Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

‘I keep thinking about Peter,’ Len whispered. ‘When he wakes up and hears about his mum.’

Robin squeezed tighter, felt her ribcage expand and contract. A cold foot – how, in the Tupperware sweat lodge? – found her shin and pressed against it. The physicality of having a child, and not just in the early days. Of course, at thirteen, Len didn’t cuddle like she used to – for years, when she was two, three, four, if they’d been in the same room, Lennie had been literally on her – but when it mattered, here they were. There’d never been anyone else whose limbs – platonically – she’d been able to tangle hers up in without thinking, unselfconscious. Even Dennis. When he’d come home this afternoon, he’d held her as tightly as she held Lennie now, but she couldn’t let herself go. She’d watched herself standing rigid in his arms, out-of-body.

Maggie had collected Lennie from school while Robin spoke to the police, so Len had already known something was wrong, but her face when she’d told her. She’d stared for a moment, aghast, and then – Robin had grabbed her – it hit home. It was the first time she’d ever lost anyone, the first time Robin had ever had to tell her someone was dead. And here, in a house that wasn’t theirs, in a school uniform that she was wearing for the very first time – that she should never have been wearing at all. ‘I’m so sorry, Len. I’m so sorry.’

She’d sobbed, shoulders shaking. Then, standing away, swiping at her eyes with her sleeve, she’d said, ‘What can we do?’

‘I don’t know, love. I’m thinking. I’m trying to think.’

But her head had crackled with white noise all day. From the moment their car disappeared from view, she’d been waiting for the police to call: they’d made a mistake; Josh had reappeared; been found; there was an explanation for why he’d been doing the bins at ten o’clock but was gone by one thirty when the neighbours called 999. Not a simple explanation, perhaps – as the afternoon ticked past, she’d queasily conceded that – but a reason. Instead, there was radio silence.

Could he have had an accident? But if it’d been serious, the police would almost certainly know. They’d have checked RTIs, hospital admissions. What else? Some kind of health crisis – a heart attack, a stroke? It ran in the family, his father had had one. What if Josh had had a spat with Corinna and driven off in a huff, blood pressure through the roof? If he’d felt ill, he might have pulled over before it happened. If he was parked on the street somewhere or in a car park, no one would think anything of it. He was young – thirty-eight. They’d glance at him and see a guy having a nap.

But someone had set the house on fire.

Not him. Her rejection of Patel’s hypothesis was visceral, straight from the gut: Josh hadn’t killed Corinna, simple as. There were no triggers – Rin hadn’t been cheating or going to leave him, and yes, she would know. But beyond that, even if she had been planning to leave and she’d written a double-page spread about it in the Mail on Sunday , Josh wouldn’t have killed her. He just wouldn’t.

‘ Your instincts tell you? ’ Freshwater’s voice suddenly, lambent with scorn. ‘Do they?’ He’d been standing behind his desk, fists planted, knuckles white. His shirt strained in lines, neck to armpit, stuffed with mid-life-crisis muscle. Anger shimmered off him but his eyes had been gleaming, too: Gotcha . Here it was at last, the excuse he’d been waiting for. ‘So we’re ignoring the facts – the facts gathered by your team , DCI Lyons – and going with your instincts , instead. What the fuck …?’ His prissy fountain pen jumped in his prissy glass tray. He’d spun around, turning his back as if disgusted. Her instincts said he was hiding his face, trying not to whimper at the pain in his knuckles.

Instinct wasn’t ‘woo-woo woman shit’ – she couldn’t wait to talk about that at her appeal – as any cop worth his salt knew. ‘Read Malcolm Gladwell, you …’ Fuckwit – she’d stopped herself but barely. He’d got the message, though. The next day, she’d ordered him a copy of Blink on Amazon. She knew it had arrived; Gid said he’d seen it on his desk. Instinct was years of lived experience, years of watching people, their words, behaviour, body language, processed in a moment and delivered to your gut as guidance on what you were dealing with, so you could protect yourself. And her instinct told her that Corinna had never had to protect herself from Josh.

An hour ago, she’d lain with her eyes trained on the red digital numbers of the desk clock: 1.30 a.m. A full day since the emergency call, already half – half! – of the first forty-eight hours, the most valuable in a murder enquiry, when everything was freshest: scene, witnesses, investigators. With every hour that passed, the case became cooler, the odds of solving it longer.

Arson .

The lack of information was doing her head in. ‘Evidence of an accelerant’ – what did that mean? A jerry can dropped on the drive, or areas of petrol that had somehow failed to ignite? Was it petrol for the lawnmower, grabbed from the garage on the spur of the moment or had it been brought there, premeditated? Where was Corinna found – which room? Had she been dead before the fire started? If she was badly burned and any existing injuries had been soft-tissue … Veteran of hundreds of crime scenes, gangland executions, shootings, drownings, Robin had run to the bathroom and puked.

She took a deep breath now, made herself exhale slowly. Hidden by the dark, she acknowledged it, the other thing that had bound them together, she, Josh and Corinna, never spoken about but always there, the fuse on everything they’d accomplished since. Had someone found out? Was that possible after all these years? Eighteen years – before Lennie, before Peter, any of it. If so, why now? What had changed?

You moved yesterday .

And she’d been in the papers – someone could have seen the photo, recognized her … No – she ordered herself to stop. That way madness lay; a spiralling nightmare.

There was so much she didn’t know, all of it essential for building a picture of what had happened. The effort it had taken not to ring the number on DS Thomas’s card, try and glean new crumbs. By now, the initial house-to-house would be long done, and the search of the immediate area. They’d be looking at CCTV, checking speed cameras. Anyone driving away from the house had to use either the A38 or Pershore Road and there’d be cameras there – they were both routes in and out of the city centre. The time-window was three and a half hours, ten o’clock to half past one; it wouldn’t take very long to find out what time Josh’s car had left, and in which direction.

Who else would they have spoken to? Di and Will, of course, and they’d have family liaison there. Gerry, Josh’s dad, and his sister, Kath. Poor Gerry – he was fragile anyway since the stroke, and a widower. What would it do to him, knowing that Josh was a suspect – the suspect? Josh, Kath and the grandchildren were everything to him. And to Rin; he’d been the dad she never had.

Robin pulled Lennie closer, breathed her in. Corinna would never cuddle Peter again – never put her arms round him and pretend to crush him while he pretended he wanted to get away. He was ten, just turned – his birthday was at the beginning of January. He’d asked for a Star Wars Lego kit and a trip to WaterWorld in Stoke. ‘Thank Christ it isn’t Alton Towers,’ Corinna had said on the phone. ‘I’d have to be tranquillized to get on one of those rides. Oblivion, Nemesis – I feel sick on the bloody spinning teacups.’ She would have done it, though, even if it had taken a general anaesthetic; she’d have done anything for Peter. Not overindulgence – he wasn’t spoiled or allowed to run wild on a diet of TV and processed sugar – but attention, fun, structure, family. Proper care. Corinna had been a great mother – way better than she was. It’s not fair , Robin wanted to shout; you fucking bastard, whoever you are, it’s not fair. Why did it have to be her?