She ran through the call history to see if that made any sense. On Wednesday there had been intermittent calls back and forth between “J” and “Dev” and “Psych,” and then in the evening the contacts increased until the phone was in almost constant use. Flora scrolled through it, wondering why Wednesday, what was so special about it? Polly was still alive then, doing whatever it was she had been busy doing on Wednesday—and then she saw it.
One missed call, on Wednesday night, from a landline number she recognized—the number for Yonder Cottage.
Flora stared at the handset, thinking hard. Polly had called this phone on Wednesday night at 23:43. The next contact logged on the call history was to voice mail, ten minutes later. Flora selected “voice mail” and dialed.
A second later it connected. “Welcome to voice mail. You have no new messages. To listen to older messages, press one. To listen to—”
Flora interrupted the voice and pressed one on the keypad.
She held her breath and listened.
“Nigel? Don’t you EVER do anything like that again, you hear me? I am fucking livid right now. What the hell were you thinking? I’ve told you I want nothing to do with any of this! How dare you put me in that situation? I can’t believe it, you total fucking idiot. I’m this close to calling the bloody police on you, you complete TWAT.”
23:54
I shouldn’t be doing this, Lou thought.
He held the door open for her, held out his hand—as though she needed help!—and, in any case, she’d only let go of his hand briefly in order to open the door of the taxi.
He didn’t bother to put lights on, didn’t take her into the living room this time, didn’t offer her food or put music on or even kiss her. He waited for her to kick off her shoes in the hallway and then he led her by the hand up the stairs to his bedroom at the front of the house. There was light coming in from outside, through the blinds, streetlight, enough for her to see him undoing the top buttons of his shirt, tugging it out of his trousers and then pulling it over the top of his head, ruffling his hair the wrong way. His face was in shadow. She couldn’t see the expression on it, or his black eye for that matter, the injury she knew for a fact hadn’t been caused by a hockey stick or else why would he be so evasive? There was more to it than that.
But she didn’t care about that right now. I need sleep, her subconscious protested feebly, thinking about the arrests tomorrow and how she would need to be focused, ready to do a press conference if necessary, certainly ready to brief Buchanan, and probably the assistant chief constable too . . .
“Stop that,” he said, quietly, running his fingers over the frown creasing her forehead.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Shh.”
Then the chink of his belt as he undid it, and as though that was some kind of signal, she realized that she was standing there like a complete lemon, mouth open, probably stopping just short of a drool. So she reached out a hand and found the bare skin of his chest. It was hot to the touch, the muscles under the skin solid, tense. He caught hold of her hand and brought it up to his mouth to kiss. Pulled her closer.
“Louisa,” he said, and kissed her.
Oh, God, it felt so good to give in to it. She could no more have gone downstairs, called a cab on her mobile, than she could have walked over broken glass. It wasn’t only sexual attraction, it was like this—this—longing to be with him.
She let him undress her. He did it almost reverently; and while his clothes had been discarded where they fell, he took each item of hers and folded it, leaving it on the chair at the end of the bed.
And, thinking that she needed to be sensible here, needed to take charge of the situation and point out that maybe they had half an hour, an hour at most and then she would have to go home so she could get some sleep, he took control of things and her body responded to him as though it was separate from her, with no intention of behaving sensibly at all . . .
In the early hours of the morning, as her breathing slowed again for what felt like the fourth or fifth time, he was stroking her arm with his eyes closed, as though he was sleeping, even though she knew he was wide awake because of the smile on his lips, she whispered to him: “Someone whacked you one, didn’t they?”
“Hmm? What are you talking about?”
“Your eye. You got punched.”
“Louisa, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. You can sleep now, you know . . . unless you want more?”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because it doesn’t matter. It’s done with.”
“Was it over a woman?”
He let her go abruptly, sat up in bed, and turned on the bedside light. She blinked at the sudden brightness, pulled at the sheet in order to cover herself.
“Hey,” he said, tugging the sheet out of her grasp. “Don’t do that. Let me see.”
“Why did you turn the light on?”
“To get this over with. It’s no big deal. I was in the locker room and one of the guys on the team was smack-talking another of the guys on the team. His wife has cancer. I got mad. I picked a fight with him. He clipped me in the face with a stick. And that is it, the full story. Are you happy now?”
“What the hell’s smack-talking?”
“You know. Mouthing off.”
He was absolutely telling the truth. “Why couldn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because it’s no big deal. We’re buddies again now. They all think it’s funny that I got a black eye from it. The only problem with it now is your personal insecurity.”
“Not my insecurity. My professional curiosity.”
He laughed, nodded. “Right. I believe you. Totally.”
She found herself smiling.
“I really like you,” he said. “I know it’s only been a few days, but you don’t need to feel insecure.”
She leaned over and kissed him, and then got up from the bed and started to get dressed.
“Where are you going? Hey, come back to bed.”
