see the sort of living room and dining room that neither of them could afford, all gleaming surfaces, rich fabrics and the kind of pictures you didn’t find in IKEA. Patterson’s finger had barely hit the bell push when the door swung open.
The state of the woman on the doorstep would have provoked a reaction in any other circumstances. But Patterson had seen enough frantic mothers to be unsurprised by the wild hair, the smudged eye make-up, the bitten lips and the tight clench of the jaw. As she took in the pair of them with their hangdog faces, her puffy eyes widened. One hand went to her mouth, the other to her breast. ‘Oh God,’ she said, her voice tremulous with the tears that were about to come again.
‘Mrs Maidment? I’m Detective Chief Inspector—’
The rank told Tania Maidment what she didn’t want to know. Her wail cut Patterson off in mid-introduction. She staggered and would have fallen had he not moved rapidly towards her, an arm round her slumped shoulders, letting her collapse into him. He half-carried her into the house, DC Patel at their heels.
By the time he lowered her into the plump living-room sofa, Tania Maidment was shaking like a woman on the edge of hypothermia. ‘No, no, no,’ she kept saying through chattering teeth.
‘I’m so sorry. We’ve found a body we believe to be your daughter, Jennifer,’ Patterson said, casting a desperate glance at Patel.
She picked up his cue and sat down by the distraught woman, taking her freezing hands in her own warm ones. ‘Is there someone we can call?’ she said. ‘Someone who can be with you?’
Mrs Maidment shook her head, jerky but clear. ‘No, no, no.’ Then she gulped air as if she was drowning. ‘Her dad . . . He’s due back tomorrow. From India. He’s already flying. He doesn’t even know she’s missing.’ Then the tears came with a terrible storm of guttural sobs. Patterson had never felt more pointless.
He waited for the first barrage of grief to lessen. It seemed to last a hellish length of time. Eventually, Jennifer’s mother ran out of energy. Patel, keeping her arm round the woman’s shoulders, nodded almost imperceptibly at him. ‘Mrs Maidment, we’re going to need to take a look at Jennifer’s room,’ Patterson said. Heartless, he knew. There would be a forensic team there soon to strip the place properly, but he wanted first dibs on the dead girl’s private space. Besides, the mother might be in bits now, but it wasn’t unusual for parents to leap to the realisation that there might be elements of their children’s lives they didn’t want the world to know about. It wasn’t that they wanted to impede the investigation, more that they didn’t always understand the importance of things they considered irrelevant. Patterson didn’t want that to happen here.
Without waiting for a response, he slipped out of the room and headed upstairs. Patterson thought you could gauge a lot about the condition of family life from its environment. As he climbed, he made his own judgements about Jennifer Maidment’s home. There was a gloss to the place that spoke of money, but it lacked the sterility of obsession. A splay of opened mail was scattered on the hall table, a pair of discarded gloves lay on the shelf above the radiator, the vase of flowers on the windowsill of the half-landing needed winnowing.
Five closed doors faced him as he reached the first floor. A home where privacy was respected, then. First came the master suite, then a family bathroom, then a study. All in darkness, not giving many of their secrets away. The fourth door revealed what he was looking for. He breathed in the scent of Jennifer Maidment’s life for a moment before turning on the light - peach sweetness with a note of citrus scored through it.
It felt disarmingly similar to his daughter’s room. If he’d had the money to let Lily have her head, he suspected she’d have ended up choosing the same sort of pink and white and pastel decor and furniture. Posters of boy bands and girl bands, dressing table a jumble of attempts at getting the make-up right, a small bookcase with novels he’d seen lying around his own living room. He assumed the pair of doors in the far wall led to a walk-in wardrobe which would be crammed with a mix of practical and fashionable items. Time enough for the SOCOs to go through all that. What he was interested in was the dressing table and the small desk tucked into one corner.
Patterson snapped a pair of latex gloves over his hands and started to work his way through the drawers. Bras and pants, fussy and frilly but pitiful in their essential innocence. Tights, a few pairs of socks rolled into tight balls, concealing nothing. Camisoles and spaghetti-strapped tops, T-shirts rendered improbably skinny by lycra. Cheap earrings, bracelets, pendants and necklaces arranged neatly in a tray. A bundle of old Christmas and birthday cards that Patterson scooped up and put to one side. Someone would need to go through those with Mrs Maidment when she was able to focus on something beyond her grief.
Nothing else caught his interest so he moved to the desk. The must-have Apple laptop was closed, but Patterson could see from the indicator light that it was hibernating rather than turned off. The latest iPod was connected to the computer, its headphones in a tangled bundle next to it. Patterson unplugged the computer from the mains, wrote an evidence receipt for it and tucked it under his arm. A quick glance round the room to confirm that he hadn’t missed anything obvious, then he went back downstairs.
Mrs Maidment had stopped crying. She sat upright, eyes on the floor, hands clenched in her lap, tears still glistening on her cheeks. Without lifting her eyes, she said, ‘I don’t understand how this could happen.’
‘None of us does,’ Patterson said.
‘Jennifer doesn’t lie about where she’s going,’ she said, her voice dulled and thickened by pain. ‘I know everybody thinks their kids don’t lie, but Jennifer really doesn’t. Her and Claire, they do everything together. They’re always here or at Claire’s house or out together. I don’t understand.’
Patel patted Mrs Maidment’s shoulder. ‘We’ll find out, Tania. We’ll find out what happened to Jennifer.’
Patterson wished he had her confidence. Heartsick and weary, he sat down and prepared to ask questions he suspected would mostly be in vain. Still, they had to be asked. And the answers weighed for truth and lies. Because there would be both. There always was.
CHAPTER 3
Carol hadn’t lied. The Sancerre was delicious, tangy with the taste of gooseberries, cool and crisp. Even so, Tony wasn’t in the mood for more than gentle sipping. If Carol was going to offer up information about his father in the spirit of a dog dropping a soggy newspaper at the feet of its human, he wanted to keep his wits about him.
Carol settled herself in the sofa opposite the armchair Tony had chosen. ‘So, don’t you want to know what I’ve found out about your father?’
Tony avoided her eyes. ‘He wasn’t my father, Carol. Not in any meaningful sense.’
‘Half of your genetic inheritance comes from him. Even the most behavioural of psychologists has to admit that
