Oh shit. “Right.” Langham gave the blonde a reassuring squeeze and checked her face for signs of severe distress. “Is your dad about, love? Or someone else we can get hold of to sit with you?”
“He’s at home,” she whispered. “Upstairs on the top floor. We live up there. Through that other door.”
“Okay.” Langham glanced up at the officer again. “Would you sit with her while I go and see him?”
“Yes, sir.”
Langham exited the room via a second door that led directly to a set of stairs, then another set as he guessed he was going to the very top, perhaps to what would normally be the attic space. He knocked on a door and waited for it to open.
A man of about fifty stood there, salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from his face, messy, as though he’d run his hands through it recently. He frowned. “Yes? How did you get up here?”
Langham showed him his ID. “You’ll need to come downstairs, sir.” He was tempted to explain, but it wasn’t his case. “There’s an officer who needs to speak to you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not another complaint, surely. I come up here for a bit of shut-eye, and look what happens. Her down the road starts.”
“Her down the road?” Langham stepped back.
The man made his way downstairs. “Yes, the woman at The Running Hare,” he said over his shoulder. “Always making things up, phoning the police with fake incidents.”
Langham followed him down.
“I can tell you I’ve been up here asleep,” the man said. “I’ve not done anything to her. I haven’t even spoken to her for weeks. Best to avoid her, I think, otherwise it gives her ammunition.”
“That’s sensible,” Langham said. “Could you wait there a minute? Don’t go through into that room just yet.”
The father paused at the bottom of the stairs. He stared at Langham and frowned. “This isn’t about her, is it?”
Langham joined him. “No, sir, I’m afraid it isn’t. Just wait there a second, all right?” He went into the room, closed the door, then motioned for the officer to come over. “Her father’s just out there. I’ll leave you to it. I would stay to help, but I’m on holiday. I’m staying here, should you need me for advice or whatnot, but anything else, you’re on your own.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Langham would normally have checked with the woman to see if she was all right, but he steeled himself against going over to her and strode out instead, leaving her grief behind. He went back into the dining room and sat.
“What happened?” Oliver was still eyeing the cottage over the road.
“The old lady who got killed. She’s the receptionist’s gran. I made sure she was okay then went up to get her dad. Whether the dead woman is his or his wife’s mother, I have no idea. I didn’t hang around to find out. Left it to the officer who’d broken the news to the receptionist. She hasn’t taken it well, but then who would?”
Oliver didn’t turn from the window. “We’re going to get brought into this, you know that, don’t you?”
“We’re bloody not.” Langham took a sip of water. It eased his parched throat from the adrenaline rush. “I’m telling you, they can get on with it.”
“I suspect we’ll have no choice.” Oliver sounded distant.
“What do you mean, we’ll have no choice? Of course we’ve got a bloody choice. We didn’t see anything, we know nothing. First we knew of it was seeing the patrol car on the drive. We didn’t hear a thing, see a thing.”
“What about if someone else butts in and we’re forced to help?”
“Forced? What, d’you think Fairbrother or whoever is going to turn up here will make me go back to work? Really?”
Why did Oliver appear so vacant, so out of sorts, so riveted to the cottage?
“Don’t be angry with me,” Oliver said.
“Angry about what?”
Oliver continued his study of the cottage. Langham’s heart rate kicked up again, another surge of adrenaline streaking through him, and on top of what had already flooded his system, he was a bit off kilter.
Langham frowned. “Will you just spit it out? What’s the matter?”
Oliver finally pulled his gaze from outside and looked at Langham. “I let her in. I let the dead lady speak to me.”
“Shit,” Langham said. “I thought it might be too much for you. Keeping her out, I mean. Are you all right?”
“Not too bad. I’ve been worse. But when I said we were going to get dragged into it, believe me, we are.”
“What did she say to you? Tell me from the beginning.” Langham glanced at Oliver’s glass. It was still full of water. “Do you need a drink? As in, a proper drink?”
“In a minute. Let me get this out first, so I don’t forget. It’s important.”
Langham drummed the fingers of one hand on his thigh. He needed a proper drink, but he was buggered if he’d get up. And calling a waitress when the hotel staff were in mourning—no, they could go into the bar in a bit. And going back to The Running Hare for a swift pint wasn’t something he’d do no matter how much he needed some alcohol.
Oliver released a long breath. “She burst in, flooded me with her spirit. I felt sick, like she’d infected me with something. She said who she was and babbled at me, her words tumbling out so they didn’t make sense. I asked her—in my head, what with that couple sitting over there—to calm down or to show me pictures instead. I could hear her breathing as she thought about how to do it. I mean, it’s not something I imagine they just know how to do, transferring images like that. But she managed it. The problem was, they