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  She found her throat was constricted with grief at this sudden turnaround, even though she realised that she didn’t love Kenneth anymore, and Gerda was welcome to him and his animal lusts and lack of empathy. Kenneth loved Kenneth and money, in that order. At least he was assured of always earning plenty of the latter.

  Klaxons and alarms were going off, Olivia shouting and screaming, ‘Do something! For God’s sake do something, somebody!’ Hal was paralysed with shock, moaning softly to himself the words of the Lord’s Prayer. White-coated people were rushing hither and thither until the moment when the one in authority asked everyone to stand back from the bed, placed the two paddles on Ben’s chest and shouted, ‘Clear!’, the boy’s body arcing as the current went through him.

  Lauren could stand the evening no longer, and took herself out of the house just to get away from the over-loud laughing and giggling that was going on behind the door to the annexe. It was obviously an act put on for her benefit, and she wouldn’t grace them with her presence and discomfort any longer. She’d leave quietly, though, so that they carried on with the strain of their forced gaiety for as long as possible before they realised she’d gone.

  She grabbed the weekend holdall she had used so shortly before, and drove off to the Hardys’ cottage, hoping to get news of Ben and offload some of her own troubles at the same time – after all, that was what she’d gone over for the night before.

  When she pulled into the narrow driveway, she could see that Olivia and Hal were just getting out of a car and approaching the house, Olivia in floods of tears, Hal’s face pale and stern. Tentatively getting out of her own car, she approached them calling, ‘Is everything all right’ but with a feeling in her stomach that nothing was right at all.

  Back at Littleton-on-Sea Police Station, Sergeant Penny Sutcliffe had resumed her usual place on the reception desk after a day’s leave, taking no time at all to make the place her lair again, and removing all signs of her temporary replacement.

  She was a married woman with three children, and had spurned any further promotions or offers of plainclothes work to retain the predictability of her shift work. She had no desire or need for unsocial hours without any warning, nor for working all night. There were two other regular shift desk sergeants to take her place when she wasn’t on duty, and they kept their own places for things, without interfering with the working practices of the other.

  Having been freed up from the reception desk, Teri Friend joined the group of officers who were putting in a lot of unpaid overtime to find out as much as they could about their two savagely murdered victims. She had been paired with Liam Shuttleworth to execute door-to-door enquiries along the last houses in front of the beach, and also putting up incident signs asking for any witnesses to contact the police if they thought they had seen anything suspicious.

  Colin Redwood was searching as rapidly as possible through their computer records looking for anyone who might be involved in the local drugs culture, whether as dealer or client, and Lenny Franklin was in the archives with Monty Fairbanks, doing the same thing with the computer that was Monty’s brain, and his little pieces of card. If they could, between them, they would assemble a suspect list, for this was so obviously to do with drugs, both victims having been full of them, that the answers must lie with this particular slice of the dark underbelly of the town.

  Superintendent Devenish had chivvied along the press officer and demanded that he be allowed a radio and television appeal about both deaths, and these had duly been broadcast. He hadn’t given details of the actual murder methods, but had appealed for anyone who had anything suspicious to report, or unexplained, that might be able to further their enquiries – then appealed, somewhat hypocritically, that he would appreciate a blanket veto by the press on reporting the proceedings, in the interests of the ongoing investigations. He wormed his way round a few press questions at the end, then slipped off with all the acumen of an eel in a hurry.

  He loved the media limelight, and had fussed like a prospective beauty queen before the mirror in his office before going to record the appeal. Proud as a peacock, vain as a top model, he did not recognise these failings in himself, and had therefore been confused when he saw officers tittering in corners when he made his way to the site of the recording.

  Having had his shining hour, he looked into the CID office to make sure there was plenty of activity, being told that two officers were in the archives, then returned to his own office for a further primp and preen. While playing with a stray strand or two that had somehow escaped from his fairly hairless crown, he decided that he’d give the whole bunch of them a rocket tomorrow. It may not have been long since the bodies had been found, but the methods of murder had been so ghastly that he wanted no more such stains on his patch. He would like the whole thing wrapped up fast, his reputation unsullied.

  By half past ten, Teri Friend and Liam Shuttleworth were back, having done all they could for the day and those working in the building had already assembled a fairly long list of suspects who were involved in, or on the periphery of, the drugs world, either with a record, or just a caution. The rounding-up and interviews would start the next day. Whoever was responsible for these two deaths needed catching and putting away for a very long time.

  All the information and names gathered were put into a new file and left on the inspector’s desk for the next day, provided she was coming in to work. If she failed to show again, they would either have to ask for another senior officer, or DS Groves would have to continue in the role, and she seemed too low a rank to be SIO in such a serious case.

  Inside the Hardys’ pretty cottage, three adults let tears roll freely. Olivia had been the first to speak her misery. ‘He seemed to be all right – I mean, he was asleep when we went in this morning, but this afternoon he seemed to be awake and know who we were, and then he just went.

