Into the Water(41)

‘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 which 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.

‘We wondered if you would be prepared to let us take your fingerprints—’

She interrupted before I could explain. ‘What for? Why?’

Sean shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘Louise, we have a matching print from the pill bottle you gave me and from one of Nel Abbott’s cameras, and we need to establish why. That’s all.’

Louise sat back down. ‘Well, they’re probably Nel’s,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you imagine?’

‘They’re not Nel’s,’ I replied. ‘We’ve checked. They’re not your daughter’s either.’

She flinched at that. ‘Of course they’re not Katie’s. What would Katie be doing with the camera?’ She pursed her lips, raising her hand to the chain around her neck, running the little bluebird back and forth. She sighed heavily. ‘Well, they’re mine, of course,’ she said. ‘They’re mine.’

It happened three days after her daughter died, she told us. ‘I went to Nel Abbott’s house. I was … well, I doubt you can imagine the state I was in, but you can try. I beat on her front door, but she wouldn’t come out. I wouldn’t give up, I just stayed there, pounding on the door and calling out for her, and eventually,’ she said, sweeping a strand of hair from her face, ‘Lena opened the door. She was crying, sobbing, practically hysterical. It was quite a scene.’ She tried and failed to smile. ‘I said some things to her – cruel things, I suppose, in retrospect, but …’