Sanderson shot a look at Helen but was ignored.
“And?”
“He bought me drinks, you know. Asked me stuff.”
“He took an interest in you.”
“He was nice. He had money too. So we chatted until midnight, then went off.”
“Where, Lianne? It’s really important you tell me—”
“We went to his van, okay?”
“You slept with him?”
“What do you think?”
“How old are you, Lianne?”
“Sixteen.”
“How old are you?” Helen repeated more forcefully.
“Sixteen.”
“Lianne...”
“Fourteen, okay, I’m fourteen.”
The girl started to cry. Helen reached out to take her hand and this time the girl didn’t resist. “How long did you stay with him?”
“A few hours.”
“He was with you the whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what?”
“He dropped me home.”
“What time was that?”
“Just after four o’clock.”
“Just after four a.m. Are you absolutely sure?”
“I saw the clock as I came in. I was pleased—my folks are dead to the world at that time.”
Helen concluded the interview shortly afterward, the young girl having agreed to make a formal statement about the events of Friday night. There was some comfort in the fact that Nathan Price would face criminal proceedings—sex with a minor was a serious offense that would land him on the Sex Offenders Register—but it was of little solace to Helen. Lianne Sumner had just cleared Nathan Price of any involvement in Ruby Sprackling’s disappearance.
Like it or not, they were back to square one.
49
He tried to focus, wrenching his mind back to the tasks in hand, but still he couldn’t settle. His unpleasant exchange with Summer had left him unsettled and disturbed—it was hard to concentrate on work today. Clients came and went as usual and he dealt with them in his usual professional manner, but he was on autopilot, getting the job done with the minimum of effort and interaction. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Why was she hostile to him? It didn’t make any sense. Why was she so... ungrateful? Didn’t she understand what he’d had to go through? The risks he’d taken?
News of the discovery of a body at Carsholt Beach had knocked him for six. He’d watched the local news repeatedly since, bought every edition of the local paper, scouring the reports for details. Images of a large police forensics team on-site had unnerved him, as had the confirmation that local hero DI Grace would be leading theinvestigation. Ever since he saw the news, he’d been on edge, half expecting a knock on the door. He knew that this was unlikely—he’d been so careful, so meticulous in his work—but it just served to underline the lengths he’d gone to, the sacrifices he’d made, to do right by her.
