‘We’re going to get soaked,’ I predicted.
‘Maybe it’ll have stopped by the time we get there,’ Georgia said.
Incorrectly, as it turned out.
Groves Edge would have been easy to miss in the best of circumstances: it was a straggle of houses and shops that flashed past the car in the strange, stormy half-light that was closer to dusk than it had any right to be halfway through a July afternoon. Low buildings lined the main street: a teashop, a post office, two pubs, a handful of cottages with well-tended gardens. The rain had settled to a steady, heavy downpour that tore green leaves off the trees and plastered them onto the road. The gutters were rivers clogged with debris and every puddle sent a spray of water up from the wheels to smack against the side windows.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Crow Lane House.’ I flattened out the map. ‘Crow Lane is on the left in about a quarter of a mile.’
We were all watching for it and we still almost missed it: a gap in the high hedges that barely deserved to be called a lane.
‘That’s it,’ I exclaimed.
Derwent braked hard, reversed, spun the wheel and accelerated up Crow Lane as leaves and twigs rattled against the side of the car. I thought of skeletons dragging bony hands against the paintwork and maybe it wasn’t so farfetched; we were on our way to see a dead woman, after all …
‘It should be up here, I think.’ The scattered trees suddenly bunched together in a solid mass, dense and forbidding, and as the road turned towards it I saw a brick chimney through the leaves. The driveway was a narrow opening in the trees. Derwent shone the headlights on the gate and the ghost of words appeared, the paint faded to the point of invisibility: Crow Lane House in all its faded glory.
‘Hop out and open the gate,’ Derwent said to me.
‘I don’t think we should drive up to the house.’
A gout of water tipped from the leaves overhead and splattered on the windscreen.
‘Yeah, why not,’ Derwent said. ‘It’s a nice afternoon for a walk.’
‘I don’t feel like giving Kate a lot of warning,’ I said. ‘I don’t want her to run again.’
‘Where would she go?’
‘I don’t know. But do you really want to chase after her in this?’
He nodded. ‘All right.’
‘I’m glad the plan meets with your approval,’ I said tartly.
‘Don’t be like that.’ He opened his door and climbed out. I looked back at Georgia, who was biting her lip. It’s awkward when Mummy and Daddy argue in the car …
I got out of the car and stared at him across the roof. ‘Like what?’
‘Snappy.’
‘I’m not being snappy.’
‘You’re probably nervous,’ Derwent guessed, accurately. ‘Worried she won’t be there. You put yourself under too much pressure.’
‘Because you’re completely relaxed.’
He grinned at me, his teeth very white in the gloom. ‘Have you got your radio?’
‘Of course.’
‘What about you, Georgia?’
‘Yep.’ She pulled the hood of her anorak over her head and zipped it up.
‘Did you tell the locals we were here?’ Derwent asked me.
‘They were completely uninterested.’ Locating someone who had probably committed blackmail and fraud – even someone who had been, for a time, dead – wasn’t the kind of thing that let you call in favours from another police force. Hampshire Constabulary had wished us well and left us to it.
Derwent grunted. ‘As long as they know we’re on their patch I don’t mind them staying out of it.’
The three of us picked our way carefully up the drive. It was mud and stones all the way, and the rain made it as slippery underfoot as glass. The trees should have kept off the worst of the rain but it was a fickle kind of shelter. Every breeze sent heavy drops of water cascading down on us and I was aware of the cold water seeping through my anorak across my shoulders and down my back.
‘Careful now.’ Derwent’s voice was a breath in my ear as he put his hand on my arm. ‘The house is close.’
We rounded the corner of the drive and saw it: a Victorian house, red brick and half-timbered, with bay windows and a front door set back in a large porch. It was grand at first glance and then less so as we got closer: damp streaked the brickwork and the coloured glass around the front door had a gaping hole in it, roughly boarded up. The trees came too close to the house, dense and overgrown as they were, and I felt uneasy, as if anyone could be hiding behind their bushy branches.
We stood for a second on the edge of the trees, not quite hiding but not announcing our presence either.
‘Try the front. I’ll go round the back.’ He was gone, drifting over the uneven ground like a ghost. Georgia and I went up the steps side by side and I knocked on the door, the sound reverberating through the house. Somehow, even though I was confident we’d found Kate’s hiding place, I wasn’t expecting her to be there and the sight of a shadow approaching the door made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
The door opened and I held up my warrant card, conscious of Georgia doing the same.
‘Kate Emery?’ It was worth asking. The woman who stood in the doorway was dark-haired, not fair, and her hair was cut into a neat jaw-length bob with a deep fringe. She looked pale and tired. Her top and trousers seemed loose on her, as if she hadn’t eaten much lately. I had been staring at photographs of her for the best part of two weeks and I would have walked straight past her in the street.
She nodded. There was no surprise in her heavy-lidded eyes. Resignation, I thought, and a degree of wariness. ‘What do you want?’
‘We want to talk to you, Kate. We need your help with a few things.’
‘Help,’ she repeated, her voice flat. ‘Are you here to arrest me?’
‘No,’ I said, although it was a distinct possibility. ‘We want to talk to you about Chloe.’
Something tightened in her face. ‘Chloe.’
‘You’ve heard about what happened.’ I didn’t phrase it as a question because I knew she had: the public appeal to find Chloe, the panicked phone calls to her number as Kate criss-crossed the local area, covering her tracks as best she could, not quite reckless with fear but close to it.
‘That she’s dead? I saw it on the news.’ Her chin quivered but she held on to her composure, barely. ‘I don’t think I want to talk to you.’
‘We’re looking for the person who killed Chloe,’ I said. ‘You must want us to find them.’
A flash of anger made her pupils snap to pinpoints. ‘Must I?’
‘I assume so. She was your only child.’
‘I’m aware of that.’ Her eyes widened at the sound of footsteps crunching the gravel: Derwent, returning with less care to be silent and a lot more speed.
‘Kate Emery, I presume.’ He jogged up the steps and peered at her. ‘You’ve changed. But then I suppose that was the idea.’
‘Leave me alone.’ She made to shut the door and Georgia stopped her.