They both sound and look completely unconvincing. One is still staring at the floor; the other is practically hopping from one foot to the other, as if he’s desperate to go to the toilet.
‘So, how did she end up spending the night in the summerhouse?’ I ask.
‘Dunno,’ one of them says. The other shrugs.
‘Where was she when you left her?’ I continue my interrogation, as Yvonne eyeballs me, her arms folded across her chest.
One of the boys looks to his mother, as if she has the answer. She gives an almost imperceptible nod in his direction, a discreet prompt.
‘She was in the summerhouse.’
‘She was tired,’ the other one chimes in.
‘We told her to close the door when she left,’ the first one says, his gaze lowered again.
‘I’m really sorry that Margo was ill, Mrs Ashford.’
‘We hope she feels better soon.’
It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. I want to throttle the truth out of the pair of them, get them to say something other than the lines Yvonne has scripted for them in this pathetic, badly rehearsed farce. But I’m not going to get any closer to the truth here.
‘Could it have been something she ate at her grandmother’s house, do you think?’ Yvonne asks.
This is a battle I cannot win. When Yvonne came to my house, we left things at a standoff. A deadlock. But, here, on her home turf, she has the upper hand.
I stand up, suddenly desperate to get away from Hilltop House, and all the lies contained within its walls. Yvonne follows me as, without a word, I head for the front door and yank it open. Leaving her to close it, I march out to my car, get in and start it up. Before I drive off, I take one last look at Yvonne, still standing in the doorway of her home, staring after me. I despise that woman, and yet a thought occurs to me and disturbs me. I like to think I’m nothing like her, but we have something in common, she and I. We’d both do anything to defend our offspring. Indeed, we have both done everything in our power to protect our respective children. She has covered for all three of her sons and lied for them, just as I have covered for Iris and lied for her. Yvonne and I are not that dissimilar after all. I wonder, as I drive home, if she has had the same thought.
Chapter 34
Ian
NOW
Something is clearly wrong. Very wrong. Ian can see that as soon as he arrives at the Devon and Cornwall Police Headquarters in Middlemoor. There are police officers (uniformed and in plain clothes) all over the place (apparently milling around and gaping rather than doing anything important), an ambulance in the car park, a handful of paramedics running with a stretcher and someone on that stretcher. Shit! Ian hopes it isn’t one of his colleagues. He parks, leaps out of his car and tries to get a better look. But all he can see as he passes the open back doors of the ambulance is the paramedics inside performing CPR on the patient. No pulse, then. Whoever is lying on that stretcher, they’re in pretty bad shape. He’s got a feeling he picked a bad day to give up smoking.
He rushes into the building and fires questions like bullets at Moody, the officer sitting at the front desk. ‘What’s going on? Who has taken ill? What’s happened?’
‘Good morning, sir,’ she says pointedly. ‘A bloke we were holding in custody was found dead in his cell this morning.’
‘What was his name?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. Sorry, sir.’
Ian remembers just in time to thank her before darting off. He takes the stairs two at a time and has to pause at the top for what seems like several minutes to catch his breath.
Ian finds DC Ward in the staff area making herself a coffee. ‘Good morning, Gail,’ he says. He’s not sure if Moody was picking him up on his manners (or lack of manners) before, but point taken if she was. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
Gail turns to face him and he gets it from her expression.
‘Bollocks! Not Harry Bloody Tomlinson.’
‘’Fraid so, Ian, sir.’
‘Fuck. Suicide?’
‘No, sir. The custody officer found him lying on his cell floor this morning. He appeared to be sleeping—’
‘On the floor?’
