Moss shook his head.
“What could he be looking for?” Clementine asked.
It felt wrong to be there now and not at all like it had even on the day Sally had died. It didn’t feel lived in anymore. Instead, it felt like a mere caricature of a life that had been. It was odd, but in a way gave Clementine the ability to close a door to something that would never be coming back.
“I don’t know,” Moss replied. He turned to look at her. “Let’s go.”
Several minutes later, having pored through Sally’s paperwork, Moss led Clementine out of the house. It was unnerving that they could get in and out of the house without anybody even noticing, or challenging them, and built on the theory that the villagers were used to Sally using this method of getting in and out of her property.
“How many people used to visit her using this back route?” Moss asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Someone has used this path regularly for there to be a groove here.” Moss studied the path. “Is there someone who might know?”
“The neighbour?” Clementine looked sceptically at the neighbour’s house but the shutters at the back of the house were closed. “I expect she has gone away.”
Moss squinted at her but nodded. He had to come back later just to make sure that she hadn’t already become the killer’s next victim. For now, he threw one last cautious look at the house before he led Clementine away. This time, hopefully, for good.
“What now?”
“I don’t know,” Moss sighed. “It is almost too tidy in there. It is as you say, just like someone has been into the house to tidy up. Whether that is because they were being neighbourly or the killer is trying to hide the evidence of how Sally was really killed, I am not sure.”
“Do you want to go and look at the other victim’s houses?” Clementine shivered at the thought of having to sit in another cold and empty house.
Moss saw that shiver, and the shadows that had already started to cloud her eyes and knew he couldn’t ask that of her. Clementine would go with him, he didn’t doubt that, but he didn’t want her anywhere near the other houses right now. Being in Sally’s was bad enough.
“I have got to go and meet with Billsdon, but it is going to take me a while because I don’t know what he is doing right now or where he is. I will drop you off at home and then be on my way.”
“How long will you be gone?” Clementine felt a huge wave of disappointment and wasn’t fast enough to keep it out of her voice, or off her face when she looked at him with a crestfallen expression.
“Will you miss me?” he teased.
Clementine blushed prettily and couldn’t stop her smile. “Might do.”
Moss’s grin grew with his delight. “I will miss it here,” he mused, a little stunned that he was admitting that.
“Really?” Clementine smiled. “I knew the village would grow on you if you just gave it a chance.”
“Yes, like a wart,” Moss snorted.
Clementine blinked at him in mock outrage, but it vanished almost instantly because she had to concede he had a point. The village was starting to feel like a barnacle now. The ugly, dark side of village life being caused by the callousness of a murderer who blighted the landscape and turned the peaceful delight of the place into somewhere nobody felt safe anymore.
“You don’t mean that,” she chided.
Moss shook his head because he didn’t. In just a few hours, he had started to change his opinion of the village and it was worrying. He didn’t want to start to contemplate life in a village like this; or with Clementine either, if he was truly honest. He liked his life as it was and didn’t want to change it, but his heart seemed to have other ideas. Clementine was already making him want things he never realised he wanted. She was already making him change his view on life, especially toward village life.
At least if I am ever away there will be other people around whom I can trust to keep an eye on her, especially her father.
Quickly shoving all thoughts about married life and its problems to one side for now, Moss studied the woman who ambled along beside him as if she was meant to be there.
Maybe a few days in that house with her, with her father as chaperone, will be enough for me to get over thi
s damned obsession I have of her so I can move on and focus on my job once more? Maybe it will be the one thing that manages to rid me of the need to constantly think about her? Maybe she has some awful character flaw that is too horrid to ignore? If I can find anything like that during my time with her then I can be certain that I am not going to make my already bad situation worse.
“How long will you be away for?” Clementine asked again once they were back in front of her house.
Moss nudged her through the gate and closed it behind them.