Daniela wrapped her hands around the cup. Slowly thawing, she started to put together the list of questions she wanted to ask Leo. If anyone knew about Auryn’s recent past, it would be him.
20
The cottage was well insulated and, once Leo closed the internal doors, the sitting room warmed quickly.
Daniela sat on the threadbare sofa, which was now covered by two bath towels, protecting it from her muddy clothes. She tried to bat away the awareness of how grubby she was. The tea was hot and sweet and milky, with the heat of the mug almost burning her palms. Normally she drank coffee, black and bitter, but she wasn’t arguing with a doctor. She’d dried her hair and arms with another towel that Leo had provided. He’d also found a knitted jumper that must’ve been ten sizes too big for him, which Daniela could wear while her own jumper was drying by the fire. It hung off Daniela’s lanky frame like a poncho. But again, it was warm, so she wasn’t complaining.
Leo sat on the other end of the sofa. The heat of the fire filled the room. The dog on the rug snored.
‘What happened to Auryn?’ Daniela asked. The question had been circling her mind, but it wasn’t necessarily where she meant to start. ‘You examined her, right?’
Leo set his mug down on a side table and clasped his hands, as if organising his thoughts into something Daniela would want to hear.
‘Steph told me someone killed her,’ Daniela said, to help him out.
‘It’s too early to say,’ Leo said carefully. ‘We won’t know for sure until the post-mortem.’
Daniela nodded. ‘They’ll have to take her to Hackett for that, yeah?’
Leo nodded. ‘The nearest facilities are at Dewar’s. Stephanie’s contacted someone to collect the body.’
‘How long d’you reckon that’ll be?’
‘Hard to say. They’ll get here as soon as the roads are passable.’ Leo’s tone was soothing, professional. It was a noticeable difference from the shy young man Daniela remembered.
‘I don’t like the idea of her lying there all alone.’
Leo looked away. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? But I don’t know what else we can do right now.’
Daniela frowned into her tea. ‘So … I mean, I know you can’t say for definite, but … what d’you think happened?’
‘I don’t know if I—’
‘You don’t have to protect me. I found her, remember? I know how she looked.’
Leo paused, sipping his tea, either ordering his thoughts or just stalling. ‘What did Stephanie tell you?’ he asked.
‘She said Auryn was stabbed.’
Leo nodded slowly. ‘That’s what it looked like, yes.’
‘Looked like?’
‘It’s impossible to be sure. There was an injury here.’ He touched his flank below the ribs. ‘We didn’t even notice it until after we lifted her onto the bed. If we’d spotted it straight away, well, we wouldn’t have moved her, for a start. We would’ve had to leave her in situ. But it wasn’t an obvious injury. It looked like a knife wound. I can’t be sure.’
‘What else could it be?’
‘Anything. She might’ve cut herself when she fell. It could’ve happened after death – there was a lot of debris floating around. I told Steph not to jump to any conclusions, because we honestly won’t know until the post-mortem.’
‘What conclusions?’
Leo shrugged carefully. ‘Stephanie was angry and upset. It can make people irrational. She got the idea in her head that someone killed Auryn, and she went off immediately looking for a suspect.’
‘Me.’ Daniela tried to blink away the idea. ‘She came straight to the pub to speak to me. But, I mean, she can’t think I’m involved with this, can she?’
Leo paused a little too long before saying, ‘Of course she doesn’t think that.’
‘No, she does. Of course, she does.’ Daniela hunched her shoulders. That’s why Stephanie was searching her room, why she’d asked those insinuating questions, why she’d stopped Daniela leaving town. ‘God, why wouldn’t she? I mean, I rock up in town unannounced on the very day Auryn gets murdered. I found the body. Me and Auryn hadn’t spoken in seven years.’ Their last conversation had ended with Auryn threatening to kill her. Daniela didn’t want to remind Leo of that. ‘Plus …’ She trailed off. Another unspoken thought: Stephanie knew Daniela’s history. She knew what Daniela was capable of.
Leo’s smile was sad. ‘She’s not thinking straight right now. None of us are. But she doesn’t believe any of that, not really.’
