Gritting her teeth, Paula Powell sped out of the car park. Taking a deep breath, she said to Sarah Shepherd, sitting beside her, ‘Don’t on any account give that woman any information whatsoever. She’ll wheedle it out of you if she possibly can so clam shut. I don’t want her anywhere near this. What are those addresses again?’
Sarah glanced down at the two addresses written on the pad lying in her lap. One was for Karen Brody’s father, a widower; the other was for Leanne Thomas. ‘One in Albert Road,’ she said. ‘That’s the father. And one on the estate. Kendal Way. That’s Karen Brody’s sister, Leanne Thomas.’
Paula ran over the information Steve Boxer had pulled off the computer that morning: Douglas – or Doug – Brody, Karen’s husband, had been known to the police in Liverpool since he hit puberty; he had been in and out of prison and now he was serving an eight-year term for armed robbery. Karen Brody had grown up in Marlbury, had gone to college in Liverpool and settled there, and then had come back, with her daughter, eighteen months previously when her husband had gone to prison. She had just recently moved into a house on the Eastgate estate, where her sister, Leanne, also lived. Liam was Leanne’s son, which explained why he wasn’t another victim. Liam’s mother suffered from depression, the woman at Acorns had told Paula, and his aunt, Karen, often brought him to nursery and picked him up. So Liam had been dropped safely at home yesterday, Paula assumed, before Karen and Lara went home. And found an intruder waiting for them?
‘If Doug Brody’s in prison,’ she said, ‘that rules him out, obviously, but we’ll need to go and see him.’
‘Has he been told, do you know?’
‘The prison governor broke the news to him yesterday. We’ll see him in a day or two.’
‘She could have had another boyfriend, couldn’t she? If her husband’s been in prison for eighteen months?’
‘She could. I’m wondering about Doug’s armed robbery, though. We need to find out if the money from the robbery was recovered. If it wasn’t, someone could have been after it and punished Karen for refusing to say where it was.’
‘Wouldn’t she have told if her daughter was at risk?’
‘Probably, but she might not have known where it was.’
She stopped the car first at the address she had for Stanley Thomas. The house, on the outside, was neat but bleak. It was in a terrace of pleasant, solid, between-the-wars houses but where the other front gardens were a high summer flurry of colour, his was gravel from fence to fence, with not a bloom in sight. Inside, too, when he reluctantly allowed them space to sidle in, everything extraneous seemed to have been pruned. They glanced into a sitting room which had no ornaments, no books, no photos, no pictures on the walls. Had he erased all signs of his dead wife because he hated her, Paula wondered, or because he loved her?
He ushered them into the kitchen and half answered her unspoken question. ‘Spend most of my time in here,’ he said. ‘Hard enough to keep the place clean and tidy now the wife’s gone. Best to use the one room.’ So he had decluttered, she assumed, to a ferocious degree, terrified that the dusting, polishing and gardening would overwhelm him. They sat on hard chairs and looked at each other across a small table in the painfully tidy kitchen but he did not offer them a cup of tea.
He was a thin, stooped man of about sixty and he was all grey: thin grey hair, steel-rimmed glasses and pale eyes, a lean, greyish, seamed face. She looked at the face for signs of grief but found it hard to read.
‘I’m so sorry about your daughter, Mr Thomas,’ she said, and he took off his glasses and polished them hard with a handkerchief – clean and ironed, she noticed.
‘That bastard’ll be behind it somehow or other,’ he said, ‘you mark my words. Nothing’s gone right for her since she met him. Nothing. And now this.’
‘It’s her husband you’re talking about? Doug Brody?’
‘Husband? She called herself Brody for the girl’s sake but they weren’t married. Wouldn’t expect scum like that to do the decent thing.’
‘And were they on bad terms before he went to prison? Are you suggesting he might have wanted Karen and Lara dead?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything.’ He put his glasses on but kept hold of his handkerchief, kneading it between his fingers. ‘I don’t know what terms they were on, do I? She was up in Liverpool. We never saw her. Barely a phone call. She was ashamed, of course, as well she might be.’
‘How did she meet Doug?’
‘She went up to Liverpool for her nursing studies. Wanted to get away from Marlbury. Said it was boring. Wanted somewhere with a bit of life, she said. Well, she soon found out what life’s like, didn’t she? Pregnant at nineteen and only that scum to rely on.’
‘Was it your suggestion that she came back to Marlbury after he went to prison?’
‘Her mother wanted her back. She wasn’t well. Cancer. She wanted Karen. They were always close.’
‘But your other daughter, Leanne. She was here?’
‘Oh yes, she was here. But her mother babied her, that one. You couldn’t rely on Leanne. Karen was the one – the one we were proud of. We expected things, we—’ He broke off and blew his nose. ‘What has any of this to do with anything?’
‘I’m just trying to get a picture of Karen’s life – and what sort of state she was in emotionally. We don’t yet know, you see, whether—’
‘Don’t try and tell me she killed herself. That’s what that policewoman tried to tell me, the one who came yesterday. And killed Lara? She’d have done anything for that child. And she’d no reason to kill herself. That bastard was behind bars and she was making a new start, doing well at the university. She was a bright girl was Karen.’
