“God, that was bizarre,” Nick said as Grace steered the Navara back up the steep slope towards the main road. He let out a long breath and shuddered. “That kid gave me the creeps.”
“She has problems, certainly,” Grace said in a detached tone of voice, unsmiling. “I’m more interested in what lies behind them.”
Nick twisted slightly in his seat so he could watch her. The T-shirt she wore was tight and stretchy, the lack of sleeves revealing long slim muscles in her upper arms as she drove. And the way the diagonal of the seatbelt emphasised the curve and separation of her breasts had his mind plummeting instantly off the job at hand.
When she reached the junction and leaned forwards slightly for a better view of traffic, he quickly averted his gaze.
“What kind of a name is Edith for a kid in this day and age, anyway? Difficult birth, d’you reckon?”
That at least raised a faint smile although she didn’t speak right away. Nick let her thoughts order themselves at their own pace. He was a good enough interrogator to know when to push and when to let things glide, and silence had never worried him. Perhaps, if it had, he might have seen other things coming, he reflected.
Grace interrupted this sour contemplation. “She’s unnaturally thin and her breath smelt of pear drops. If I had to guess, I’d say bulimia rather than anorexia—her teeth are starting to go bad.”
Then it was Nick’s turn for stillness while he re-ran his encounter with the girl in his head, overlaid now with the framework of this new perspective. It fits, he thought, but… “What difference does that make—the state of her teeth?”
“Bulimics go through a cycle of bingeing and purging with excessive use of diuretics and laxatives,” she said. “They also regularly induce vomiting. Stomach acid is highly corrosive to the enamel of the teeth.”
“You’re a mine of fun facts, aren’t you?” Nick grimaced. “The roots of all those eating disorders are reckoned to be psychological, aren’t they? You’ve met her before—any thoughts?”
Grace slowed at a crooked humpbacked bridge to let an oncoming elderly Land Rover over first, lifting her right hand briefly from the wheel to acknowledge the driver’s nod of thanks.
“From what I recall, she seemed desperately unhappy when I met her at school. I would say she was being bullied. But any one of a number of things could have triggered it—a thoughtless remark by some boy when she was at a sensitive age, perhaps.” Her voice was even, but he heard something else, little more than a shadow.
“I have to say I didn’t like the way Airey hovered over the girl while we were questioning her,” he said when Grace didn’t continue. “It wasn’t quite protectiveness. There was something else…”
“Fear?” She shrugged at Nick’s sideways glance. “He certainly seemed very anxious what she might say to us, don’t you think?”
“Hm, but about the death of Frederickson’s dog, or about what he might be doing to his own daughter behind closed doors?”
“That’s a bit of a leap. Have you considered it might simply be your scary interrogator demeanour thoroughly intimidated the pair of them?”
“Me?” He flashed a brief, boyish smile. “As it happens, I was thinking the same about you.”
“Really? I think you’ll find I haven’t bitten anybody for weeks now.”
He gave a bark of laughter that quickly faded. “All the same, there was something off about the way Airey interacted with his daughter, and I intend to find out what that was.”
Paedophilia had always pushed the button of Nick’s temper. Pushed it and held it down. The thought of a father having those kinds of desires for his own child made him bitterly sick as well as angry.
“Maybe we should bring her in, get her away from home and see if she’ll open up,” he said. “One of the DSs is the motherly type. I could ask her to have a word.”
Grace lifted one shoulder by way of reply.
“What?” Her lacklustre response nettled him.
“I think you should be very careful with Edith,” she said slowly, all evidence of humour gone. “As soon as we walked in there I got the feeling she was putting on a show for us, like a precocious child. She claims to have been out rabbiting all morning, yes? And according to her father, she was supposed to be at her cleaning job down near Kendal before lunch, and yet there she was all dressed up in those dreadful middle-aged clothes, like she was going to a play. Or maybe taking part in one…”
Her voice trailed off and Nick’s eyes narrowed.
“She knew we were coming.” His voice was hollow. “And she was ready for us.” Damn Airey! He shut his eyes, picturing again the kitchen table with the gun spread out across its surface. “She wasn’t just cleaning that rifle—it was on display for us, wasn’t it?”
“Hm, that’s my guess.” Grace turned into the lane that led up to her cottage. “And those rabbits were in full rigor. It takes eight hours to develop in humans. I’d have to check, but I’d say it’s unlikely they were killed this morning.”
“But, what does she gain by any of it? I mean, we’ve only hearsay linking her to all this, and you know as well as I do that if Lady Muck wasn’t involved, we probably wouldn’t have bothered taking it this far. It’s as if Edith wants us to look at her more closely.”
“She’s seventeen and once expressed an ambition ‘to be famous’.” Grace slid him a sideways smile. “Who says there’s any logic to her thought patterns?”
Nick grunted. “So, we have a disturbed hormonal teenager with a grudge against her former employer and a penchant for firearms.”
It was Grace’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Shooting rabbits and squirrels is hardly the sign of a psychopath.”
He shook his head. “When I was interviewing Frederickson, he mentioned she was a remarkable shot. Then she didn’t want me to touch the scope in case I knocked it out of alignment. That tells me just how serious she is about it.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.”
“For Edith,” Grace murmured, “yes, it probably is.”