  ‘The alarms went off, and he just lay there – there was nothing. A crash team came and worked on him, but it took them three shocks to get him back, then they took him off to intensive care. They put him into a coma that they wanted to keep him in for a couple of days, while he was on a ventilator and God knows what else. The doctor thought there must have been something else in that cocktail that he took, and which had attacked his heart as it reached its half-life, whatever that means.

  ‘All I know is that he’s in the ICU, he’s seriously ill again, and that he’s got to see a psychiatrist in case he tried to take his own life.’

  ‘I can’t take all this in,’ growled Hal in his deep, rich voice, wiping tears from his eyes with the back of one of his huge hands.

  ‘And even if they identify what else he took, there’s no telling whether it could have done him permanent harm,’ Olivia wailed in her misery of the unknown. ‘What am I going to do if he’s brain-damaged – or if he dies. I shall die, too, of grief. It must somehow be all our fault. It’s all my fault. I should never have gone back to work full-time. I should’ve been home, here for him when he needed me, instead of chasing up the criminal activities of other people’s kids.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Liv,’ said Hal, putting an arm around her. ‘I retired and I’m here a lot for the time. That obviously hasn’t helped at all. He just made a bad choice.’

  ‘But we could lose him, and we’ve already lost all that time with him, not being here. You were the same when you taught, always tied up in lesson plans, evaluating students, marking work, and setting work. We hardly ever saw you. Our kids must have dragged themselves up like little orphans.’

  Olivia was inconsolable, and Hal knew he had to intervene before she became hysterical. ‘We did our best. We’ve been no different to most parents. We did what we could, when we could, and the best we could according to our circumstances. Some of the best-educated kids, the most supervised, go much further off the rails than this. It’s one teenage over-indulgence in drugs. Don’t get it out of proportion. There’s a reason for this. All we’ve got to do is uncover it an
d try to put it right.’

  ‘Hal, what if we lost him? I don’t think I could bear it without him.’

  ‘He’ll come through it, you’ll see. They’re going to phone from the hospital when they’ve identified whatever other drugs he took, and they said we could go in in the morning to see him and get an update.’

  At that particular moment, the telephone jangled, making all three of them jump. Olivia went off to answer it, half in hope that it was news of her darling son, and half in dread that the news would be bad.

  They heard her end the call, then dial another number, having a second short conversation before returning to the other two, her eyes momentarily dry, her expression grim.

  ‘What was it?’ asked Hal hopefully. ‘And who did you ring afterwards?’

  ‘It was that bloody boy’s junkie mother again. She said she’s also noticed some of her travel sickness tablets have disappeared from the bedroom cabinet, and her son’s owned up to taking them as well. She gave me the name of the active ingredient, and I’ve just called the information to the hospital so that they can get on with treating it. The nurse said she’d have to contact the poisons department in some London hospital to check on its full effects, but don’t ask me which hospital, because it went in one ear and out of the other.’

  ‘So what’s happening?’

  ‘She said someone would ring us back as soon as they knew the best treatment for whatever this bloody chemical is – hyoscine, I think she said – and give us an up-to-date prognosis.’

  ‘They didn’t know about this drug?’

  ‘Apparently they didn’t test for it because they thought it was such an unlikely ingredient in a cocktail to get high. Don’t ask me – I’m not a bloody nurse. How the hell should I know?’

  Hal stomped off to the kitchen and returned with a tray containing three glasses, and a bottle each of red and white wine. Removing a corkscrew from his pocket, he suggested that they drink the white first, and leave the red to breathe for at least five minutes before starting on it as their second course.

  ‘This makes us no better than Ben, if we drink too much,’ announced Olivia glumly. ‘Alcohol’s a drug as well, a poison that the body has to neutralise.’

  ‘Do you want a drink or not?’ asked Hal in a disgruntled voice.

  ‘I’ll have white,’ she replied, all memory of her previous well-intentioned remark already erased from her memory. She needed a drink, and no amount of proselytising would wipe out that need.

  ‘Would you like white, too?’ Hal asked Lauren.

  ‘No, I think I’d prefer black,’ she said, then flushed furiously at her Freudian slip. She panicked as she realised it could be deemed to be unforgiveable.

  Instead of seeming hurt or reproving, though, Hal suddenly burst into peals of delighted laughter, put down the bottle he was holding, and clutched at his stomach. ‘That’s brought us back down to earth. I presume that’s a red for you then, Lauren?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know how to apologise enough …’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Do you think that’s the first time that’s happened to me? Would you like to consider my age and add it up?’

  ‘If you’re sure I haven’t upset you …’

  ‘Lady, you’ve made my day. That’s the first thing that’s made me laugh since before I found Ben last night, and you have my undying thanks for that. So, what’s gone wrong in your life? There must be something, as you dossed down here last night and came back this evening.’

  Lauren found it easier to tell than she’d thought possible. ‘I went home knowing I’d find Kenneth there, then I picked up some strange vibes and concluded that Gerda and Kenneth had been to bed together. When I went to her room to confront her, she said they’d been at it like knives since just after she started working for us, and we … sort of had a fight. That’s how I split my lip, when she pulled me to the floor.’

