And why had Zoe been there in the first place?
What did Arabella know that she was afraid would all come out?
Was it to do with sexual abuse?
Had Zoe really had an abortion at age thirteen?
And, if so, who had been the father?
So many questions but precious few answers.
And there was something troubling me about what Janie had said.
I took out my smartphone and sent a text message to the research team containing a couple of requests. One was easy and the other much more difficult.
I knew that the wizards were renowned for getting into work early and leaving late, but I didn’t expect the confirmation of reception reply that I received back almost immediately.
It was only five forty-five in the morning.
They need to get a life, I thought.
At six o’clock, I watched as the strings of horses started to appear and, each in turn, cantered up the polytrack towards me, the sound of their hooves on the ground growing louder as they approached.
And, talking about hooves, whose stupid idea had it been to lock me in a stable with the mad horse Momentum?
I considered that a real affront to my dignity. I had walked straight into a potentially disastrous situation when I was the very person that others came to in order to get them out of theirs.
I didn’t particularly want that on my CV.
As ASW was always telling his operatives, we were in business to protect the reputations of our clients, but the most important reputation we needed to protect was our own and that of our company. Without that we were nothing.
I watched as a Land Rover drove up Moulton Road and parked.
Ryan and Oliver, I thought, but only Ryan emerged. Oliver was probably still at home trying to mollify his wife after my exposé yesterday concerning the monthly payments.
I smiled at the memory and decided it was time to insert another thunderflash.
I remained hidden by the cover of the tree line and watched as three strings of light-blue caps and red pom-poms came up the polytrack, Ryan watching them intently through his binoculars.
The horses made two runs each up the track and then Ryan walked back to his Land Rover and drove away. Back to Oliver’s house for his coffee before second lot.
I stood up, went down the hill and back to the Bedford Lodge Hotel.
‘Thought you’d deserted me again,’ Kate said when I walked in.
‘Never,’ I replied. ‘I just needed some space to think.’
‘Did it help?’
‘Not really.’
‘You should have stayed here with me then,’ she said in mild rebuke.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Fancy some breakfast?’
‘To be honest,’ Kate said, ‘I’m still pretty full from last night’s Chinese. But I could murder a coffee.’
Murder, I thought.
I needed to remind myself that I was dealing with someone capable of the most heinous of crimes. And he or she would probably do anything not to get caught.
In the end I skipped the coffee as well, opting instead to take a thunderflash along the Fordham Road.
Susan Chadwick opened her front door in jeans and a sweatshirt, and with no red lipstick in evidence.
‘Ryan’s up at the yard,’ she said.
‘I know. I’ve come to see you.’
I could tell she didn’t like it.
‘I’ve got the kids here.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’
‘What for?’ she said, standing her ground in the doorway.
Just because DCI Eastwood hadn’t felt the need to push her too hard didn’t preclude me from doing so.
‘I want to talk to you about the film you saw on the night of the fire.’
She blushed, her neck and face swept by a crimson tide rising from below.
‘What about it?’ she asked, the nervousness clear in her voice.
‘Good, was it?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Remind me of the title,’ I said. ‘I’ve already looked up to see what was playing that night.’
She stared at me in silence. She knew she was in trouble. She should have done the same research I had. She’d have made a poor spy.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
She led the way down the hall into the kitchen. Her two children were having their breakfast, the two-year-old boy in a high chair with a plate of toast in front of him, and the five-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on the floor watching the TV in the far corner, a bowl of cereal balanced on her knees.
‘I’ll have to take Faith to school soon,’ Susan said.
‘What time?’
‘She has to be there by eight-fifty, at the latest.’
I looked at my watch. It was eight o’clock. As I’d planned, it was right in the middle of second lot at the training yard. Ryan, I hoped, would again be on Warren Hill, watching his horses canter up the polytrack.
‘Which school?’
‘St Louis Primary. It’s just down the road. We walk.’
‘So we have time,’ I said.
‘For what?’ she asked with trepidation.
‘For you to tell me where you really were when the fire broke out.’
‘I was at my mother’s house,’ she said with conviction. ‘I stayed there that night.’
‘But you weren’t there all evening, were you?’
‘I told that policeman I went to the cinema.’
‘But you didn’t, did you?’
‘No,’ she said sheepishly. ‘I spent the evening with a friend.’
‘Which friend?’
She blushed again, slightly darker this time but there were also tears of distress in her eyes.
‘It doesn’t matter which friend,’ she said in annoyance. ‘It has nothing to do with the fire.’
‘So why did you lie to the police about the cinema?’
‘Because that’s what I’d told my mother. I was afraid they would check with her.’
‘Didn’t your mother ask which film you’d seen?’
She laughed. ‘My mother wouldn’t even know where the cinema is in Ely let alone what’s on. She was only too happy for me to go out as she then had her grandchildren all to herself. That’s what she lives for.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her the truth?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Does Ryan know?’
She glanced down at her daughter but the little girl was deeply engrossed in an episode of Peppa Pig.
‘No, of course he doesn’t,’ Susan said quietly. ‘So don’t you go and bloody tell him.’
‘Then answer some more of my questions.’
She had no choice and I wondered if I, too, was being guilty of a little blackmail. But, before I had a chance to ask another question, she unburdened some of her anger.
‘Do you have the slightest idea what it’s like to live in the Chadwick family? Talk about controlling. Ha! The Kennedys have nothing on us. Oliver decides everything. All their lives, he’s set the boys at each other’s throats so that they won’t gang up against him. He likes people to think that he’s doing his best to make them all get along but, underneath, he’s stirring things up as fast as he can.’
‘But they do all stick together,’ I said. ‘They keep the family secrets.’
‘Only because that’s what they have been taught to do. Drilled into them from the cradle that the Chadwicks are the best, and no one should be allowed to do anything to damage the family. Family first, second and third.’
‘But somebody has damaged the family,’ I said. ‘One of your number has been murdered and another has killed herself.’
‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ she said, throwing her hands up in frustration. ‘We women don’t matter. It’s only the Chadwick boys that count.’