by Roz Watkins
‘Au contraire,’ Craig said, having recently returned from some winter sun. ‘It’s probably the bloke’s wife.’
That probably said more about Craig’s relationship with his wife than it did about the murder, but I decided to keep that insight to myself.
‘You wouldn’t need a great amount of strength,’ Mary said. ‘Because it was done with an inward stabbing rather than a slicing motion. A feeble little woman could definitely have done it.’ She smiled at me to show her solidarity.
I nodded a thank you at Mary, and stood for a moment taking in the room. Something was odd. The chaos of pulled-out drawers and strewn clothes was muted. I couldn’t imagine an intruder storming through.
An en-suite bathroom led off the bedroom. From the droplets of water in the cubicle and on the floor, it looked as if someone had taken a shower within the previous few hours.
Back on the landing, I noticed something on the windowsill, almost hidden behind the curtain. At first I thought it was a vase, but then realised it was a carving in pale wood. I walked over and looked more closely. It was a miniature version of one of the stone statues I’d seen in the clearing – a child screaming. The terrible face was the same, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. But there was one difference. This one was naked, and where the heart should have been, the wood had been gouged out, leaving a hollow in the child’s chest.
3.
Back outside, I found Craig standing on the paved area staring upwards. His breath puffed dragon-like into the air. ‘It looks like a house for freaks.’
Good old Craig. Always ready to empathise with the victim. But he did have a point. I loved these kinds of houses, but wasn’t sure I’d want to live in this one, even without a corpse in the bedroom. Not in the middle of the woods, isolated from any other human life. I looked up at the central tower poking into the heavy morning sky. ‘You can imagine catching sight of dead children’s faces in those top windows,’ I said, forgetting for a moment that it was Craig.
‘You’re not going to have one of your funny turns, are you?’
I pretended I hadn’t heard. He knew I’d had time off with stress in my last job in Manchester, a fact which I found excruciating. But I was senior to him. He wasn’t supposed to talk to me like that. I just wasn’t sure how to stop him without resorting to being a total dick. If I ever had to work closely with him, I’d be forced to take up Zen Buddhism or go to anger management classes. I sucked in a breath of bitterly cold, pine-saturated air and thought about fluffy kittens and not at all about smacking Craig’s smug face.
‘They brought the kid back,’ he said. ‘She’s in the van with her mum and the paramedics. Victim’s name’s Philip Thornton. His wife’s Rachel Thornton. Wife claims she was with her mother last night, left there at nine this morning to come here. Put petrol in the car in Matlock, and we’ve confirmed that with the petrol station. When did he die?’
‘Mary thinks between two and five.’
‘How come you were on the floor? Did you fall over?’
I didn’t answer. Decided not to mention the punch. It would give Craig far too much pleasure. ‘I think she’s the woman who’s been phoning about a stalker,’ I said.
Craig let out a sigh of theatrical weariness. ‘Bloody fantastic. So it’ll be our fault the poor bastard’s had his throat slit.’
*
I climbed into the paramedic’s van. Abbie looked tiny, sitting on a robust green chair, quietly rocking to and fro, her legs pulled to her chest. She was still holding on to my sister’s scarf. Her mother sat by her, but there was a space between them, a physical distance that seemed matched by something else – something about the way the woman didn’t quite look at her daughter, the way she angled herself away from her a tiny bit.
I couldn’t take on this case – I’d have to pass it on to another DI or DCI – but early information was vital, so I needed to talk to the wife. In the horror of the immediate aftermath, the relatives often handed you the answers, fresh and steaming on a plate.
The van smelt of bleach and misery. I had a flash of memory. When I’d found my sister, I’d curled up like Abbie was now, trying to make myself so small I’d disappear. I wanted to put my arms around Abbie and make it all go away. But of course nothing would make it go away.
‘Mrs Thornton,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve had a terrible shock.’
She looked up and gave me a blank stare. ‘It’s Rachel.’ There was a deadness in her eyes as if they’d seen too much.
