Marianne had been wearing wellies when she died. Hunters – navy blue Hunters, though probably the colour made no difference. She’d been wearing them when her body was found and, Theo had told her, the police had CCTV footage of her wearing them a few hours before she died, after it snowed.
The lane towards Port Meadow was deserted, the weather keeping people indoors, and Rowan allowed herself one loud laugh at the idea that having slept with him had paid off after all. She’d thought what he’d told her had ruled out anyone else being at the house the night Marianne died but perhaps – perhaps – it had ruled in just one person.
Those three words: after it snowed. There had been one set of footprints going into the house, he said, and one coming out, and Marianne had made them both. By which, presumably, he meant that they’d been made by the same boots. They were shopping together, Turk had said. They used to share clothes and shoes. And shoes. If they’d shared shoes, they must have been the same size. Had they bought their matching Hunters together, Marianne and Bryony?
Greenwood had been trying to deflect attention but not from himself: there had been no larger, male footprints in the snow. She remembered his ferocity when he came to the house to look at Marianne’s work, the rage he’d barely contained. He wasn’t trying to protect Marianne that day, though: he was afraid for his daughter. Bryony said you went to find her at school yesterday. Please don’t do that again.
Marianne had made the footprints going in, that was certain – at some point between appearing on CCTV in North Parade and falling to her death, she must have entered the house in order to have come off the roof. But if she’d been out of the house before the snow started and came back after it stopped, perhaps she’d made only the footprints that headed into the house. If Bryony had been at Fyfield Road that day before it started snowing, maybe hanging out and reading, waiting for Marianne to come home, she, in her identical boots, could have made the ones that headed out.
Rowan reached the end of the lane and stood at the gate to the meadow. It was as bleak as she’d ever seen it, a pockmarked stretch of drab grass stretching away under a grey sky towards an unremarkable length of river, but to her, now, it was beautiful. Bryony could have been in the house that day after all, and if she’d seen the relationship that was growing between Marianne and Cory, or even, like Adam, only intuited it, she’d had a motive.
When she announced herself over the intercom, Sarah Johnson sounded surprised but also a little pleased and Rowan remembered what she’d said about Marianne’s trips out with Martin being almost as nice for her as they were for him. A break, if you know what I’m saying.
Rowan accepted tea in a fussy china cup and saucer and sipped it while she waited for Sarah to prise Martin away from his computer game. ‘Hello again.’ She smiled as he came into the room with his deliberate, muscular gait, the men’s senior champion approaching the springboard.
‘You’re Marianne’s friend,’ he said baldly. ‘You were here before.’
‘That’s right. Martin, I’m trying to help Marianne now – well, her family. I wondered if I could ask for your help?’
He looked at her, expressionless.
‘The day Marianne died.’ She glanced quickly at Sarah to check she wasn’t going to upset him. ‘That afternoon – I don’t know if you’ll remember but just in case. Was anyone else there, during the day? Did you see anyone?’
‘Yes,’ he said, as proud as if he knew the answer to a difficult question in class. ‘The blonde one. The one who was there all the time. She was there all day. She stayed there the night before.’
Rowan felt another joyful upsurge in her chest. It was a struggle to keep the elation off her face.
‘The day that Marianne died, Martin?’ said his mother, frowning. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’ He was annoyed at that. ‘I remember. Marianne was my friend.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything to the police when they came?’
‘They didn’t ask me. They asked if I saw anything susp . . . susp . . .’
‘Suspicious,’ supplied Sarah.
‘Did you?’ said Rowan.
‘No.’ He shook his head, emphatic. ‘I went to bed. I waved to them, Marianne and the blonde one, and then I went to bed. I woke up and Marianne was lying in the garden. She was all . . . broken.’
Thirty-five