‘Kate!’ A face loomed in front of her. The creased features of Superintendent Rav Kapoor and, next to him, her detective sergeant, Ben Michaels, looking strained and angry. ‘Are you all right?’ asked Kapoor. ‘Are you hurt?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied.
She pointed to the evidence. ‘Mabel was wearing those the day she disappeared. Lucas just brought me here and dug them up. He told me more about what happened that day.’
Kapoor nodded. ‘We have a recording of much of what you said to each other,’ he said. ‘Not great quality through the phone connection but our tech guys should be able to tease it out.’
Kate nodded and watched while Ben walked across and began to take phone camera shots of the log and the underwear, careful not to tread too close to the burial site. Soon this whole area would be tented, lit, and excavated.
She already felt her sister gone. A void was tearing open inside her. But what made her feel sick to her very soul, was the grief she felt clawing through that void. Not for the loss of Mabel, but for the loss of Lucas.
‘I think,’ she said, in a voice as thin as parchment, ‘I want to go home.’
39
You should have waited. You should have given me the benefit of the doubt.
Lucas paused, his pen hand unstable as the boat hit a swell. It also didn’t help that his wrist was bandaged and sore, possibly sprained, from falling heavily as he’d outrun the Wiltshire Police one more time. Just holding the pen was painful. He guessed he was about mid-Channel by now. A glance through the window revealed only a vast expanse of grey sea and grey horizon.
How could you think I would kill Zoe and Mabel? How could you? What does your copper’s instinct tell you, Kate? Don’t you go with that any more?
He felt fury and hurt fizzing through him as he wrote. Although he could understand, too. He had not presented his story in the best light, had he? He should have told her everything he knew well before they had gone to Pepperbox Hill. Sitting in a cafe, in a place of safety. He had clearly overestimated her instinct to grasp that he was no threat to her. But then, after the hellish weekend she had just been through, how could he expect her to be sound and steady in her judgement?
Her bitter expression as she’d launched at him and flipped him brutally onto his face was something that gave him chills to remember. And he remembered it roughly every thirty seconds. Part of him had considered giving up; allowing her to cuff him and take him in, and interview him under arrest. She would have had to listen to everything he said and weigh it up like the professional detective she was.
But it was the others crashing down the hillside that ended that idea. He’d been in the not so tender care of her Salisbury colleagues before. He didn’t really blame them for Tasering him — twice — but he knew they blamed him for leaving them stranded in a bog one time, while he’d done a runner. And for showing them up by beating them to the resolution of two cases with his dowsing talent. With the possible exception of the chief superintendent, they all loathed him.
Instinct kicked in as he sensed DS Michaels and other unfriendly officers heading for him with a lot of hate in their hearts and quite a bit of firepower in their holsters. So he’d run. Once again using Sid and his own adrenaline-driven dowsing instincts to get him away before he could be captured.
Because there was only one way to make Kate believe he was not a killer, and he needed to be free to do that.
I am not running away, he wrote on. I am running to. I am determined to find out what happened in the quarry that day. Because I really WASN’T in the quarry that day. I did not kill Zoe. I didn’t do anything to Mabel.
I am going to find the answers and then I am coming back to show you, Kate. I am coming back to show you.
40
About the Author
AD Fox is an award winning author who lives in Hampshire, England, with a significant other, boomerang offspring and a large, highly porous labradoodle.
With a background in newspaper and broadcast journalism, AD also spent a memorable summer working at a holiday camp on the east coast of England when she was 19 - which she maintains was the making of her. Probably. Although she’s still scared of kids in swimming pools.
Younger readers will know the AD alter ego as Ali Sparkes, author of more than fifty titles for children and young adults including the Blue Peter Award winning Frozen In Time, the bestselling Shapeshifter series and Car-Jacked, finalist in the national UK Children’s Book of the Year awards.
For more on AD Fox visit www.adfoxfiction.com and for updates about further Henry & Sparrow crime novels and other thrillers, along with bonus material, blogs and stuff - CLICK HERE.
Also by A D FOX
HENRY & SPARROW - how it all began:
THE DYING DOLLS
where it went next:
DEAD AIR
and what follows
SEVEN DEADLY THINGS:
DEATH CIRCLES
(available Summer 2021)
and click here for a free copy
of the Henry & Sparrow prequel novella
UNDERTOW
Acknowledgments
Deep and heartfelt thanks to Beverly Sanford (editor), Nicola Sparkes (vital insights provider) and Sarah Bodell (police procedure guidance). Also to Neville Dalton, Mr Backstop, whose extraordinary eye for detail has saved me from ignominy!
Warm appreciation also goes to The Collective, who have really helped to keep Henry & Sparrow rolling by keeping their creator focused on the bigger picture. You know who you are!
And, of
