Shadow Over Edmund Street by Suzanne Frankham (best e reader for android .txt) 📗

new light aeroplane. He’d been the one to teach them to drive along the private roads on the farm and the winding country back lanes.

‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ Alex replied. The instructor had surprised him. He’d expected someone tough and stern. She could have been anyone’s grandmother, with curly white hair and glasses. The nerves of steel well hidden behind a sweet smile.

‘There should be something. I think I’ll send Marion out tomorrow.’

‘Ah, Marion, your attack dog. The one disguised as a kitten.’

‘Well I wouldn’t put it in quite those words. Be fair. She never attacks.’

‘The best attack is the one a person doesn’t see coming. Marion finds the weak points, does she not? You also, my friend. If this case is a problem then it must be baffling indeed.’

Alex took the dog’s face in his hands. ‘Well, Dog, between you, me and Mr Chan we have nothing. Not a thing.’

‘Then you will need all your strength. Try these and see what you think.’ Mr Chan finished laying out an array of steamed dumplings and vegetables.

Alex took in the table loaded with food and rubbed his hands together. ‘Heaven.’

DAY 4

Wednesday morning, eight-thirty. The room was jammed with officers. Alex counted twelve. The two young constables who’d coordinated the crime scene search began first. They had nothing that could be called evidence. By the time they’d organised a team to search the park, the area around the car was a pool of mud filled with rubbish washed down from the cliff, and leaves stripped from the trees.

The house-to-house interviews on the clifftop had been equally futile. No one had seen a thing. No strange people, no strange cars, no strange behaviour. Nothing out of the ordinary. They still had two householders to talk to. One was the chief of a large energy company who was overseas, and the other was a judge. They’d talked to his wife but needed to confirm her statement. Alex wasn’t surprised. The houses on the clifftop faced the sea, not down the hill to the park.

The officers combing through Edwina’s phone records hadn’t had much to do. She made very few calls. They handed Alex a list. Every phone number identified. Doctor, hairdresser, real estate agent, solicitor, Mrs O’Brien, her two children, Rose, calls to a small group of women the officers had identified as ‘church friends’. He’d check the list to reassure himself there weren’t any nuggets hidden in the numbers, but it seemed unlikely.

Same thing with the uniforms who’d followed up the carjack idea. They’d combed through the hospital Accident and Emergency records for Saturday night. All they’d come up with was a group of four teenagers from a rugby club, drunk in the A&E at about the right time. Jerry had talked to them. Nothing. Their furious coach had driven them home. No CCTV in any useful spots, but they hadn’t given up yet. They were still on it.

The officers examining the mountain of documents from Parks Pathology reported similar results. Every person Edwina had contact with at work, on the phone, in the hospital, in the pathology labs—nothing. The forensic accountants trawling through the finances of Parks Pathology's and Edwina’s personal accounts had a while to go, but so far everything they’d scrutinised had been above board.

The search of Edwina’s cottage had turned up nothing. Three generations of family life reduced to one box of keepsakes when she moved house. No computers, cameras, very little evidence of a life lived. A few snaps of her children, some women from the prayer group. The photo Alex had noticed on the mantlepiece of Edwina and Mrs O’Brien smiling outside the house, had been taken by the real estate agent on the day of the sale. A present to her.

Alex could feel the combined exasperation in the room. He tried to remember other cases when there’d been as little to go on. Couldn’t. He looked at Marion for salvation. She shook her head. Nothing from Edwina’s children. The daughter, Rowena, and son Michael had not seen their mother for about eighteen months. They talked to her on the phone, knew she’d sold the family home and bought another. They’d been gobsmacked by how trendy the cottage was, were trying to reconcile the smart woman she had become with the mother they’d grown up with.

Alex stood up, told everyone the story of the driving instructor. Someone who’d sat with Edwina for a hundred hours. Used it to illustrate Edwina was not your average person. Thought of Rose’s words, borrowed them shamelessly. Edwina was someone who had undergone a metamorphosis, had recently emerged into the real world.

They were searching for a contact, but whoever it was might be easy to overlook if they didn’t understand the recent changes in Edwina’s life. This case was going to be solved by attention to detail. Some small, tiny, inconspicuous detail.

He urged them to keep going, to keep at it.

Detective Superintendent McKay, who’d been standing, watching from the back of the room, made a face. It was an ‘I’ll see you later’ face. The raised eyebrow, the hand jerked towards his office. Alex pretended not to notice. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have.

* Jerry and Marion followed Alex back to his office. Alex felt the pressure on his shoulders. ‘We knew from the start Edwina had transformed herself. But we didn’t understand what it meant.’ He spat it out, wanted to pace but there was no room in his box of an office. ‘We saw a woman with a brand new car, smart clothes, a new job, a nice house. We missed the phone for example. We should have realised someone had given it to her. An old phone, pre-paid SIM with two numbers in the log. And the car, new. Tough one. Who would think a fifty-five-year-old had just spent one hundred hours with a driving instructor?’

‘And it wasn’t even a fucking man.’ Jerry was desolate.

‘Language, Jerry.’ Marion’s voice was sharp.

‘Sorry Mar, but Jeez …’

‘More to