A DI Meg Dalton thriller

6.

I dreamt of Abbie Thornton. She was running through the woods, blonde hair streaming behind her, hidden by trees, almost out of sight. When I caught up with her, it was Gran who’d been running away, not Abbie.

My alarm shrilled into the dream. The images faded away.

I smacked the clock and lay for a moment listening to the rain pummelling the window. The duvet was twisted round my feet. I kicked it clear and imagined what it would feel like to stab a knife into someone’s throat, to feel the resistance of the flesh, the moment when the artery burst and blood exploded into the bedroom. It would be quick. It would be better than the agonising, nauseous decline that was probably in store for Gran, if we didn’t get her to Switzerland.

I dressed and breakfasted quickly in my freezing kitchen, Hamlet curling around my ankles and demanding three breakfasts before retreating to his ridiculously indulgent heated bed. Sleet battered the windows that never shut properly, and a small dribble of water had seeped inside and plopped onto the tiled floor.

I donned boots and my best coat, gave Hamlet a backward glance, wondered why I couldn’t be a cat, and opened the front door. A blast of sleety air whipped into the hallway, lifting unread bills and flipping the pages of books I’d left on the hall shelf. The weather was so bad, it was almost invigorating, allowing me to feel slightly heroic just by leaving the house. I stepped out and pulled the door firmly shut behind me.

*

Abbie looked even younger than her ten years, skinny in too- baggy clothes, dark shadows under huge eyes. We’d put her in our special interview room – made officially child-friendly through the presence of smaller chairs, a couple of pictures so completely lacking in content that no human could be upset by them, regardless of the traumas they’d suffered, and walls where the shade of puke-yellow had been toned down a notch.

Rachel had fought strenuously to attend the interview, but we couldn’t let her, in view of her suspicious behaviour. Instead we’d let Rachel’s mother sit in. She was Abbie’s only grandparent – a robust-looking woman named Patricia, coiffured to perfection and botoxed into a permanent look of horrified astonishment, which seemed quite appropriate for the circumstances. I was a little concerned about her, since there was a chance she was lying to protect Rachel. But I wanted it to be someone Abbie knew.

Craig was in the room with me, Jai watching again.

Abbie was just about holding it together, shaky but coping. She was sandwiched between her grandmother and a child protection officer from social services, who looked about twelve. I tried to put Abbie at ease and gently shift her focus to the day before, by talking about Elaine’s dog.

‘You shouldn’t let her near pets,’ Patricia said. ‘She could get an infection.’

‘I want Mum.’ Abbie called Rachel Mum even though she wasn’t her biological mother. ‘Why can’t Mum be here?’ I sensed she was in danger of completely falling apart. Understandably.

‘Your mum’s right outside,’ I said. ‘You can see her in a minute.’

Abbie turned to Patricia. ‘This lady was nice.’ She pointed a shaking finger at me. ‘The dog was nice.’ There was tension between Abbie and her grandmother. The air looked sliceable.

I smiled at Abbie, and said to Patricia, ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t know about not letting Abbie near pets. But the dog helped us get home safely.’

Patricia sniffed and looked over her reading glasses, down her long nose.

Craig set up the recording apparatus and we gently took Abbie through the questions to find out if she knew the difference between truth and lies. It seemed she did. It was a shame we couldn’t do the same with the solicitors.

‘Abbie,’ I said, ‘we need to have a chat with you about what happened yesterday. Is that okay?’

She chewed on a piece of hair and nodded slowly, her eyes damp with tears. She was sitting bolt upright with her arms tight to her ribs, as if she didn’t want to spread towards either of her companions.

I focused my attention softly on the whole room, rather than directly on Abbie. ‘Can you tell us what you remember?’

A tear crawled down Abbie’s cheek. The social worker reached into her pocket and passed her a tissue.

Abbie took the tissue and dragged it across her face. ‘I had a dream,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to remember.’

‘It’s okay. Take your time. Just tell us anything you can think of.’

‘There was blood everywhere. Then I was in the shower. And Mum dried my hair. Dad was . . . ’ She swallowed.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘There’s no hurry. You had a shower and your mum dried your hair?’

