The thick night air started to close in on me and my throat seized up.
Mike shuffled from foot to foot. ‘When will you arrest him?’
PC Knowles was quick to answer. ‘There’s no evidence at this stage that would prompt an arrest. We’re just talking to him. What would be helpful from the family is any idea why he might have had Amy’s phone. Something you might have seen or heard, or something Amy said. Anything you can tell us, no matter how insignificant it might seem.’
A chill breeze swirled along the street, picking up leaves and tossing them in the air before carelessly letting them fall back to the ground.
My mind was racing. ‘Could Richard have planted the medication at the garage? If he was trying to frame Phil?’
‘That’s for us to look in to.’ DCI Bell’s mouth was pressed into a pinch. ‘And we’d like you to come in tomorrow as well, Mr Sanders – nothing official, just a few details to go back over.’
I looked down at my feet.
Mike cleared his throat. ‘I see. Do I need a lawyer?’ He chuckled nervously.
‘Nothing like that,’ said DCI Bell. ‘It’s just formalities, really. Please pop in for a chat when you can. I’m free at eleven.’
It was a command, though, rather than a suggestion. I wondered if Mike had heard it, too. I kept my eyes fixed firmly on DCI Bell’s boots as she turned and made her way down the path back to the car, with PC Knowles following her.
A silhouette appeared at a window across the street. How long would it take for the whole village to find out about Richard?
We retreated to the warm hallway, shutting the door against the evening. I leaned back against the wall. The living room was quiet, and I pictured the kids, Mum and Auntie Sue anxiously waiting behind the door to hear the news.
‘I knew that creepy bastard was up to something,’ Mike hissed.
You have no idea, I thought, as I pictured him in Puffin Cottage.
‘Wonder why they need to speak to me again. You don’t know anything about that, do you?’ His eyebrows were raised in a question.
I shrugged, trying to keep my face neutral. ‘Probably just a formality, like she said.’
There was no point delaying the inevitable. Mike went into the living room, took a deep breath and told the kids that Phil had been released, and the police had taken Richard Pringle in to answer some questions about their Mum’s death. His gentleness belied the rage I knew was brewing inside him.
Mum began to cry and Hannah was the first to comfort her – showing a kindness that made me feel Amy was right there in the room with us.
Mike took the lead, coaxing the children to talk about what had happened and trying to get a discussion going. But we had so little to share, and we had agreed not to tell them that Richard had Amy’s phone.
Only Lucas had questions, and they were purely logistical. Was Mr Pringle sleeping in a cell? Were there bars on the door? Was it locked?
Mike mentioned in passing that he would being going in tomorrow to help the police, and nobody responded, but Hannah glanced at me. She would have questions later that she didn’t want to ask in front of the little ones.
The news about Richard hit Auntie Sue the hardest. I found her a little later in the kitchen, standing alone at the sink and staring out the window into the dark of the garden. She kept her back to me.
‘Just because he’s an outsider doesn’t mean he’s evil. He’s just different – it doesn’t make him bad.’
‘He had Amy’s phone! He stole it from us!’
‘I know, I know,’ she said, holding up a hand to stop me. ‘But… maybe there’s some explanation. It doesn’t mean he murdered her. I just hope the man’s life hasn’t been ruined for nothing.’
She dried her hands and went wordlessly to join the others. I stepped up to the window to see what she had been staring at, but all I could see was my reflection.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out to find a message from Adam:
Why aren’t you answering? Call me back.
There was also one from Jake:
Heard the news. How are you all holding up? It’s late already, they’ll keep Richard overnight at a minimum. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.
I chewed on a fingernail. So that was it. Phil was out and on his way home, and Richard was in custody.
I had built Phil up in my mind to be such a monster that it had been difficult to even consider he might be innocent after all, even after I’d realised his messages to Amy had probably been faked. At first, I had even been trying to imagine scenarios where Mike and Phil might both be guilty, although that made no sense. How wrong I’d been about it all. In my grief and desperation, I’d seen things that weren’t there.
We had all been too quick to believe Phil had killed Amy, even his wife. What that meant for him and Rachel, it was too soon to know. And now I’d told the police about Mike’s affair for nothing. A knot hardened in my stomach.
My instinct on Richard had been way off, and I shuddered as I pictured him sitting on my sofa. Had he come on to Amy as well? She would have spurned his advances. Was that what had pushed him to breaking point?
He must have planned all along to frame someone else for her death. His reaction to the suggestion that she had been having an affair with Phil was bizarre, considering he had sent the messages – but presumably that was all part of his attempt to cover his tracks. It was an elaborate scheme, though, and for just a second it