I sat on the seat next to her. All the earlier agitation seemed to have gone, and she looked flat and resigned.
‘I’m DI Meg Dalton,’ I said. ‘I need to ask you a few questions. I know it’s hard but the sooner we get onto it, the better.’
Rachel shifted away from me slightly, but still kept a little distance between herself and Abbie. ‘I told you someone was following me.’ She sniffed and wiped her face with a tissue.
Abbie leant her head against the side of the van, eyes closed, red-smeared blonde hair spilling over the back of her seat. I wanted to get her cleaned up and warmed up and generally looked after. But I’d been told that sensitive kid-people were on their way to handle this, and to make sure we didn’t lose any evidence in the process.
Rachel ran blood-stained fingers through her own dark hair. Mascara seemed to bruise her cheeks.
‘Can we talk outside?’ I said.
She nodded. We left Abbie in the van, being looked after by the paramedics, and walked along a path leading away from the house and into the woods.
The ground was so cold I could feel it through the thin soles of my trainers, and the air was icy and seemed more solid than usual. I remembered Abbie’s feet stepping through the freezing stream and hoped the paramedics had made sure she was okay.
‘So, tell me about this person who was following you.’
Rachel breathed in shakily, and swallowed. ‘No one took it seriously. I told your people but they didn’t care.’
‘Do you know who it was?’
We walked slowly, Rachel shuffling as if her feet were numb. ‘I never saw them properly. I only caught glimpses and sensed someone looking at me when I went outside or walked in the woods.’ She sniffed and wiped her face. ‘Once I even thought someone was following us when we went out in the car.’
‘Can you remember what type of car they were in?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. You’re doing really well.’
She ground to a standstill and looked down at her feet. ‘How am I supposed to cope? I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through this.’
There was no answer to that. A woman in her forties, with a young child, her husband gone. I didn’t know how she was supposed to cope.
‘There’s a bench,’ I said. ‘If you’re not too cold. Shall we sit a moment?’
‘I’m not cold. I don’t feel anything. I could walk into a frozen lake and I’d feel nothing.’
We walked to the bench, which was in the clearing with the statues I’d seen earlier.
‘Do the woods belong to you?’ I asked. ‘And the statues?’
She glanced at them and let out her breath. Nodded slowly. ‘Horrible things.’
‘Are they old?’
‘Victorian, I think.’
A plaque was attached to the nearest statue’s base. I leant forward to read it. For the weak and the poor who died for the strong and the rich. How depressing.
I glanced at Rachel. She was shaky but seemed to be coping. ‘Just a few more questions. Is that okay?’
‘I suppose so.’ She stared ahead, as still as one of the statues. ‘I don’t think it’s sunk in.’
‘Thank you. We can go back to Abbie in a moment. But do you remember when you first noticed you were being followed?’ I was careful not to say, When you thought you were being followed, or anything that implied she might have been mistaken.
‘A few months ago. I wondered if it was something to d
o with Phil’s job. He’s a social worker, and sometimes the parents of the kids can get nasty. But Phil didn’t think it was that.’
I twisted to sit sideways on the bench, so I could look at her. ‘Who did he think it was?’
She paused and her eyes went glassy. When she spoke, her throat sounded tight. ‘I don’t think he even believed me. He thought I was imagining it. Ironically.’ She twisted her mouth into an almost-smile, and fiddled with her wedding ring, rotating it on her finger. ‘But he’s been odd recently. He disappeared a few times and didn’t tell me where he was going. And he’s been a bit secretive.’ She sat up straighter, and some life came back into her, as if thinking about her husband’s strange behaviour was dulling her pain. She took a deep breath and turned to look at me. ‘I do love him though. I really love him.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks. And I need to know where you were this morning.’
She fished a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose loudly. ‘That other detective already asked me. I stayed at Mum’s. It had been arranged for ages. Phil and Abbie came home and I stayed on a couple more days to help Mum with sorting out some stuff. Wills and things.’
