“Someone did this to her?” she whispered, opening her eyes.
“We think so.” I wanted to ask more questions, but her scared eyes constantly flicked over to Grace, her fingers winding nervously together and apart. “We’ll have some more questions for you, Miss Whelan. But for now, if you’d like to get Grace home and call the hospital, we’d understand.”
She whipped her head around to look at me, relief all over her face. “Thank you,” she sighed. “You’ve got my number, right?”
I nodded, handing her my own after scribbling it on a piece of paper. “We’ll be in touch shortly, Miss Whelan. The sooner we ask you some questions about your sister, the sooner we can help her.”
Paige nodded. “I understand. Once I get Grace settled, you could come to the house?” she suggested. “Most of Abbie’s stuff will be there, anyway.”
“That would be great, thank you.” She nodded again, standing up at the same time as me, and I gave her a smile, shaking her cold, trembling hand. She wandered over to Grace, speaking quietly with Susanne for a moment before taking her niece’s hand and leading her away.
“Say thank you,” she told her, and Grace looked up at us with a smile and a wave.
“Thank you!” she called. Paige managed another smile and nodded in my direction once more before taking Grace over to the stairs.
Mills stood at my shoulder and sighed. “Back to the gardens, then?” he asked.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” I answered, shooting him a grin. “I’m driving.”
Four
Thatcher
We ended up having lunch before going back to the gardens, bringing Susanne with us to the small café around the corner until she had to go back to the office. It wasn’t hard to see why Mills was so taken with her. She had an easy presence to be around, funny and caring. I noticed that she was quiet as well, listening patiently as Mills rambled on about things, his head and mouth in competition for processing something first, all the while with a smile on her lips, her eyes fixed on his face as he spoke.
After she left, we jumped back into my car, and I drove us back out towards the gardens, at a far more leisurely pace this time so that we could enjoy the scenic hills and fields that we drove through. I gave Mills my phone as we went so that he could put Paige’s number in, along with the hospital number, to save myself fiddling with it all later.
“What did you make of her?” Mills asked, putting my phone away and shifting in his seat so that he could read my face.
“Who?” I asked, mindful that he could be referring to Susanne and not wanting to put my foot in it.
“Paige Whelan,” he said. “She’s younger than I thought she would be.”
“Early twenties, I’d say,” I agreed, casting my mind back to the young lady. “She seemed to know what she was doing with Grace, though, and Susanne had no issues.”
Grace seemed hugely fond of her aunt, in fact, and Paige’s note to Holly to see our ID’s was a clever thing to do. Grace was in good hands, that much I was confident in, and it made it easier now to focus on getting her mother back to her.
“Not one. Kind of her to invite us over to Abbie’s house as well to question her,” he added. “Especially since we’d need to have a poke around there at some point, odds are.” We usually did, but it all depended on what happened. For all we knew, Abbie would wake up tomorrow.
“She’s worried about her sister,” I murmured. “And I’m guessing that if Abbie were to die, she’d be the legal guardian for Grace. She has every reason to want to help us and see things made right.”
“Do you think it might be worth asking her about Grace’s father?” Mills asked after a short pause. “Just so that we know a little about him.”
“We’ll ask her about the relationship, of course. If he harbours any bad will towards Abbie, but otherwise, if he doesn’t have an involvement with Grace, I don’t see why we should bring it up. We’ll wait,” I decided, “and see what Paige tells us about him.”
I could see Mills nod in the corner of my eye, and we sat quietly for a while, listening to the radio and watching the landscape whirl past.
“What did you make of Dr Quaid?” he asked suddenly. “He was the only other person in the gardens. That doesn’t shine the best light on him right now.”
“Sadly not. He seemed pretty shaken up by it all and was happy to comply with everything.”
“Maybe because someone he injected with a drug managed to survive,” Mills pointed out.
“Maybe. But let’s not go counting our chickens before they hatch. There’s plenty of places round there where a person can hide, and I wouldn’t doubt they’ve got people coming and going all the time,” I said. But Mills made a good point, and I kept it tucked away in the back of my head. Dr Quaid had been the only one there, and I was sure he knew exactly how to make or access a drug like that.
The thought mulled over in my head as we reached the gardens again, a few more cars loitering outside the house. We went about things more slowly this time, scanning the surrounding hedges and the road that ran past, the farm across the way and the house itself. There were two cars that had been here when we arrived this morning, and I headed over to them, clocking a child’s seat in the back of the small, red Mini. It was an old-fashioned make, I noticed, walking around and peering in the windows.
“Looks like a Noddy car,” Mills said, making me laugh, and he bent down and looked through the