But Daniela couldn’t shake the thought now. It was one thing for Stephanie to suspect her of stealing the money, but did she really think Daniela was involved in Auryn’s death? She couldn’t honestly think that, could she?
‘Who would want to hurt Auryn?’ Daniela asked aloud. ‘She wasn’t the type to make enemies. Was she?’
Leo half-laughed. ‘No, not at all. Everyone loved her. She’d go a mile out of her way to do anyone a favour.’
‘I know.’
‘Remember when we were kids, how we used to send her into the sweet shop in Hackett ahead of us to charm the old folk behind the counter? No one could resist that smile of hers. She’d always come out with a handful of free sweets for us.’
Daniela smiled too, but she was thinking. ‘She’d never say no to anyone,’ she said. ‘What if someone took advantage of that?’
‘People often did,’ Leo said with a sigh. ‘At uni, she was always the one our friends would go to if they were short of cash, or if they needed help with their coursework. I swear she spent more time doing other people’s assignments than her own.’
That probably hadn’t changed after Auryn moved to London. Daniela could well imagine her, always wanting to help, always willing to go out of her way. Always trusting she wouldn’t get hurt in return.
‘Daniela?’ Leo asked then, breaking her train of thought. ‘Can I ask … where’ve you been since you got out? Why didn’t you come back sooner?’
Daniela snorted. ‘What’s to come back for? Who’d want to see me?’
Leo didn’t answer, and Daniela almost laughed at herself. What were you expecting? Leo didn’t miss you. The best thing you ever did for him was leaving.
‘I’ve not been anywhere specifically,’ Daniela said to cover the moment. ‘Just … building a new life. Getting back on my feet, finding a job, all that stuff.’
‘Where’re you working?’ There was a hesitation behind the question, which made Daniela half laugh.
‘It’s legit, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Daniela said. ‘Boringly legit. Data entry for a computer company, scanning documents for eight hours a day.’ The annoying thing was, there’d been plenty of offers of better paid, more interesting work after she’d left prison. So long as she wasn’t fussy who she worked for. ‘It’s work.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess Steph’s given you any relevant updates about me.’
‘I don’t speak to Stephanie very often. I see her around town, but we don’t socialise.’
‘But you’ve heard. Small towns like this, no one has any secrets.’
Leo nodded. ‘I heard some of it. Like you say, people talk.’
Gossip was the bread and butter of a small town, and any scrap, no matter how insubstantial, was circulated and recycled until it lost all flavour. Everyone in Stonecrop knew her life story. Dani Cain was the biggest thing that’d happened to the village. She imagined people whispering. ‘She’s out now, did you hear? It’s only a matter of time till she does something else. Her kind don’t change …’
She still had nightmares about the incident that’d landed her in prison. Seven years hadn’t faded those memories. If anything, time and maturity had added a new dimension. She often woke up in the middle of the night shivering with guilt and panic. It sickened her to recall how often she’d told people it wasn’t her fault, when they all knew no one was to blame but her. Things might never have got out of hand if she hadn’t been carrying the knife that day.
T
hat bloody knife, Daniela thought sourly. Ever since she’d acquired it, it’d caused nothing but grief. Her eyes went to her jacket, hanging over the arm of the chair, with the knife hiding somewhere in an inside pocket. If it was possible to assign malicious intent to an inanimate object …
‘It was stupid of me to come back,’ Daniela said. ‘If I’d known you were here – I mean, this isn’t what I wanted. For you to have to deal with me again.’
Leo tightened his jaw. ‘I can’t think about that right now. Not with what’s happened to Auryn.’ He hesitated. ‘Why have you come back?’
Daniela shrugged. ‘It’s been a long time. I wanted to see Steph.’
‘Now, though, with the flooding? You couldn’t have picked a more inconvenient time. I’m not even sure how you got here.’
‘I walked from Hackett. Waded.’ And now she was stuck.
‘So, it must’ve been urgent. Couldn’t it wait?’
Daniela hesitated, then came to a decision. ‘You want the stupid, boring truth?’ she asked. ‘I’m getting evicted. The place I’m living in is one of those rent-to-buy things, but the landlord’s decided we need to buy now. I need a little over four grand by Tuesday to cover the shortfall in the deposit, otherwise I’m out on my ear. I’ll lose everything. I came home this weekend to ask Stephanie for money.’
