The Missing Marriage. Sarah May

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СКАЧАТЬ do scars like that fade?’ This time, she appealed to the Inspector, who was staring at her.

      ‘Can I have a few words – my car?’ he said at last.

      Anna and Laviolette left the room, making their way up the hallway followed slowly by Laura – who made no attempt to speak to Anna.

      They stood outside, the rain that had started since Anna’s arrival banging on the porch roof.

      Laura remained in the doorway, dry and distant, watching as the Inspector and her childhood friend headed out into the night.

      ‘It’ll be okay,’ Anna shouted back, through the rain. It sounded like a promise, she thought.

      ‘Wait!’

      Anna and the Inspector turned round.

      Martha Deane had appeared suddenly in the doorway. She pushed past Laura, running barefoot through the rain towards them.

      ‘Martha!’ Laura yelled, but she didn’t follow her daughter out into the rain.

      The next moment Martha slammed into Anna, who almost lost her balance.

      She braced herself thinking Martha might start hitting her, but then she felt the girl’s narrow arms tighten round her waist, and understood.

      She hugged her back – for no reason – just as hard. Martha’s thin pyjamas were already soaked through at the shoulders, as was her hair, pressed into Anna’s red sweater. The girl’s earlier hostility had been replaced by a sudden clinging need.

      ‘You were right – about dad’s scar. I know the one you’re talking about. She was right,’ she said, excited, to Laviolette, before turning to Anna again. ‘You’ll come back, won’t you? You’ll come back tomorrow?’

      Anna smiled down through the rain at her, although Martha was only a head shorter – aware that the Inspector hadn’t moved.

      ‘Martha!’ Laura yelled again from the front door.

      Martha turned and ran back towards the house on tiptoe, her shoulders hunched. She stood in the doorway for a moment, next to Laura, but not touching her, until Laura pulled her back in order to shut the door.

      A few seconds later, Anna saw Martha’s face at one of the front windows, framed by curtain. Then the face vanished and the curtains fell back into place.

      She hesitated for a moment before following the Inspector to an outdated burgundy Vauxhall, the rain loud on the car’s roof.

      Chapter 3

      The Vauxhall had been taken for a valet service recently – very recently. It smelt of cleaning chemicals and the strawberry tree, hanging from the rear view mirror. When the Inspector turned on the car engine in order to get the heating working, music he must have been listening to earlier – some sort of church music – came on automatically and the strawberry fumes from the air freshener intensified, making Anna nauseous. She wondered, briefly, if the car was even his.

      ‘That’s not a coat,’ he said with a heavy accent, turning off the music and giving her a sideways glance. ‘Not for up here anyways.’

      She looked down at herself. The jumper had got soaked between the Deanes’ house and the Inspector’s car.

      ‘What brings you this far north?’

      Anna turned to stare at him. ‘I was born here,’ she said defensively.

      He put the windscreen wipers on and for no particular reason it immediately felt less claustrophobic in the car.

      ‘Lung cancer,’ she added.

      ‘Not you,’ he said, genuinely shocked.

      ‘No – my grandfather. Advanced small cell lung cancer. The specialist refers to it as “metastatic”, which is specialist-speak for cancer that’s behaving aggressively.’ She stopped speaking, aware that she felt tearful. ‘It means there’s no hope.’

      ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Laviolette closed his mouth, and looked away. ‘Who’s your grandfather?’ he asked after a while.

      Anna had forgotten that these were the kind of questions people asked up here – questions that sought connections because everybody belonged to somebody. It was difficult to stand alone.

      ‘Erwin – Erwin Faust.’

      Laviolette nodded slowly to himself. ‘The German.’

      ‘That’s him,’ Anna said, unsurprised. ‘I’m on compassionate leave.’

      ‘How long for?’

      ‘A month.’

      ‘A month?’ he said, surprised. ‘Unpaid.’

      ‘Where are you on leave from?’

      She hesitated. ‘The Met.’

      Now he was staring at her again. ‘Rank?’

      ‘Detective Sergeant.’

      ‘Why didn’t you say anything earlier?’

      ‘It didn’t seem necessary. I came here tonight as a friend of the family and because I saw Bryan in the sea this afternoon, which could well be a last sighting.’

      ‘A friend of the family – and yet you haven’t seen Laura Deane or Bryan Deane for that matter, in over sixteen years.’

      They paused, staring through the windscreen at the curve of houses, which looked strangely desolate in the rain – as though they’d been suddenly vacated for some catastrophic reason.

      ‘Was it sudden – your grandfather?’

      ‘Very.’

      Anna wondered if Laura could hear the car engine from inside number two, and if she could, would she want to know what they were doing out here still, parked at the end of her drive? As soon as she had this thought, she realised that the Inspector was doing it on purpose. She didn’t know how she knew this; she just did.

      ‘D’you want to tell me what you told DS Chambers?’

      ‘You want me to go over my statement again?’

      ‘If you don’t mind.’

      She didn’t answer immediately then when she did, she said, ‘DS Chambers didn’t like me very much.’

      ‘DS Chambers doesn’t like anybody very much at the moment. He’s got a newborn baby and he’s sleeping on average two hours out of every twenty-four. I think he’s got postnatal depression.’

      ‘He liked Laura Deane.’ When the Inspector didn’t comment on this, she added, ‘But you didn’t, did you?’

      He smiled. ‘You’re happy for me to correlate what you’re about to say with CCTV footage?’

      ‘Of СКАЧАТЬ