Death in the Sunshine (Retired Detectives Club, #1)(47)

Lizzie unfastens the clasps on the front of the trunk and opens the lid. She runs her fingers over the neatly sorted kit, then looks up and meets his gaze. She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. ‘Everything’s here. I should be able to test that water sample.’

He smiles back. Ignores the tension between them, just as he did for all those months after he’d retired. ‘I’ll get back to bed then.’





24


LIZZIE


She didn’t have the heart to tell Philip the truth. She’s spent nearly ten years, ever since he retired and they came here, trying to forget and forgive, and she’s almost managed it. These days, ninety-five per cent of the time she doesn’t think about it, and for the remaining five per cent, well, she tries not to get too angry. Yoga helps. Painting does too. But now he’s at it again – playing the big police chief – she can’t bury her head in the sand any more. She needs to know what really happened before his heart attack and be able to spot the warning signs.

She has to be prepared.

Lizzie scans the boxes that now litter the loft space higgledy-piggledy style. She could have sworn the files were up here. Philip had them in a blue metal file case, like an over-wide briefcase, but she’s opened everything and hasn’t found it. He must have moved it somewhere else. She needs to work out where.

Keeping her field kit and the box it was in separate, Lizzie moves the other boxes back to their original neat positions along the back wall. She stacks them two boxes high, just as they were, then returns to the silver trunk. First she collapses the box it was packed in and leans the flattened cardboard against the end of the line of boxes. Then she turns her attention to the field kit. The metal trunk isn’t very big, but it’s heavy. Picking it up, she carries it over to the edge of the loft hatch. Getting it down is going to be a challenge.

First she steps on to the ladder and slowly lowers herself down through the hatch. Then she reaches for the trunk and slides it across the boarded loft floor towards her until it’s teetering half over the edge. Taking a deep breath, she grips the handle on the top of the trunk and lifts it over the edge.

The weight of it almost causes her to lose her balance on the ladder. She grits her teeth. Swallows hard. Focuses on putting one foot after the other, climbing her way down.

When she reaches the landing floor and the comfort of the carpet beneath her feet, she exhales. She hadn’t realised she was holding her breath until that moment. It’s not a surprise though. She’s always hated heights and darkness – put them together and it’s the worst of both worlds. That’s why she’s never been up in the loft since putting her field kit there, never gone in the lofts of any of their homes. Philip had seemed shaken to find her up there.

Lizzie frowns, remembering the look on Philip’s face when he’d seen her – a mixture of shock and worry. Did he buy her story about the kit? she wonders. Maybe, but she isn’t sure.

She folds the loft ladder back up through the hatch and fastens the hatch door. Picking up the field kit, she carries it back downstairs to the main living space and sets it down on the island in the kitchen.

She glances at the clock. It’s almost 3 a.m. She should try and get some sleep, but she doesn’t feel remotely tired. Knowing there’s no point trying to force it, she switches on the kettle and puts a teabag into a mug. While she waits for the kettle to boil she reaches into the pocket of her dressing gown and pulls out the old newspaper article she’d removed from its hiding place inside her old edition of War and Peace. She shakes her head. That’s what a long marriage does to you – forces you to hide your secrets in the places your husband will never look. Philip shuns the classics; the books he reads are either crime fiction or true crime. She would have thought he’d have had enough of that in his job, but then maybe that’s the attraction – getting to live vicariously through the books.

Exhaling, she sets the ageing, yellowing clipping on to the countertop. Smoothing out the creases, she takes a breath and starts to read.

Goodbye to Beloved Top Brass

On Tuesday the Thames Valley Police said goodbye to its longest-serving DCI. Detective Chief Inspector Philip Sweetman worked within the Thames Valley for his whole career. He’d been battling health issues for some time and has now decided to take his retirement and some much-deserved relaxation.

A well-known figure in our community, amongst his many achievements DCI Sweetman led the team that uncovered the identity of the Hillside Strangler, and played a leading role in breaking the ‘Harvester’ people and drugs-trafficking ring that was operating out of a number of farms within our Buckinghamshire countryside, which resulted in 38 convictions.

In more recent years he’s focused on mentoring his team – earning him the coveted local ‘top boss’ award three years in a row – and on increasing police outreach and community involvement. And his efforts have paid dividends – bringing about significant drops in the violent crime statistics for the Thames Valley that have been sustained, year on year, for the past eight.

So as DCI Philip Sweetman eases into retirement, his successor, DCI Robert Keene, will be taking his place, and he has some big shoes to fill. We’ll be keeping an eye on the crime stats with interest!

Lizzie shakes her head. Their local paper wasn’t known for much more than local puff pieces anyway, but the article is light even by its own standards. And fabricated of course. Not Philip’s service record, that’s accurate enough, and it is true that his team had a lot of respect for him. Had – that’s the key word. But the reason given in the article for his retirement is at best a partial truth.