Staring out the window, she beats an edgy rhythm on her thigh.
‘How did Sienna get on with her dad?’
‘She said he was a Nazi.’
‘He was pretty strict.’
‘Way strict.’
‘Is that why she spent so much time at our place?’
Charlie nods. We’re halfway home, driving through farmland that has been ploughed into rich brown furrows tinged with green on the ridges. Seeded. Growing.
‘What did you think of Mr Hegarty?’
‘He was OK, I guess.’
‘Just OK?’
‘Whenever I stayed at Sienna’s he got us a DVD and pizza. Sometimes he used to watch a movie with us.’
‘Did he ever make you feel uncomfortable?’
‘Like how?’
‘When you were staying at the house - did he ever look at you, or brush against you, or say something to you that made you feel like you didn’t want to be there?’
Her voice drops to a whisper and something slithers south in my chest, settling at the base of my stomach.
‘Sienna always told me to lock the bathroom door. One night I was getting out of the shower and the doorknob turned, but the bolt was across. I asked who it was. Said I wouldn’t be long.’
‘What happened?’
‘The doorknob turned again.’
12
Helen Hegarty holds the crumpled search warrant in her fist and steps aside. Heavy boots move with intent, going from room to room. Cupboards are opened, drawers pulled out, books feathered, CD cases prised open, rugs lifted . . .
For Helen this must seem like one more indignity added to a steaming pile - a dead husband, a traumatised family, bloodstains on her floorboards, fingerprint dust on her sills . . .
On the other side of the village, not far from the cottage, a long unbroken line of police officers shuffles across open ground. Uniformed. Silent. They call it a fingertip search, but nobody is crouching on hands and knees.
Charlie notices.
‘What are they doing?’
‘They’re looking for something.’
‘What are they looking for?’
‘Evidence.’
DCI Cray is on the bridge, her fist clenched around a cigarette, rasping orders. She’s dressed in a parka jacket and Wellingtons. They’re using police dogs to trace Sienna’s footsteps through the undergrowth.
Dropping Charlie at the cottage, I go back to the Hegartys’ house where Helen has retreated outside, leaving the police searchers to do their worst. Pulling a cardigan tight around her chest, she lights a cigarette and ignores the stares of neighbours who have gathered to watch. Not embarrassed. Past caring.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I confiscated them from Zoe.’
Her son Lance is prowling the garden, thinking dark thoughts. The moment I step through the gate he confronts me, chest to chest, lips curled. A Union Jack tattoo flexes on his bicep.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m just checking on your mum.’
‘You’re working for them.’
‘I don’t work for the police.’
‘Bullshit!’
Helen puts a hand on his forearm and the effect is remarkable. The frenetic energy drumming in his head seems to evaporate. Lance turns away. Paces the garden. Punches his thigh.
‘He doesn’t know what to do,’ whispers Helen. ‘He thinks he should be the man of the house . . . looking after us.’
Something topples and breaks upstairs. She glances at the window and flinches. Then she gazes past me, as though imagining another life. Different choices.
Upstairs she has three shelves full of self-help books like The Secret, Lose Your Friends and Find Yourself, Chasing Happiness and The Choice is Yours. Yet all this advice on forgiving herself and learning from her mistakes had simply depressed her even more with their messages of urgent hopefulness and relentless positivity.
Pulling a crumbling tissue from her sleeve, she has to squeeze it together to wipe her nose.
‘Sienna didn’t like you working nights.’
Helen shakes her head. ‘We needed the money. Ray’s new business took a while to get off the ground.’
‘That must have been hard.’
‘You do what has to be done.’
‘Did Ray and Sienna fight a lot?’
She shrugs. ‘They were like oil and water. One morning I came home and found her sleeping in the shed. Ray thought she’d run off.’
‘When was that?’
‘She was eleven.’ Helen squints and stares past me down the lane. ‘Some kids want to grow up so quickly, you know. Sienna couldn’t wait to get away.’
‘From Ray?’
‘From home.’ She looks at me miserably. ‘I tried to be a good mother, but Sienna can be a terror - bunking off school, staying out late, drinking . . . I blame the boyfriend. Ever since he came on the scene she’s stopped listening, you know. Now one of her teachers has made a complaint against her. Accused her of making nuisance phone calls.’
‘Which teacher?’
‘Mr Ellis. Teaches her drama. I told Sienna to leave the man alone.’
‘Why would she be calling Gordon Ellis?’
‘Mr and Mrs Ellis have a little boy. Sienna used to babysit him, but that stopped a few weeks ago.’
‘Why?’
‘Ray says he saw Mr Ellis kissing Sienna one night when he dropped her home from babysitting.’
‘What did Sienna say?’
‘She said nothing happened. She said Ray was mistaken. Mr Ellis was just leaning across her to open the car door. Ray said she couldn’t babysit any more. It caused a huge row.’
Another police car pulls up in the lane. Ronnie Cray emerges and walks quickly down the path to the front door. She signals to me, wanting me inside.
Apologising to Helen, I follow the DCI through the house to a workshop in the back garden. An old motorcycle, partially disassembled, takes up much of the floor space. One entire wall above the workbench is hung with every tool imaginable. Beneath the bench there are clear plastic drawers containing nails, screws, brackets, nuts and bolts, as well as welding equipment and soldering irons. On the opposite wall, a series of shelves hold grease guns and cans of motoring oil. This is a proper workshop kept neatly ordered by a man who perhaps dreamed of being a craftsman but settled for something else.
Cray sits in a tall office chair with a wonky wheel. Her feet are propped on a milk crate.
‘I have a hypothetical for you . . .’ She laces her fingers together on her chest. ‘Psychologists like making excuses for people.’
‘We explain human behaviour.’
‘OK, enlighten me. I can understand why a teenage girl might fight off her attacker. She might pick up a weapon. She might lash out and run off. Terrified. Traumatised. Is that true?’
‘It’s feasible.’
‘But would the same girl clean her hands in the bathroom sink and neatly fold the hand-towel? Would she then take the weapon with her and try to dispose of it by throwing it from a bridge?’
I don’t answer. Cray doesn’t wait for me.
‘Seems to me that any teenage girl who did that would be pretty clear-headed. I would even call her lucid. Maybe even calculating.’
‘You found the blade.’
‘We did.’
‘You searched beneath the bridge before.’
‘We missed it the first time. I’m charging Sienna Hegarty with murder.’
There’s no hint of triumphalism in her tone. Instead I sense an underlying sadness that her instincts had been right.
‘What possible motive?’ I hear myself say.
‘She wanted him dead.’
‘It’s that simple.’
‘Simple or hard, I don’t differentiate, Professor. You try to understand human behaviour. You try to explain it. Not me. I know we’re smaller than gorillas, bigger than chimps, worse than both of them and, for all our rationality, our rules and laws, our baser drives are still straight out of the jungle.’