  ‘Good God in Heaven, Lauren. Why didn’t you say something?’ Olivia was stunned at her friend and work partner’s reticence in this matter.

  ‘How could I, with everything that went off here. I couldn’t say anything when I first got here because I felt ashamed, as if it were my fault somehow. Then Hal found Ben, and you know the rest.’

  ‘But what’s happened since? Have you been home since then?’

  ‘I contacted my solicitor – actually, he’s our solicitor, but I got first bagsy – and I’ve initiated divorce proceedings; gosh, how formal that sounds! When I got home tonight, I was about to give Kenneth the news that I was divorcing him when he floored me with the news that when he went back to work, he was taking Gerda with him, but he’d need use of the granny annexe for him and her when he was on leave, so that he could keep in contact with the kids. Then he had the cheek to inform me that when they had a family of their own, he’d need to sell the house, making his own kids homeless, so that he could house the little bastards he intends to father in the future.’

  The two women grasped each other in a full body hug, and Hal put his arms around both of them. ‘Oh, my poor injured darlings,’ he crooned. ‘You’ve both been through the wringer, haven’t you, in the last twenty-four hours.’

  Olivia suddenly broke away. ‘Has anybody let Hibbie know? And where the hell is she anyway? And what happened in the office today? I haven’t even given work a thought.’

  Hal got in first. ‘I texted her this morning, and she replied that she’d stay on where she was as it was convenient at the moment. I haven’t let her know about this turn for the worse, because it could still all be a storm in a teacup.

  ‘And we’ve got that other body,’ said Lauren, ‘but I don’t want you to concern yourself about that now. We’ll muddle through, somehow. We’ve both got messes to sort out, and life demands that they’re what we concentrate on,’ she declared. ‘I’ll call in for both of us tomorrow and speak to Superintendent Devenish, to see if we can both have a couple of days’ compassionate leave.’

  ‘But we can’t …’

  ‘That’s what’s going to happen, and there’s no point in you arguing, guv. Neither of us would be any use on a major crime scene at the moment, so I think it’s best left to someone who can concentrate all their mind on the finer points than let us two loose with all the distractions we have to live with for now. We’d be worse than a couple of rookie PCs.’

  ‘But the other murder …’

  ‘If you really want to know the details, I’ll tell you after we’ve all had a couple of glasses more wine each, but it’s unpleasant and I don’t want to upset you anymore.’

  ‘Nobody could achieve that at the moment. I just want to know.’

  The next morning brought good news from the hospital. The additional substance had been checked and, thankfully, dealt with, and they were going to wake Ben that evening, if his parents wanted to come in when they took him off the ventilator. Olivia had been told in no uncertain terms by her sergeant that she had spoken to Devenish, and he would get some support staff in if they could be certain to come back the next day.

  Not sure whether this would possible, but fairly certain it would be a good thing to get back to work as long as she could concentrate, Lauren went home to see what the situation was; whether she’d been relegated to the garden shed while the erstwhile au pair lorded it in her former bedroom, perhaps.

  She was pleased to find that there was no other human presence in the house, and that, after a quick peek through the windows of the annexe, there seemed to be a lot of possessions thrown about in some disorder. Kenneth’s car was gone from the garage, and she presumed that he and his paramour were still resident in the annexe, and that they had gone out together. That suited her fine.

  They could stay there, thought Lauren, as she went up to Gerda’s little apartment up in the attic and gathered up all the German woman’s possessions, then dragged them all down to the annexe door. She pushed a note under the bottom of the door to inform them that she had returned all that was Gerda’s, and that she hoped they’
d be very happy together. And she meant it. Today, to use a shameless cliché, was the first day of the rest of her life.

  She felt a shudder of shame run through her as her hope was tainted with poor Olivia’s continuing uncertainty about the recovery of her son, but she didn’t have the energy to worry about more than one person at the moment – and that person was her. She’d need to advertise for a holiday nanny and a cleaner, for when the children were home. Or, she could advertise for a live-in housekeeper, and choose her own candidate. She’d managed as practically a one-parent family for years now, and there seemed no reason why she couldn’t do it permanently, with the necessary domestic help.

  Back at the police station, Superintendent Devenish had decided to take things into his own hands rather than chasing after recently retired detectives to fill the unexpected absences of two of his plain clothes officers. He had been warned about promoting women in plain clothes, been told that they’d never stand the emotional strain or the call of domestic matters, but he didn’t consider what Detective Sergeant Groves had told him in confidence that morning as anything like that.

  Both Groves and DI Hardy had suffered domestic disasters that would equally have made his male detectives take at least a few days off work, and he had no criticism of them requesting some compassionate leave. Devenish had decided to take over the investigation himself, an unprecedented move but one designed to keep everything in-house. He warned his staff, nonetheless, that he didn’t want his involvement bandied about, during his morning briefing on what had been squirrelled out of their records the previous evening by ‘a bunch of dedicated officers who gave up their own time out of devotion to duty’, everyone knowing that he was making clear that the overtime budget had already been blown for the month.