After You Die (40 page)

Ferreira’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she took it out, checked the display and turned it towards Zigic, who motioned for her to go, recording the time as she left the interview room.

Outside in the corridor Wahlia was waiting for her.

‘Are we sure about this?’ she asked.

‘Murray called it in about twenty minutes ago,’ he said. ‘It was gossip at that point.’

‘From who?’

‘Sally Lange. But it suits her, doesn’t it? So I wanted to wait until I could back it up.’ He handed her a few sheets of paper, phone logs covered in yellow highlighter. ‘It backs up big.’

She scanned the times and dates, saw that her thinking about the pregnancy had been right and smiled; she hadn’t completely lost her touch then.

‘Thanks, Bobby.’

She went back in, Zigic announcing her arrival for the recording. Matthew stopped talking while he did so but then went straight back into his flow.

‘It’s why she’s taken Dawn’s death so badly. She was part of a unit here. She’d known her for almost two years, they’d become very close.’ He eyed Ferreira as she sat down. ‘Dawn was a proper friend to her, she hadn’t had many of those.’

‘How about you and Dawn?’ Ferreira asked, hands on the file. ‘Proper friends?’

He looked perturbed by the interruption. ‘She was Julia’s friend more than mine but we got on well enough. As I think I told you before.’

Ferreira took a sheet of paper out of the file and pushed it across the table.

‘That is your mobile phone number highlighted, isn’t it?’

He stared at it but the number refused to change.

‘Yes.’

‘Long phone calls,’ she said. ‘Twenty minutes, thirty. An hour some of them. How did Julia feel about that?’

‘It isn’t what you think,’ he said.

‘An affair? Looks like one to me.’

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘There was nothing physical between me and Dawn, we just talked.’

‘Emotional infidelity,’ Ferreira said. ‘Some women think that’s worse. Much more intimate, pouring out your soul to a woman who isn’t your wife.’

‘I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t going to judge me.’

‘About what?’ Zigic asked.

Matthew slipped his glasses back on but didn’t look at either of them. ‘I’m forty-seven years old and I’m about to become a father. I was planning on retiring at fifty, now I’ll have to work until I drop. I’ll be pushing seventy when it’s leaving university. How could I talk to Julia about that? She thought she couldn’t have children, then suddenly she’s pregnant. I couldn’t say anything. All she’s ever wanted was a child of her own.’

He sagged in the chair, drained but relieved, Ferreira thought, as if it had been weighing impossibly heavy on him. The room doing its work; dragging out a confession but, just like Warren Prentice’s yesterday, not the one they wanted.

‘How did Julia react?’ she asked. ‘When she found out about Dawn and you?’

‘She was livid.’

‘Can you blame her?’

‘Yes, I bloody well can,’ he snapped. ‘We were friends. Why shouldn’t I confide in my friend? She wouldn’t have reacted like that if it was another man.’

‘It isn’t the same and you know it,’ Ferreira said. ‘Which is why you had to be careful. No more phone calls.’

‘I haven’t spoken to Dawn since Julia found out.’ Matthew cocked his head. ‘Do you think I’d jeopardise my marriage for the sake of conversation?’

‘You’ve made it clear you don’t want to have a baby. Maybe you want out of your marriage altogether.’

‘I love my wife,’ he said. ‘Dawn was a friend. The decision wasn’t difficult.’

‘You weren’t allowed to have any contact with her?’ Ferreira asked, checking the story that had come from Sally Lange.

‘Not alone, no.’

‘How did Dawn feel about that? Losing you?’

‘I have no idea,’ he said sharply. ‘I didn’t speak to her again.’

Zigic rapped his fingertips against the tabletop. ‘If Julia was so livid about it why didn’t she cut Dawn off completely?’

Matthew smiled, lopsided and vicious.

‘You really don’t understand women, do you, Inspector? Julia won. She wanted to rub it in. So she can be friends with Dawn and I can’t. But really she wanted to see Dawn suffering and you can’t do that from a distance.’

Ferreira thought of the woman she’d first encountered when they went to look for Nathan, all sickly grin and saccharine manners, playing the perfect host while she lied and evaded, covering for Nathan when he could well have been a murderer.

