I crawled over and put my arm around Eleanor’s shoulders. She turned and hid her battered face against my neck, weeping as if her heart was broken. When she could speak again, it was to say: ‘At least Morgan acted like he’d enjoyed having sex with me.’
The door opened with a noise like an intake of breath and Derwent came through it like an avenging angel. He stopped dead when he saw us, as Pettifer crashed in after him and Una Burt appeared in the doorway behind them.
‘What the fuck happened?’ Derwent demanded.
‘Long story,’ I croaked, wondering what exactly I looked like, given the way he was staring at me. ‘But you could arrest him.’
‘For?’
‘Murder.’
‘And being a bastard,’ Eleanor said. ‘A complete bastard.’
Derwent’s face lit up with amusement for an instant. ‘Not illegal, luckily for me.’
I started laughing, aware that at least some of it was shock, knowing that it could just as easily have been tears.
I sobered up enough at last to explain what Oliver Norris had done, and why, and how, while he sat in handcuffs on the edge of the platform. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him, not that we were taking any chances. Pettifer, who was not a small man, was sitting beside him and Derwent stood in front of him, his head lowered, daring him to try and escape. I had seen him angry before but I’d never seen him look at anyone the way he was glowering at Oliver Norris.
‘And why did his wife attack him?’ Una Burt asked when I got to the end of what Oliver had told me.
‘Because she’s quite angry that he was sleeping with Kate. And,’ I added, being fair, ‘he was strangling me at the time. So I’m glad she did.’
‘You need to get that looked at,’ Burt said, unemotional as ever.
‘I will when the paramedics have finished with Eleanor.’ My neck ached. I didn’t really want to think about it.
‘Do you think she’ll give evidence against him?’
‘I don’t think you’ll be able to stop her,’ I said. ‘But we need to get a statement from her before she calms down. And we’ll have to arrest her for her part in Chloe’s death. According to Bethany, she was the one who took Chloe from the house to the church. She might not have known what they were planning to do to her, but she was involved.’
‘And so was Gareth Selhurst. I’ve got people out looking for him.’
‘I would really like to talk to him,’ I said quietly. ‘They can try and argue Chloe’s death was an accident but she had bruises on her shoulders. They held her under the water. It should be a murder charge. And the same goes for Eleanor, even if she didn’t do the restraining. It’s joint enterprise. She brought her to the church. She was involved in Chloe’s death. We’ll have to see what she says in interview, but if she says she knew what they intended to do here – and it’s hard to see how she wouldn’t have known what they were planning – she’s not going to get a slap on the wrist for it.’
‘Have you cautioned her?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’ll do it when the paramedics are finished with her.’ Una looked across at them and sighed. ‘Poor Bethany.’
‘Because her parents are going to prison? I can’t help thinking it’s a good thing for her to have a break from them. A break from all this.’ I gestured at the church. ‘Maybe she can learn to live normally while they’re inside. Work out what she wants out of life. Shed some of the guilt she doesn’t deserve.’
‘Get to know her real father better?’ Una suggested and I shuddered.
‘Not that, no.’
The paramedics – two nice, brisk women – decided that I was fine, if bruised, but that Oliver Norris and his wife needed to go to hospital to be checked out. Deprived of the chance to interview Norris ‘like it was Judgement Day’, Derwent sulked. I found him sitting outside the church on a bench, watching two uniformed officers pack Norris into a van for transport.
‘Cheer up,’ I said, sitting down beside him. ‘He’s still having a worse day than you.’
‘Being arrested for murder?’
‘Finding out his own brother fathered his daughter.’
‘Morgan?’ Derwent whistled. ‘Nothing like keeping it in the family, is there?’
‘It means you don’t have to explain away any awkward resemblance to the milkman. I think Eleanor was very clever about it, actually. She knew Morgan and Oliver were competitive with one another. She’d been involved with Morgan before she met Oliver, so she knew he was attracted to her – and she knew he’d do anything to get one over on his brother. I don’t think Morgan has much of a conscience at the best of times. She can’t have found it too hard to coax him into bed. She was unfinished business.’
‘I made a mistake. You were the one I preferred all along and now it’s too late,’ Derwent said.
‘Exactly that. And it explains why Eleanor was able to persuade Morgan to warn Kate off sixteen years later when it all came back to bite her in the arse. She must have thought there was no chance of anyone finding out and then Kate turned up, armed with evidence that Oliver was infertile. Kate didn’t know the whole truth, but she knew Eleanor wanted to keep it quiet. And Morgan wanted the same, or he’d have been out on the streets. He must have known how Oliver would react and he was depending on him for a roof over his head. Eleanor might have been being blackmailed but she has a good line in manipulating people herself.’
‘The thing is, it’s bullshit,’ Derwent said. ‘Norris is going on about how he’s not her father any more, but he is her dad. He’s the one who’s brought her up. He’s the one she loves.’
‘Like you and Thomas,’ I said, knowing it was dangerous territory.
‘Yeah. Like that.’ Derwent’s face was unreadable behind his dark glasses. ‘He’s mine now, whatever happens. There aren’t many people in the world I care about, but he’s on the list.’
‘Who else is on the list?’
Derwent snorted. ‘Well, not you. You’re on the other list.’
‘What’s the other list?’
‘People who don’t listen to me. People who act like twats despite my advice.’
‘I didn’t have time to call for back-up,’ I said. ‘He was going to kill her.’
‘And he almost killed you.’ He reached out and lifted my chin, examining my neck.
I jerked my head away. ‘You’d have done the same.’
‘I keep telling you that’s not a good thing.’
I stood up. ‘Come on. Let’s get to the hospital. With any luck they’ll be able to tell us when the Norrises will be fit to be interviewed. The clock’s ticking.’
39
The clock was ticking in more ways than one. Before I had taken more than three steps Una Burt emerged from the church to inform us that justice, in the shape of the department of professional standards, had finally caught up with us.
‘You’re on restricted duties until further notice. I’ll contact you when the DPS are finished investigating what happened to Kate Emery.’
‘We know what happened to her. She ran off and got herself killed,’ Derwent said. ‘She was determined to see Oliver Norris. There was nothing we could have done.’