“Yesterday was a bit of a blur. Got here and realised there wasn’t much in, so me and Grace had to nip to the shops. Then today work called so…” She shrugged and trailed off. “This evening, we’ll go.”
“How much do you know about the work your sister was doing?” I asked her.
“Not much,” she said. “Honestly, most of the time, whenever Abbie told me about her work, it was like static in my head. She’s a lot cleverer than me. But she worked from the garage sometimes,” she looked to the backdoor. “So, you might find some of her notes out there.”
“Is there anything else in the house that might be useful to us?” I asked.
Paige thought for a moment, chewing the inside of her lip. “Her laptop? I can give that to you. Her password’s Marmalade and then Grace’s birth year.”
“Marmalade?” Mills asked with a smile.
“The cat,” she explained, nodding to the beast in question who padded in and jumped onto the kitchen counter. Abbie leant back, reaching out and waving an arm at him until he jumped down and slunk from the room again.
“How did Abbie seem?” I asked her once she finished glaring at the cat’s vanishing tail. “The last time you spoke to her?”
“She was good. Great, actually. We talked about the holidays, maybe the three of us doing something together, going to the beach or something. She’s been really good for a while now, actually.”
“And what can you tell us about Grace’s father?” I asked carefully, watching as her face instantly darkened, like storm clouds passing over.
“They met at uni,” she managed to say once she got a grip of her anger. “He’s a plant man too. When Abbie got pregnant, he was there for the first few weeks. Then he got offered this research thing in South Africa, and he just left. No word, no warning. One day, he was there, and the next, he was halfway across the world. Never answered a call, never answered an email. He’s still there, I think,” she practically spat the words out. “Has had nothing to do with Grace. I don’t think he even knows her name.”
“So, there’s been no contact with him at all?” I asked.
“None,” she enunciated the word clearly. “Not even on the birth certificate.”
I nodded, happy to have all of that cleared up. “Did Abbie talk to you about her co-workers? Her research partner?”
“Sonia? A couple of times. I’ve met her once or twice at some of Abbie’s work events. Seems nice, a bit stuck up her own arse though,” she added. Mills and I grinned at Paige’s expression.
“Paige!” Grace shouted down the stairs. Her aunt’s head shot up, and she untangled herself from where she was balanced cross-legged on the chair.
“Coming!” she called back, opening a drawer and tossing me a key. “For the garage. Have at it. I’ll get her laptop whilst I’m up there too,” she added, already walking out the kitchen.
I stood up, Mills following once he’d drank the rest of his tea, and as I opened the back door, I could hear Paige’s feet hurtling up the stairs. I smiled and stepped out into the garden, to where the back of the garage was. I unlocked it, and stepped in, surprised. It wasn’t a garage anymore, that much was clear. There was a skylight in the roof that let in streams of sunshine, and when I switched the lights on, the place flooded with light. There was a radiator on one wall, an impressively stocked bookshelf on another, a few plants hanging here and there, and a desk. By the main garage door, the suspect cluster of gardening equipment, wellies, a wheelbarrow, bags of compost and a small child’s bike were kept out of the way.
“Pretty good home office,” Mills remarked, nodding to the small kettle that was even kept in here, like the kind you got in hotels. I nodded in agreement, walking over the shelf above the desk where Abbie had carefully stored and labelled her various research projects from the years. I pulled the first one down, and then the next. Mills joined me, and we noticed a pattern through them all. Cited as the lead researcher, both on the papers and in the corresponding reports, was Abbie Whelan. Sonia Petrilli, if she was mentioned at all, was only given a small amount of credit, the same as Dr Quaid in most cases.
“Solid footing?” Mills asked, a concerned look on his young face.
“For someone who just does the plants, this doesn’t add up. If I were Sonia,” I said, taking a few pictures of the studies before putting them back into place. “I’d be rather sore about all this.”
“Sore enough to take over the next project entirely,” Mills murmured. We left the garage, returning to the kitchen when Grace now was, sitting on the counter as Paige pulled a smoothie from the fridge for her.
“Hello,” Grace said as we walked in, Mills shutting the back door.
“Hello, Grace. How are you?”
“Good.”
Paige handed her the smoothie and helped her down from the counter, smiling as Grace skipped away in her stripey tights and fairy wings.
“Laptop,” she pointed to the table where it now sat, and Mills picked it up, holding it under his arm. “Did you find anything?”
“We think so. Thank you, Paige. We’ll be in touch.” She smiled and nodded, walking us back to the door. As we got in the car and pulled away, she stayed there, looking at the garden with a sad, longing look on her face.
Ten
Thatcher
Mills and I stopped for lunch before we went back to the station, leaving the car on the road, and we wandered up and down aimlessly for a while as we searched for a decent place to eat. The day was growing warmer, but across the roofs and chimneys of the city, a few clouds were beginning to gather. The
