‘Thank you.’ He hovered in the hallway. ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I might wait downstairs for you. All this—’ He gestured at Sophie’s things. ‘It’s just too much.’
‘I understand. I won’t be long.’
Whittaker nodded, and disappeared.
Kay moved into the centre of the room and turned in a circle, her eyes roaming the single bed, built-in wardrobes and nightstand.
Harriet’s team had worked methodically but with empathy; the room had been tidied as best as possible once they’d completed their systematic search, yet it was plain to see that this was no longer the bedroom of a teenager.
It held the atmosphere of a life now extinct; something intangible that left a whisper on the air of a moment stopped in time, forever frozen in memories.
Kay checked over her shoulder, and then pulled on protective gloves and began to go through the drawers of the nightstand.
She didn’t doubt Harriet’s ability, nor that of her team, but she did want to better understand Sophie, to get an idea of what the girl’s life had been like before it was taken so violently from her.
Two paperback books, both non-fiction, were shoved into the top drawer together with an eReader and a packet of headache tablets. A couple of hair elastics and a nail file were pushed to the back.
Sophie had kept an assortment of old CDs in the lower drawer, and Kay ran her eyes over the titles before pushing them to one side. A box of tissues took up the rest of the space, but she found no diary and neither had Harriet’s team.
Sophie had been a keeper of secrets, that much was already evident.
Kay turned her attention to the built-in wardrobe that took up the length of one side of the bedroom, but apart from a selection of clothes hanging in order of length and a variety of shoes, she found nothing to suggest that Sophie was involved with anyone else apart from the young man she had recently been betrothed to, or Peter Evans.
A murmur of voices reached her from the bottom of the staircase and she realised Barnes had returned with Diane and was talking to Matthew.
She sighed, and stepped out of the room. Descending the stairs, she pocketed her gloves as three faces turned to her.
‘Thank you for your time this morning,’ she said to Diane and Matthew. ‘We’ll be in touch as soon as we have something to report. In the meantime, Hazel will be on hand for anything you need, so please don’t hesitate to let her know.’
‘Thank you, Detective,’ said Matthew, and showed them to the door. He wiped at his eyes. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’
Diane shivered, and pulled her cardigan around her sides. ‘The Lord knows how on earth Josh is coping. He’ll be heartbroken.’
Eight
‘What do you think?’
They’d travelled away from the Whittakers’ house in silence until Barnes accelerated up the ramp onto the motorway and weaved around a slow-moving car in the left-hand lane.
‘Diane Whittaker definitely didn’t know Sophie was still seeing Peter Evans, much less planning to run away with him. I asked her how long Sophie had had her own passport, and she only got it six months ago for an art school trip to the Loire Valley in May. Sponsored, apparently, so the parents didn’t have to pay.’
‘They never holidayed abroad?’
Barnes shook his head and indicated left, taking a slip road off to the north of the town and moving into the lane that would put them in the right road to get back to the station. ‘I got the impression they couldn’t afford to.’
‘With a house like that?’ Kay rubbed at her eye. ‘I guess stately homes take a lot of money to maintain.’
‘Well, that place definitely needs some work.’
‘Yeah. Some of it looked a bit worse for wear, didn’t it?’
‘Diane Whittaker told me they were expecting some sort of grant or payment from a foundation or something to come through shortly, to help kick off some renovations.’
‘Hopefully they’ll get it. It must cost a fortune to keep up with the work on a place like that. By the time you’d worked your way through it, it’d be time to start all over again.’
‘Did you find anything in Sophie’s room?’
‘No – and Harriet and her team are still compiling their report. Sophie’s bedroom was quite sparse, actually. I always remember my bedroom being a bit of a tip when I was a teenager.’
‘Yeah, mine too.’
‘It was strange – there weren’t even any posters on the walls.’
‘Antique wallpaper, maybe.’
Kay narrowed her eyes at him.
‘Okay, so the house isn’t a museum – yet,’ he grinned. ‘What did you think you’d find?’
‘I thought there might have been a diary or some love letters or something hidden away that we’d missed during the formal searches, but there was nothing.’ She peered out the window as they drew up to a set of traffic lights and watched as a young mother pushed a toddler on an oversized toy car along the pavement, while the child laughed and threw his head back with delight.
‘Any thoughts on motive yet?’
‘Jealousy, maybe?’
‘So, he kills her.’
‘But then why wait for us to come and pick him up?’ Kay shook her head as the lights turned green and Barnes pressed the accelerator. ‘Doesn’t make sense. He had a passport on him, and was packed and ready to go – so, why didn’t he?’
‘Shock?’
Kay wrinkled her nose. ‘Bit of a long shot.’ She rested her hand on the clip to her seatbelt as Barnes turned into the police station car park. ‘Listen, take a look into Matthew Whittaker’s business. Find out if there’s anything going on there we should be aware of. Same with the house and the funding for the renovations.’
‘Anything in particular I should look for?’
‘Something that doesn’t fit. You know how it can be. We might not know what it is until we see it.’
He killed the engine and pulled on the handbrake before turning to her. ‘There also might be nothing there.’
Her