It was one of the most painful things about these investigations. This woman was sitting next to me on a freezing bench with her life splintering apart. Although I could only sense the jagged edges of it, I knew her pain. And yet a part of me was assessing her. Wondering if she could have done it. If she was the one who’d plunged that knife into her husband’s neck. ‘So, you were at your mother’s last night, but you came home this morning?’
‘Yes. When I’m away, Phil and I always talk in the morning. And he didn’t answer, and he wasn’t responding to texts. So, well, I wasn’t exactly panicking because he and Abbie are both on these sleeping pills and he can sleep late, but I had a bad feeling. So I came back. And then when I got back, I found you and . . . ’
I waited but she didn’t carry on.
‘Where does your mother live?’
‘A couple of miles past Matlock. Not far.’
‘And did you drive straight from your mother’s to your house this morning?’
She hesitated. ‘I got petrol in Matlock. You can check that.’
That suspicious part of me felt something. Something deep inside that my boss would dismiss as a hunch, but that I knew was based on years of experience and observation. Something my subconscious mind had translated into a twitching in my stomach. Her responses weren’t quite right.
‘So, when you saw me, had you come straight from your mother’s, apart from getting petrol?’
She touched her throat. ‘I told you that. It took a while though, with the traffic. Do you think Abbie was there when . . . She’s really sleepy. She doesn’t remember. She’s on these pills for her night terrors. But she must have . . . what? Seen the killer? Or wandered through to our room and found Phil . . . ’
‘How old’s Abbie?’
‘Ten. She’s small for her age.’
I waited a moment, feeling the cold air in my nostrils. The wind whispered through the trees, and I could hear the river in the distance. ‘What pills is she on?’
‘Sleeping pills. I can show you.’
A ten-year-old on pills. I knew in the US the drug companies had achieved the holy grail of pills for all – old or young, sick or well. But in this country, sleeping pills for a kid was unusual.
‘And . . . why did you realise something was badly wrong?’ I said. ‘When you saw my car, I mean. You seemed very upset and worried.’
Rachel turned her body away from me and spoke as if to someone sitting on her opposite side. ‘I just knew.’ She blew her nose again.
All the birdsong and rustling of the trees and the rushing river seemed far away. The woods were quiet around us, as if muted by the presence of the stone girls.
‘What’s the story behind the statues?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Some ancient folk tale or something. Phil was obsessed with them but he always denied it.’
‘I noticed a carving on your landing, similar to one of them.’
‘You see. Phil did that. I sometimes thought he only bought the house because of the statues. It’s such a money pit, I don’t know why else he came here. But he always clammed up if I asked him about them, apart from one time when he was drunk . . . ’
‘What did he say then?’
‘I couldn’t get much sense out of him. But something about doing penance, I think.’
My ears twitched. ‘Penance? What did he mean by that?’
‘He wouldn’t say. But it seemed to have something to do with these.’ She nodded towards the stone children.
Penance. That was a hot word. When anyone wanted to do penance, there was always a chance someone else wanted revenge. I wondered about the story behind the statues. ‘So, any more ideas why you were so worried when you arrived at the house this morning?’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Because no one answered the phone earlier I suppose. I’m always worried about Abbie’s health. I’m sure he probably does know what he’s doing, but I always wonder if Phil gets her medication right when I’m not around.’
‘What medical problem does Abbie have?’
Rachel rubbed her nose. There was something sticky in the air between us. Something she wasn’t saying. She didn’t seem numb and shocked any more – there was a new sharpness about her. She huddled into her coat as if suddenly aware of the cold. ‘You never think about your heart, do you, until it goes wrong? And then you think about it all the time.’
‘Does Abbie have a heart problem?’
‘Yes. It’s in Phil’s family.’
‘So, did Abbie have a sister?’
‘Jess. She died four years ago. She was only six. Not of the heart problem though. An accident.’
