A list of words comes up with translations in English beside them and a button to press if you want to hear the correct pronunciation.
Woodley clicks on the word for Down and the computer says, “Platz.” He clicks again, and once more.
“I got it,” I say.
“The dog wasn’t just there. It was being commanded to get down by Jason Wright—it’s got to be him on the recording—which suggests that the dog was doing something it shouldn’t be doing.”
“Like scaring the hell out of the boys.”
“Exactly. I think Wright was telling the truth about not having access to the scrapyard, but those dogs could have terrified the boys and made them feel trapped if they were throwing themselves against the fence and making a racket like they did with us.”
“And caused Noah to fall into the water?”
“It’s not an impossible scenario,” Woodley says. “The only thing I was wondering was why Janet Pritchard phoned if it was going to land her and Wright in trouble?”
“She was probably genuinely worried. You’d have to be hard as nails not to, if you saw a kid go into the water and not come out.”
“I’m just surprised she didn’t phone anonymously.”
“From where? I didn’t see any pay phones at the location, so she was stuck with her mobile. No way to be anonymous if your number’s flashing up on the operator’s screen.”
“So she’s a Good Samaritan, then,” he says. “Shall I update Fraser about the dog?”
Fraser’s conspicuous by her absence, which works for me because I want to be on more solid ground with this before I talk to her.
“Let’s speak to the witnesses again first.”
“One bit of less good news,” Woodley says. “The Underwater Unit can’t get back out to the canal until tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
“They’re fishing for a body in the river in Bath.”
I can’t argue with that, though I’d like to. Tomorrow’s better than next week, at least.
We find Janet Pritchard in her shop.
She locks the door behind us when she understands that we’re not there to congratulate her on being a good citizen, and leads us to a private office in the back.
The office is a cramped windowless space so small that Woodley has to stand in the doorway. The deep-pile carpet is dark pink. Thick white glossy paint has been slapped on every available surface. It feels airless. That might work in our favor, though. Witnesses don’t always fare too well when they’re boxed up with you. It gets very intense. I adjust my chair, easing it just a little closer to her.
“Would you like to tell us why you lied?” I ask her.
“I didn’t lie.”
“Would you like to tell us why you lied?”
She purses her brightly painted lips.
“I’m curious as to why you’re repeating yourself, Detective?”
“You weren’t alone on Monday night at the canal, were you?”
She blinks.
“We’ve been informed that there was somebody else at the scene, another witness.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I think you do, and if you don’t start telling us the truth, you might find yourself in trouble. Perverting the course of justice is a very serious charge.”
“Carries jail time,” Woodley adds.
“All right,” she says, “I wasn’t alone. Jason was there, he does the security patrol, but he didn’t arrive until I was phoning.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“Because I forgot.”
“Funny you should feel so threatened by the boys when he was there with you.”
Her eyes cut from me to Woodley and back again. “I wasn’t frightened when he got there, but I’d already phoned.”
“Neither of you tried to help the boy?”
“We couldn’t get into the yard. Jason didn’t have keys.”
“Even though he does security?”
She shrugs.
“When did Jason leave the scene?”
“When the emergency services arrived. He had to get on with his job.”
“He didn’t think it would be helpful for him to give a statement?”
“You’d have to ask him that.”
“I expect you understand why we’re surprised that you didn’t mention this earlier.”
A part of me admires the way she keeps her mouth shut and still looks defiant, but I also wonder where she gets her guts.
“I think we’re going to need you to come down to the station and make a new statement.”
“And I suppose I don’t have a choice about that, do I?”
Neither Woodley nor I answer.
“Can I at least call someone to man the shop?”
“I’m not sure there’s time for that.”
Back at HQ we put her in an interview room.
“I want you to go and chase up the background checks on Ian Shawcross,” I tell Woodley. “Everything dotted and crossed as it should be. And then get her statement. It won’t do her any harm to sit there for a few minutes.”
I hand the witness’s typed-up statement to Fraser when I see her early evening. Her frown deepens as she reads it.
“Okay. Get the security guard in here for a formal statement, too, and let’s see if the stories match up.”
“I plan to do that first thing tomorrow. Are you all right, boss?”
“I will be when this case is put to bed. I’ve got so many eyes on me from above that I feel like I’m splayed out on a bloody dissection table with a class of spotty teenagers hovering over me. Why do you ask? Do I look as bloody overworked and underfunded as I feel?”
I know better than to answer that.
When I get home, I find Becky’s got herself dressed up. She’s covered the bruises on her face with foundation so they look purplish and beige all at once, and licks of black liner taper to suggestive points at the corner of each eye. She’s sitting on my sofa painting her fingernails dark blue. She’s wrapped her dreads up in a colorful scarf. Her lips are painted, too.
“What’s the occasion?”
“I’m meeting someone for a drink.”
Her expression warns me not to ask who, so I don’t. If I don’t want to risk losing her company, I’m going to need a “softly, softly” approach.
“You made it home just in time, then,” she says.
“For what?”
“They’re interviewing somebody on TV about your case. In a minute.”
My gut takes a swan dive. This can’t be good. If it was official, I’d know about it already. I sit down beside my sister to watch with a mounting sense of dread. When the screen cuts from the newsreader on our local channel to a studio in which three women are sitting, I understand that it probably couldn’t get any worse.
Emma Zhang and Fiona Sadler are side by side on a velvet-covered sofa. It’s immediately obvious that when we met at the bar, Emma wasn’t dressed up or partaking of some Dutch courage to help her get through our meeting. She already knew exactly where she was going afterward. I could not have misjudged that more completely. It was an own goal.
I feel my jaw clenching, a dull throb in the gums around my back teeth. Both are familiar companions to my rising anger.