Death in the Sunshine (Retired Detectives Club, #1)(68)

She waits until Rick’s disappeared around the side of the house and she’s heard the back gate open and then click shut. Philip’s still staring into his mug at the half-drunk coffee. It’ll be cold now, Lizzie thinks, and he hates cold coffee. She gathers her and Rick’s mugs up and heads inside to the kitchen. She’s at the sink, washing out the mugs, when Philip joins her.

Lizzie turns off the water and turns around to face him. ‘Did something happen today?’ She tries to keep her tone conversational, but even she can hear the telltale quiver of worry. She keeps her eyes on Philip’s face, even though he’s avoiding eye contact.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says, putting his mug in the dishwater and turning towards the hallway.

Lizzie moves fast, blocking his path. ‘What’s going on?’

Philip shakes his head. ‘It’s—’

‘Don’t tell me it’s nothing, because I know it can’t be nothing. You’re never silent unless there’s a problem, and you’ve hardly spoken a word to me or Rick for the last hour.’ She stares at him until he meets her gaze. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

There’s a long pause. Then Philip says softly, ‘Golding knows.’

Lizzie frowns. ‘I don’t—’

‘He knows why I left the force.’ Philip’s voice is so quiet she can barely hear him. ‘He knows about the girl. That I was made to retire.’

Lizzie feels like a bus has just slammed into her chest. The memory of the day he’d come home after they’d found the child’s body and told her he’d made a terrible mistake. She’d pushed him to tell her what had happened, and he’d resisted for a while, but in the end he told her that he’d missed a vital clue and it had led to them discovering the child too late. He’d cried in her arms. Sobbed for hours. Then, later, after the heart attack and agreeing to step down from being DCI, when she’d asked him, he’d said he’d rather not talk about it. That he’d made an error of judgement. That he’d gone out to lunch rather than following up on a tip-off, and that had delayed them locating the kidnapped girl. Now she looks at his dejected stance and the way he can’t meet her gaze, and her suspicions return. Did he tell her the whole story, or has he been hiding something all this time? ‘What does Golding know?’

Philip shakes his head. ‘I don’t know exactly, but enough. He says he has a contact in the UK force who told him all the details and if I don’t stop getting in his way he’ll tell everyone here, maybe the media too.’

Lizzie breathes in fast. If that happens, their happy life here is done. ‘Then we need to stop.’

‘I won’t stop,’ says Philip. He looks at her with angry intensity. ‘That bastard can’t make me—’

‘You’d have everyone here know what happened? If people find out, we could lose our friends, everything we’ve built here . . .’

‘Was what I did so bad?’ Philip’s voice is raised now. His face is red.

‘You tell me,’ says Lizzie. ‘Was it?’

They stare at each other for a long moment. Both angry.

Philip’s the first to look away. He shakes his head. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘How very convenient,’ spits Lizzie. She’s furious now. It’s obvious he’s lying.

‘Look, I . . . I made a mistake. It was an awful thing, a tragedy, but I . . .’

Lizzie hugs herself. Feels like she’s going to explode. ‘First you don’t remember. Now you say it was a mistake. If it was just a one-off error of judgement, why did they fire you? They knew you’d been under extreme pressure, they knew the volume of tip-offs was massive once the reward was offered. Surely they could have moved you to a desk, or put you into another unit, but they didn’t, they pensioned you off. Why?’

Philip says nothing but she can tell from his expression that she’s right – he’s hiding something. His silence infuriates her. It’s like he doesn’t care or respect her enough to tell her the truth. She swears under her breath.

She knows a child died because of Philip and because of it he was forced to retire. If that gets out they’ll have to move – their friends here will shun them and the shame will be too much. Emotions rollercoaster through her – anger that Philip caused this, hurt that even after all these years he won’t tell her everything that happened, and, if she’s honest, the rising frustration with herself for standing by and staying with him. She glares at him. ‘You owe me the whole story. You’ve owed me that for nearly ten years.’

‘I . . .’ Philip shakes his head. Opens his mouth, then closes it again. ‘I’m going to do some reading.’ He steps around her.

Lizzie doesn’t try to stop him. Doesn’t waste her breath trying to make him talk to her. It’s pointless. She can see that from the expression on his face.

Till death do us part, that’s what they promised each other in their wedding vows. She takes their vows seriously, always has. But now, she wonders if it’s enough; if it’s enough for her to stay with him. The way he’s behaving isn’t the way the man she spoke those vows to used to behave, and he seems a long way from the idealistic, public-service-committed man she fell in love with all those years ago. Has he really been hiding something from her for the last ten years? If he has, does she even know him at all?