Leo studied the side of Daniela’s face. ‘Did she give it to you?’
‘I never got the chance to ask.’ The lie came easy enough. ‘After everything that’s happened, it hardly seems to matter, does it?’
Because it didn’t matter, did it? If Daniela lost her home, lost everything she’d worked so goddamn hard to build up over the last year, who would care? Likely it was no more than she deserved.
Daniela rubbed her face. ‘Christ, if I’d thought to come last week,’ she said, ‘Auryn would’ve still been alive. I could’ve … shit, I don’t know. I could’ve talked to her, y’know? Maybe figured out what was wrong.’ Maybe apologised.
Leo watched her. ‘How do you mean?’
‘C’mon, you know something was wrong. Look how she was living. She used to be so tidy. Like ridiculously tidy, even as a kid. But when I was there yesterday … the house was a state, even before it flooded. You saw the empty bottles, right?’ Something besides the general state of the house continued to niggle her. ‘Steph said Auryn had a breakdown. Quit her job, all that. If I’d just cared enough to visit …’
Leo squeezed her arm in gentle support. Daniela flinched from the unexpected contact. ‘It’s okay,’ Leo said. ‘I mean, it’s not; it’s awful. But it’s nothing we could’ve predicted. None of us knew. I mean, she was drinking too much, yes. I always told her—’ He stopped.
Leo’s hand on her arm had distracted Daniela. ‘Were you guys still friendly?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Like you say, when you’re neighbours you have to stay kinda cordial, don’t you?’
‘You could’ve picked anywhere to live,’ Daniela said. ‘Did you ever think about moving down to London, to be closer to Auryn?’ Daniela felt a twinge of a very old envy, which surprised her. She thought she’d drowned those feelings a long time ago.
God, I’m the most inappropriate person in the world. What’s wrong with me?
Leo considered his words before he answered. ‘It would’ve never been practical, for me to live in London,’ he said. ‘But when I heard she was moving back to Stonecrop last year, I did wonder for a time whether she was coming back here for me. I thought maybe she’d change her mind and let me back into her life. Losing her was the worst mistake I ever made.’ His voice wavered. ‘Actually, no. The worst mistake was when we broke up. I told her I didn’t want her to keep the baby.’
21
June 2010
A mile was a long way on a damaged leg. It took Daniela over an hour to reach the old house. Which gave her plenty of time to think.
Now fear and adrenaline had worn off, anger took over. She spent a lot of time planning what she’d do to Henry next time they met.
But she was also angry with herself. How had she got into such a stupid situation? She’d let Henry corner her by the river. She’d let him threaten her and take her phone. Her idiocy made her want to break something.
With every step, Daniela discovered how difficult it was to walk cross-country with a bad ankle. Uneven ground and patches of mud suddenly became insurmountable obstacles. She had to lean heavily on trees for support. Several times she stumbled and once she fell flat onto the grass at the edge of the path. She wondered if she’d be better off staying down.
Keep going. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
Even so, she was glad she hadn’t walked through town. She was dishevelled, limping, with her eyes red from suppressed tears. At best she looked crazy. If anyone saw her, they’d immediately call her father.
Daniela definitely didn’t want that. She was still trying to work out how to tell Stephanie about all this.
Her thoughts turned inevitably to Franklyn. Daniela had screwed up. She’d let Henry take her phone and get Franklyn’s number. If not for her, Henry might never find Frankie.
He would’ve asked Auryn instead. Daniela’s hands shook at the idea of Henry, with that insincere smile of his, doing anything to threaten Auryn. What if it’d been Auryn walking alone by the river that afternoon when Henry drove past? What might’ve happened?
At last, the path led her home. Daniela staggered down the slope to the old house. The jolting pain in her ankle was now so familiar she barely noticed it. Her whole body was a map of discomfort.
It looked like no one was home. No lights showed in the downstairs windows. Daniela let herself in through the back door. She paused in the kitchen, listening. The house was silent.
