The Start of Everything (34 page)

A hymn was audible outside the church.

I smoothed my suit jacket. My chest heaved; I slowed my breathing. The brief snow shower had stopped. A droplet of melt fell out of my hair and slid down my face.

I slipped into a pew at the back. The woman next to me slid over, then tilted her open hymnal towards me. I waved my hand over it to indicate “no.” I don’t sing. I clasped my hands and looked straight ahead. Organ chords rattled my body. The music crescendoed in grand style, except for the howl of the woman next to me who couldn’t reach the note.

Turns were taken to remember Tobias. Generic prayers were halfheartedly murmured. The eulogy recapped his marriage and fatherhood, his career achievements and the nurture of those under him. Heads nodded in agreement. That’s all the view I had: the backs of bobbing heads atop dark suits and jackets.

“Tobias Oliver treasured every stage of his life. He was an active member of his school’s alumni organisation, and it’s thanks to their contributions that I can share with you these photos from his boyhood.”

A standing screen had been set up in front of the altar. A slideshow was projected onto it. The first photos were black-and-white, but I knew what colours they represented. The coat was blue; the socks were yellow.

More pictures followed: a succession of graduation photos with ever more elaborate hoods and hats, as his academic career progressed. Wedding pictures. Infant Mathilde. Fewer as she grew older.

Those early photos, from Bristol. They’d come from the alumni donations for the archive. I opened the program.
Eulogy: Richard Keene, Magdalene College
.

I knew who had the box.

CHAPTER 29

CHLOE FROHMANN

I
call the CSI team. The Bennet flat needs processing. Had Dru been forced to participate in getting rid of the body? Or cleaning the floor? One of them had had to collect Grace’s belongings from the help flat, without Katja or Mum or Max seeing. My stomach hurt.

But CSI had come and gone. They’re back at the lab already. The hair from the hammer is indeed a superficial match with the hairs from Grace’s brush, just as Keene had eyeballed. The brand of hammer matches a brand popular in Mr. Bennet’s admittedly haphazard tool collection. It’s suggestive. You can say that with authority if you’re a prosecutor, or a sneer if you’re the defence.

I’m parked on the grounds of the school, facing across Trumpington Road. I look through the windscreen towards the brook beyond.
Why would he bring it all the way here?
I can understand avoiding the original dump site, and the rain in which he’d dumped the body had kick-started the flooding that closed that road, anyway. But why not
with Grace’s things, which Keene had found? Why here? On a busy road? Was he even here after dark? He dropped Dru off and then he …

Except he hadn’t. Mrs. Bennet had said that after September
she
was the one who took Dru to school, at Dru’s then-inexplicable insistence.

Maybe Mr. Bennet made Dru take it well away from the scene of the crime? It was only a few days later. But why would he still have it? His bloody shirt he could have missed, perhaps, in the frenzy of the original disposal, but the hammer? Wouldn’t he have just tossed it in with the body? Wouldn’t dropping it be the first thing you’d want to do when the adrenaline falls and you realise what you’ve done?

I picture the hammer in my hand. I picture the spattered shirt on my body. Spattered, not soaked. The blood had transferred in the moment of killing, in close proximity to it. Wouldn’t I want to get it off me? Wouldn’t I drop the hammer down?

Unless I was scared. Unless I was ashamed. Unless staying clothed and continuing to defend myself were my top priority.

Oh, Dru …

What if she did it? What if she killed Grace? Grace was going to … what? Call the police? Call Children’s Services? Ruin everything that Dru had sacrificed herself for. If Mr. Bennet were arrested, he couldn’t support Max’s care anymore. She’d continue to get NHS treatment, of course, but Mrs. Bennet would go back to work. They’d live hand to mouth again. Maybe she hid the shirt, crumpled in her hamper, then suitcase; maybe she didn’t take it off for days, wearing sweaters on top. I looked after a rape victim once who wouldn’t give us her semen-stained clothes. She’d been fierce about it. No one was going to make her undress again.

Maybe she’d held the hammer up to Ian Bennet, with the proof of her power bleeding at her feet. Maybe later she kept it in bed with her. Maybe, only when she was safely here, away from him and with a snooping housemistress to worry about, did she let it go.

No, I have to stop thinking like this
. There’s no proof. Her witness statement is sufficiently coherent. Don’t go looking for trouble.

I look towards Dru’s campus house with Ms. Barnes. Dru won’t be
back. Whatever money Mr. Bennet had in hand when he died would be best kept back against necessities, not tuition. They can sell Deeping House, or live off the rents, if they’re able to keep it up themselves or hire a handyman.…

A sharp rap of knuckles on glass jolts me. It’s the teacher I spoke to earlier. “Inspector, is there a problem?”

People don’t like it when police linger. I start up the car and ease out between the posts.

I’m pregnant. I’m driving. No drink for me. I think back to my irresponsible youth: What besides getting pissed makes the stress fade to the background?

I twist the steering wheel hard right. I throttle the gear shift and stomp the accelerator. Barton Road leads me to the motorway. It’s commuter-free this Saturday evening, and I let the car have its head. Eighty, ninety … at ninety the blur is almost enough to extend to my mind.

I’ve come to Milton Keynes and pulled over. I look in my notes for Grace’s parents’ address, and park in front of their house.

The drive has cleared my head. What did my imagination have to do with anything? Who knows how that shirt and hammer got there, and whether that hair had been pulled from Grace Rhys’s head? We have a witness. The suspect has accomplished near-confession and ample punishment with his suicide. Finished. There’s only the tidying up left to do.

