“What happened after that?” I asked.
“I got home,” Billie said. “I just sat on the sofa and cried. I was there for a while until Stella woke up. She put a bag of frozen peas on my hand and just sat with me.” Billie sniffed and smiled through her tears. “We must have looked a right pair.”
“Was Edward with anyone when you hit him?” Mills asked.
Billie thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not that I saw. Someone might have been in the shop, though?”
“Did anything happen after that?” I asked her gently.
She shook her head. “Stella asked me not to do anything like it again. We were okay, and then…” She shrugged, her face falling in a heartbroken expression.
And then Stella died.
“Why didn’t you tell us? You said the last time you threatened him was back in April.”
“Because I knew how it would sound,” she said desperately. “I mean, he’s been murdered, and less than a month ago, I punched him in the face. I was scared if you knew…”
“You realise that lying to us about it is worse,” I said, trying to get the right balance of patient and stern that my own mother used to use.
Billie nodded, and looking at her now, she looked her age for once. Not the grown-up, working, rent-paying mother bear trying to raise and heal her little sister. She was a twenty-year-old girl, without a family, without a sister, sitting in a café crying. The sternness disappeared from her eyes, from her face. She was just a girl, barely old enough to have shouldered all that she had for so long.
“I know how it looks.” Her voice was wobbly. “And sounds. I know that I have all the right reasons to have wanted Edward dead. Sometimes, I wish it had been me,” she admitted darkly. “But it wasn’t. After Stella died, this,” she indicated the café around us, “this is about all I’ve had the strength to do. I go from upstairs, to here, to the supermarket, and that’s it.”
I believed her, believed her sincerity and her grief, and I knew Mills did too. Still, he had to do his due diligence.
“How well do you know the building Edward lived in?” he asked.
Billie looked surprised. “I—I knew where it was. That was about it.”
“You never went inside?”
“A few times,” she said, looking down at her fingers again, twisting the rings there. “I didn’t like it much. Smells funny, a bit like an attic.”
I held in the laugh that threatened to huff out and leant back in my chair. “What about the basement?”
“The laundry room?” Billie made a face. “What about it?”
“Did you ever go down there?”
“Once. I spilt water down my jumper and went to put it in the dryer. Why?”
Mills and I shared a look, and I shook my head subtly, wanting to keep the information about the basement door for ourselves. Either Billie didn’t know about it and didn’t need to, or she was a very good liar.
“So, after the incident by the park,” Mills went on, brushing past her question, “you didn’t see Edward Vinson?”
“No,” she said, still looking confused. “Stella asked me not to.”
“Did she say what he spoke to her about?” I asked, watching Billie’s expression turn sour again.
“No. She didn’t want to tell me that.”
“Did that bother you?”
She shook her head. “The next day, she walked around like it hadn’t happened at all, and I went along with it. Didn’t want to push her. The only reason I was sure it happened was that I had to go and get an x-ray of my hand.” She twiddled the thumb in question.
“Is there anything else, Billie?” I asked in a firmer voice. “Anything that you didn’t tell us before that we need to know?”
She hesitated, looking at both of our faces in turn. “He and I were close,” she said after a while. “It’s what made me so angry. That he would do that to me, as well as her.”
“How close?” I asked. She shrugged, and I let it go for now, sighing deeply. “Thank you for answering our questions, Billie. We’ll probably be in touch again. Please don’t leave the city.”
“Nowhere else to go,” she muttered sadly. I grimaced, standing up from the table with Mills.
“You still have my card?” I asked. When she nodded, I nodded back. “Good. Don’t be afraid to use it.” I tapped the table once before turning and walking away, my hands in my pockets.
Mills trailed after me, a frown on his young face. He was quiet on the drive back, deep in thought, and I left him to it, knowing him better than to make him talk whilst he was processing.
We got back to the station, and I headed straight for the office, Mills lagging behind, muttering about needing a cup of tea. I walked to the board, shrugged my coat off, and grabbed a pen, adding Billie’s punching of Edward to the timeline a week before Stella’s death. I wondered if Lena would want to know about how his nose got broken. She’d probably say he had it coming, which he rather did. Would it have gotten the anger out of Billie, or would it have made it worse?
I stepped back, looking at the chaotic maze of photos, dates, and facts that we had gathered over time, and Sharp strode in, her coat draped over her arm.
“You should head on soon,” she told me. “You look crap.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
Sharp looked at the board, noting my new addition and her eyes focused on Billie’s picture. “I’m concerned,” she told me.
“About what?”
“Your investment.”
“Ma’am?”
“Someone like Billie,” she said, leaning against Mills’s desk. “You’ve worked cases like these before. A young adult, tricky home situation, dead relatives, all on their own. It clouds your judgement. Makes you biased.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes, walking over to my desk, luckily that we had known each other long enough that I could get away with it. “I’m not biased, ma’am.”
“Aren’t you? This girl has both the means and motivation to be our killer. She assaulted the boy a few weeks before he was killed, and yet you’ve made no arrest. She barely has an alibi, Thatcher.” Her voice had turned bleak.
