“She’s motherless,” I said, “but is she fatherless? Do you honestly believe that Lena has no idea who her father is? Do you know if she and Katie ever spoke about that?”
Louise shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know. That was what Nel always said. I thought it was odd. Like a lot of Nel’s parenting choices, not just odd but irresponsible—I mean, what if there was a genetic issue, an illness, something like that? It seemed unfair on Lena in any case, not to even give the child the option of getting to know her father. When pressed—and I did press her, back when she and I were on better terms—she said it was a one-night stand, someone she met when she first moved to New York. She claimed not to have known his last name. When I thought about that later on, I concluded it must have been a lie, because I’d seen a photograph of Nel moving into her first flat in Brooklyn, her T-shirt stretched tight over her already pregnant belly.”
Louise stopped stacking books. She shook her head again. “So, in that sense, Josh is right. She is alone. There’s no other family apart from the aunt. Or none that I ever heard of. And as for boyfriends . . .” She gave a rueful smile. “Nel once told me that she only ever slept with married men, because they were discreet and undemanding and they let her get on with her life. Her affairs were private. I’ve no doubt there were men, but she didn’t make that sort of thing public. Whenever you saw her, she was alone. Alone or with her daughter.” She gave a little sigh. “The only man I think I’ve ever seen Lena be even vaguely affectionate to is Sean.” She coloured slightly as she said his name, turning her head away from me, as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
“Sean Townsend? Really?” She didn’t reply. “Louise?” She got to her feet to fetch another pile of books from the shelf. “Louise, what are you saying? That there’s something . . . untoward between Sean and Lena?”
“God, no!” She gave a brittle laugh. “Not Lena.”
“Not Lena? So . . . Nel? Are you saying there was something between him and Nel Abbott?”
Louise pursed her lips and turned her face from mine so I couldn’t read her expression.
“Because, you know, that would be highly inappropriate. To investigate the suspicious death of someone with whom he’d had a relationship, that would be . . .”
What would that be? Unprofessional, unethical, grounds for dismissal? He wouldn’t. There is no way he could have done that, no way he could have kept that from me. I would have seen something, noticed something, wouldn’t I? And then I thought of how he looked the first time I saw him, stood there on the banks of the pool with Nel Abbott at his feet, head bowed as though he was praying over her. His watery eyes, his shaking hands, his absent manner, his sadness. But that was about his mother, surely?
Louise continued silently packing books into boxes.
“Listen to me,” I said, raising my voice to get her full attention. “If you are aware that there was some sort of relationship between Sean and Nel, then—”
“I didn’t say that,” she said, looking me dead in the eye. “I didn’t say anything of the sort. Sean Townsend is a good man.” She got to her feet. “Now, I have a lot to do, Detective. I think it’s probably time you left.”
SEAN
The back door had been left open, the Scenes of Crime officers said. Not just unlocked, but open. The tang of iron caught in my nostrils as I entered. Callie Buchan was already there, talking to the SOCOs; she asked me a question, but I wasn’t really listening because I was straining to hear something else—an animal, whimpering.
“Shhh,” I said. “Listen.”
“They’ve checked the house, sir,” Callie said. “There’s no one here.”
“Does he have a dog?” I asked her. She looked at me blankly. “Is there a dog, a pet in the house? Any sign of one?”
“Nope, no sign at all, sir. Why do you ask?”
I listened again, but the sound was gone and I was left with a sense of déjà vu: I’ve seen this before, I’ve done all this before—I’ve listened to a dog whimper, I’ve walked through a bloody kitchen into the rain.
Only it isn’t raining, and there’s no dog.
Callie was staring at me. “Sir? There’s something over here.” She pointed at an item on the floor, a pair of kitchen scissors lying in a smear of blood. “That’s not just a nick, is it? I mean, it might not be arterial, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Hospitals?”
“Nothing so far, no sign of either of them.” Her phone rang and she went outside to take the call.
I remained stock-still in the kitchen while two Scenes of Crime officers worked quietly around me. I watched one of them pluck with tweezers a strand of long blond hair that had snagged on the edge of the table. I felt a sudden wave of nausea, saliva flooding my mouth. I couldn’t credit it: I’ve seen worse scenes than this—far worse—and remained impassive. Haven’t I? Have I not walked through bloodier kitchens than this?
I touched my palm to my wrist and realized that Callie was speaking to me again, her head poked around the doorframe. “Can I have a word, sir?” I followed her outside, and while I removed the plastic covers from my shoes, she filled me in on the latest. “Traffic have picked up Henderson’s car,” she said. “I mean, not picked up, but they’ve got his red Vauxhall on camera twice.” She looked down at her notebook. “Thing is, it’s a bit confusing because the first capture, just after three this morning, has him on the A68 going north towards Edinburgh, but then a couple of hours later, at five fifteen, he’s driving south on the A1 just outside Eyemouth. So maybe he . . . dropped something off?” Got rid of something, she means. Something or someone. “Or he’s trying to confuse us?”
“Or he changed his mind about the best place to run to,” I said. “Or he’s panicking.”
She nodded. “Running around like a headless chicken.”
I didn’t like that idea, I didn’t want him—or anyone else—headless. I wanted him calm. “Was it possible to see if there was anyone else in the car, anyone in the passenger seat?” I asked her.
She shook her head, lips pursed. “No. Of course . . .” she tailed off. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t another person in the car. It just means that the other person isn’t upright.
Again, that odd sense of having been here before, a scrap of memory that didn’t feel like my own. How could it be anyone else’s? It must have been part of a story, told to me by someone I don’t remember. A woman lying slumped in a car seat, a sick woman, convulsing, drooling. Not much of a story—I couldn’t remember the rest of it, I only knew that thinking about it turned my stomach. I pushed it aside.