“I’m glad we’ve established that you like me,” she teased. “I can go home now and get some sleep with what’s left of the night.”
Day Six
Tuesday 6 November 2012
08:47
Lou was in the canteen on the top floor at Briarstone Police Station with Jason, Ali Whitmore, and Jane Phelps. She’d ordered a full English breakfast for them all and they were keeping a close eye on the kitchen to make sure that there were no dangerous hygiene violations taking place. Unlike the canteen up the road at police headquarters, the Briarstone nick canteen was known to be a bit hit-and-miss. The kitchen was open plan, enabling the customers to watch their food being prepared from start to finish. This should have been reassuring, but unfortunately it wasn’t.
Lou felt strangely relieved that Andy Hamilton was on a rest day. He was one less headache for her to deal with. Under normal circumstances she would have been grateful for every warm body she could get her hands on for the arrest phase of the operation, but keeping an eye on him was proving such hard work it was much better for everyone if he was out of the picture, for today at least.
It had all gone smoothly and, for a change, everyone seemed relaxed. Relieved.
Brian had been arrested as soon as he had been discharged. He had looked shocked, but had reserved his right to remain silent. He had spoken to his solicitor, who was waiting for him when he was brought into custody.
Brian’s doctors had confirmed that, for now, he was fit to be interviewed. The force medical examiner had been briefed and the forensic nurse practitioner on duty in Briarstone nick had been asked to stay close at hand while the interviews took place.
Lou felt exhausted, not least because she’d had only four hours’ sleep. Bits of the time she’d spent with Jason kept coming back to her and distracting her from the sudden flood of information that was pouring in to the MIR via Barry Holloway.
Later, she thought. Tonight I’m going to ask him
to stay at my house. And even if all we do is sleep, I want it to be with him there . . .
“Ma’am?”
There was something about the tone of the voice from behind her shoulder, and the way Jane Phelps’s smile had died on her face looking at the expression on Ron Mitchell’s face as he approached Lou, that made her realize that this was not going to be good news.
“What is it, Ron?”
“Flora Maitland is downstairs. She’s insisting she wants to talk to you.”
08:52
Flora had been waiting for nearly an hour. The front office of the police station opened at eight, and she had been here since the doors had been unlocked. She had asked to speak to whoever was in charge of the investigation into the murder of Polly Leuchars.
The front office was an interesting place to sit. A man came in to report a stolen car. The woman on the counter ran through a series of questions, made notes, but the story kept changing: he’d last seen it on Sunday evening, then he corrected himself and admitted driving it to work yesterday. He’d left it parked outside his house, then he said it had been stolen from the car park where he worked. Flora could feel the woman’s frustration building, and then she realized that the man was drunk. This early in the morning?
Eventually, the man went.
Flora asked, “How long will it take? Do you know?”
The woman had responded, “Sorry, love. No idea.”
A woman came in to ask about some lost property, then another woman with a buggy and a toddler, asking whether her boyfriend was in custody again because he hadn’t come home last night. A sign on the wall offered people the chance to discuss their query in a private room, but nobody seemed bothered by Flora’s presence. She felt as though she were fading, becoming transparent. If she sat perfectly still, nobody would even be able to see her anymore.
At eight forty-five a man in a suit turned up. He was there for a meeting with someone from Crime Prevention. They made him sit and wait. He sat opposite Flora and stared at her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. He was probably wondering what she was there for, and then she realized she probably didn’t look too good.
“Will it be much longer, do you think?”
“I’ve rung them, they know you’re here. I expect they’re all busy at the moment.”
She had barely slept, just dozed in the kitchen at the studio with the blanket around her shoulders. When it got light and nothing had happened, no phone calls, no texts, she tried to decide what to do. She wanted to phone her father, demand to know what he was doing, what Polly had meant by her frantic voice mail.
The last few days had been such a nightmare. First Polly’s death, and then her father acting strangely. How could she not suspect him? And having listened to Polly’s voice, tearful, furious, and terrified on that message, she was jumpy and afraid. She was imagining all sorts of things, her mind flitting from one possibility to the next. Why hadn’t he used the gun, if he was going to kill her? Because he hadn’t had it with him, of course. He had got her voice mail and had gone down to the cottage to confront her about it, whatever it was, and of course she hadn’t made him cheese on toast, how ridiculous!—he had gone there to talk to her, and they’d had another row, and he’d hit her too hard and she had died. And after that he’d been covering his tracks, establishing an alibi with friends, or whatever it was he’d done. But no, that wasn’t right either, was it? He’d been at the farm. He had told them he was at home, with Mum. And he was relying on Felicity to cover up for him, relying on her being vague and confused as she always was but nevertheless unflinching in her support of him.
Think, Flora, think. Her eyes kept moving from the front desk to the clock on the wall. Why were they taking so long? The longer they left it the more her resolve started to slip. This morning she had been certain of what she needed to do: go to the police and tell them she was ready to talk, as long as they were prepared to offer her some protection.
