‘Mum, he uses you. Can’t you see that? Why should we have to look after him just because she won’t?’
Her mother’s eyes had welled up. ‘Oh sweetheart, I hate hearing you talk like that. I know how much you loved Dad before all this happened and it breaks my heart that he’s destroyed all that. But he’s still your father and he’s still my husband. Please try to understand that I have to do this. I’ll make it up to you, I promise…’
‘Don’t bother.’ Hannah swung sharply away. ‘I’ll be out of your hair when I’m back at Uni anyway. I’m sure you’ll both be much happier without me.’
‘Hannah …’
The sound of a car horn outside the house had Hannah grabbing her bag.
‘That’s Jess – she’s giving me a lift. Do what you want. You always do anyway. I told Dad that I never wanted to speak to him again and I meant it. If he moves back in, then I move out.’
Hannah had stormed out of the house slamming the door behind her. She knew she was being a selfish cow but she couldn’t seem to help it. How could her mother take him back after two years of being messed around? It was pathetic.
And now she’d lost Ben too. She hadn’t told her mother about their break-up yet. She’d wanted to wait until she got home to pour her heart out, but now she knew she probably never would. The special relationship they’d had this last couple of years would be gone forever. Life was crap.
‘Hey … what’s up with you? You look fit to explode.’
The twinkle in Jess’s eyes as she’d watched her friend throw herself into the car had gone some way to diffusing Hannah’s anger, but she’d still scowled her response.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. But I’ll tell you something. Sod everyone. I don’t need any of them. I’m getting pissed tonight.’
‘Still not heard from Ben?’
‘No. And I don’t want to. It’s over.’
‘What did you fight about?’
Hannah had hesitated, knowing she could never give the reason for their split. Not even to Jess. She’d not got over the humiliation of finding her hands being handcuffed to the frame of Ben’s bed and discovering that no matter how loudly she’d shouted at him to let her go, he’d completely ignored her wishes; whispering that he knew she didn’t often come when they made love and that perhaps she needed more kinky sex to enjoy it. He’d used her body and taken his pleasure of her with a passion she’d never witnessed in him before. It had shocked her to the core and afterwards she’d stormed out of his flat telling him she never wanted to see him again.
‘Just stuff,’ she responded vaguely, not looking at her friend.
‘Uh huh … and if you think I believe that when you’re so hot for the guy? It must have been something mega to cause a bust up between you.’
Hannah had given her the benefit of one of her fiercest scowls. ‘I really don’t want to talk about it, Jess.’
‘Okay.’ Her friend had shrugged her shoulders and started the engine. ‘Let’s go get drunk.’
Now, as Hannah lay in her bed remembering, she switched on the bedside light and finally gave up all pretence of trying to get to sleep.
She carried tremendous guilt about both her parents; she didn’t need any analyst to tell her that. She hadn’t believed her father was that ill – had thought it was just a ruse to con her mother into taking him back. And when Helen Walker had chosen her husband over her, Hannah’s hurt had been so deep she’d refused to have anything further to do with either of them – moving in with Ben when she’d discovered she was pregnant and leaving her mother to cope alone with a dying man.
The guilt, when her father had died five months later had been excruciating, and over the years she’d dealt with it the only way she knew how. She’d packed it up and filed it neatly away, alongside her guilt over Sophie. And though she and her mother had subsequently reconciled, that period was like a huge invisible barrier between them, and something they never discussed for fear of destroying the fragile relationship they’d rebuilt.
She threw back her bedclothes and moved restlessly over to the window, unsurprised to see that, at some point, night had turned into dawn. Reaching into the drawer of her dressing table, she pulled out a small bottle of sleeping pills. She hadn’t taken one in a long time but she didn’t hesitate to down one now. She’d done enough remembering for one night.