She knew how to keep secrets.

She’d done the same thing not more than ninety minutes ago, sat across the table where her husband was now listening as Zigic explained the next part of the process, the statement to be signed and the DNA sample they could compel him to provide. She’d sat there and vehemently denied that Matthew and Dawn were sleeping together; not lying but not quite telling the truth either.

An affair without sex. Physical sex anyway.

Ferreira eyed the list of late-evening calls, wondering how often the soulful outpourings became more bodily, fingers straying, breaths quickening. It’s what Julia would have suspected. Any woman would.

Zigic handed Matthew Campbell over to a uniform, had him taken away so a DNA sample could be collected. No resistance from Matthew, which meant he was innocent enough to willingly submit or so confident in his cleaning up that he didn’t think they’d have anything to test it against.

Back in the office she went to the murder board, looked at the timeline with its yawning four-hour space; the exact point of Dawn’s death impossible to plot with any accuracy. Her phone logs gave them her last definite contact, a call to check her bank balance at 8.20; the system was automated but the details required to clear security suggested it was her.

After that, nothing.

Three suspects with incomplete or unsatisfactory alibis. Caitlin and Matthew could vouch for each other, but only within a limited time frame. Nathan told the same story but his recollection of the night was imprecise.

Julia’s alibi was similarly open to interpretation. The women from the book club all agreed she was there and that they broke up at ten o’clock on the dot, but without a concrete time for her arrival home she could easily have dropped by Dawn’s house.

Premeditated murders didn’t require a lengthy build-up.

‘Could Julia have killed her?’ she asked.

‘She’s heavily pregnant,’ Zigic said, heading for the coffee machine.

‘But it isn’t impossible.’

‘You’ve seen her – does she look nimble?’

‘Do you need to be to cut someone’s throat?’

He poured himself a drink and she shook her head when he offered her one.

‘I’m not sure Julia would be capable of squatting over Dawn’s body and repeatedly stabbing her,’ he said. ‘There was so much blood, she’s already unsteady on her feet. It’s the kind of risk pregnant women would avoid taking. Like walking on an icy pavement.’

‘If she was thinking logically, yeah. But she what if she just totally lost her shit with Dawn?’

‘Why?’

Ferreira started to roll a cigarette. ‘Because she found out Matthew and Dawn were still in contact. We keep hearing all this about the kids going round – wandering over whenever they felt like it – what about if Nathan or Caitlin caught them at it and reported back to Julia?’

‘Nathan didn’t mention that.’

‘Well, say he saw them talking then, he wouldn’t know it was significant.’ She sealed her roll-up. ‘And she’s the one who’s out of the house. We’ve got her going to the book club but what was she doing before and after?’

Zigic dropped into a seat at one of the free desks. No sign of Murray and Parr.

‘Maybe we just have to wait for the DNA results to come back.’

Ferreira shoved the window open and lit her cigarette. ‘I didn’t become a copper to sit around waiting for DNA matches, did you?’

‘Sometimes you have to let the science do the work.’ His phone pinged and he smiled as he looked at the display. ‘It’s like Jenkins can hear us.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘They’ve recovered a care label from the incinerator.’ Read on, eyes narrowing. ‘She’s traced the product code. Christ, there’s only one person that can be.’

Ferreira tossed her cigarette out of the window. He held his phone out to her and she scanned down the information Jenkins had sent over.

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll drive.’

The traffic was rammed bumper to bumper on the Oundle Road, as it always was at that time of day, slowed by the speed cameras and the interminable roadworks on the parkway that backed up cars along the flyover exit, making everyone fractious. Julia felt their nerves playing on her, adding to the tension tightening the muscles in her shoulders, small stabbing pains going into her lower back.

The baby kicked so hard she thought she was going to be sick. No sense of wonder in it now, just another disturbance in her system, another discomfort to add to all the others. It had kicked in the interview room, at the exact moment she denied that Matthew was sleeping with Dawn, and she felt as if her unborn daughter was exposing her, betraying her just like her father had.

They hadn’t asked the questions she feared they would, the ones she had no good answer for, and that was a relief. She knew they would find out eventually, though, and when they did this mess was only going to get worse.

