The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(79)

“You put a stop to it?”

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said.

She thought of the terrible power she’d felt with her hands around Esme’s throat. If she closed her eyes, she could see the way her eyes had bulged, her mouth gasping for air.

“I hardly noticed the baby, at first, but then…afterwards, when it was over, it was just staring at me and crying. It wouldn’t shut up.”

It, Ryan thought. She had dehumanised Samantha, not even referring to her by name.

“Afterwards, I was so panicked, I almost called the police,” she said, laughing. “But then I managed to find a way. I shoved her underneath the caravan and moved my car, so it was closer to Charlie’s caravan, then waited until after dark. It must have been two or three in the morning. It was hard getting her across the grass without waking anybody up, and she’d started to smell, by then. I had a map in the car and I just looked up somewhere with plenty of woodland and drove out. It was exhausting, all the lifting and carrying. I lost my bracelet somewhere along the way, and that cost me some sleep. I went back to search for it, a couple of days later, but I never found it. At least it was easier for me to get around back then, without all this extra bulky cargo.”

She looked down at the bump and, before their eyes, her baby gave a kick.

“It won’t make a difference,” she told it. “Not anymore.”

Ryan didn’t like her tone, nor the way she was cupping the bottle of neon blue liquid, ready to knock it back.

“Everything went back to normal, after Esme left,” she continued. “Marco came back to me, just as I knew he would. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s incredible, really, what people will believe, if it suits them.”

Yes, Ryan thought. It really was.

“Samantha worried me, for a while. When she was little, she used to avoid me, wouldn’t go anywhere near me, and it was quite obvious. I worried about people noticing. But I just broke her down, gave her sweets and toys, played games, that sort of thing. Eventually, she forgot why she’d been frightened. It was easy enough to drop in a little something here and there, to see if she remembered.”

“She did remember.”

Leonie’s face shifted into something hard, and dangerous.

“She’s ruined everything. Everything!”

“Did you know she was Marco’s daughter?”

She shook her head, and started to knead her temple, to ease the throbbing behind her eyes.

“When he told me this morning, I can’t describe how I felt,” she whispered. “And, after he came back from the police station, he was talking about adopting her, making her part of our family…imagine, Esme’s brat, living here with us! The thought of it made me sick. He made me sick. I knew it was the end.”

Ryan’s eyes flicked to the window above the sink, where he could see flashing blue lights approaching.

Not long now.

“Marco never knew what I’d done,” she said, in a low, almost inaudible voice. “When I decided Charlie had to go, I needed help, and there was no way Marco would have done it, if he’d known the truth. So, I told him the version he wanted to hear; the version everybody expected. Charlie had killed Esme and I’d found out. In fear for my own life, I clubbed him with the back of that ugly marble statue he has sitting on the shelf in his caravan. I managed to work up some tears, and, once Marco was over the initial shock, he understood what we had to do. Charlie was the guilty one, after all, and I’d been acting in self-defence.”

She snorted.

“Like I said, it’s amazing what people will believe, if they really want to.”

She raised the bottle of window cleaner in a toast.

“Here’s to you, chief inspector. I gave it my best shot and, for a while, I almost managed to pull it off, didn’t I? But you played the trump card. You found out Samantha was his.”

Ryan’s body tensed, as he prepared to lunge.

“Put the bottle down, Leonie. Think of your baby.”

“I am! Don’t you get it? I’m saving it the pain of the life it’ll have, if it’s born. This way, it’ll never have to live with strangers, and eventually find out what its mother did. It’ll never have to know the pain of loving someone, so much, so badly, that you’d do anything to keep them. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Can’t you understand? This is for the best.”

They heard the sirens approaching outside, and knew that the time for talking was almost over.

“Did you see him fall, chief inspector? Did you see the graceful way he fell? It was like watching an angel, falling from heaven.”

Her eyes had grown wide again, and tears ran freely down her cheeks and onto her shirt.

“Time’s up,” she whispered.

As she raised the bottle to her lips, Ryan surged forward to snatch it from her hands. He would never have imagined he’d be caught in a wrestling match with a heavily pregnant psychopath, and it didn’t rank high on his bucket list, but he was not afraid of exerting whatever force was necessary to protect her, and the life she carried inside her.

He managed to knock the bottle out of her hands and its contents chugged onto the floor, pooling on the cream linoleum.

“No! NO! Look what you’ve done!”

She turned on him, fingers curled into claws as she went for his face. Ryan grasped her forearms to hold her away, half sitting on her legs, so she couldn’t thrash about and hurt herself further. She was surprisingly strong, and he was more than relieved when he heard voices outside.