CHAPTER THREE
Natasha Campbell came too very slowly in her bed that Sunday morning, aware of a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Then she remembered why. That terrible sight of yesterday – the tiny skull, parts of it already crumbled away. She shuddered. What with finding those bones and the problems between her and Adam, it was no wonder she felt ill. Anyone would. It was nothing to do with her condition. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she’d been taught, and then another. Her thoughts drifted back to Adam. It had upset her when he’d stomped off up the garden like that yesterday. Even after seven years, she sometimes felt she didn’t know him at all.
She turned onto her side and closed her eyes, Adam’s image sliding away, to be replaced by a darker, more sinister one that nudged at her mind as if to torment her. The skull had been horrible; she didn’t want to think about it. She hated anything to do with death. It triggered too many memories – like the speed of her mother’s passing away, for example, despite the chemo.
Stop it, Natasha. Don’t go there …
With a determined breath, she flung back the bedclothes and headed for the bathroom. No point dwelling on stuff. If she’d learnt anything from her therapy it was that. In the shower, she turned her face upwards, letting the water flow over her – washing away the darkness of her thoughts.
Later, as she made her way to the top of the stairs, she was surprised to hear voices coming from the lounge. It didn’t take long to work out that it was a policeman talking to Adam. She frowned. She didn’t feel like entertaining anyone right now, but Adam had warned her they’d be coming back to ask a few questions. She’d just have to answer them as best she could so that they’d leave and she and Adam could have a calm day.
Adam looked up as she entered the room. ‘Natasha! I was just about to come and wake you. Are you feeling better?’
She pinned a bright smile onto her face. ‘Yes, much, but I felt I’d go mad if I stayed upstairs on my own any longer.’
She turned questioning eyes to the slightly older and rather good-looking man who was standing by the window. Probably in his early thirties, he had sandy hair and a pleasant face that was somehow reassuring in the bizarreness of everything else.
‘Tash, this is Detective Sergeant Briscombe. He needs to ask you a few questions.’
‘Okay, though I’m not sure what help I can be.’ She moved over to one of the chairs and sat down. ‘It was awful. I can’t get the picture of that skull out of my head.’
Harry Briscombe’s smile was sympathetic. ‘I can come back another day if you’re not feeling up to it, Mrs Campbell?’
Natasha shook her head. ‘No, no, I’m fine. Let’s get it over with. I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea though, Ad, if you’re making one?’
She watched her husband leave the room then turned back to the sergeant.
‘So, how can I help? I wouldn’t have thought there’s much we can tell you. Adam said those bones could have been there for hundreds of years?’
‘Well, it’s possible, but we won’t know for certain until we get all the information back from the Lab. And in the meantime, we like to gather all the facts while they’re still fresh in people’s minds. So …’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Your husband tells me you’ve lived here for several years?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And before that apparently it was occupied by a couple who he thinks moved abroad?’
‘Yes. Australia, I think. Or maybe New Zealand.’
‘Well obviously we’ll be looking into that further. Do you remember if they had children?’
‘Oh, no. I don’t t
hink so. They’d have been too old for young children I’m sure, though they could have had grandchildren I suppose.’
‘And no history of any children going missing in the area that you’re aware of?’
‘No. Apart from that poor little baby in Hertford of course…’ She broke off, her eyes clouding. ‘I saw the news last night. They were saying it might be her. Is that what you think?’
‘Well, the press do seem to have got ahead of us somehow on that one and we won’t know for sure until the DNA results are back. It’s a possibility’.
‘That’s horrible. How dreadful to think...’ She looked out onto the garden, glad that the rhododendrons blocked that awful view. Then her eyes returned to the sergeant. ‘‘How long will it take? Before you know for sure if it’s her I mean?’
‘That depends. It’s much quicker and easier, for example, to process samples from a living person or a body, than it is from a skeleton; so, while we can possibly get some results back quite quickly, other bits could take a couple of weeks before we’re able to do a statistical match.’
‘I see. And if it is her, do you think it could have been one of the parents who killed her? That’s what they were suggesting at the time, I seem to remember.’
