‘I’m pretty sure sight is one of the basic five.’
He recovered with barely a flicker. ‘Look, all I’m saying is, you can’t hide that kind of thing from me. I know you too well. You’re not getting any and you haven’t been for a long, long time. So when you do, I’m going to notice the difference.’
‘You’re deluded. And perverted.’
‘Just observant. Anyway, it could be one couple. Maybe they ran out of condoms and took a chance.’
‘Kate had keys to this house. Who else did?’
Derwent shrugged. ‘No one, as far as I know. The neighbour only has a key to the garden. Harold didn’t mention anyone else.’
‘There was no sign of anyone breaking in. We have to assume Kate was using the house or letting someone else use it.’
‘Or someone stole her keys.’
‘Either way, we need to know who was here. And why they were using this room.’ I nudged the curtain back, noticing a fragile curl of ash that ghosted along the sill, and a sticky mark where something round had rested. ‘That’s a hell of a good view of Kate’s house. Maybe that’s why they chose this room.’
‘Or it’s a complete coincidence. It can’t be connected with her murder or they’d have done a better job of cleaning up. You’d have to be as thick as pigshit and you’d have to know nothing about criminal investigation to leave this place as it is without even attempting to get rid of the sheet, not to mention the rest.’
‘Maybe they meant to. Maybe they didn’t have time. Chloe came back early, remember? She wasn’t supposed to be here until Tuesday. Maybe they thought they could come back and clear up at their leisure, but then there were police everywhere and they couldn’t take the risk.’ I looked around. ‘Remember, if it wasn’t for the dog leading us here, we probably wouldn’t have known about the house. Kate’s keys were gone, along with the keys for this place. There was nothing to send us over here. They probably thought they could leave this stuff here forever. They gambled and lost.’
‘So this counts as us being lucky.’ Derwent rubbed his forehead with the back of a gloved hand. ‘Excuse me if I don’t rush out and buy a lottery ticket.’
9
I left Derwent with Kev Cox and Una Burt, trying to justify why we’d trampled all over a house that was suddenly vital to the investigation. From the looks on their faces, ignorance was not going to be an adequate defence. Burt in particular had a wild look in her eyes that was as close to panic as I’d ever seen in her. She was presiding over a murder investigation with no body and no suspects, after all; it wasn’t a reputation-maker. And through no real fault of our own, we’d lost an opportunity to watch and wait for the perpetrator to come to us. Whatever the forensic evidence said – assuming we hadn’t compromised that too – there was nothing to compare to catching someone red-handed.
It wasn’t only cowardice that made me slip away. I wanted to speak to Chloe Emery again, this time alone. I didn’t think that Georgia had put her off the previous day – I doubted Chloe had even noticed she was in the room – but it couldn’t hurt to try a more casual approach.
I rang the doorbell at number 32 and waited. It was Morgan Norris who came to the door, his expression forbidding. I thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to let me in but then the scowl faded and he clapped a hand to his head.
‘You’re the police officer who was here yesterday. Sorry, I didn’t recognise you. Your hair was … um … different.’
I let that go without acknowledgement. The difference humidity made to my hair could be measured in yards. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I wanted to speak to Chloe again.’
‘Have you found anything?’ He glanced up the stairs as he spoke, wary of being overheard.
‘It’s a routine follow-up. No news.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ He fiddled with the chain on the back of the door, frowning at it as if it was important. ‘There’s hope.’
Hope could be far more destructive than grief. I didn’t say that to him. I smiled instead.
‘Is Chloe upstairs?’
‘I believe so.’ I started to move past him and he put his hand on my wrist. ‘Wait. Eleanor wants a word first. She’s in the kitchen.’
I was about to say no. He was holding on to me firmly, but not tightly, and his hand was very warm against the soft skin on the inside of my wrist. I objected on principle to being grabbed. If he could feel my pulse under his fingers he would know my heart was pounding.
But my reaction was nothing to do with Morgan Norris. I wasn’t scared of him.
And I didn’t want to miss out on a chance to speak to Eleanor Norris again just because I was offended by some uninvited manhandling.
Norris tilted his head to one side. He had dark eyelashes, several shades darker than his hair, and they made his eyes look lighter. It was attractive, and he knew it. ‘Please.’
‘All right.’ I twisted my wrist out of his grasp but without drama. I knew he would never have touched a male DS and it annoyed me but there was nothing I could do about it.
‘I want to apologise too,’ he said quickly.
I had already started towards the kitchen. I stopped and looked back at him. ‘For what?’
‘Calling you names yesterday. It was a stupid joke and I was sorry as soon as I said it. We were all under a lot of strain.’
I genuinely couldn’t think what he meant at first. ‘Oh – when you said we were the filth, you mean?’
‘Yeah. I’m not proud of it.’
‘I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard worse.’
‘You weren’t at all like what I was expecting.’
I frowned. ‘Expecting?’
‘When they said a detective would come round.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets, doing the awkward little boy act. ‘I was expecting someone tougher. Older.’
‘Great.’ I managed to get a world of I-don’t-care into my voice. ‘Shall we get on with this?’
‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ He looked upset, sincerely so, and I revised my impression of him: maybe it hadn’t been an act after all. Maybe he genuinely did feel awkward about what he’d said.
But I couldn’t quite believe he was unsure of himself when he’d had the confidence to take hold of me. My wrist ached. That was psychosomatic. It was the memory of having to fight for my life that was flooding my body with adrenalin, not real, actual pain. It wasn’t fear of where I was or what I was doing. It was a useless leftover, learned behaviour from experiences I wanted to leave far behind me. That wasn’t who I was any more.
I squared my detective sergeant shoulders and lifted my chin and walked into the kitchen as if every step took me further away from the past. The past can’t hurt me any more.
I knew it was a lie, but it was a comfort all the same.
Eleanor Norris had her back to me. She was leaning over the kitchen table, reading a newspaper. ‘Who was it?’
‘DS Maeve Kerrigan,’ I said. ‘We met yesterday.’