I flip the mirror on the sunshade open and brush my hair. Formality is key. There’s no way to get through these things except as ritual.

My mobile buzzes the way I have it set for callers who aren’t in my phone’s log. “DI Frohmann,” I answer, curious.

It’s Keene. He explains that he’s bought a cheap pay-as-you-go.

“What the hell happened to you?” I demand.

“We found Ian Bennet hanged.”

“So I was told.” He doesn’t mention passing out. I’d told him I was pregnant; what the hell was he holding back on me for? “I recorded a witness statement from Dru. She saw him commit the murder.”

“Dru? The daughter? What about Katja?” The connection crackles.
Or his voice is hoarse. We’re worlds apart. I have to explain it all to him to catch him up.

“Brookside’s a strange place for Ian Bennet to dump the weapon,” he says, coming to the same conclusion that I did. “Traffic, daylight. Unless he stayed late or overnight when he brought Dru to school in January. Did you ask her about that?”

I can’t remember if it had been before or after I started recording that Mrs. Bennet had mentioned that she was the one to drive Dru into Cambridge in January.

“No,” I equivocate. I hadn’t, it was true, specifically asked. “The hair evidence is tenuous, Keene. It could well be nothing to do with Deeping House. I’m going to recommend the case to Cole as closed.” I’ve made my decision. There’s nothing to be gained by looking deeper.

“That’s my decision, isn’t it,” he says.

Is it? Is it, D-C-I Keene?
That one extra letter, c-is-for-chief, makes all the difference, except that one of us is bearing the load and the other is flopping and fainting and crashing the car. He’s not ready. Cole is expecting my report, not just on this case but on Keene.

“I have to go,” I say. I have a bell to ring.

The woman who answers the door is not Mrs. Rhys. “No, we’re just subletting! They’re on a trip,” she lets me know. She’s bright from head to toe: yellow hair, orange blouse, white jeans. She hurts my eyes. She copies a handwritten list of phone numbers that Mrs. Rhys and her new husband have left for emergencies, including various cruise-line offices.

Tomorrow. I can set that in motion tomorrow.

But Cole can’t wait. I have to report in before Keene does.

I push all the air out of my lungs. My phone feels slippery in my hand. Cole answers.

I assert the evidence. Cole agrees with my conclusions. There are formal processes to go through, but agreement has been found.

Then, “What’s Keene’s opinion?” he asks. “I haven’t been able to raise him on the phone.”

“About Keene …” I begin. I tell the truth: His hand is a problem. His frustration with his hand is a problem. His stress levels are at full throttle. He broke his phone. He fainted at the scene of Ian Bennet’s suicide.

“Fainted?” That one takes Cole aback. “What do you mean, fainted?”

“I don’t know any more than that, sir. Keene’s not well.”

Keene will raise holy hell when Cole calls him in. He could fling my pregnancy out there, to get back. I have to be prepared for that. And even if he doesn’t, it’ll come out anyway, soon enough.

“Get him to call me before you set the paperwork in motion. I’d like to hear his take.”

“Pardon?” I’ve missed a transition, surely.

“I want to hear Keene’s take on the case.”

“I told you, sir, he’s not well.”

“I’ll judge it myself. I appreciate your views.” He rings off.

He appreciates my bloody views?

I slam my head back against the headrest.
Damn
. Cole set me up. That’s what it is. He set me up to see if I’d throw Keene to the wolves. To show what kind of team player I am.

My heart bangs into my ribs.

This is worse than pregnant. This is Judas.

And if Keene pushes the inquiry about the hammer and shirt … If he raises the same questions that had come to my mind …

I’d recorded Dru as a witness. I hadn’t cautioned her about her right to silence, because, to my mind, she hadn’t been a suspect. The tape would not be admissible as evidence. All of it—not just about the murder but the rape and molestations—would need to be regained, if that was even possible. She wouldn’t want to say it again, and certainly wouldn’t willingly incriminate herself. I’d botched it.

The inside of my belly flip-flops. No, it’s not the baby. It’s panic.

If she turns out to be the killer, and my cavalier hurry with the interview costs us proving it, I’ll deserve to lose my job. If I keep it somehow, I’ll never be trusted again.

I drive home, clutching the wheel tight.

Dan is waiting at the door. I smell potatoes and gravy, balsamic from a salad, and washing-up soap. For someone so apparently well-fed, he doesn’t look happy.

“What?” I say.

“Your friend Alice. She’s been hurt. You have to go.”

“Alice?” I’m lost.

“Keene’s brother’s wife? Alice?”

“Shit. Did she miscarry?”

“Chloe, she was attacked. The police are interviewing her. Richard couldn’t reach Morris, so he called here.”

What? No, I can’t …
I just want to sleep. “I can’t. Dan, I’m not up to this.”

“Coco …” he says, catching me in a hug.
I love this man’s chest. I love his arms
.

I could quit. I could stay home with the baby. Everyone would think I’ve given the job up out of fascination with motherhood and not because I’ve ruined the case and betrayed my partner.

“I’m pregnant,” I say.

He loosens the hug to lean back and look at me.

“You’re what?”

“I’m pregnant. Ten weeks.”

He looks up, counting back in his head. But there was no drunken or distracted forgetting of birth control. No birthday or Valentine’s romantic abandon. It’s just one of those things.

“How do you feel about this?” he asks cautiously.

“So you can just agree with me? No way. You tell me how
you
feel.”