‘It’s much too early to speculate at this stage,’ Harry said cautiously. ‘First off we have to establish whether or not it is their baby.’
‘Yes, of course. God, I hope it isn’t. It makes it seem even more horrible somehow, knowing the history behind it. I’ve been praying that Adam’s right and it’ll turn out to be some sort of ancient discovery.’ She gave him a thin smile. ‘You read about this sort of thing happening to other people in the papers but it doesn’t seem real when it’s your garden.’
‘Did you know the woman?’
‘No. I went off to boarding school when I was eleven. I’ve not got many local friends.’
‘One of the drawbacks, isn’t it?’ Harry’s look was sympathetic and she looked at him surprised.
‘Sounds like you speak from experience?’
He shrugged. ‘Yup. I went when I was eight.’
‘That’s unusual for a policeman, isn’t it? Though I probably shouldn’t say that – not terribly PC to label someone like that.’
‘I’ll forgive you,’ his smile told her that he wasn’t offended and she recognised something else in it. Interest.
Her expression lifted, her eyes glinting mischievously. ‘Anyway, no need to feel too sorry for me, I found ways of getting my fun. There was a boys’ school just down the road.’
She could tell he didn’t quite know what to make of her and the thought amused her. She watched as he made a pointed show of returning to his notebook.
‘When your husband found the remains, did he call you to come and look?’
‘No. In fact I don’t think he’d have even told me if I hadn’t happened to go out into the garden looking for him. He’s very protective of me.’
‘And what exactly was he doing when you went out to him?’
Natasha thought. ‘Well I’m not sure ... just looking at them I think. He tried to cover them up as soon as he knew I was there.’
He had rather nice grey eyes, she noted inconsequentially, and she found her own engaging rather cheekily with them, despite the severity of the occasion. She watched, amused, as the colour crept into his cheeks.
Then Adam came in with a tray. ‘Tea, Sergeant?’
Harry blinked, then cleared his throat. ‘Erm, no thanks. I think that’ll do for now. Thanks for your time, Mrs Campbell. I’ve given your husband a card in case you think of anything else?’
‘Of course. We’ll be in touch straight away.’
After he’d gone Adam and Natasha looked at each other.
‘Are you okay?’ Adam asked.
‘No, I’m about to have a breakdown,’ Natasha responded impatiently. ‘For God’s sake stop fussing over me the whole time.’
She lit a cigarette and took a deep drag from it, blowing the smoke slowly back out into the air. ‘I think they suspect it’s that little baby that went missing from Hertford.’ Her eyes were keen as they fixed on him. ‘You remember?’
‘Sort of,’ he dismissed vaguely, ‘but I was backwards and forwards between here and university when it was all going on.’
‘Well, it was in the news for ages. They never found her. It doesn’t seem possible does it, that a child can just disappear like that?’
She put her cigarette down and looked at her husband provocatively. Something about the sergeant had channelled her thoughts towards sex and she didn’t want to think about all this depressing stuff.
She slanted him a look from beneath ridiculously long lashes. ‘Why don’t we make the most of it while Katie’s at your mum’s and go to bed?’ she suggested.
‘I’ve got some work to catch up on.’
She rose from her chair and sidled up to him, ignoring the set expression on his face as she trailed her hand lightly over the front of his jeans. ‘Oh, come on. It can wait surely? What’s the matter with you? I always used to be able to turn you on. It’s been a horrible couple of days. We need something to distract us.’
He stepped back, breaking the contact. ‘I know you’re upset, but I’m sorry, I really do need to get on with my report.’
She stared at him for a long moment, one eyebrow raised, then said in cool tones. ‘Are you ever going to forgive me?’
He seemed to consider her words.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, it’s been three months since I finished it and you know I was in a bad place in my head at the time. I said it wouldn’t happen again and it won’t. I just want things to go back to how they were.’