She went to the freezer to look for ice to put on her ankle. Among the frozen ready meals that’d been there so long they were welded together, she located a plastic tray of ice cubes. They too had been in there for some time, the cubes frozen tight to the plastic, opaque with age. Daniela whacked the tray on the counter a few times. When the cubes refused to come loose, she took a knife out of the kitchen drawer and started jemmying them out. She grabbed a tea towel to pile the ice into.
Her hands were still shaking. Angrily, she stabbed at the ice with more force, sending chips flying across the counter. Stupid, stupid.
‘What’re you doing?’
Daniela spun around. The knife clattered to the tiled floor.
Auryn stood in the doorway. She was barefoot, her blonde hair tangled like she hadn’t combed it properly after her shower that morning. She frowned at the knife.
‘I-I hurt my ankle,’ Daniela said. ‘I fell. In the woods. I—’
Auryn came into the kitchen. Her eyes were wide. Gently, almost fearfully, she touched Daniela’s shoulder. Daniela flinched away. ‘Dani, what happened?’ Auryn asked. ‘Are you okay?’
Daniela realised she must look awful. Instinctively she wanted to shrug off Auryn’s concern and pretend everything was fine. But she felt tears prickling her eyes.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not okay.’
Auryn picked up the kitchen knife and set it on the counter with the blade pointing away. ‘What happened?’ she asked in a deliberately calm tone.
‘I need to sit down. Who else is home?’
‘Leo’s here, in the spare room. I think he’s reading. And I guess Dad’s upstairs.’ Auryn wrapped the broken ice up into the tea towel then put out a hand to support Daniela as she limped into the front room.
Daniela collapsed on the sofa. She’d never been so grateful to rest.
‘Take your shoe off,’ Auryn said.
Teeth gritted against the discomfort, Daniela unlaced her trainer and worked it off her foot. Auryn gave her the bundle of ice to hold against her ankle.
Auryn sat down in the armchair. She leaned forwards and rested her elbows on her knees, lacing her fingers. Daniela wondered where she’d acquired that habit. It did make her look like a lawyer.
‘So, tell me,’ Auryn said.
Daniela propped her injured leg on the coffee table. The effort made her wince. ‘It was Henry,’ she admitted.
‘Henry did that to you?’ Auryn asked, shocked.
It was tempting to say yes. After all, it was his fault she’d fallen. ‘He followed me out into the woods,’ she said. ‘He wanted to know where Franklyn was.’
‘Frankie? What for?’
Daniela wasn’t sure she wanted to share everything she’d learned about Franklyn. And she really didn’t want to tell Auryn about the burglary that morning.
‘No idea,’ she said. ‘He’s angry with her for something. He … he threatened to throw me in the river if I didn’t tell him.’ Daniela tried to say it casually, like the idea of the freezing water didn’t still terrify her.
Auryn’s expression was appalled. ‘Seriously?’
Daniela hesitated. The threat had definitely been there – hadn’t it? Maybe Henry hadn’t used those exact words, and maybe he hadn’t laid a hand on Daniela, but still—
‘Seriously, yeah.’ Daniela pushed down her damp sock so she could put the icepack against her bare skin. ‘I don’t know if he really would’ve done it.’
‘Why would he do something like that?’
‘Frankie’s run off and he wants to find her. He’s still mad about the argument yesterday.’
‘You said the argument was nothing serious.’
‘Yeah, turns out I was wrong.’ Daniela couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. Why the hell was Henry so worked up about a small amount of money? ‘Anyways. Nothing came of it. I got away from him and came straight home.’
‘But what happened to your ankle?’
If Daniela intended to blame Henry, now was her chance. Auryn would believe whatever story Daniela told. Together, they could tell Stephanie. It might be an opportunity to get Henry put away, which was exactly what he deserved.
Daniela considered it seriously for several seconds. But lying to Stephanie would set off a chain of events. Daniela would have to make a statement. She’d have to tell her story over and over, and keep it consistent and believable each time. Could she do that? And, when the police got involved, there’d be nothing to stop Henry telling them about the break-in at his store, about Franklyn taking the money … and about Daniela waving a knife at him.
The Flood Page 13
