HARRIET GAYLE IS A COOL BLONDE, HER HAIR TIED tightly back, a pair of understated silver knots in her earlobes. She’s wearing a trouser suit with heels. She is quite perfect, from her plucked eyebrows to her exquisitely painted fingernails. She is also tough, no nonsense. Cassie gave me her number. She’s an old friend of Evan’s. After a shaky start, I ended up telling her everything about the various strands of our lives that knitted together at the point where Nick disappeared. I admitted I had been suspicious about Anna and Nick and had gone out searching for him, my heart racing, half expecting to see them together. I told her I’d stood at the corner of Anna’s street, waiting for him to come out of her house. All the things I should have confessed to Marsh. No WPC Grant this time.
She advises me to deny watching the house, because it only complicates things. I have denied it, but Marsh evidently doesn’t believe me and thinks it’s the key to unlocking what happened.
‘Have you any idea why Anna Foreman would have walked across the Common on her own in the dark?’ Marsh asks.
‘None at all. It’s not something any of us would do.’
‘Then she must have been meeting someone. Was it you, Grace?’
‘No. Absolutely not.’
He steeples his fingers and looks at me over them. ‘You had the opportunity, with Lottie not being at home. We all know you’re prone to flashes of violent temper. Stop lying, Grace, and tell me what really happened.’
Harriet turns to me. ‘You don’t have to answer that.’
‘No comment,’ I say.
‘You have no evidence that my client has either committed or colluded in a crime,’ she tells Marsh. ‘No evidence either that Nick didn’t kill himself. You might have had a motive if Nick and Grace had been married, but as it is, you have nothing.’
He leans back, stretches out a crick in his neck. ‘I would call jealousy a motive, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m not like that,’ I protest, even though I know it’s not entirely true. ‘I don’t get jealous.’
Harriet puts a hand on my wrist and applies gentle pressure. I take the hint and clamp my mouth shut.
‘What about your attack on Douglas Parr? That was provoked by jealousy, wasn’t it?’
‘That was years ago. Douglas and I have a good relationship these days.’
‘Are you still as volatile?’
‘No.’
‘That’s not what Cora says.’
‘That woman hates me.’
‘You pushed her over,’ Marsh says.
‘I didn’t push her. She tripped over the dog. She told me that they wanted me out of the house, and I admit I lost it, but I didn’t physically attack her.’
‘Fine. How did it feel when you thought Nick and Anna Foreman were having an affair?’
Harriet cuts in. ‘Don’t answer that, Grace.’
I’d felt hot and bothered when we first came in and I had taken my jacket off, but now I’m chilly, goose pimples on my arms. The milky coffee in the plastic beaker in front of me has gone cold.
‘Were you angry, Grace?’
I don’t answer.
‘Did you use a knife again?’
‘That’s enough,’ Harriet says.
I lean forward, my hands clasped on the table. ‘I didn’t hurt Nick. I loved … love him very much. We were planning to get married. We had just got engaged.’
‘All the more reason to lash out when you discovered his betrayal.’
‘Which I didn’t.’
‘Did you or Nick mention your engagement to anyone? Maybe he called his parents to tell them the good news. Did you tell Lottie?’
I have a sinking feeling. ‘We didn’t have a chance to tell anyone.’
‘So, none of it might have happened. You might have made up the conversation to deflect suspicion about the state of your relationship.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
He flicks through his notes, then smiles to himself. ‘If Nick was intending to kill himself at the site of Izzy Wells’ death, the most obvious thing would have been for him to drive himself to Devon. But the car was back in its space on your forecourt the next morning.’
‘His car was there when I went looking for him. It hadn’t moved.’
An officer puts his head round the door and signals to Marsh, who pauses the tape and leaves the room. Harriet and I sit in silence. I wonder what’s happened, what new piece of evidence has come to light. Something that exonerates me, I hope. Why do I feel so guilty about Anna when I haven’t done anything wrong?
Marsh comes back in. He sits down. We wait.
‘You’ll be pleased to hear Anna has regained consciousness,’ he says, his eyes on my face.
I breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Thank goodness.’
‘Are you relieved for yourself, or for her?’
‘For her, of course. But she’ll tell you I had nothing to do with the attack.’
He smiles and switches on the recorder. ‘Let’s go back to the question of why Nick’s car didn’t leave the forecourt on the night he ended up in Devon. We only have your word that it was there all night. None of your neighbours can remember. You could have driven him, dumped his body in the river, hidden the bag and been back by dawn. Then when you subsequently visited the place with Anna Foreman, she pointed out where her sister had left her shoes at the water’s edge, and you realized you’d left the bag in the wrong place.’
I’m so incredulous, I laugh. ‘Even if that were the case, which it’s not, there’s no way of getting to that stretch of the river in a car. I’d have had to have carried him a quarter of a mile down a rough footpath.’
‘But, if Nick knew where Izzy went in, if that place meant so much to him that he chose to die where she did, then why did he leave the bag fifteen yards downriver? It doesn’t feel right.’
‘No,’ I agree. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘If he didn’t drive himself there, then someone else did. You didn’t know exactly where Izzy went into the water, did you?’
‘No, but I didn’t know Izzy Wells existed until a couple of weeks ago.’
‘So you say. You agree that, in the dark, it would be easy to mistake the footpath and leave the bag in the wrong place.’
‘I think we’ve heard enough of this,’ Harriet says impatiently. ‘My client maintains that she did not drive her partner’s body to the river. Once you’ve had Forensics examine the car I’m sure you’ll be able to prove either case to everyone’s satisfaction. But until then, perhaps we can move on?’
‘One moment.’ He holds his hand up. ‘There is the small matter of the missing wheelbarrow.’
I lean back in my chair and wait.
‘It was found in the woods. It’s being tested for traces of your and Nick’s DNA. If we find it, we will take that as confirmation that Nick was murdered. And don’t worry, we will find his body, Grace. It’s only a matter of time. Devon and Cornwall have a team working on it right now.’
I remember something. I see Anna striding away from me, and Mrs Burrows preventing me from following her. ‘Anna took off in a huff in the direction of the river. If she had expected to see the bag, and hadn’t, perhaps she’d been waiting for an opportunity to check without me there. Her temper tantrum did seem a little contrived. But she didn’t make it further than the lawn because a police car turned up.’
Marsh looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Why wouldn’t she have put it in the right place at the time?’
I lean on my elbows and press my fingers into my head. ‘God knows. She was in a hurry? She made a mistake? It’s been eighteen years since her sister’s death, and it was pitch dark. She could have taken the wrong path. She would have been exhausted, and maybe the environment had changed, and she didn’t recognize the spot. Or maybe it wasn’t her at all. Maybe she had an accomplice.’
I realize as I’m saying all this how desperate I sound.
‘You really hate her, don’t you, Grace?’
‘No,’ I protest. ‘That is not what this is about. She has an agenda. She’s the one who was stalking Nick, not me.’
‘Right. I think that’s quite enough,’ Harriet interrupts. ‘It’s patently obvious that this is a fishing trip. Without a body, you can’t prove definitively that my client’s partner was murdered. If you have no evidence with which to charge Ms Trelawney, we’ll be going.’
She drops her pad into her briefcase and slides her pen into the inside pocket of her jacket, then stands up.
Marsh sighs and pushes his chair back.
I lean against the wall of the police station while Harriet sends a text. Then she drops her phone in her bag and smiles.
‘Don’t worry, Grace,’ she says. ‘They’re clutching at straws. There is very little they can achieve without a body, frankly, and bar finding Nick’s blood in the boot of the car and a blunt object with your fingerprints on it, I can’t see what this achieves, apart from demonstrating to the taxpayers that they are actually doing something.’
‘They have to look closer at Anna.’
‘They will. They should be able to question her soon. If there is a link between the attack on her and Nick’s disappearance, they’ll find it.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ I say, sincerely. ‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’
She pats my arm lightly. ‘You’ll be OK. You’re tougher than you think.’