When she got to the top of the stairs, she jolted and put her hand to her chest.
‘Oh, you surprised me,’ she said, laughing to herself. ‘You’re here early, Charlie.’
He put the bag containing the knife into his jacket and then shrugged, unsure how to respond at first. ‘I came to get the court files. I’ll go home first. You’re early too.’
‘I know, but I’ve got some post to get out today. It was supposed to go out yesterday, but you know how it was, with the burglary.’
As Linda walked to her desk, she wrinkled her nose and frowned. She looked at Charlie suspiciously, and he realised why she was doing that. Charlie could taste the booze on his breath, and he guessed that the office smelled like a wino had been dossing down in there. Which, of course, was true.
She went to her desk and handed him three thin files. He took them from her and was about to go down the stairs, when he stopped.
‘I was looking for a sharp knife before, but I couldn’t find one,’ he said. ‘I thought we had a carving knife in the kitchen.’
Linda shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Why did you need a knife like that?’
‘I just did. I’m sorry. I thought we had one.’
‘What’s happened to your face? Your cheek. It’s grazed.’
‘I tripped,’ he said, and then turned away, walking quickly down the stairs, not wanting the same discussion with Amelia, who was due into the office at any time.
Charlie grimaced and shielded his eyes as he went onto the street. Someone shouted his name. He looked over. It was one of his clients waving at him.
He turned away. He wasn’t in the mood to be pleasant. The plastic bag with the towel and the knife was clasped tightly against his chest, and so he put his head down and walked as quickly as he could.
He needed to work out what had happened.
Chapter Twenty
Sheldon stared out of his windscreen at the brick wall of the police station. The skin underneath his eyes felt sore. He looked into the mirror and saw dark rings. It was late, almost nine o’clock, and he was angry with himself. He had wanted to be the first one in, but images of Alice Kenyon had taunted him as he tried to sleep, of the swirl of her hair in the water, and the post mortem photographs he had copied, kept securely in a metal box that he hid under the bed, fastened shut with a combination lock. He had looked through them again, once more hoping to find that elusive answer. He had turned in his bed for hours and then drifted off as the first licks of daylight painted his room soft blue.
He remembered reaching out to the empty side of the bed when he finally stirred, as he did most mornings. His wife had left him six months earlier, because she hadn’t understood about Alice. Neither had Hannah, his daughter. Like Alice had been, she was at university, but they didn’t speak anymore. His family didn’t understand that it wasn’t just Alice. It was all of them. The victims. The forgotten ones.
He climbed out of his car, feet crunching on loose stones on the tarmac. There was a police officer standing by a patrol car. He seemed to be looking over but pretending not to be. Sheldon tugged on his cuffs and headed for the entrance.
The corridor was quiet as he got inside, although he heard low rumbles of conversation as he got closer to the Incident Room. The talking stopped when he walked in and everyone looked round. It was the detective sergeant, Tracey Peters, surrounded by a small group of detectives.
Sheldon smiled, but it felt strained. ‘Good morning. Nice to see you keen.’
There were some mumbled greetings but nothing more than that.
There was a newspaper on one of the desks. It was open at the Billy Privett story, a picture of Alice Kenyon prominent, Jim Kelly’s by-line at the top. Sheldon turned away. He didn’t want to know what the press were saying.
‘Anything come in overnight?’ he said.
It was Tracey who spoke. ‘We did the calls to the neighbours last night, like you said, and guess what; someone went out in Ted Kenyon’s car the night Billy was killed. He remembered because it was late, past eleven o’clock.’
‘So Ted lied about staying in?’
Tracey nodded. ‘Is it enough to bring him in on?’
Sheldon thought about that for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘We need more than that, and if news gets out that we’ve arrested him, people will think the case is closed and stop calling with information. But I want to know why he didn’t tell us the truth.’
He turned towards the board at the front and looked at Billy’s body, the face missing, so that he looked anonymous, and the very essence of him taken away at the point he died. It wasn’t how Sheldon remembered him. The Billy Privett he knew was bullish, had a swagger, the knowledge that Sheldon couldn’t touch him. The Billy in the pictures was different to that. He was a victim. Helpless.
Sheldon started to feel some pity, but he shook that away when he thought of Alice Kenyon. He remembered how limp her body had been as he’d pulled her out of the water, so that she flopped onto the wet tiles like a caught fish. Sheldon had seen the bruises straight away. Blue marks around her neck where strong hands had held her under the water, and there were bruises around her wrist, as if she had been held down before she was drowned. And there were marks on her thighs, and between her thighs. There were some cuts on her stomach, small slashes.
It was the face that he remembered though. Alice had been a beautiful young woman. Young, with high cheekbones and smooth bright skin, and red hair that seemed to swirl over her face in the pictures he saw. When she was dragged out of the water, it was lank and wet, draped across her cheeks.
Then there had been Billy’s behaviour after she had been found. He’d refused to answer questions, and so was brought in to get his side of the story, but he had stayed silent. He’d seemed frightened at first, but once he was in the station, familiar territory, he acquired an arrogant smirk as he sat across from Sheldon, his arms folded. He looked to his lawyer, Amelia Diaz, every time a question was asked. She gave the same response each time; a small shake of the head, and then he would repeat, ‘No comment.’
Sheldon had tried to speak to Amelia after the second interview, when he knew that he would have to watch Billy walk out, but she hadn’t been interested. ‘Just doing my job,’ was all she’d said.
So he’d kept watch, waiting for Billy to slip up, to meet up with the others who’d been there. But what had he found out? Only that there had been a party. Just another raucous night, except that by the time Sheldon and the young cadet arrived, the house was deserted. Even Billy was gone.
The blood had been a mystery. A pool of it had been congealing in one of the party rooms, with spray on the walls. They never did find out whose blood it was. It wasn’t Alice’s. It wasn’t Billy’s. It wasn’t on the DNA database. But it had been spilled that night and so was part of the story. Had someone else died?
He heard someone behind him. It was Duncan Lowther.
‘Sir, about Christina.’
Sheldon nodded. He remembered her. Billy’s housekeeper. ‘What about her?’
‘She’s gone.’
Sheldon turned from Billy’s death pictures, confused. ‘What do you mean, gone?’
‘Just that. I went up to the house last night, after you’d gone, just for a welfare check, and to see whether she remembered anything else. She was gone, no trace of her. Her clothes. Toiletries. No sign she had ever been there.’
‘She might have gone home, wherever that is. She’d just been made jobless. There was no point in hanging