The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(7)

“If the Chief Constable will sign off on it, I’ll make up the spare bedroom for tonight,” she said slowly. “But let’s be straight from the start, Sam. If there’s a case to investigate about your mum, then I’m more sorry than I can say, and we’ll do all we can to help you. But my husband is anything but an ‘average nobody’, and neither am I. We expect good behaviour and a measure of respect while you’re staying with us.”

The girl nodded vigorously.

“You’ll hardly know I’m around. I promise.”

MacKenzie smiled, while Phillips looked to the heavens and wondered what he’d let himself in for.

*

“Boss?”

Charlie half turned.

“What is it, man? I’m busy.”

He wasn’t, especially, but he couldn’t face a conversation with his younger brother just now. His twin had been born only three minutes after him, but it may as well have been three decades, for they were worlds apart. The name sounded right—their father had demanded good, strong names for both his sons—but ‘Duke’ didn’t match the awkward, clumsy man who spent his days clowning around, making people laugh.

“It’s important,” he insisted.

Charlie swore viciously and ground his cigarette into the soil beneath his feet before turning and spreading his muscular arms.

“Well? You’ve got my attention.”

“It’s about Sam,” Duke said, refusing to be intimidated. “I can’t find her anywhere.”

Charlie huffed out a laugh.

“Is that all? You know she does this every time we come to a new place. She’ll have gone for a wander around the town.”

Duke remained troubled and looked up at the sky, which was a bold wash of warm amber as the sun began to fall into the horizon. Soon, it would be dark.

“She left an extra bucket of feed beside Pegasus,” he persisted. “The stall’s been mucked out, but she gave him twice the usual amount. Why would she do that?”

Charlie was losing patience.

“Look, I don’t have time to worry about why the bloody horse has two buckets of feed. We’ve got a meeting later and it’s important. I don’t need you losing your nerve and screwing this up for both of us.”

Duke said nothing, but continued to look at him with sad, clown eyes.

“Fine,” Charlie spat. “Go and look around, if it makes you feel better, but I’m telling you she’ll trot back soon enough—probably with an armful of clobber she’s nicked from some poor sap. I want you back here, with or without her, by seven.”

“And, if it’s without her? What then?”

But Charlie had already turned away.





CHAPTER 5


“Where are we?”

On the drive home, Phillips had counted eighty questions from the youngster sitting in the back of his car.

This was the eighty-first.

“Kingston Park,” he replied testily, as they passed through the comfortable residential neighbourhood on the western edge of the city. “Although we’re thinking of moving soon, aren’t we, love?”

“Frank needs more room for his ties,” MacKenzie chipped in, with an affectionate smile. “And I’d like to be nearer the sea.”

“Are we close to the sea?” Sam asked, with a trace of excitement.

“Not far,” Phillips replied. He almost went on to say he’d take her, one day, but stopped himself just in time. The lass wasn’t going to be with them long, and it wouldn’t do to get too attached.

MacKenzie silently agreed, although it went against the grain.

“Nearly there,” she said instead, and a moment later they turned into a cul-de-sac lined with smart, semi-detached houses built sometime in the seventies and eighties.

“I don’t know how you can stay in one place for so long,” Sam said, as she unfastened the seatbelt they’d bulldozed her into wearing. “Don’t you get bored?”

MacKenzie shook her head as she opened the car door.

“I like to visit new places, but there’s nowhere like home.”

The girl let the word roll around on her tongue and wondered what ‘home’ might feel like. Hers had been a transient, often volatile existence, and the caravan she shared with her father was just a place to sleep.

“Shoes off, please!”

She toed off her scruffy trainers at Phillips’ insistence, then padded through the hallway towards the kitchen.

“She’s like a homing pigeon, that one,” he muttered, and MacKenzie smiled.

“Hungry?” she called out.

“Always!” two voices replied.

*

“Will you be alright in here?”

Half an hour later, Sam heard Phillips’ rumbling voice behind her but couldn’t quite find the words to answer. She stood on the threshold of a beautiful room which boasted an enormous double bed decked in soft covers and fluffy pillows. There was a dressing table and a stool in the corner, with a mirror on top. The curtains at the window were a delicate, buttercup yellow and caught the last rays of the evening sun.

“It’s just the spare room,” he continued, starting to feel a bit worried. “I know it’s not much, but—”