“Sonia and Abbie might not have been the only people working on it,” Mills said. “We’ve only just learnt about Toomas Kask. There could be other people’s names left out, under the radar.”
More botanists, I thought with a slight curling of my lips. I was getting a bit sick and tired of all the gardening. I looked back at the laptop, the screensaver now running across. I watched, for a moment, as pictures of baby Grace, teenage Paige and another couple, the sister’s parents perhaps, raced across the screen. I looked to my own computer, with its generic background of a field and frowned.
“Awfully personal for a work computer,” I murmured. “Especially a work that requires ID and access cards to get into most of the rooms.” A very lax password as well, now that I thought about it, particularly lax for the sort of work that Abbie would have been doing. “Do you know many people who store pictures of their daughter eating ice cream on their work computers?”
“I do not,” Mills said slowly, catching up to where I had gotten. “You think she has another computer?”
“I think there’s a significant lack of privacy and actual work on this.” She’d get pages, Pdfs and scanned images of books, research papers and articles, but there was nothing of her actual work on the computer. Nothing jumped to Wasco because there was nothing to jump out full stop.
I picked up my phone, scrolling through the contacts for Paige’s number. It rang for a while, and I was girding myself up to leave a voicemail when she at last answered.
“Inspector Thatcher?” She asked, must have saved my number, I realised rather happily.
“Hello, Paige. Sorry to bother you. We were wondering if you knew whether or not Abbie had a separate computer for her work.”
“A separate laptop?” Paige asked, her voice lost in the wind slightly. I could hear Grace giggling in the background and wondered if they were making the most of the nice weather outside. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I can have a look around the house.”
“I’d appreciate that very much,” I told her.
“I’ll do it as soon as we get home,” she said. “We’re at the park,” she added, “needed to let Grace run out of energy a bit.” She sounded a bit fatigued, and I wondered if the pressure of looking after her niece, her sister in the hospital, was starting to get to her.
“Why don’t we meet later?” I suggested, hopefully taking some of the strain of the day off of her young shoulders. “At the hospital, if you like. That way, you don’t have to worry about Grace?”
“We planned on going there anyway,” she said in a much more relieved voice. “Five? That gives me time to look.”
“Five is fine. And don’t worry if you can’t find anything,” I added, “it’s just a hunch.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she did,” Paige said. “She liked to keep things separate. I’ll see you later, Inspector.”
“See you later, Paige.”
I hung up and spun my chair around to look at Mills.
“Has Susanne said anything about her? How is she holding up?”
Mills shook his head, looking concerned. “Should she have?”
“I’ll find out later,” I told him. “For now, let’s clear through some of this paperwork, eh?”
A rather large mound had built up on our desks, almost the same height as the photo frame on my desk. A frame that I studiously avoided, dragging the stack of sheets towards me as Mills groaned his way to his own desk.
It was dull work, tedious as anything and my hand ached by the end of it, but it sped the day along. We stopped for lunch, chatted to Wasco for a while before getting back to it, and then the afternoon was gone, and I pulled my coat on, ready to head to the hospital.
I bade Mills goodbye, and as I walked towards the stairs, Sharp appeared out of nowhere, a sympathetic look on her face.
“You off home?” She asked, pulling her bag over her shoulder and joining me as I walked towards the doors.
“Hospital,” I told her. “Going to have another chat with Paige.”
I could feel her looking at me.
“Take care,” she told me in such a gentle voice that I actually stopped and looked round at her. She smiled at me, reaching up and patting my shoulder before striding outside into the car that waited for her, her husband waving at me from the driver’s seat. I waved back and stuffed my hands into my pockets, walking to the hospital.
Take care, I thought to myself. It wasn’t so bad this year. Maybe all the work in the coaching house really was working. But every step I took towards the hospital felt like walking through tar, and the horrible feeling that riled up in me, that exact same as it had those years ago, as the looming building came into view. I made my way to the lift, passing the floor she would have been on, and walked towards Abbie’s room, nodding to the officer outside who gratefully scarpered off for a piss and some food.
Paige and Grace were already there, so I knocked on the door and pushed it open, only walking when Paige turned and nodded.
“How are you both?” I asked, wandering in and sitting in a spare chair. Abbie was looking, not well, but better. Her bruises had all but faded now, and though she was thin and wan, she didn’t look like she was knocking on death’s door anytime soon.
“We’re okay, aren’t we, Grace?” Paige said, a nod coming from the curly red hair. Grace knelt on a chair, her head pressed against Abbie’s shoulder, her thumb stuck in her mouth.
“I couldn’t find another laptop, though,” Paige told me mournfully. “Maybe she kept it at work?”
I nodded. “Thank you for looking. We’ll likely be checking there next.”
Paige gave a small smile, jumping like a rabbit when her phone suddenly trilled out. She looked