Adam shook his head. ‘And as I’ve said – I don’t know that they can. Do you think I can just forget you had an affair? Do you have any idea what it’s like finding something like that out? And I’m not convinced it was the first time – that’s what really gets me. Things like trust and loyalty don’t seem to mean much to you, but they do to me. Things can never go back to how they were.’
Natasha held his gaze defiantly for a moment longer, then she shrugged and turned away. ‘In that case, get me a glass of wine, will you? If I can’t have a good shag to take my mind off everything I might as well bury myself in a bottle.’
‘You know you shouldn’t drink with your medication.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake get a life,’ she shrieked, rounding on him. ‘No sex, no alcohol – what else is there left for me in this bloody life? You make me sick.’
CHAPTER FOUR
DCI Murray was in the office bright and early Wednesday morning. He’d had two days leave and was raring to go. Harry could tell that, the minute he pinned him with his sharp gaze.
‘So, what’s new?’ Murray asked.
‘Not a lot. Things are reasonably quiet for a change. We finally got those fingerprints through on the Post Office robbery. They match the suspect, so we can turn that over to the CPS now.’
‘Good. What about the skeleton?’
‘Nothing’s come through yet. But I’ll chase it up,’ he added hurriedly, recognising that look.
‘Make sure you do. We can crack on with that if things are quiet. How did you get on interviewing the wife on Sunday?’
‘She didn’t have much to offer. Seemed pretty upset at the thought it might not be historical bones like they’d hoped.’
‘That’s not surprising. What’s she like?’
Harry shrugged, remembering with a sense of discomfort the disturbing effect she’d had on him. She’d been quite stunning to look at with her dark hair and sultry eyes, and yet there was something quite fragile about her. Just for a moment, when she’d first walked in and fixed him with that slanting stare, he’d lost the plot - aware of an instant attraction that had disconcerted him.
Harry avoided Murray’s eyes. ‘Difficult to say. Posh, very attractive, but on edge somehow. That’s the impression I got. The husban
d did mention she’d been unwell and still has to take things easy. I don’t know what that’s about.’
‘What was your impression of him?’
‘Seemed a straightforward sort of guy. Obviously concerned about her. I didn’t know whether to think it suspicious or not that she reckoned he wouldn’t have told her about the bones if she hadn’t seen them for herself. She said he was very protective of her and tried to cover them over when she arrived on the scene.’
‘Reasonable enough I suppose. The real question is; would he have told us? Where was he when the Walker baby went missing? Have you established that?’
‘Touched on it briefly. Didn’t want to make too much of that until the stuff’s back from the lab and we know what we’re dealing with. He said he was away in Glasgow at university over that period – coming back on and off to see his wife.’
‘Hmm.’ Murray’s tone was impatient. ‘We need to see what Edwards has come up with on the forensics. Give him a ring. Let him know we’re on his case.’
Jeez, Harry thought, walking out of the room. They’d only been in half an hour and it wasn’t even eight thirty. He could see what sort of a day it was going to be.
Two hours later Murray looked up as Harry entered the office. ‘What’s that?’
‘Post Mortem. Edwards has come up trumps but you’re not going to like it.’
He slapped the document down on the desk and Murray skimmed his eyes over it
before looking up.
‘Suspicious causes cannot be ruled out or confirmed? What the hell does that mean?’
‘If you look at page two it tells you. It seems there wasn’t enough to go on to tell the exact cause of death. But there was a small fracture of the left arm. They’re still working on the full forensics.’
Murray turned his attention back to the report and read it through. When he’d finished, he looked up.
‘Okay, so we don’t know cause of death and it’s impossible to tell the sex from a skeleton that young – but we do know that it’s a tiny baby, only a few weeks old. And they’re not ancient bones. The time scale would appear to be around the time Sophie Walker went missing. I’d say there’s a good chance it’s her. What do you think?’
Cry From The Grave A Thrilling Psychological Crime Mystery (Harry Briscombe Book 1) Page 4
