see into the room.
‘What Craig wants to know,’ I said, ‘is whether someone with limited upper body strength could have done this.’
‘Don’t get all uppity,’ Craig said. ‘Women do have limited upper body strength.’
‘Assumptions like that get us into trouble,’ I said. ‘You need to arm-wrestle my friend Hannah. I suppose at least you’re not assuming a man did it.’
‘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.
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