‘In my dream, I think?’ She said it as a question.

‘What else do you remember?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s okay. Do you remember waking up?’

‘I don’t know. Later, I woke up, I went to Mum and Dad’s room and . . . ’

Patricia popped up in her seat. ‘This is too much for her.’ She wrapped her arm around Abbie.

Abbie accepted the arm but didn’t seem to appreciate it. ‘And Dad . . . I couldn’t make him wake up. I got blood all on me. He wouldn’t wake up. I got scared and ran away.’ She gulped a single sob. ‘And you found me.’

‘Well done, Abbie. Well done for remembering.’

She gave me a tiny smile though her tears.

‘And the dream where you had a shower and your mum dried your hair – do you remember anything from before that?’

It was so vital not to lead, especially with children. You could easily implant false memories. I wanted to ask if she was sure this had been a dream, if she’d seen anyone else in the house, if she’d ever seen her dad with another woman, if her parents had fights, if she’d seen her mum slit her dad’s throat . . . But I had to keep my questions clean.

She swallowed. ‘Blood everywhere . . . I always have horrible dreams.’ She shrugged off her grandmother’s arm and blew her nose. ‘I’ve been screaming in the night. There’s something wrong with me.’

I looked into Abbie’s eyes. She had thick, dark lashes. ‘What do you mean, something wrong?’

‘I went to see a man to make me better, but I got scared.’

‘Who did you see?’

‘It was appalling,’ Patricia said. ‘They took her to a psychiatrist because of the night terrors, and he insisted on seeing her alone, and hypnotising her, and Rachel said she started screaming and screaming. It was terrible. I don’t know what he did to her.’

‘I got scared,’ Abbie said. ‘You won’t make me do it again, will you? Make me go to sleep like that?’

‘No. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do it again. Do you remember anything about why you got scared?’

I flicked a glance at Craig. He was tapping his fingers. Uh oh, I could do without him getting worked up. ‘Did the psychiatrist do something to you, Abbie?’ he said.

Abbie shook her head.

‘I don’t know . . . Yes . . . Daddy . . . ’ She stared behind us, as if she was looking at something we couldn’t see. She shook her head, and shrank back a little in her chair.

The social worker shifted forwards in her seat. ‘No more today.’

Abbie wiped her eyes. She was crying properly now. ‘It’s my heart,’ she said.

Patricia touched Abbie’s arm. ‘Come on now, Abbie, don’t get upset. They’re not going to ask you any more questions.’

I ignored Patricia and spoke gently. ‘What do you mean, Abbie? What about your heart?’

The social worker turned to Abbie. ‘It’s okay, you don’t need to say any more now.’ She gave me a hostile look.

Abbie let out a sob, and I felt a wrenching in my chest as if I wanted to cry too. Not a good move for a detective.

‘What do you mean about your heart?’ I said. Was this something to do with what Karen had said? Did Abbie believe her new heart had affected her too?

Abbie shook her head and cried.

I reached forward and touched her hand. She didn’t pull away. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’s enough for today.’

Abbie took a big, gulping breath. ‘Daddy did a bad thing. That’s what I dream about. My heart knows.’

*

‘Okay,’ I said, plonking myself on a chair in the incident room. ‘So, she dreamt about a shower and her mum drying her hair. And then later, she remembered finding her dad dead, and she remembered getting covered in blood and running out. Then I found her. Did you get that too?’

Jai nodded. ‘If Rachel Thornton killed him, Abbie could have come through and got covered in blood, and then her mum cleaned her up. She thinks the shower and her hair being dried was a dream but maybe it actually happened.’

Voices drifted through from Richard’s room next door. Craig was talking. Jai looked up sharply and glanced in that direction. I could only make out the odd word. She shoved her. Was that what Craig had just said?

I felt a twinge of worry. ‘What’s Craig saying to Richard?’

Jai looked blankly at me. ‘Didn’t hear properly.’

I paused and listened again, but someone had shut Richard’s door. I shook my head as if that could clear it of its paranoid thoughts. ‘Craig’s wife collared me yesterday,’ I said. ‘Asked me to go easy on him, can you believe?’

