“Spit it out,” Patrick muttered. My skin prickled with heat, breath shortening. “You Abbotts! Christ, what a family!” His voice rose as he slammed the knife down on the kitchen table. “I remember you, you know? Obese, weren’t you, when you were younger?” He turned to speak to Helen. “Disgusting fat thing, she was. And the parents! Pathetic.” My hands were trembling as he turned back to look at me. “I suppose the mother had an excuse, because she was dying, but someone should have taken them in hand. You ran wild, didn’t you, you and your sister? And look how well you both turned out! She was mentally unstable, and you . . . well. What are you? Simple?”
“That’s quite enough, Mr. Townsend,” Erin said. She took my arm. “Come on, let’s get you to the station. We need to get Lena’s statement.”
“Ah yes, the girl. That one will go the same way as her mother, she’s got the same dirty look about her, filthy mouth, the kind of face you want to slap—”
“You spend a lot of time thinking about doing things to my teenage niece, do you?” I said loudly. “Do you think that’s appropriate?” My anger was roused again, and Patrick wasn’t ready for it. “Well? Do you? Disgusting old man.” I turned to Erin. “I’m actually not quite ready to leave yet,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re here, Erin, I think it’s appropriate, because the reason I came was not to speak to him”—I jerked my head in Patrick’s direction—“but to her. To you, Mrs. Townsend.” My hand trembling, I fished the little plastic bag out of my pocket and placed it on the table, next to the knife. “I wanted to ask you, when did you take this bracelet from my sister’s wrist?”
Helen’s eyes widened and I knew that she was guilty.
“Where did the bracelet come from, Jules?” Erin asked.
“From Lena. Who got it from Mark Henderson. Who took it from Helen. Who, I’m guessing from the guilty-as-sin look on her face, took it from my sister before she killed her.”
Patrick started laughing, a loud, fake bark of a laugh. “She took it from Lena, who took it from Mark, who took it from Helen, who took it from the fairy on the fucking Christmas tree! Sorry, love,” he apologized to Helen, “excuse my French, but what utter garbage.”
“It was in your office, wasn’t it, Helen?” I looked at Erin. “It’ll have prints on it, DNA, won’t it?”
Patrick chuckled again, but Helen looked stricken. “No, I . . .” she said at last, her eyes flicking from me to Erin to her father-in-law. “It was . . . No.” She took a deep breath. “I found it,” she said. “But I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know it was hers. I just . . . I kept it. I was going to hand it in to lost property.”
“You found it where, Helen?” Erin asked. “You found it at the school?”
Helen glanced at Patrick and then back to the detective, as though considering whether the lie would hold. “I think that I . . . yes, I did. And, er, I didn’t know whose it was, so . . .”
“My sister wore that bracelet all the time,” I said. “It has my mother’s initials on it. I’m finding it a bit hard to believe you didn’t realize what it was, that it was important.”
“I didn’t,” Helen said, but her voice was thin and her face was reddening.
“Of course she didn’t know!” Patrick shouted suddenly. “Of course she didn’t know whose it was or where it came from.” He went quickly to her side, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Helen had the bracelet because I left it in her car. Careless of me. I was going to throw it out, I meant to, but . . . I’ve become rather forgetful. I’ve become forgetful, haven’t I, darling?” Helen said nothing, she didn’t move. “I left it in the car,” he said again.
“OK,” Erin said. “And where did you get it?”
He looked right at me when he answered her. “Where do you think I got it, you moron? I ripped it off that whore’s wrist before I threw her over.
”
PATRICK
He had loved her a long time, but never so much as in the moment when she flew to his defence.
“That is not what happened!” Helen sprang to her feet. “That is not . . . Don’t! Don’t you take the blame for this, Dad, that is not what happened. You didn’t . . . you didn’t even . . .”
Patrick smiled at her, reaching out a hand. She took it and he pulled her closer. She was soft but not weak, her modesty, her unashamed plainness more stirring than any facile beauty. It moved him now—he felt his blood rising, the pump of his weakened old heart.
No one spoke. The sister was crying silently, mouthing words without any sound. The detective watched him, watched Helen, something knowing in her face.
“Are you . . .?” She shook her head, lost for words. “Mr. Townsend, I . . .”
“Come on, then!” He felt suddenly irritable, desperate to get away from the woman’s evident distress. “For Christ’s sake, you’re a police officer, do what you have to do.”
Erin took a deep breath and stepped towards him. “Patrick Townsend, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Danielle Abbott. You do not have to say anything—”
“Yes, yes, yes, all right,” he said wearily. “I know, I know all that. God. Women like you, you don’t ever know when to stop talking.” Then he turned to Helen. “But you, darling, you do. You know when to speak and when to be quiet. You tell the truth, my girl.”
She started to cry, and he wanted more than anything to be beside her, in the room upstairs, just one last time, before he was taken away from her. He kissed her forehead then, and before he followed the detective out of the door, bid her goodbye.
• • •
PATRICK HAD NEVER BEEN one for mysticism, for gut feelings or hunches, but if he was honest, he’d felt this coming: the reckoning. The endgame. He’d felt it long before they’d dragged Nel Abbott’s cold corpse out of the water, only he’d dismissed it as a symptom of age. His mind had been playing a lot of tricks lately, boosting the colour and the sound in his old memories, blurring the edges of his new ones. He knew it was the start of it, the long goodbye, that he would be eaten from the inside out, core to husk. He could be grateful, at least, that he still had time to tie up the loose ends, to seize control. It was, he realized now, the only way to salvage something of the life they’d built, though he knew that not everyone could be spared.