‘I’m sorry. Were they twins?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘Abbie’s Phil’s daughter and Jess was mine. I adopted Abbie after Phil’s ex-wife died.’
I turned to Rachel and looked at her dead eyes; weighed up whether to say anything; decided I should. ‘I lost my older sister when I was ten. She was fifteen.’
Some of the tension left her body. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned my sister. It wasn’t exactly in the manual of recommended interviewing techniques. But Rachel Thornton was a person too, and I found if you shared with people, they often had a strong urge to share back. Sometimes they’d even share that they’d killed someone. Most murderers didn’t intend to kill – it was something that happened in a loose moment that slipped away from them, when they were so furious they weren’t really noticing what they were doing. Often it was a relief to explain and justify.
Besides, my story was public now. Google my name and there it was. Poor me. Found my sister hanging from a beam, and I was only ten. Everyone knew. After I’d kept it to myself all those years. I felt like someone who’d fallen asleep drunk and woken up with no clothes on.
We sat together on the freezing bench, touched by our own individual horrors.
I hoped she might say more but she didn’t, and I decided not to push it for now. We’d need to get her in for a formal statement anyway.
‘Is Abbie’s heart okay?’ I asked.
‘She had a transplant last year.’
‘That’s why you can’t let her have pets?’
‘That’s right. She has a suppressed immune system.’
I pictured the needle marks on Abbie’s arms. Remembered her hugging the dog, then wrapped in his blankets and Carrie’s scarf, after nearly freezing to death. Not ideal.
‘Is she okay though?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Was there a problem with the transplant? Is that what your husband’s artwork’s about?’
‘Of course not. This has nothing to do with Abbie’s heart.’
I turned to look at Rachel’s face.
‘Do you mean your husband’s death?’ I asked. ‘Why would it have anything to do with Abbie’s heart?�
�
She blinked a couple of times and shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t. I didn’t mean anything. Abbie’s heart’s fine.’
4.
‘I can’t take on a big case,’ I said. ‘I spoke to the victim’s wife at the scene, but I’ll have to hand it over to someone else. It’s really bad timing for me.’
DS Jai Sanghera leant against the window in my room and hitched one leg up onto the sill in a bizarre yoga-style move. ‘Have you told Richard why you’re off next week?’
I took a step towards the door and lowered my voice. ‘He wants to see me now. I can’t tell him. I said I was spending time with family and catching up on some DIY and stuff.’
‘If you don’t take it on, he’ll ship someone else in. DI Dickhead from Nottingham.’
My stomach tightened at the thought of Abbie being grilled in one of our dispiriting interview rooms. ‘Maybe he’ll bring that woman in? She’s alright.’
Jai shook his head. ‘She’s tied up on a big case already. Human trafficking. No chance.’
I’d told Abbie I’d make sure she was okay. But I couldn’t let my family down. I swallowed. ‘I can’t delay my time off. You don’t know what it’s like.’
‘I know what it’s like to lose a grandparent. Tell him you can’t take the case. We’ll cope with Dickhead.’
*
It was only Monday afternoon, but I felt as if I’d had a full week at work. And I still hadn’t called Mum back. I shoved open the door to DCI Richard Atkins’ lair.
‘Ah, Meg.’ Richard’s customary greeting, whether he was bollocking or praising. ‘Sit down.’ He indicated his spare chair, famous for its ability to engulf the unwary. I suspected it housed the putrefied remains of previous DIs.
I stayed standing. ‘I can’t take on this case. I’ve got time off next week.’
Richard looked at me over piles of papers and the tiny cacti he used as paperweights. He rearranged them each morning and I was always looking for meaning in the arrangements, as if he was sending messages about his mood or the state of the world. He cracked his fingers. ‘You let the victim’s daughter fall into freezing water,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t be so careless. She could have been seriously hurt, and the evidence on her nightdress is compromised. What on earth were you thinking?’