He sat and stared at it for a long time. He couldn’t for the life of him think what it meant, the fact that it
was here. It meant nothing. It couldn’t mean anything. Mark replaced the bracelet in the desk, abandoned his search and returned to his car. He had the key in the ignition when it struck him exactly when he’d seen that bracelet last. He’d seen it on Nel, outside the pub. They’d spoken briefly. He’d watched her head off towards the Mill House. But before that, before she had left him, she had been fidgeting with something on her wrist as they spoke, and there, it was there. He retraced his steps, went back to Helen’s office and opened the drawer, took the bracelet and put it into his pocket. He knew as he was doing it that if someone asked him why, he wouldn’t be able to explain himself.
It was, he thought, as though he were in deep water, as though he were reaching for something, anything, to save himself. It was as though he had reached for a life buoy and instead found weeds, and grabbed hold of them anyway.
ERIN
The boy—Josh—was standing outside the house when we arrived, like a little soldier on guard, pale and watchful. He greeted the DI politely, looking more suspiciously at me. He was holding a Swiss Army knife in his hands, his fingers working nervously around the blade as he opened and closed it.
“Is your mum in, Josh?” Sean asked him, and he nodded.
“Why do you want to talk to us again?” he asked, his voice rising with a sharp squeak. He cleared his throat.
“We just need to check a couple of things,” Sean said. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“She was in bed,” Josh announced, his eyes flicking from Sean’s face to mine. “That night. Mum was asleep. We were all asleep.”
“What night?” I asked. “What night was that, Josh?”
He blushed and looked down at his hands and fiddled with his knife. A little boy who hadn’t learned yet how to lie.
His mother opened the door behind him. She looked from me to Sean and sighed, rubbing her fingers over her brows. Her face was the colour of weak tea, and when she turned to talk to her son I noticed that her back was hunched, like an old woman. She beckoned him to her, speaking quietly.
“But what if they want to talk to me, too?” I heard him asking.
She placed her hands firmly on his shoulders. “They won’t, darling,” she said. “Off you go.”
Josh closed his knife and slipped it into his jeans pocket, his eyes on mine as he did. I smiled and he turned away, walking quickly down the path, glancing back just once as his mother was pulling the door closed behind us.
I followed Louise and Sean into a big, bright living room leading out into one of those boxy modern conservatories that seem to make the house bleed seamlessly into the garden. Outside, I could see a wooden hutch on the lawn and bantams, pretty black-and-white and golden hens, scratching around for food. Louise indicated for us to sit on the sofa. She lowered herself into the armchair opposite, slowly and carefully, like someone recovering from an injury, afraid of inflicting more damage.
“So,” she said, raising her chin slightly as she looked at Sean. “What have you got to tell me?”
He explained that the new blood tests gave the same results as the original ones: there were no traces of drugs in Katie’s system.
Louise listened, shaking her head in clear disbelief. “But you don’t know, do you, how long that sort of drug stays in the system? Or how long it takes for the effects to manifest or to wear off? You can’t dismiss this, Sean—”
“We’re dismissing nothing, Louise,” he said evenly. “All I’m telling you is what we have found.”
“Surely . . . well, surely supplying illegal drugs to someone—to a child—is an offence, in any case? I know . . .” She grazed her teeth over her lower lip. “I know it’s too late to punish her, but it should be made known, don’t you think? What she did?”
Sean said nothing. I cleared my throat and Louise glared at me as I began to speak.
“From what we’ve discovered, Mrs. Whittaker, regarding the timing of the purchase of the pills, Nel could not have purchased them. Although her credit card was used, it—”
“What are you suggesting?” Her voice rose angrily. “Now you’re saying Katie stole her credit card?”
“No, no,” I said. “We’re not saying anything of the sort . . .”
Her face changed as realization dawned on her. “Lena,” she said, leaning back in her chair, her mouth fixed in grim resignation. “Lena did it.”
We didn’t know that for sure either, Sean explained, though we would certainly be questioning her about it. In fact, she was due to visit the station that afternoon. He asked Louise whether she’d found anything else of concern amongst Katie’s possessions. Louise dismissed the question bluntly. “This is it,” she said, leaning forward. “Can’t you see that? You combine the pills and this place and the fact that Katie spent so much time round at the Abbotts’, surrounded by all those pictures and those stories, and . . .” She tailed off. Even she didn’t seem entirely convinced by the story she was telling. Because even if she was right, and even if those pills had made her daughter depressed, none of it changed the fact that she hadn’t noticed.
I didn’t say that, of course, because what I had to ask was difficult enough. Louise was hauling herself to her feet, assuming our meeting to be over, expecting us to leave, and I had to stop her.
“There’s something else we need to ask you about,” I said.
“Yes?” She remained standing, her arms crossed over her chest.