Critical Incidents - Lucie Whitehouse

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turned over. No. She stopped herself. Just think: how else could that be connected?

      Could Hinton be involved somehow? Was that possible? He was at large, whereabouts unknown – he could be in Birmingham. And he certainly had contacts here. But she was the person who’d let him go – she’d been fired for it, plastered all over the sodding Mail and the Evening Standard. Even if it hadn’t been crystal to him that day, he’d know now. So – who? The person who had actually killed Farrell? An enemy of his?

      No – it was too intricate, too massive a leap. Even if it was Hinton himself, which was unlikely enough, or Farrell’s killer, why would they harm Corinna? And how would they even know she and Rin were friends? No one would find them posing together on social media. Plus, there’d been no threat, no claim afterwards – what would be the point of doing it if she, the target in this scenario, wasn’t even aware? No, this was crazy stuff.

      She bent her head, dug her nails into her scalp. What the fuck was going on? How could she find out?

      Picking up her phone, she opened Contacts. Last night, she’d rung Di, Corinna’s mother. She’d been ashamed of how relieved she’d felt to get voicemail. She’d left a message saying just that she was heartbroken, and heartbroken for her. ‘If I can do anything, Di, anything at all, please let me know.’ Just words, however much she meant them.

      Will’s number was underneath his mother’s. Robin had it from group texts – photos of Peter, details for birthday parties and dinners – but she hadn’t actually called him since the old days, when she and Rin were sixth formers and he’d used to pick them up from parties, sober as a judge in his little Peugeot. Will didn’t drink, never had. ‘Just not my thing,’ he said but Rin told her it was deeper than that. He was afraid that if he started drinking, he’d never stop.

      ‘Does he think that for a reason? Does he feel like he’s an alcoholic?’

      ‘No, but it runs in families; alcoholics quite often have alcoholic kids. He says he can’t risk it.’

      Will had been an adult since he was twelve, responsible and reliable as bedrock. While they’d been out getting smashed, he’d been studying. He’d done medicine at Edinburgh and he was a consultant neurologist now, at the Alexandra in Redditch. His wife, Lily, was an anaesthetist and they lived with their son and daughter in a snazzy barn conversion near Henley. Not bad for a bloke whose nickname at the boys’ grammar, where irony was king, had been Thrill. But was he ever actually that boring? He was no Sean Harvey, tearing the place up with his delinquent tendencies and come-to-bike-shed eyes, but when you could hear what he was saying, Will was funny, which had become more apparent as, with the advent of Lily, he’d become more confident and thus more audible.

      He answered almost immediately. ‘Robin?’

      They spoke at the same time. ‘How are you?’

      ‘I don’t even know,’ he said. ‘Stunned.’

      ‘How’s your mum?’

      ‘She’s … not good. She’s with Peter at the hospital, she was there all night.’

      ‘The police came to talk to me yesterday – you probably know. They said he broke a lot of bones.’

      ‘Yes, but the real issue’s the lung. They keep calling it a puncture but it was more of a tear – the end of the broken rib tore the lung. They’ve operated, obviously, but now it’s a waiting game. If he gets an infection, it could all just …’ He trailed off into silence.

      ‘What happened, Will? What are the police saying?’

      ‘I don’t know. Nothing. The same as yesterday.’

      ‘You don’t think Josh did this, do you?’

      ‘No. I don’t.’ He paused. ‘But I don’t know what else to think, either. If he didn’t, where the hell is he?’

       Chapter Seven

      Robin looked up. High overhead, above two encircling galleries of shops, an arching roof of white concrete beams and curved glass captured the last light from the sky and poured it down. In her day, anyone arriving by train at New Street had to exit the station via the Pallasades, a shopping centre of epic grimness, low-ceilinged and lit like a prison, its insides full of Woolworths and SockShop and crappy health-food stores, the outside decaying brown concrete. That was all gone – obliterated – and now, as if born in the light of the explosion, there was this, Grand Central, clean and white and imposing, like a modern cathedral or one of those Southern US mega-churches. A cathedral of commerce.

      ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet,’ Maggie had said when she’d told her where she was meeting Lucy. ‘It’s ever so smart.’

      ‘Yeah, Rin’s been boasting about it.’ She’d stopped. Every couple of minutes she’d focus on something else, forget, then it body-slammed her again: Corinna was dead.

      She was ten minutes early but when the escalator delivered her to the café at the top of the new John Lewis, Lucy was already waiting. She had on the same scarf she’d worn at the Christmas market, and her hair was down over the shoulders of a short black coat. Cheap black trousers, slightly scuffed high heels – career-dressing on a tiny budget. She worked as a PA for a firm of solicitors, she’d said on the phone. ‘Family law – divorces, custody disputes.’

      At close range, she looked barely older than Lennie. Under a ton of mascara, her eyes were round as a pre-schooler’s. Though it had looked near-perfect in the Facebook photo, up close and unfiltered her skin was teenage: a smattering of acne dints below the cheekbones, an active spot half hidden by a lid of concealer.

      ‘Lucy? I’m Robin.’

      There was a hiatus, a moment in which the choreography felt off, a physical move missing. Of course: no badge, the extraction from the pocket, the thumb-flip that established her authority. Instead she took out the little Muji case Maggie had given her at the same time as a pay-as-you-go mobile. Robin Lyons, Private Investigator, MH Investigation Services. She watched the girl scrutinize the card.

      ‘Shall we?’ she said ‘Tea? Why don’t you find a table and I’ll bring it over?’

      Robin could see immediately why Rin had liked the café. Industrial spotlights and tiles, painted farmhouse tables and outsized lampshades – it was her taste all over. But that was true of John Lewis generally: not flashy or designer, but good quality, solid. It sold the illusion of a trustworthy, comfortable world. The idea made her want to put her boot under a table, send its cake-stands and shortbread flying. Lies.

      Lucy had chosen a table by the window. She’d taken off her coat and was scrolling through her phone, which she dropped into her bag as Robin approached.

      ‘Thanks again for meeting me.’ She unloaded the tray and sat down.

      ‘No problem – I wanted to. We’re really worried – Harry and me,’ she clarified. ‘We were texting and calling but we kept getting voicemail. Then Valerie rang.’ In the light, the wisps of hair at her temples showed hints of ginger, and her skin was pale, its underlying tone blue. Some Celtic heritage, probably – Scots or Irish. Her hands were graceful, the fingers long and elegant despite a clutter of silver rings, eight or ten across the two hands. ‘We can’t believe the police won’t do anything. She wouldn’t just disappear.’

      ‘Okay. Before we start, I just want to say that as private investigators, not police, we – that’s Maggie, my colleague, and I – we’re not interested in getting anyone into trouble. We work for Valerie, and our job is just to find Becca.’

      ‘You think she’s all right?’

      ‘Do you not?’

      Lucy looked down. ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘We’ve talked

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