“You said you trust my judgement,” I replied, “my instincts.”
“I do. But I think in situations like these, your instincts aren’t always spot on. Billie is the sort of person you feel sorry for, someone you want to help. Don’t argue,” she snapped when I opened my mouth. “I know you, Max. As a friend, as well as anything else. And I don’t blame you for wanting to believe her innocence. But we don’t work in belief. We work in facts. And if you can’t be impartial…” She trailed off with a shake of the head.
“What?” I asked. “You’ll take me off the case.”
“I don’t want to. Don’t give me a reason to, Thatcher.”
I sighed, raking a hand through my hair and sitting at my desk, my eyes falling on my mother’s face in her frame.
“I know where you’re coming from,” I told her quietly, “but I know this job too. And I just don’t think Billie’s our killer. It doesn’t add up.”
“It doesn’t always add up,” Sharp replied, matching my tone. “You’ve worked enough cases to know that as well as anyone.” Her eyes looked to the photograph. “Don’t let your history get muddled up with everyone else’s now, Max. This isn’t the same story. Billie isn’t you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She asked softly. “I need to be sure, Max. Because you’re my best Inspector, I need you to be sure.”
I looked up, meeting her gaze to offer her a slight smile. “I’d like that on a t-shirt, please, Mara.”
She rolled her eyes and stood up, pulling her coat on.
“Or a mug. That way, I can walk around the station drinking my coffee, and everyone can see it.”
“This is why the only person who joins you at the pub is Mills,” she informed me with a pointed finger.
“Sometimes Lena does,” I replied.
&nbs
p; “She’s just as bad,” Sharp said, pulling her bag up onto her shoulder. “You good, Max?”
“I’m good, boss. Scout’s honour,” I added, my hand over my heart.
“I know you weren’t a boy scout,” she told me, shooting me one last smile before turning and walking from the office.
I sighed and leant back, idly turning my chair. My thoughts turned to my mother, to the coaching house, and to Elsie. I owed her a visit, maybe some flowers. That will give her the energy she needs to get up from bed and scold me.
Seventeen
Thatcher
I settled on daisies for Elsie, knowing that anything too pungent would earn me a stern word and anything too colourful would be discreetly moved to another side of the room but a well-meaning but easily spooked nurse. Liene was working late at the museum tonight, so I headed straight to the hospital from work, the bouquet balanced precariously on the passenger seat as my car trundled through the countryside.
The car park was relatively empty, so I found myself a place to park before striding into the hospital, the nurse at reception kindly letting me through to Elsie’s room. They let me in. Apparently, in a moment when she was awake, she’d bluntly informed the staff that I was allowed in. The room was quiet, Elsie looking so small as she lay tucked up, the starched sheets and itchy blanket pulled up to her chin. I set the daisies in a jug on the bedside table and settled down in the chair, looking over her restful face, her scruffy white hair curling around her cheeks.
“Hi, Elsie,” I said into the quiet of the room. “Doctor said you should be out in a few days, which is good. I’ll make sure your house is clean for you. I know how you feel about dust bunnies. This case is a rough one.” I rubbed my face. “One of those where I’d come to you for a chat. Or at least to have you tell me to kick my arse into gear.”
I chuckled softly. I stayed there for a short while, telling her little bits and pieces before a nurse came in to check her over, and I ducked out to give her some privacy. I’d visit again, hopefully when she was awake, but for now, I headed back out and sat in my car, staring out the window to the trees that lined the hills beyond me.
I started the engine and drove away, not thinking about where I wanted to go until I ended up outside the coaching house, hoping a few hours of fixing the old place up would help clear my mind, at least clear it from the conversation I’d had with Sharp. She had a point, I knew she did, but I couldn’t put the fact out of my head that Billie was innocent. There was something I was missing.
Unlocking the door, I stepped into the coaching house and flipped the light switch. A few lights fluttered to life, one bulb popping in the corner, but it was enough for me to see the state of the place. Not as bad. There weren’t any more holes in the walls or floors, the electrics and plumbing were safe again, and the stairs didn’t look like they would come crumbling down the moment you stepped foot on them. The bar was covered in boxes, crates were stacked along one wall, construction equipment in the other corner. I’d gotten the materials to sort out the cupboards on the wall behind the bar, so I shucked my coat and jumper off, rolled my sleeves to my elbows and turned on some music on my phone, dragging the boxes down to give myself space to work.
It was always soothing, being back here. But knowing that Elsie’s house lay dark and quiet across the path was an unpleasant feeling. She usually dropped in whilst I worked, scaring me most of the time, or at least offered me something to eat and drink before I drove back to the city.
This time, I was on my own, which wasn’t so bad. I needed some headspace to think everything through.
I thought back to the Halloween party, imagining Billie and Stella there, the look on Billie’s face when she realised Stella was gone. The crowded house of drunk, high students all dressed up in costumes and makeup, hard to tell who was actually who as she searched through the hallways and rooms. The look on her face next when she found Stella, sitting on the floor of a guest room, bruised and silent, clothes rumpled, probably torn. Billie had had to pick her up and get her to the car, take her to the hospital and the police station, sit there, holding her hand through it all without their mother, without their father, with all of her friends doubting and siding with the person she had, at one point, probably trusted.