Caitlin was waiting for her in the bus shelter at the entrance to Ferry Meadows, alone and downcast looking, holding onto the strap of her bag with both hands. When she got into the car she clutched it on her lap as if it contained something more precious than books and pens.

‘How was school?’

‘Fine.’

Julia wanted to fake some brightness for her but found she couldn’t. There were no more words in her, everything used up in that interview room, and she was grateful Caitlin didn’t want to talk either, happy enough to spend the ten-minute drive home in a passable approximation of contented silence.

Her mind was whirring, though, hands tightening around the steering wheel as she tried and failed to push away thoughts of Dawn and Matthew, his voice – damn him – that soft, caressing voice he never used with her any more, coming through the study door when he thought she was asleep, the words so low she had to strain to hear them, his directions and encouragement, then that last strangled gasp as he came.

No.

This wasn’t about her.

She needed to think of Caitlin.

The police didn’t seem to consider her a serious suspect but she could see that their options were limited and they’d had no compunctions about aggressively pursuing Nathan, damaged boy that he was. Caitlin had no Rachel to protect her, though. She only had Julia and she wasn’t going to let whatever fragile recovery she’d made be smashed apart for the sake of Dawn fucking Prentice.

By the time she pulled into the driveway Julia knew what she needed to do.

‘Go and get changed and I’ll make you a sandwich,’ she said, forcing a smile for Caitlin.

She watched her trudge up the stairs, then went into the kitchen, found the number for Susan Russell, Caitlin’s social worker, and called it, got one of the other women in the department and left a message, said it was important and she needed to speak to her immediately.

Julia switched the lights on and the radio, trying to conjure some sense of normality into the kitchen, chase out the ghosts of this morning’s occupation, but as she began to make a snack for Caitlin the tears welled in her eyes and she remembered the conversation with Matthew. Months ago now but it didn’t feel that long, the pain he’d caused her made fresh again; how he’d stammered and denied and finally lost his temper, raised a fist he didn’t use but there had been a split second when she shrank back, sure he would.

What would happen if she told the police about that?

Would it be enough to damn him?

The phone bleated at her and she took a couple of deep breaths before she answered it.

‘Julia, what’s happened?’ Susan asked. ‘Is Caitlin okay?’

‘I think you should come and collect her,’ Julia said.

‘Is she being difficult?’

‘No, God, no, it’s not that.’ Julia looked out across the garden; the shed door had been left open and it swung slightly on the breeze. ‘I’m so sorry to have to ask this, but things are … escalating here.’

There was a pause at Susan’s end. ‘Because of your friend’s murder?’

‘Yes.’ She felt her cheeks flushing. ‘The police have been here, they’ve searched the house. I don’t know where Matthew is, he’s not answering his phone. I think they might have arrested him.’

‘I see.’

A couple of tears ran down her cheeks. Everything was ending. So suddenly that it felt unreal to her, this room that she knew so well made alien and insubstantial, pieces of it spinning away from her, losing their meaning and the memories attached to them. She felt her heart pounding against her ribcage and the baby shifted, an elbow or a foot poking her sharply.

‘Caitlin shouldn’t have to see us like this,’ she said. ‘I want her to remember this as a happy home, Susan. Do you understand? She was so close to Dawn, I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it’s going to hit her when she knows.’

Another moment of charged silence from Susan, phones ringing at her end, voices chattering, dealing with their own emergencies but nothing as big as this.

‘I know she isn’t due to leave for a few weeks but can’t you speed things up?’

‘Yes, I think that would be best,’ Susan said, brisk now, businesslike.

‘Today? Could you arrange that?’

‘Hold on a moment, please.’

‘I’m not going.’

Julia turned to see Caitlin standing in the kitchen door, eyes red behind the dark wedge of her fringe.

‘Sweetheart, I’m only thinking of what’s best for you.’

‘You don’t care what’s best for me,’ she said. ‘You just want shot of me because you’ve got your own baby coming.’

‘It isn’t like that,’ Julia said. ‘This is for your own good, believe me.’

‘My own good?’ Caitlin came around the table, shoving aside a pink-painted chair. ‘Where am I going? D’you know? Have you asked them?’