“I never see her out of work,” Sonia told me. “She’s a mum, so when she’s not here, her world revolves around Grace. Where is Grace?” She sat abruptly upright in her chair.
“With Paige Whelan,” I told her, and she nodded, relaxing again.
“Cute kid. Anyway, when she’s not here, she’s with her daughter or her sister. Not one to come out for a night out or anything, you know? Though, nor am I really. We’re very different,” Sonia stated matter-of-factly. “Which is fine in the lab, but if we didn’t work so well together, or if I met her at school or something…” She trailed off with a shrug.
“You wouldn’t have been friends?” I guessed.
“Seems like not the best thing to tell a police officer investigating her attempted murder now that it’s out there, but there we go. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have hurt her. She’s a good lass and a mum, and I need her for this project. I might not get my PhD without it.”
“Was Abbie working towards a PhD?” Mills asked.
Sonia shook her head. “She used to talk about it now and then, before Grace. Now, the only thing she’s been talking about future wise is moving to a new house or Grace starting school. But that’s small talk, when we’re waiting for the kettle to boil.”
“Do you know anything about Grace’s father?” I asked, since Paige had not been the person to ask earlier.
“No, and I know that we don’t ask. He’s nothing more than a sperm donor, Inspector, certainly not a person worthy of conversation. All I know about him is that he’s ginger.”
“Like Grace?” I asked, and when she nodded, I went on. “So is Abbie.”
“She started dying it when Grace was born, so that they looked more alike. She’s a brunette naturally.” Like Paige, I realised.
“Dr Quaid tells us that you’re working on a natural treatment for cardiovascular diseases,” I said, drawing us back to why we were talking to Sonia in the first place.
“That’s right,” she nodded, lifting her chin slightly with pride.
“Would you be able to show us the greenhouse where Abbie would have been working?” I asked.
“Can do,” Sonia said. She stood up, drank the rest of her water and tossed the paper cup into a bin, leading us out through the back of the house, down into the gardens.
“How many more buildings are out here?” Mills asked her as we passed a wooden shed with a bolt and chain across the door.
“Quite a few,” Sonia told us. “Storage, tools, plant food, wheelbarrows. All those exciting things. And some more greenhouses, some smaller, some bigger, potting sheds. We’re bigger than we look.” She pointed down towards where the gardens sloped and rose with the hills.
She led us along the gravel path, our coats brushed by the extending arms of plants on either side, to a greenhouse that was not far from where Abbie had been found, shadowed by a large oak to one side. She stopped suddenly and frowned. The door was open, squeaking on its hinges.
“Are they normally left open?” I asked, coming to a stop behind her.
“No,” she answered shortly. “No, they are not.” She stepped aside, letting me enter first. I ducked beneath the low doorway into the warm room. It was a mess inside.
The stone floor had soil spilt across it, shattered remains of some pots and glass beakers glittering across. One of the big wooden benches was on an angle, the papers on top almost falling off, the wireless radio toppled to one side.
“Abbie was messy, but this is not normal,” Sonia said, stepping in to look over my shoulder at the mess.
“She must have fought back against whoever it was,” I murmured, looking at the scuff marks on the floor. Sonia hung back, her hand stuck into her pockets as I moved over the broken ceramic and glass. A bottle had been tipped over, a puddle of clear liquid pooling on the uneven stones that I stayed away from. There had been something of a fight, or at least, this was definitely how Abbie got some of those bruises.
I turned around to look at the viewpoints from the greenhouse, unable to see too far up the path, or the house in the distance. There was a scuffle, and I turned to find Mills bending down slowly amongst the shattered pieces, a pair of gloves on his hands. He picked up a large shard of pot that was stained dark on the jagged point.
“Blood?” I asked, walking over to him as he rose, examining the piece.
“I’d say so. Dried now. Was Abbie cut anywhere?”
“Her head,” I answered, picking up another piece with similar dark splatters. She could have cut herself on any one of these, or the sharp edge of the bench. “Bag them separately,” I told Mills as he fished some evidence bags from his pocket. “Just in case only some of this is hers.”
I handed him the piece I held and looked over at Sonia, who was staring at the mess with an ashen face and curled lip.
“I take it that nobody’s been down here,” I guessed, and she looked up to meet my gaze.
“No. We’ve all been in the main lab really since Sean told us. I was meant to come down here later and check on what she did. Guess it’s a good thing you got here first.”
“Aside from the obvious,” I spread my arms around the evident mess, “is there anything else that looks wrong or out of place?”
Sonia looked around; her dark eyes narrowed. “The radio,” she pointed at it. “It’s on the wrong bench. She kept it on hers.” She pointed to another bench pushed up against the glass where an empty mug also sat.
I went over to the bench, scanning some of the notes on the pad of paper, unable to understand at all what they meant. They looked like formulas or equations, and the sheer number of them hurt my
