Yvette tried to focus on her visitor in the piercing light. Her black hair was tousled and her eyes sleepy as she tied the belt of a silk robe tightly round her waist. The curve of her breasts and her shapely legs were, as usual, available for inspection. ‘Damen. It’s Sunday morning. Do you know what time it is?’
‘It’s six o’clock,’ said Brook helpfully. He removed his laptop from his shoulder.
‘What the hell do you want?’ She kept the door open enough to converse but no more. ‘Have you found Rusty?’ she said with sudden hope.
‘No.’
‘Then. .’ She looked annoyed but in a trice her manner became flirtatious. ‘You should ring next time, Damen. I might have had company.’
‘Len!’ shouted Brook at the top of his voice. ‘You still in there?’
‘Stop that,’ she spat, looking round at neighbouring houses. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Just checking,’ explained Brook. ‘I think he’s gone now. He wouldn’t risk a sleepover with Alice three streets away.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What makes you think it would be Len Poole? I might have your Sergeant upstairs in my bed.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then you don’t know men like I do, Damen. The Sergeant was very taken with me, don’t you think?’
Brook was sombre. He couldn’t lose sight of the fact that maybe Yvette was herself a kind of victim. ‘He’ll get over it.’
Her lip curled. ‘So what do you want?’ she said, cocking her head.
‘I need to ask you about yesterday’s Deity broadcast. It’s important.’
Yvette’s face hardened as she sought the excuse she needed but it wouldn’t come. Instead she walked away from the door and Brook, uninvited, followed her into the sun-dappled sitting room.
‘I haven’t seen it,’ she said, sitting demurely on the sofa.
‘What do you mean, you haven’t seen it?’
‘Just that.’
‘It was on the Deity website, it was on the news in the evening. Are you telling me that you haven’t seen a piece of film that might have a bearing on your son’s disappearance?’
She didn’t reply. Instead she went to the kitchen. ‘I’m making coffee,’ she explained. ‘Want one?’
‘You’re making coffee?’
She smiled sweetly at him. ‘Got to start the day with a cup of hot coffee.’
‘Is that what you did when you found your mother’s body?’
Her eagerness to please vanished for a split second but resumed almost at once. ‘I was only nine. And it was a can of Lilt back then.’ Her eyes lowered in sadness. ‘She left me on my own.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Brook.
Yvette found her smile a second later. ‘No use crying over spilled milk.’ She breezed back to the kitchen.
‘I brought Russell’s computer back yesterday,’ shouted Brook, looking around the living room. He spotted the laptop on a side-table still in the plastic bag he’d returned it in. He picked it up. ‘Why didn’t you watch the broadcast, Yvette? I want an answer.’
She appeared at the doorway. ‘No sugar, right?’
‘You’re a mother. Your missing son could be on that film,’ insisted Brook. ‘The son you begged us to find.’
She looked right at him now, her lips quivering. ‘Russell’s not coming back. He’s dead.’
‘Russell!’ exclaimed Brook. ‘Did you say Russell?’
She hesitated. ‘My son, yes.’
Brook smiled sadly. ‘Your son is dead? How do you know?’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘A mother always knows.’
‘Of course she does.’ Brook pulled Russell’s laptop from the plastic and turned it on.
‘Why are you turning that on? There’s nothing on there. You said yourself.’
‘The files on here were wiped but the software wasn’t touched,’ answered Brook.
Yvette looked at him, processing the information. ‘I don’t understand.’ Her eyes suggested otherwise.
‘Don’t you?’ The software loaded and Brook flicked his eyes around the desktop. ‘Word, Recycle Bin, Help — and an old web browser. Is that all that’s on here?’ Yvette didn’t reply. Brook clicked on the browser icon.
‘It takes ages to load,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘It’s really old.’
Brook nodded. ‘I know,’ he said softly. He turned to face her. ‘But only yesterday you told us Russell was a film buff, that he spent hours filming and watching his films on a laptop.’
‘I. . er, that’s right.’
‘On this?’
No reply.
‘I don’t think he watched films on this piece of junk, did he?’ Yvette didn’t answer. ‘He had another laptop.’ Still no reply. ‘An expensive one capable of uploading and watching films.’
Yvette stood up and smoothed down her robe. ‘No, he used that one,’ she said airily.
‘Then show me the software,’ said Brook.
‘I don’t know about that stuff.’
‘I think you do. Where’s the other laptop?’ said Brook. ‘And more importantly, where is Russell?’
She glared at him briefly before returning to the kitchen to pour two coffees. She placed one next to Brook with a coquettish smile. ‘You did say no sugar.’
Brook’s face was like stone. He swung his own laptop case from his shoulder and turned on his machine. He cued up the last Deity broadcast as Noble had shown him and swung the screen round to face her.
She glanced at the screen but didn’t react. A moment later, Brook paused the broadcast on the picture of the hanged boy. Yvette’s eyes widened. ‘No, no, no!’ she screamed and threw her coffee cup at Brook, who just managed to duck in time, though hot coffee scalded his hand. ‘Leave us alone!’ she wept, and leaped towards the front door. Brook had anticipated her and blocked her way so she turned and headed for the back door. Brook declined to follow, instead pulling out a handkerchief to cover his burning hand.
A few seconds later he heard more screaming, and a struggling Yvette was being restrained with some difficulty by Noble and PC Patel.
‘Yvette Thomson. You’re under arrest for the murder of Russell Thomson.’
Brook plucked the nearly new toothbrush from the cup and dropped it in the evidence bag. He jogged back down the stairs where Don Crump was waxing lyrical about his antipathy to early mornings.
‘It’s Sunday, for Christ’s sake — middle of the night too, I mean, fuck me. .’ He stopped when his colleagues’ eyes were drawn first to Brook on the stairs and then to their tasks. Crump turned to Brook, who handed him the evidence bag.
‘What’s this?’
‘Yvette Thomson. DNA profile, please.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No. You can clear Russell’s room of all the artefacts. I want them bagged and tagged,’ said Brook, over his shoulder.
‘What about his DNA? SOCO already looked, remember.’
Brook turned at the front door. ‘You may have to separate it from other samples,’ he said, ‘but I’d try Mrs Thomson’s bedroom.’
Crump rolled a lascivious eye to colleagues and in his best Kenneth Williams accent, said, ‘Ooh, Matron!’
Cooper scrolled through all the texts on Yvette Thomson’s phone as Brook and Noble looked on.
‘Since the students went missing, Yvette’s sent him fifteen texts. All asking where he is and when he’s coming back and all increasingly desperate. All unanswered as were the thirty calls she placed to his mobile number. If she’s faking it, it’s pretty impressive.’
‘Anything else?’
‘You want to see her snapshots?’
