Let the Dead Speak: A gripping new thriller

Derwent frowned. ‘Who the fuck is Georgia Shaw?’

‘New DC,’ I said.

‘The blonde?’

I nodded.

‘What’s she like?’

‘You’ll have to decide that for yourself,’ Georgia said, coming to stand beside me. I hadn’t noticed her but of course she was within earshot. She smoothed her hair, which was already immaculate. I was all too aware that no amount of finger-combing was going to sort my own hair out. Heat and rain were a deadly combination.

‘Georgia Shaw, Josh Derwent,’ Una Burt said. ‘He’s my detective inspector.’

My detective inspector. I hid a smile. It was a nice way of reminding Derwent who was the boss, in case he’d forgotten about it during his two weeks off.

Georgia put out her hand and I thought for a brief moment he was going to ignore it but he shook it, without enthusiasm.

‘We haven’t met. You’ve been on holidays since I joined the team.’

‘And now I’m not.’ He turned back to Una Burt. ‘Please let me go and talk to the girl.’

‘Don’t wheedle,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it and it won’t work.’ Her face softened very slightly. ‘NPAS is going to be overhead shortly and they need someone on the ground to help coordinate the search for the body.’ NPAS was the police helicopter; she was pulling out all the stops on this investigation. ‘There’ll be a dog unit and a search team. It’s not just babysitting Kev Cox.’

‘Great.’ He stretched, frustrated. ‘A search through a million gardens in the rain, looking for a missing body. What a welcome back.’

‘Don’t say I don’t find interesting murders for you to investigate.’ Una Burt nodded to me. ‘Get on with it.’

Which left me trying not to mind that Georgia was walking right behind me, leaning to read the notes I’d scrawled on my clipboard.

‘Are you going to ask her why she walked all over the footprints in the hall?’

‘I don’t expect to.’

‘Why not?’

I stopped and faced her. ‘Because I want to get to know her first. I want to get her to trust us. If I need to ask some hard questions, I will, but that’s not why we’re here. She’s the one person who can tell us what happened in that house before she left it last Wednesday, but she’ll only do that if she wants to help us.’

‘What if she did it?’

‘Did what? We don’t even know what happened.’ I turned away. ‘If she doesn’t want to help us find out where her mother is, that tells us something too. But I don’t want to give her a reason not to talk to us. That’s why DCI Burt found something else for DI Derwent to do.’

‘He seems fairly aggressive.’

‘Mm,’ I said, and Georgia could make of it what she liked. Derwent would either piss Chloe Emery off until a day after the end of time or win her heart forever. Extreme reactions were his speciality, and too high-risk for this particular situation.

‘Whose house is this?’ Georgia had dropped her voice to a whisper now that we were right outside the address, which was already a lot more subtle than Derwent would have been.

‘The neighbour who gave her a lift from the station and called 999.’ I checked my notes again. ‘Oliver Norris.’

‘Shouldn’t she have been kept away from him? Until we’ve spoken to them, I mean? In case they’re getting their stories straight.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Don’t you trust anyone? Ring the bell.’

She did as I asked. ‘But—’

‘They were kept separate. There’s an FLO with the girl. Burt said the officer was a dragon and she wouldn’t let Norris near Chloe.’ I grinned. ‘Burt doesn’t trust anyone either.’

The green-painted door swung open to reveal a slim woman with light brown hair and a worried expression, which was fair enough when there were two police detectives standing on her doorstep. She was wearing a long-sleeved white blouse buttoned up to the neck and an ankle-length skirt. I glanced down at her feet to see flat, round-toed shoes in soft blue leather, and buff-coloured tights. I was wearing my lightest trouser suit over a sleeveless top and I was melting. I would have collapsed from heat exhaustion after five minutes in that outfit.

‘Mrs Norris?’

‘Yes, I’m Eleanor Norris.’

‘We’re here to interview Chloe, Mrs Norris.’

‘She’s upstairs in my daughter’s bedroom.’ She looked back as if she was expecting to see the girl standing behind her. The house was a mirror image of the one I’d just visited and I studied it with interest, trying to imagine what the Emery house had been like before most of the contents of a human being had been emptied out all over it. It was hard to see through the clutter of family life – the coats slung over the end of the bannisters, the keys and post on the table by the door. The house I’d left behind me was immaculately tidy, apart from the blood. Here the wallpaper was dated and rubbed, the carpets old-fashioned, the house badly in need of a makeover.

‘Have you spoken with Chloe?’ I asked.

‘No. I mean, I asked if she wanted anything to eat or drink.’ Eleanor Norris squeezed her thin hands together as if they were cold. ‘My husband told me about the house. About what they saw.’

‘Very unpleasant,’ I said blandly.

‘Do you think you’re going to be finished across the road soon?’ Eleanor’s voice dropped so it was whispery low. ‘Only, I think it would be good for Chloe to know when she can go home.’

‘Not soon,’ I said.

‘Even if she wanted to,’ Georgia added. ‘I wouldn’t want to, would you?’

‘She can stay here for a few days, but …’ Eleanor shrugged helplessly. But I can’t accommodate a neighbour in my house indefinitely. Her cheeks were flushed.

‘We’ll know a lot more in the morning,’ I said soothingly. It was true, but probably not relevant to Chloe’s plans. Eleanor Norris didn’t need to know that though. ‘Has Chloe spoken to her father?’

‘No. She won’t call him.’

He’d been informed, I knew. Una Burt had asked Thames Valley Police to speak to him, to get the measure of the man at the same time as breaking the bad news. I hoped for his sake he’d reacted with the requisite shock and horror, and for our sake that he hadn’t, that he had no alibi, that he had been nursing a grievance, that there was a murder weapon conveniently located in his car along with a few telling bloodstains … Ex-husbands made good suspects in murder investigations.

‘Do they get on? Chloe was visiting him, wasn’t she?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ Eleanor looked past us to where the police helicopter was hovering. It was shining its searchlight into the garden behind number 27, the beam piercing the unnatural gloom. ‘What are they looking for?’

‘It’s just part of the investigation,’ I said quickly, before Georgia could say anything about the body, or rather the lack of one. ‘When was the last time you saw Kate Emery, Mrs Norris?’

‘Oh – I don’t know.’ She bit her lip. ‘Wednesday night, I think. We were putting out the bins at the same time.’

I made a note. ‘Did you speak?’

‘No. I waved at her. I had no idea – I mean, I couldn’t know.’