baby,’ Eliza said. ‘Briony Rose. How is she?’ She couldn’t get the image of that still bundle out of her mind.
‘She’s doing well, she’ll be out of hospital soon.’
‘What’s going to happen to her?’
DC Barraclough shook her head again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, taking out a sheaf of notes. ‘That’s in the hands of social services. Now,’ she changed the subject briskly, ‘let me run through those timings with you again,’ she said. ‘We’d like to get them a bit more specific.’
‘You said it was a general idea you wanted,’ Eliza said. She felt a mixture of relief and anxiety about the baby.
‘Just a bit more specific. You closed the fire door a bit before midnight –’
Eliza nodded. ‘It must have been, because I heard her walking around in the flat later.’
‘– and then you say you heard the baby crying, and that was when you heard Cara? Can you remember the time?’
‘I remember I looked at the clock,’ Eliza said. ‘I was so fed up about being woken up again. But I can’t remember what time it was. You said it must have been around midnight.’ She frowned, thinking back. That was the way it had happened, wasn’t it?
She saw DC Barraclough look past her, and turned round. A tall, fair-haired man had come into the room. It was a moment before she recognized him as Roy Farnham, the man from the funeral, the man who had been at the gallery yesterday, taking charge when they found the baby.
‘Thank you for coming in, Miss Eliot,’ he said.
‘Eliza,’ she said. He nodded and looked thoughtfully at DC Barraclough, whose face was a bit pink.
‘Is everything all right, Barraclough?’ he said. His voice was polite, but DC Barraclough looked more flushed. He turned to Eliza. ‘I’d like a clearer idea of the evening. Can we go over it again?’
She nodded. ‘I was explaining to DC Barraclough,’ she said. ‘It’s really hard to remember.’
He dismissed that. ‘Don’t worry. Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ He took her through the evening with Cara, the time Cara left her flat, what Eliza had done next. ‘You don’t give yourself much time off,’ he said with a quick smile. She smiled back. ‘Right, so you worked for – what – all of the evening? Did you do anything else?’
‘No, I worked, then I felt tired, so I got ready for bed.’
‘And then…’
‘I went to bed. I read for a while…’
‘Let’s go through that again,’ he said. ‘It was about half past seven when you went upstairs with Cara Hobson. You had coffee and then she went – how long did she stay?’
‘Oh, only as long as it took to drink the coffee. Twenty minutes or so.’
‘OK. So about half past eight, you started working. How much work did you get through?’
‘There was a folder of stuff – I got that finished. It must have taken me more than a couple of hours…Yes. The news was finishing – I meant to watch it and I missed it.’ He didn’t say anything, just waited. ‘I had a shower,’ she said. It was coming clearer.
‘So it would have been about eleven by the time you got to bed.’
She nodded again. ‘And then I read until I began to fall asleep, you know.’
‘And something woke you up?’ he prompted.
‘It was the draught from the door,’ she said. ‘There’s a fire door leading on to the steps, and sometimes Cara didn’t shut it properly when she came in. I had to get up and shut it.’
‘So you were wide awake,’ he said. His smile was sympathetic. ‘And an early start the next day?’
She looked at him. ‘I remember now, I looked at the clock. It was after one. I was really pissed off. And that was when I heard the footsteps. I was trying to get to sleep, but I could hear Cara walking around with the baby.’
‘And then…’
She frowned. ‘Something else woke me up later, I remember that. I spent the rest of the night in the chair. The baby was crying. But it was something else woke me up.’ She shook her head. She didn’t know what it was.
‘Someone going out? Opening the fire door?’
Eliza shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t hear that. I don’t know what it was.’ In her mind, she could hear the wailing cry of the wind as it blew through the empty windows of the derelict buildings. She shook her head. She’d be guessing now. ‘I made myself a drink. It was about two, I think. I’d forgotten.’ She felt pleased with herself for remembering.
Farnham nodded. ‘Did you hear anything else from Cara’s flat? Apart from the baby.’
Eliza thought. ‘No, it was only the baby. I don’t remember hearing anything else.’
‘OK,’ he said again. ‘And you didn’t see Cara at all after she left your flat?’
‘No.’ Eliza remembered Cara as she walked towards the door. Hindsight – was it hindsight? – made her a sad and lonely figure. ‘No, I didn’t see her again.’
He stood up. ‘Thank you, Miss Eliot, you’ve been very helpful. DC Barraclough will sort out your statement with you.’ Eliza was aware suddenly of the other woman as a silent presence in the room, aware of a tension in the air.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There was something I wanted to know…I don’t know if you can tell me…’
Farnham waited, his hand on the door.
She knew he must be busy, but she had to ask. ‘The paper,’ she said. She could see his expression changing, becoming cautious. ‘They said something about the canal, they called it “the canal of death” and they mentioned Ellie Chapman. Why are they making a connection? Is it just the canal?’
He looked at her. ‘You knew Ellie,’ he said. He seemed to hesitate, then he said, ‘We found Cara Hobson’s body near Cadman Street Bridge.’
Of course. The place where Ellie’s body had been found dumped in the undergrowth by the towpath, an accidental find. The police were searching the towpath after a junkie had OD’d in a boat moored by the canal side.
‘It’s a deserted place,’ he went on, ‘but it’s bang in the centre of the city – and there’s a lot of dodgy places close by, you must be aware of that – a good place to shoot up, a good place to take a punter. A good place to dump a body.’ He looked at her to make sure she understood. ‘There’s no other link,’ he said.
It was gone twelve by the time Eliza left the police station. Somehow, she had expected the news of Cara’s death to have more impact, for the people going about their business in the city to be concerned,
