Devil in the Detail by A.J. Cross (love letters to the dead .TXT) 📗

have taken my dog and I’d have gone for a short walk, to see what I could see.’

The small room was silent. Nigel eyed him, looked away, then back. ‘If you spotted me, you should have said.’

‘I didn’t. Now you’re going to tell me all about it.’

Traynor brought the Aston Martin to a stop and looked at the house. What was waiting for him was a make-or-break situation. Molly Lawrence’s wellbeing was paramount and he would do nothing to jeopardize it, but if there was something related to the investigation which she hadn’t disclosed, he needed it. Today.

Mrs Monroe opened the door to him. ‘Hello, Dr Traynor. I’m so glad you’re here. Please, come in.’

‘How is Molly?’

She led him inside the warm kitchen full of the smell of baking. ‘She’s drying her hair. The good news is that she’s had her first shower since she came home. She won’t be long. The downside is she’s now refusing to leave the house. I’ve told her she can’t go on like this. Her response was that she doesn’t want to go on. I rang the hospital yesterday without telling her. Now she’s discharged, they’re suggesting she goes to her doctor to get help.’ She looked at him, indicating a large sponge cake. He shook his head. She brought coffee to the table, sat opposite him. ‘Tell me what to do, Dr Traynor.’

Recalling his own feelings of helplessness after his wife’s death, his inability to do anything constructive for months, he felt quick sympathy. ‘Your being here has to be a great support. Yes, she needs help. She also needs time.’ The door opened. Traynor stood.

‘Hello, Will.’

‘Hello, Mrs Lawrence.’

Her mother went to the cupboard for another cup. ‘Sit down, Molly, and I’ll pour you some coffee. How about a small slice—?’

‘Nothing for me.’ She looked at Traynor. ‘I’m ready.’

He followed her to the sitting room, waited as she sat down. He sat opposite. ‘How are you?’

She pushed her hands through her hair. ‘I want to say that I’m OK. I’m not. For the first time, I’m seeing the world how it actually is: full of risk and violence and people out to do others harm.’ She looked up at him. ‘Would you believe, we’re getting calls from newspapers offering obscene amounts of money for me to talk to them? It’s madness.’

None of what she was saying was unexpected. Last time he was here, he had recognized her omission of the shots fired at her husband and herself, plus much else, as a form of denial. It seemed to him that that denial was beginning to erode. Now, he had something to tell her, before she learned it from the media.

‘I have some news. The police have recovered your handbag.’ Her head came up, her eyes widening with shock.

‘What?’

‘It was in a lake at Westley Country Park. Do you know it?’

She shook her head.

He waited for her next question. It didn’t come. ‘Most of your property was still inside it, though one of your earrings is missing.’

‘I don’t understand. Why would somebody steal from us then … throw it all away?’

He looked down at the questions he had brought with him. ‘How do you feel, knowing that, Molly?’

‘Confused.’

‘I want you to talk some more about what happened.’

‘Yes.’

The directness of the single word response took him by surprise. ‘You told me last time how events led to you and your husband being in that street and about the man who got into the car.’

‘Yes.’

‘From what you said, this man appears to have been very much in control of the situation, yet he still used the gun. I’m trying to understand that.’

She stared at him, saying nothing.

‘Did something happen which led him to do that?’

‘You’re saying that we caused him to shoot us?’

‘No. One person is entirely responsible for what happened that night, the man with the gun, but the police need to understand how and why events occurred in the way they did.’ He waited for a response.

‘You know, don’t you?’

‘What do I know, Molly?’

‘You know it was my fault.’

‘No—’

‘It was, Will.’ She clasped her hands at her mouth, her eyes fixed on his. ‘He … he did something … the man.’

‘What did he do?’

She looked away from him. ‘He told me to open my coat. Unbutton my shirt.’

Traynor’s thinking was in freefall. The investigation was now pursuing the possibility that the attacker was known to one or other of the Lawrences. Now, here, was a further dimension they knew nothing about. One which was giving Traynor a clear message. It wasn’t appropriate for him to pursue it.

‘Molly, do you recall Police Constable Chloe Judd who came to see you at the hospital?’

She didn’t respond.

‘How do you feel about seeing her again, talking to her about what you’ve just said to me—?’

‘He touched me.’ Her breathing quickened. ‘He leant over me, put his face against … me, his mouth on my neck, my chest. That’s when Mike lost it. That’s when he shot us.’

Traynor waited out the silence. ‘Is there anything else you want to say about it?’

She shook her head.

Traynor had carried within him for a decade the certainty that his wife had been attacked sexually by whoever had killed her and taken her away. He looked down at his hands, saw the tremor in his fingers, closed down the line of thinking. There was another question he had to ask.

‘This man. Was there a physical characteristic, something in the way he moved, his voice or tone, the way he phrased what he said that led you to think he was at all familiar?’

Watts’ eyes were fixed on Nigel’s face, intent on what Nigel was telling him.

‘I’ve done years of security work. I’m no overweight bladder of lard who rocks up to a building site or whatever, does one turn around it in an eight-hour shift then hangs around the office drinking coffee, or sods off home. I take pride in what I do. The shots we told you about. The ones Abdul and