She had left the studio as it began to get properly light, looking around in case someone was waiting for her outside. Nobody there. She hurried to her car, checked it carefully. It seemed all right. Started okay. Before she did anything else, she had a very important task to complete: she drove to the farm, in through the driveway beside Yonder Cottage so that nobody in the farmhouse would know she was there. She left the car outside Polly’s house and walked up to the stables, keeping an eye out all the way. Nobody was around, of course. Felicity would still be fast asleep.
The horses were surprised to see her but seemed quite happy to have an early breakfast. After they’d been fed she led them one by one to the paddock and turned them loose. They stood around looking dazed. That was fine. She wouldn’t bother mucking out. Felicity probably wouldn’t even check; she would see them out in the field and think—what? That Petrie had suddenly decided to do his job properly? Actually, knowing her mother, she probably wouldn’t even care. Either way, by the time the horses needed to be brought in again, the day would have taken its course and nothing would be the same again anyway.
After the stables, there had been nothing else for it but to go to the police station. There was no point in going to her flat—that was a dangerous place now. Her father would be looking for her soon enough, and the flat would be the first place he would check. She couldn’t risk going to Taryn’s, either. It would be wrong of her to involve her friend now that the stakes had become so much higher.
“Do you think you could ring them again? I’ve been here ages,” she asked.
“They’re based over at HQ, could be a while yet. Sorry, love. Try to sit tight, I’m sure someone will be here before too long.”
The longer she waited, the more uncertain she became. Every few minutes she checked her phone, even though it would vibrate for any incoming calls or texts. Since last night’s text, Nigel had remained silent. This could mean one of two things: either he was carrying on with his daily business, blissfully unaware of her activities, or he had spoken to Connor Petrie, in which case she was in deep shit.
Yes, the police station was the only safe place at the moment, and as much as she didn’t particularly like or trust the police, especially after they had brought her in for questioning, searched the flat, and accused her of murdering the only person she’d ever loved, they were definitely a better prospect than confronting her father.
And then her mobile phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the display: Taryn. And just at that moment the door to the side of the reception opened.
“Ms. Maitland?”
Flora looked up. The woman who had called her name was holding open a door next to the reception desk. “Would you like to come this way?”
Flora pressed the button to reject Taryn’s call and sprang to her feet, wiping her hands down the front of her grubby, paint-stained jeans. “Thanks, yes.” Her heart was bouncing around in her chest.
Focus. Think.
Above the swirling, panicky thoughts, Flora was acutely aware that what she was about to do amounted to a further act of betrayal and that from this point on there was no turning back.
The woman was young, slightly built, wearing a smart suit that made her look older than she probably was. Her long, dark, glossy hair must have taken a lot of effort to straighten every morning. Flora could never see the point of all that stuff.
She was led into a small, artificially lit room with a table and two chairs, a metal filing cabinet upon which sat a pile of dog-eared magazines, a box of tissues, and a plant that was so green it had to be made of plastic.
“Have a seat,” the woman said.
Flora sat. The woman pulled the chair out from the desk and sat in the open space beside the table.
“My name is Detective Chief Inspector Louisa Smith. I’m leading the investigation into Polly Leuchars’s murder and I understand you wanted to see me?”
“You’re in charge?” Flora asked, surprised. She had a momentary vision of the brash, intimidating Detective Inspec
tor Andy Hamilton and wondered how he could possibly be subordinate to this smiling, softly spoken woman.
“Yes, I am. How can I help?”
“Well, it’s about my father,” Flora began. This was the moment, she thought. After this, her choices would diminish. She hesitated, feeling panic and confusion and, in all of that, still this terrible aching in her heart because of Polly. And she was tired now, so tired. Despite the emotions, all she wanted to do was lie down on the floor of the room and sleep. And how could any of this possibly make sense?
“Your father—Nigel Maitland?”
Flora swallowed. She didn’t want to cry in front of this woman but it looked like it might happen anyway. “I’m so scared,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Why are you scared, Flora?”
There was a long moment, a long, painful moment when she debated with herself about what to say next. And then, in a small voice, she said, “I’m scared of getting things wrong.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. If you have information for us, it’s up to us to make sure we know what it means. So you see, you can’t get things wrong, Flora.”
Flora took a deep breath in. “He’s been acting strangely since Polly’s death. I think something happened that night, but I don’t know what. I just know he’s been odd. And he was having an—an affair with her. I supposed that’s what it is.”
“With whom? With Polly?”
“Yes. He said it ended months ago, but I don’t know if that was true.”
“In what way was he behaving strangely?”
Flora thought about this, and the confusion and the doubt seemed to lift a little. She couldn’t tell them about the phone, or about Polly’s voice-mail message, because to do so would be to admit to the boxes and their contents. She had hidden them under the kitchen sink at the studio, which wasn’t the best hiding place, but at least they were out of sight. How could she tell them what she knew? How to start something like this? And, once started, how to stop?