I tell him it is and then he spins on his heels. The front door clicks closed and I listen as his car engine starts to grumble.
All these years and I never realised how good a poker player my husband is. My question was hardly waterboarding, but he didn’t crack at all. If it wasn’t for the fact I’d seen the gun in his locker, I’d swear it didn’t exist. I know it was a taser in his locker, but it’s still a weapon. I’m sure he would have still reacted to the word, ‘gun’. He’s also left me in a position where I either have to ask him directly about it, forget about it, or do something unpredictable, like tell the police.
I’m still thinking that over when there’s the sound of a key scratching against the lock. By the time I get into the hallway, Dan is back inside.
‘Forget something?’ I ask – but he shakes his head and holds the front door wider.
Behind him are constables O’Neill and Marks. PC Marks’ friendly smile seems a long way away as she shares her colleague’s grim look.
It seems obvious why.
‘You’ve found Tyler…?’ I say.
I expect forbidding acceptance. Something awful has happened to him and I’m going to have to break the news to poor Liv.
PC O’Neill shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid not. Can we come in?’
He looks between Dan and I, but neither of us protest. Dan holds the door open and the officers wipe their feet before stepping into the hall. We all move through to the living room and I close the door, pointing upwards and telling them that Olivia is sleeping.
The officers exchange a quick glance. ‘We might have to speak to her,’ PC O’Neill says.
‘Why?’
‘I believe there was a possible break-in here a few days ago…?’
‘Right.’
‘There was a blood sample taken from your garage…?’
It’s clear he knows the answers to these questions and I again confirm he’s correct.
He takes a breath and, in that moment, I know what he’s about to say. My knee wobbles but I hold onto the back of the sofa, maintaining some degree of control.
‘We’ve got the results back on the blood,’ PC O’Neill says. ‘It belongs to Tyler Lambert.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
I stare from one officer to the other, expecting some sort of follow-up. I’m not simply holding onto the back of the sofa for support any longer, it’s the only thing holding me up. My legs are jelly.
I killed Tyler.
Me.
Not Dan with that stun gun; not Jason with his cryptic remarks about people getting what they deserve. Not Frank going after his own son for whatever reason.
None of them.
It was me.
When I woke up in that field in the early hours of Tuesday, Tyler’s blood was on my car.
‘Are you okay?’
It’s PC Marks who speaks. She’s calm, using that measured tone that public service workers like police officers, doctors and nurses can pull off so well. Dan does it, too. For a long time, I believed it was because someone genuinely cared. After the arguments with Dan, the passive aggression and the breakdown of our relationship, I’ve become confused about it all. I’ve wondered if that tone is an act. I’m muddled at whether strangers really do care.
‘Surprised, I suppose,’ I manage.
PC O’Neill responds this time, asking to talk to Olivia.
Dan seems a little bemused and I can’t read him. I’m not sure how but I make my way to the stairs without my knees giving way. There was a second after they confirmed it was Tyler’s blood in which I assumed they knew everything. They were here to arrest me and it was game over. As it is, it’s not even me they want to talk to. It should have been obvious. The clearest reason for his blood to be in our garage isn’t because I hit him with a car, it’s because he spends time at the house with Olivia. At some point, they were in the garage and he cut himself. Simple.
I forget about the creaky stair and wince as the screech echoes through the house. I push open Olivia’s door and whisper ‘Liv’ through the darkness. She’s a groaning mass of bedcovers as she asks the time. I reply that the police want to speak to her and she sits up so quickly that it makes me jump backwards. Like a scene from The Exorcist.
‘Have they found him?’
‘No.’
There’s a pause as she wriggles against the sheets, fumbling her legs over the side of the bed. ‘He’s not…?’
‘They don’t know,’ I reply. ‘They’re not here to say he’s dead. They only want to talk to you.’
She says she’ll be right down and so I turn on the light and close the door for her, heading back downstairs to sit awkwardly with the officers. Dan’s on one of the sofas making small talk, out of place in his running shorts compared to their uniforms and my regular clothes. There’s nowhere for me to sit other than next to him and it feels so weird. We’re husband and wife, yet we haven’t sat by one another in years. It’s always on separate sofas, or across from each other if we end up going out for a meal with mutual friends. I’m paranoid that the police must notice our awkwardness. He’s in one corner, me in the other. It’s like either or both of us have a contagious disease that the other is trying to avoid. If the constables do see it, then they say nothing. Instead we talk about weather and roadworks. About plans for the weekend and what’s on telly tonight. The usual. I play the part well enough, or think I do; my stomach is doing cartwheels.
It takes around five minutes for Olivia to come downstairs. She’s in jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair is unwashed, the pink dull and faded. She still has bedhead. I ask if she wants my spot on the sofa but she’s already plonked herself cross-legged on the carpet in front of the officers as they explain about finding a patch of Tyler’s blood in our garage.
Olivia turns to look at her father and me and it’s clear she has no idea what’s being talked about.
‘How do you know it’s his blood?’ she asks.
‘The sample from your garage was tested and compared to the DNA database,’ PC O’Neill says. ‘Mr Lambert is in there because of his shoplifting convictions. It’s a one hundred per cent match.’
He waits for another question and, when it doesn’t come, adds: ‘Do you have any idea how Tyler’s blood could be in your garage?’
I look to Dan and then Olivia, hoping somebody other than me might answer.
Dan’s the first one to speak with an odd-sounding, ‘I’m not at home much.’
It’s true, but it’s a strange way to answer the question. I think he realises it because he then offers a prompting, ‘Liv…?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘We never went in the garage.’
This is bad. This is really bad.
PC Marks writes on a pad while PC O’Neill leans forward. ‘You never went in the garage?’ he asks. ‘Not once?’
Olivia shrugs. ‘Why would we? None of my stuff’s in there. I never go in there, let alone Tyler.’
‘Is he interested in cars at all?’
‘He couldn’t care less.’
‘Have you ever left the house through the garage?’
‘That’s what the front door’s for.’
She replies clinically and it’s good to know it isn’t only me she can make sound like a fool.
PC O’Neill is unmoved. ‘Is there any chance he could have gone in there by himself. When you weren’t around, perhaps?’
‘Like when?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking.’
There’s frustration in her voice when she replies. That annoyance that other people don’t see Tyler as she does. I’ve heard it so many times myself. ‘No. He wouldn’t go in there without me.’
The constable holds her in a firm gaze for a moment and then nods.
There’s a silence in which I can’t help but think of all the quotes from television. Things like, ‘It’s always someone close to the victim’. It sounds like a cliché but it’s probably true. Do they suspect Dan? Me? Olivia? Is that what this is about?
‘That does leave us in rather a quandary,’ PC O’Neill says.
‘Why?’ Olivia replies.
‘Because if he never went into the garage, then how did his blood get in there?’
‘I…’ Olivia stops herself and then starts to rock. She can’t answer because she doesn’t know.