Into the Water(89)

‘Hello?’ I called out. ‘Mr Townsend? Hello?’ There was no answer. I walked into the living room, a spartan space with dark wooden floors and bare walls; the only concession to decoration was a selection of framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Patrick Townsend in uniform – first army, then police – and a number of pictures of Sean as a child and then a teenager, smiling stiffly at the camera, the same pose and the same expression in each one. There was a photograph of Sean and Helen on their wedding day, too, standing in front of the church in Beckford. Sean looked young, handsome and unhappy. Helen looked much the same as she does today – a bit thinner, perhaps. She looked happier, though, smiling shyly at the camera in spite of her ugly dress.

Over on a wooden sideboard in front of the window was another set of frames, these ones containing certificates, commendations, qualifications, a monument to the achievements of father and son. There were no pictures, as far as I could see, of Sean’s mother.

I left the living room and called out again. ‘Mr Townsend?’ My voice echoed back to me in the hallway. The whole place felt abandoned, and yet it was spotlessly clean, not a speck of dust on the skirting boards or the bannister. I walked up the stairs and on to the landing. There were two bedrooms there, side by side, as sparsely furnished as the living room downstairs, but lived in. Both of them, by the looks of things. In the main bedroom, with its large window looking down the valley to the river, were Patrick’s things: polished black shoes by the wall, his suits hanging in the wardrobe. Next door, beside a neatly made single bed, was a chair with a suit jacket hanging over it, which I recognized as the one Helen wore when I interviewed her at the school. And in the wardrobe were more of her clothes, black and grey and navy and shapeless.

My phone beeped, deafeningly loud in the funeral-parlour silence of that house. I had a voicemail, a missed call. It was Jules. ‘DS Morgan,’ she was saying, her voice solemn, ‘I need to talk to you. It’s quite urgent. I’m coming in to see you. I … er … I need to talk to you alone. I’ll see you at the station.’

I slipped the phone back into my pocket. I went back into Patrick’s room and took another quick look around, at the books on the shelves, in the drawer next to the bed. There were photographs in there, too, old ones, of Sean and Helen together, fishing at the river near the cottage, Sean and Helen leaning proudly against a new car, Helen standing in front of the school, looking at once happy and embarrassed, Helen out in the courtyard, cradling a cat in her arms, Helen, Helen, Helen.

I heard a noise, a click, the sound of a latch lifting and then a creak of floorboards. I put the photographs back hastily and shut the drawer, then moved as quietly as I could out on to the landing. Then I froze. Helen was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me. She had a paring knife in her left hand and was gripping its blade so tightly that blood was dripping on to the floor.





Helen


HELEN HAD NO idea why Erin Morgan was wandering about Patrick’s house as though she owned it, but for the moment she was more concerned with the blood on the floor. Patrick liked a clean house. She fetched a cloth from the kitchen and began to wipe it up, only for more to spill from the deep cut across her palm.

‘I was chopping onions,’ she said to the detective by way of an explanation. ‘You startled me.’

This wasn’t exactly true, because she’d stopped chopping onions when she’d seen the car pull up. With the knife in her hand she’d stood stock-still while Erin knocked, and then had watched her wander over to Patrick’s place. She knew that he was out, so she’d assumed the detective would just leave. But then she remembered that when she’d left that morning, she hadn’t locked the front door. So, knife still in hand, she walked across the courtyard to check.

‘It’s quite deep,’ Erin said. ‘You need to clean and bandage that properly.’ Erin had come downstairs and was standing over Helen, watching her wipe the floor. Standing there in Patrick’s house as though she had every right to be there.

‘He’ll be livid if he sees this,’ Helen said. ‘He likes a clean house. Always has.’

‘And you … keep house for him, do you?’

Helen gave Erin a sharp look. ‘I help out. He does most things himself, but he’s getting on. And he likes things to be just so. His late wife,’ she said, looking up at Erin, ‘was a slattern. His word. An old-fashioned word. You’re not allowed to say slut any longer, are you? It’s politically incorrect.’

She stood up, facing Erin, holding the bloody cloth in front of her. The pain in her hand felt hot and bright, like a burn almost, with the same cauterizing effect. She was no longer sure who to be afraid of, or what exactly to feel guilty for, but she felt that she ought to keep Erin here, to find out what she wanted. To detain her for a while, hopefully until Patrick got back, because she was sure that he’d want to talk to her.

Helen wiped the knife handle with the cloth. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Detective?’ she asked.

‘Lovely,’ Erin replied, her cheery smile fading as she watched Helen lock the front door and slip the key into her pocket before continuing on into the kitchen.

‘Mrs Townsend—’ Erin started.

‘Do you take sugar?’ Helen interrupted.

The way to deal with situations like this was to throw the other person off their game. Helen knew this from years of public-sector politics. Don’t do what people expect you to do, it puts them on the back foot right away and, if nothing else, it buys you time. So instead of being angry, outraged that this woman had come into their home without permission, Helen was polite.