It was easy to see how that might turn foul inside her, how that hatred for Edward Vinson grew every time Stella had a panic attack, every time she heard a certain song. She’d given up her studies, started working full time, more a mother than a sister. And then she’d had her taken away. After all of that, Stella was gone. Billie wouldn’t blame Stella, wouldn’t have it in her. But she would blame Edward, and she would be angry. I thought about Sally, what I might do to someone if they’d ever hurt her in such a way and was impressed, honestly, that Billie had only punched him the once.
I got caught up in my thoughts, the methodical work, the music on the radio and my own laboured breaths that I didn’t hear the door open, didn’t hear the footsteps traipsing across the room until a hand reached out and tapped my shoulder.
I swung round, hammer in hand, expecting the worst, and Sally danced back out of reach, swatting my arm.
“Christ, Max, you’re gonna take my bloody head off!”
“Christ me?” I spluttered. “You’re the one who scared the living daylights out of me!” I dropped the hammer, trying to calm down my racing heart as Sally looked me over with a smirk.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” I told her pointedly. “It’s rude.”
“Not my fault you couldn’t hear me over the sound of your own breathing. Like a sodding bulldog,” she chirped, hopping up onto one of the bar stools.
I rolled my eyes and relaxed, leaning against the wall. “What are you doing here?”
“Tom had a meeting with the board,” she told me, and I kicked myself. He worked on the campus on the other side of the city, but he still worked for the university.
“All well?”
Sally waved a hand. “Not much to do with him, but I know he’ll have questions for you. I came out to see mum and dad,” she explained. “Saw your car outside. You’ve been to see Elsie?”
I nodded. “She was asleep.”
“Probably needs it. Mum saw her earlier when she was awake. Asked after you, apparently.”
“I am her favourite,” I reminded her.
She rolled her eyes. “Only because you lived right next door. If I lived on this lane, I would be favourite, and we both know it.”
I just smiled and sat down on a box. Sally looked down at me, her smile faltering.
“What’s up?”
“This case,” I sighed. “It’s dragging me down a bit.”
“Not an easy one?” she asked.
“Every time I think I find something, it just yanks out even more confusion. I found a way into the building and no clue who knew it was there. I find a suspect, and I don’t think she’s a killer. Sharp thinks I might have a slight conflict of interest,” I added.
“You?” Sally frowned, crossing one leg over the other. “Why?”
I looked up at her with a sigh, and she held out both hands.
“I will take any secret you tell me to the grave, you know that. No names,” she said.
“No names,” I replied. “There’s a girl, a kid basically, she’s only twenty. Mother’s dead, father’s an alcoholic long out of the picture, her sister died a few weeks ago. Suicide, and she’s a suspect.”
Sally’s face tightened with grief. “Bless her. So, she’s all on her own?”
I nodded. “And they were close, her and her sister. She practically raised her.”
Sally swore. “I can see why that might be a bother for you.” When I raised an eyebrow, Sally sighed. “Anytime you meet anyone like that, someone with strained parental relationships, someone on their own, this happens.” She gestured around the coaching house. “You try to fix the same problem they have because you don’t think you managed to fix yours.”
“I didn’t fix
it,” I replied.
Sally scoffed and slid down from the stool, coming to sit beside me, knocking her elbow into mine. “You did. At least, she thought you did.”
“She was sick.”
“Come on, Max. She could have been stark raving mad on cocaine, and she’d still have been the smartest woman, smartest person, in the room, you know that. Especially when it came to you, she was never wrong.”
“Sally…”
“I was there,” she reminded me, poking me hard on the arm. “Don’t you forget that. I knew her too. I saw it all happen, and I’ll tell you now what I told you then. You’re an idiot, Max Thatcher, but you’re my brother. So, I love you.”
I grinned, leaning into her. “I love you too, Sal.”
“And so did she,” she added more gently. “So stop beating yourself up and stop running yourself ragged. I want to see this place look the way it used to, but for love of God, hire a constructor.”
I laughed through my nose at her tone and the look on her face as she scanned the dusty, cobweb ridden room.
“I’ll let you decorate a room,” I told her. “For you and Tom.”
“No one else will be allowed to sleep in it,” she said.
“I’ll make sure you have the only key,” I assured her.
Sally laughed then asked me. “You’ll keep it then? Get it running again?”
“Don’t see why not? Might move out here,” I said with a deep breath. “Get out in the countryside, turn the bar into a kitchen.” I nodded behind me.
“Bit of a journey for work every day,” Sally pointed out. “Especially when you get called out at three in the morning to go look at a dead body.”
That was true. I said nothing, and she turned to look at me.
“Right? Max? It’s too far?”
“Yep,” I sighed. “Too far.”
Sally looked me over suspiciously, and I hopped to my feet, extending a hand.
Guilty Conscious Page 14
