruthie, breezily asking after her and the boys, promising to drop by as soon as she could.
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