Let the Dead Speak (Maeve Kerrigan #7)

‘The guys at the car wash near the dump. Oliver took it there after we got rid of the garden rubbish. They’re Polish or Russian or something – not very much English, anyway. But you can speak to them if you like. They’ll tell you it was muddy and full of leaves. They charged him extra for cleaning it because it was so filthy. There’s always some reason why they need to charge extra, but they do a good job.’

The SOCO had sprayed the entire car including the inside of the boot with Luminol, a chemical that made traces of blood fluoresce under the right light. She’d promised me that, despite the cleaning, she’d have found traces of blood if they’d been there to find. And if there had been as much as a speck of blood, I would have arrested Oliver Norris then and there. I couldn’t explain why I disliked him so much but I wasn’t ready to write the feeling off just because his car seemed to be clean. Not when his wife was under so much stress she was coming apart at the seams. Not when his brother was fishing to find out if Norris was a suspect.

I left the two of them in the kitchen and headed upstairs with the intention of persuading Chloe to leave Oliver Norris’s house as soon as possible. I could hear voices and followed the sound to the bedroom where I’d seen Chloe the previous day. As I got closer there was a sudden burst of laughter, quickly stifled in a flurry of shushing. I tapped on the door gently.

‘Wait!’ There was a scuffle from inside, and then a voice said, ‘Come in.’

It wasn’t Chloe’s voice, I thought. Bethany’s.

I put my head round the door. The two girls were lying on the floor. Chloe’s face went as blank as a sheet of paper when she saw me. Bethany’s expression jumped from wariness to surprise.

‘Sorry. I thought it was my mum.’

‘I wanted another word with Chloe.’

‘We didn’t think it was – we thought – you went to talk to my mum. We thought you’d left.’ Bethany scrambled to her feet, shaking out her long, loose dress, and I saw she had been lying on a mobile phone. She saw me looking at it. ‘It’s not mine. I’m not allowed one. It’s Chloe’s.’

I looked down at Chloe, who was still lying on the floor. ‘Can you sit up and talk to me, please, Chloe? And Bethany, do you mind leaving us for a few minutes?’

Bethany flashed me a hostile look, then turned to her friend. ‘Do you want me to stay?’

‘That’s not an option, I’m afraid.’ I held the door open. ‘As I said, I won’t be long.’

She trailed out past me, muttering under her breath. I smiled at her, unmoved, and shut the door firmly. She might dress like something from the nineteenth century but she was a normal teenager under it all.

‘What do you want?’ Chloe sat down on the chair she’d occupied the previous night, pulling her legs up again so she could hide behind her knees.

‘Did you get the medication I brought over last night?’

A nod.

‘I didn’t find the envelope you were asking about.’

Her face went taut with tension. ‘It must be there. It has to be.’

‘We took some papers from your mother’s study on the second floor. I’ll check to see if it’s got caught up with them. Is it important?’

A nod. ‘I need it.’

‘Then I’ll check very carefully to see if we have it.’

She managed a smile.

‘I have a couple of questions to ask, Chloe. Why did you come home early from your dad’s house?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She was more focused today, less blank. No more helpful, I noted.

‘I’m going to talk to him tomorrow.’

‘So?’

‘So I’d like to know your side of the story before I hear his.’

‘He doesn’t know.’

‘Know what?’ No answer. I tried again. ‘Was it something someone said? Or something they did?’

No answer.

‘Why doesn’t your dad know about it?’

‘He wasn’t there.’

‘He’d gone out?’

‘No, I mean he wasn’t there.’ She looked up. ‘He was away.’

‘But you were there to see him.’

She shrugged. ‘It was business, he said. Important.’

‘When was he away?’

She thought about it. ‘He left on Friday morning. He came back on Saturday evening.’

I made a note. ‘Do you know where he was?’

‘No. He didn’t say.’

‘OK. You know, I understand that you don’t want to talk about what happened in your dad’s house, but it was something that really upset you, enough that you didn’t want to stay there even after your father came back, and that makes me think it’s something the police should know about.’

Her eyes went wide. ‘No, no. It was … family stuff.’

‘An argument?’

Her eyes slid away from my face. ‘Yeah. I said some things I shouldn’t have. I got in trouble with my stepmother. I don’t think she likes me very much.’

‘OK,’ I said. I might have tried to convince her she was wrong but I knew there were a lot of wicked stepmothers out there. I’d reserve judgement on the second Mrs Emery until I met her. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to tell me? Has anything else occurred to you that you think I should know?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you have any message for your father? Anything you’d like me to pass on to him?’

‘No.’

Time to see if I could get a reaction. ‘If he asks about you coming to live with him for a while—’

‘He won’t. I’ve told him. I’m not going. I’m never going.’ She was shivering.

‘Have you spoken to your father?’

‘No. I’ve sent him a text.’ She looked up at me. ‘Can you tell him I really mean it? Tell him to stop calling me and sending me messages too. I don’t want to talk to him and I don’t want to see him. Tell him that. Tell him.’

I didn’t see Bethany straight away when I came out of the bedroom. She was sitting on the stairs, a few steps down, crouching like a cat. ‘Hey.’

‘Hi,’ I said, surprised.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘It’s about Chloe.’ Bethany glowered at me. ‘You need to leave her alone.’

‘I can’t, I’m afraid. It’s a murder investigation. I don’t get to leave people alone.’

Pure shock on her face. I’d thought it was common knowledge that we were treating the case as murder but it shouldn’t have surprised me that the Norrises had kept the girls away from the news. If Bethany had no phone she almost certainly didn’t have internet access either.

‘Murder. So you think—’

‘We don’t know anything for sure yet. Don’t say anything to Chloe about it.’

‘I have to.’

‘No, Bethany, please.’

‘I’m not going to lie to her for you.’

‘I’m not asking you to lie, I’m simply asking you not to use the word I used.’

Her expression was venomous. ‘You people always underestimate her. When are you going to tell her if I don’t?’

‘When I know for sure what happened.’ I sat down on the top step. ‘Look, if it’s a murder investigation it gets all the resources the police can throw at it. You know the forensic team have been working here since Sunday. You’ve seen the uniformed officers in the area, and the detectives. If it wasn’t a murder investigation we’d find it very hard to commit so many people to finding out what happened. We’re going to work as hard as we can to find out what happened in Chloe’s house and why. And it helps us to assume the worst but that doesn’t mean Chloe has to think that way.’

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