‘When did you last see her, Mr Thomas?’
‘Saturday. I went round there for tea. It makes me sick to think of both my daughters living on that estate, but she kept the house nice did Karen.’
‘And how did she seem? Was she depressed at all, or worried?’
He looked down at the handkerchief in his hands and folded it and put it away before he answered. ‘I said to her she looked pale. I asked her if she was all right. She said she had some things worrying her. I didn’t ask what and she didn’t tell me. But that doesn’t mean she was going to kill herself, does it? We all have worries. We don’t … do that.’
‘She didn’t give any hint of what was worrying her?’
‘No.’
Sarah Shepherd spoke for the first time. ‘Did she have a boyfriend? I mean, a new boyfriend, other than Doug.’
‘Not that I knew.’
‘She didn’t mention anyone? In the past year and a half?’
‘No. That scumbag. He was the only one.’
*
Leanne Thomas’s flat was on the second floor of a small block at the far end of the estate. The stairs to it were litter-strewn and smelly and her front door was scabby and pockmarked. There was no bell or knocker so Sarah banged hard with a fist. No-one came but they could hear a television inside so she banged again and shouted, ‘Leanne. Open the door, please. Marlbury police.’
Eventually they heard the shuffling of feet and the sounds of keys turning and bolts being released.
‘What’s with all the security?’ Paula asked as the door was opened.
The young woman behind the door shrugged. ‘Can’t be too careful round here,’ she said. ‘Did anyone see you come in?’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind.’
The flat inside was better than the approach to it suggested. It was cramped and cluttered with toys and magazines, and there were clothes drying on a rack in the sitting room, but the window was open, and there was no smell of cigarettes or drink. There were some pop concert posters on the walls and a supermarket-style bunch of flowers in a vase on the coffee table. Leanne herself was a strikingly pretty girl, Paula thought, hardly a woman – not more than twenty probably. She was wearing tracksuit bottoms and flip-flops and her hair hadn’t been brushed, but she was slim and blonde and would look good dressed up.
‘Sit down,’ she said, flopping down onto the sofa. ‘I suppose this is about Karen?’
‘Yes.’ Paula glanced at Sarah, who detached herself to sit on a chair at the table in the corner, while she sat in the only armchair, opposite Leanne, and examined her for signs of grief, as she had her father. She was pale, but not puffy-eyed. Wary, her eyes were, and a bit scared, she thought. ‘I’m very sorry about Karen,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’ Leanne pulled her legs up onto the sofa and hugged her knees. ‘Well, you have to say that, don’t you? It’s in the script.’
‘Were you and Karen close?’ Paula asked.
‘Course we were. We were sisters, weren’t we?’
‘Not all sisters are close.’
‘Well we were.’
‘Karen was a few years older than you, wasn’t she?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘And she was away for a long time in Liverpool. Did you use to go and see her up there?’
‘Yeah. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just trying to get a picture. We need to know what was going on in Karen’s mind. Was she missing Doug, for example?’
‘Missing him? Nah. She was over him. She was obsessed with him in the early days, even when he screwed up, but now, no, she just wanted the best for Lara. She was doing this course at the university – medical secretary. She wanted a proper job.’
‘Was she worried about anything?’
‘Worried?’ Her voice was sharp. ‘What’d she got to be worried about?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘She wasn’t worried.’
Sarah Shepherd asked, ‘She used to look after Liam for you, didn’t she?’
‘A bit, yes. What’s wrong with that?’
‘She used to take Liam to nursery?’
‘Sometimes. When she was going into the uni anyway.’
‘Where do you work, Leanne?’ Paula asked.
‘I don’t.’ She lowered her head onto her knees. ‘I’m on antidepressants. I can’t work.’
Depression. That was what Caroline at the nursery had said, Paula thought, but this girl didn’t look depressed. Discontented, maybe, and bored. Her mother babied her, her father had said. You couldn’t rely on Leanne. No, Karen was the one they all relied on – Karen, who had plenty of problems of her own.
‘It must be expensive to send Liam to nursery if you aren’t working,’ she commented.
‘Karen paid. It’s only a couple of afternoons a week. I need a break from him, stuck in here.’
‘So Karen had plenty of money?’
‘She had a student loan and she was a good manager.’ She laughed. ‘You think she was spending the money they robbed? ’Fraid not. No. ’Fraid not.’
As they got up to leave, Sarah Shepherd asked, ‘So where’s Liam today?’
Leanne snapped to her feet, immediately aggressive. ‘Downstairs with Carole, my neighbour. Anything wrong with that?’
‘And Liam’s dad?’ Paula asked, ‘Is he around?’
‘Oh, Liam’s dad!’ Leanne said, putting on a performance of scratching her head in puzzlement. ‘Do I know where he is? Can I even remember what he looks like? No, I don’t think I can.’ She sank back onto the sofa. ‘He’s long gone,’ she said. ‘Long gone.’
They let themselves out.