‘Can anyone else vouch for your whereabouts?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Did either of you go out again?’ DI Jones asked.
We both shook our heads.
‘According to the pathologist’s initial findings, Niamh had only been dead for a couple of hours.’ The detective shifted in his seat. ‘You see my difficulty here, Mrs Cooper. I have you at the scene until just before ten and, according to your account, I have a mystery driver in a vehicle you can’t describe. I have a body, and I have a murder weapon that looks suspiciously like the string you use for your food parcels.’
‘Meal kits,’ I said. I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I had nothing to do with Niamh’s death. You have to believe me.’
‘Then who did?’
‘Her dealer? Her pimp?’ Stuart said. ‘She must have mixed with a few shady characters when she lived in Chatham.’
‘Her associates in Medway will form part of our inquiries.’ DI Jones jotted something in his notebook, then looked at me. ‘We’ll need you to come to the station to make a formal statement, but in the meantime is there anything else you can think of that might help us find Niamh’s killer?’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’
‘We’ve not released anything to the press, but it won’t be long before someone clocks all the police activity and tips off the local paper. We won’t mention the link between Niamh and your daughter, and I urge you both to do the same.’
‘What about Immy?’ I asked. ‘Do you think Niamh took her?’
He slid his notebook into his pocket. ‘It may not be a coincidence that Niamh turned up at your old warehouse a couple of days after Immy went missing. But I don’t have a shred of evidence that she had anything to do with Immy’s disappearance.’
‘What do you think happened to her?’ I said.
It was the detective’s turn to pull at the collar of his shirt. ‘The longer this goes on, the more I’m inclined to think that uniform’s favoured hypothesis is right.’
‘And what do uniform think?’ I asked, although I already knew the answer.
‘That Immy wandered through the water gate and fell into the river.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Fuck,’ Stuart said, once DI Jones had driven away. ‘Poor Niamh. I can’t believe it.’
Niamh was dead. Not just dead. Murdered. I rubbed my face. My skin felt dry and flaky.
Niamh. The pretty girl from County Cork who’d looked after Nate, who’d given birth to Immy, whose short life was so intrinsically linked with ours, was gone. It was beyond comprehension, and I felt numb, one step removed, as if I’d read about her death in a book or heard it on the radio. As if it wasn’t really her, just someone with her name.
‘Strangled.’ Stuart shook his head. He looked at me. ‘You don’t think Bill would have…’
‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘It must have been someone from Niamh’s past catching up with her, like you said.’
‘D’you think we ought to call him, warn him what’s happened?’
I nodded, but before Stuart reached for his phone, Nate bounded into the room, as bouncy as Tigger in Star Wars pyjamas. I pasted a smile on my face.
‘Hey buddy, want a bacon sandwich?’
‘With ketchup?’
‘I’m sure I can run to some.’ I reached out for him and he wound his arms around my legs and squeezed me tight. I ruffled his hair. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you get dressed while I rustle up breakfast?’
He nodded and disappeared, his skinny arms and legs a blur. Stuart followed me into the kitchen, staring at his phone as if he’d never seen one before.
‘For Christ’s sake, just call him,’ I said.
‘Are you sure it was Bill you saw?’
‘I’ve known him for half my life, Stu. Of course I’m sure.’
Once again, the phone went straight to voicemail. Stuart cleared his throat and said. ‘Mate. You need to call me. Now.’
‘Try Melanie,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’ll take it outside. I need some air.’
I busied myself finding bacon and the tomato ketchup, pouring Nate a glass of milk and turning on the grill. Before I’d popped two slices of bread in the toaster, Stuart was back.
‘He’s not been home.’
I stopped, my hand resting on the loaf of bread. ‘What?’
‘He usually passes out on the sofa in front of the TV when he comes home pissed, so Mel thought nothing of it when he didn’t come to bed. But when she came down this morning and realised he hadn’t been home, she panicked. She was about to ring the police when I phoned.’
‘The police?’
‘She thinks he’s driven home half-cut, has totalled the car and is lying in a ditch somewhere between their house and the pub.’
‘Christ.’
‘I told her not to call the police. I said it would be wrong to take resources away from the search for Immy if the silly sod had dossed on one of his drinking pal’s sofas.’ Stuart’s words came thick and fast, as if by saying them quickly they wouldn’t seem so calculated.
‘What did she say to that?’
His gaze darted towards me. ‘She agreed it made sense. I told her we’d help her find him. She’s on her way round now.’
‘What are we going to tell her?’
‘Everything. We have to, don’t we?’
An intense weariness swept over me. Didn’t we have enough to deal with, without worrying where Bill might or might not be? What he might or might not have done? All I cared about was finding Immy.
Four days had passed since she vanished off the face of the earth. Four days and four long, long nights. And the police still had no inkling where she was. What were they waiting for - her bloated body to fill with gases and bob up somewhere downstream? My stomach roiled, and I clamped my hand over my mouth as I retched. I turned it into a cough, hoping
