9.04 p.m.
The police picked me up as soon as I called. They made very good time, actually – just over five minutes.
‘We’ve got the flashy lights, haven’t we?’ Sergeant Leach explained, when I complimented him on his swiftness. ‘We can cross the town in five minutes flat.’
It was actually five minutes and fifty-two seconds, but I don’t point this out.
As we pull up outside Tom Kinnock’s house, I say, ‘So what will happen now? Will you arrest her?’
‘We’ll get the wheels in motion,’ says Sergeant Leach, a muscular man with grey-blond hair and a perfectly fitting, pressed uniform. He and Constable Matthews climb out of the car.
Matthews, a younger woman with brown hair in a loose ponytail, opens the car door for me. ‘Nice place,’ she says, looking over the large, Victorian corner plot. ‘Front garden could do with a going-over, though. She’s let it go wild.’
Sergeant Leach goes to the grand front door, nestled between two pillars, and bashes his fist on the wood.
Bang, bang, bang.
A pause.
Bang, bang, bang.
‘Could you open the door, Miss Riley?’ he calls through the letterbox. ‘It’s the police. We’d like to talk to you, please.’
My eyes wander over the grassy front garden and closed curtains. For all its grandness, it has the same vibe as Leanne Neilson’s place. Unloved. Neglected.
Everything is still.
‘Could we have missed her?’ I ask. ‘She might be on her way back to the hospital.’
‘You’d best go round the back,’ says Sergeant Leach, pounding on the door again.
Constable Matthews disappears through a back gate.
‘Mrs Kinnock,’ Sergeant Leach shouts, banging harder. ‘Come to the door. If you don’t, we have the right to enter your property.’
We wait for a moment.
Then Constable Matthews reappears, a little out of breath. ‘I think the house is empty,’ she says, resting her hands on her thighs and exhaling. ‘I had a little look around. The back door was unlocked. It’s a right mess in there.’
Sergeant Leach pulls his hat firmly on his head. ‘Kate – stay here.’
‘I’d like to come in,’ I say. ‘I need to see the state of the house.’
‘Best not. She could be hiding inside somewhere. We don’t know what she’s capable of.’
‘Constable Matthews thinks the house is empty,’ I point out. ‘And if Lizzie is in there, there’s only one of her.’
‘Yes,’ says Matthews. ‘But she sounds like a psychopath.’
‘Only one psychopath,’ I reason.
I follow them through the tall gate, treading on ready-meal packets and weeds in the back garden.
‘It’s a state, isn’t it?’ Matthews says. ‘Wait until you see the kitchen. It’s filthy. How could this woman have been given custody?’
‘She’s an excellent liar,’ I say, following her through the back door. ‘Very good at playing the perfect parent. The virtuous, vulnerable single mother.’
The kitchen is indeed filthy. Unwashed dishes. Flies. Piles of clutter.
Sergeant Leach and Constable Matthews head upstairs, while I look around the chaos.
Then Leach reappears. ‘No one’s home. But look what I found.’
He holds up a black bag, opening it to show empty medicine bottles rolling between empty hair-dye bottles and cardboard toilet roll tubes.
‘It gets better,’ says Sergeant Leach. ‘Matthews found a prescription medicine label stuck to the bath. She must have soaked the labels off in a hurry.’
‘For a mother to be doing that to her child…’ Constable Matthews shakes her head. ‘Giving him tablets. Making him sick. It beggars belief. She’s a monster.’
‘That’s probably why she got away with it for so long,’ says Sergeant Leach. ‘Who would believe a mother would hurt her own son?’