‘Go easy on him?’

‘Yeah. Said he was working too hard and blamed it on pressure from me.’

‘I’d hate to see him when he wasn’t working hard.’

‘I know. You don’t think he’s using work as a cover, do you?’

Jai shrugged. ‘Don’t know him that well. No love lost, as you know.’

I put Craig out of my mind. ‘So we’re thinking Rachel might have washed Abbie, dried her hair, put her back to bed and gone off to dispose of her clothes?’

‘It looks that way. Which would mean Rachel must have had blood all over her at some point, and there must be some clothes somewhere that she wore when she killed him. Because there’s no way she could have slit his carotid without getting absolutely covered in the stuff.’

A knock on the door. Fiona.

‘We’ve found a plastic bag,’ she said breathlessly. ‘With clothes in it. And a knife. And some boots that look like the ones that left the marks outside the door.’

‘Fantastic!’ I said. ‘Exactly what we were talking about.’

‘It was dumped in someone’s bin on the outskirts of Matlock. It was bin day and they noticed the bag when they put some of their own stuff in, just before the refuse guys arrived. They fished it out because they thought it looked dodgy.’

‘Has it got Rachel’s clothes in it?’

Fiona rubbed her nose. ‘It’s a bit . . . strange.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s the men’s boots, and a set of clothes which look like Rachel’s, which have got blood smears on them. It’s all gone off to the blood guys but I thought I should let you know . . . ’

‘What? Spit it out, Fiona.’

‘Okay. There was something else in the bag as well. You know you can tell if something’s actually been spurted on? Arterial spurt. Like whoever was wearing them was standing over the person when they were stabbed. Well, there is something like that, but it’s not Rachel’s.’

I had a bad feeling, right under my ribs. ‘Whose is it?’

‘It has embroidered puppies on it. It’s a little girl’s nightdress.’

*

Sleet rolled down the hills as we drove towards Matlock. A grit lorry chugged along ahead of us. I tried to focus on the icy road, while my mind churned with the new information. Arterial spurt on a little girl’s nightdress. Did that mean poor Abbie was there, standing next to her father while his throat was cut? I felt sick at the thought.

‘Why are we driving all the way out to see her?’ Craig said. ‘We’ve got enough to arrest her.’

‘Maybe. But there are a few question marks around her behaviour.’

‘You overthink things.’

He certainly didn’t act as if he wanted to impress me. I wondered again what he’d been saying to his wife.

‘They pay us to think,’ I said. ‘Why would she kill her husband with her daughter there? So close she got spurted on? Why would she kill him, disappear, come back, and disappear again?’

‘We could ask her all this at the Station.’

‘I know. But sometimes you learn more this way.’

I leant forward and flipped the radio on, wishing Jai was with me. You could toss ideas around with Jai. He helped me think, even if he’d been a bit distracted recently.

‘I suppose you’ll have to come off the case anyway.’ Craig’s tone was pointedly neutral. ‘Looks like it’s going to be a biggie. And you’re on holiday next week.’

I contemplated pretending I hadn’t heard, but decided against. Rumours would be started that I suffered from hysterical deafness. ‘I’ll delay my time off.’ I glanced at the sky as if God might smite me for my lie.

‘Going anywhere nice?’

‘Not really. Was your wife okay the other day? She seemed upset. Is she worried you’re working too hard?’ Two could play this game.

The sat-nav interrupted us, for which Craig must have silently thanked it. ‘At the end of the road, turn left.’

I obeyed and sat-nav man told me we had reached our destination – a modern bungalow, surrounded by more of the same. It couldn’t have been more different from Phil and Rachel Thornton’s Gothic money-pit in the woods.

The door was answered by Abbie’s grandmother, Patricia, and an ancient-looking tortoiseshell cat. Patricia looked upset; the cat didn’t.

Patricia lead us into a chintzy front room. She wrenched her botoxed forehead into a frown. ‘I hope you’re not going to bully Rachel. She’s just lost her husband, and she has mental health problems. Did you know that?’

‘Maybe we could have a chat with Rachel first,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll have a word with you?’