Lane: A Case For Willows And Lane Read online

  ‘I need to keep your phone. Are these your house keys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t leave them in your possession.’

  Lane said, ‘I know. You can put them – or can my neighbour take them? They’re not pertinent to the charge and I assume my place has already been turned over.’

  The sergeant looked a little taken aback – then she turned to Emily and said, ‘Are you willing to look after Ms Lane’s keys, Mrs Willows?’

  Of course she had been. There was no further opportunity for them to talk – the policewoman made sure of that – and it was the officer who rode with Lane in the ambulance to the hospital. Emily Willows had intended to do that herself.

  Instead, she had been taken back to the station at Bodmin and reunited with her son. It had been her intention to return to her own home after that but Robert wouldn’t hear of it; she was going to spend the rest of the night with him and Marie, even though he had admitted, when she pressed him, that the likelihood of any further threat was minute. In the end there had been a compromise: she would go to Robert’s home that night on condition that he would take her to her own the following morning.

  ‘Mother, for heaven’s sake why? It’s your birthday! You were coming to us anyway.’

  ‘Because it might be a mess. Are you certain the forensic people have done with it, by the way?’

  ‘Yes, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Then it will need cleaning properly. I won’t be able to relax all weekend at yours if I know it’s in a state. I need a couple of hours on my own, that’s all. Then you can come and pick me up. What about my car, by the way?’

  And that’s how she had distracted him, of course, and won the argument – which was why she was standing in her kitchen now, at eleven o’clock on the Saturday morning. The car, Robert had told her, was also still part of the crime scene, and he doubted whether it would be taken to her garage until Tuesday. But it didn’t matter, he said – it’s probably a write-off.

  What on earth would Ronald have said? That car wasn’t eighteen months old and had done only a tiny fraction of the mileage that he, her husband, would have projected for it before purchase. She went upstairs and found the wallet file with the registration printed neatly on the front, just as Ronald used to do. No point looking at it now but it would be here and waiting on Tuesday.

  Whoever had come in and examined the house yesterday evening or maybe overnight, had left very little mess. Where there must have been blood on the laminate floor in the hallway, there was no trace now, and she knew that they didn’t always clear up like that; it was because she, as Robert’s mother, was viewed as one of their own, and because they were all shocked at the blatant attack on the police.

  But she cleaned anyway, wiping away the memories as much as anything else before they had the chance to become a permanent stain on her home and her life here. When that was done, she boiled the kettle, made some tea and considered what Robert had revealed to her about Summer Lane this morning.

  He told her about Heathrow and the injuries that Lane had received there. At first, according to Superintendent Harley, she had been told she might lose her leg, and then that she might never walk again.

  ‘And now she’s going to run a marathon. If you ask me, Robert, that’s exactly the kind of person you need back in the police force.’

  As if it was his decision… But she was going to say it to someone, and he was there.

  And then he had told her that there was more to it – much more. Lane had been in a coma for more than a week afterwards because of the injury to her head. A real coma, not the induced sort, and when she finally came round it was thanks to her own efforts, not the doctors’. There would have been extensive tests and discussions, Robert had said; they would not have concluded that she had to leave the force unless there were serious doubts about her wellbeing and her operational fitness.

  Emily had said to him, ‘It seems to matter a great deal to her, Robert.’

  ‘I can understand why. It’s more than a job to some people.’

  ‘Yes – as it is to you, of course. I don’t think she has accepted it yet, either. What a shame…’

  ‘The pay-out from the compensation board was a huge one.’

  ‘And no doubt that’s how she bought the house. But even so. A woman of her age. What will she do?’

  Whilst she had not exactly planned it, Emily had known that there would be this spare half an hour before Robert was due to arrive. She looked at the tea pot and thought that it would not yet be too stale for another cup – she could do that, and then there would be only twenty minutes…

  When she walked out of her front door, into the street and then turned into the gate of Ling Cottage, she saw that the patrol car which had been there first thing had gone. She wondered whether Robert or Superintendent Harley, who had been so very kind, had asked for it to be there. But if it had now gone, they must think that all danger really had passed.

  She examined Lane’s front door when she reached it but there were no signs of a forced entry; do the police have those skeleton keys and things that one sees on the television? She had no idea, but when she gave the door a push she found that it was indeed locked – she would have to use the key, and there was another moment of hesitation before she did so.

  There were boxes, cardboard boxes, little stacks of them against the wall in the hallway. Some had the top open and inside Emily could see books and CDs and cutlery and crockery. She frowned and moved cautiously on into the kitchen. More boxes – it seemed that each room had its own complement of cardboard boxes, as if they had been distributed about the house on the day of the move but had stood here untouched ever since, apart from when a particular item had been required.

  Emily stood in the kitchen and tried to see beyond the boxes. It was difficult. She went to the window that looked out over the rear garden. The wall, her own wall, ran down the left-hand side but that was the only thing that their two gardens had in common. Here was a jungle. The grass on the lawn was absurdly long, to the point where it wasn’t really a lawn at all, and yes, it was true now that she thought about it – Emily realised that she hadn’t heard a lawnmower all summer. Around the edges were shrubs and climbers out of control, and between them, where there should have been, as befits a cottage garden, an informal mixture of annuals and perennials in bloom, there were only tall weeds.

  She turned her back to the window and leaned a little on the sink unit, as if she felt in need of support. The kitchen was modern and well-equipped but the cream-coloured walls were bare – no pictures, no calendar, not an ornament on a shelf. On the hob, a single small saucepan, a kettle half-filled on the surface next to it, and in the sink itself, one unwashed mug, one unwashed cereal bowl - yesterday’s inadequate breakfast, no doubt - and one unwashed teaspoon. Absent-mindedly, she turned on the tap and ran it until there was warm water, half-filled the washing up bowl and scrubbed the offending items clean. Then she placed them upside down on the drainer because there was no sign of a tea-towel anywhere.

  In a whisper, she said to herself, ‘Oh, my dear.’

  After a moment of that, Emily Willows stood up straight and braced herself. This was a crisis; a decision and prompt action were required. She took the decision and went quickly over the rest of the house. It was all the same. Summer Lane had moved in six months ago but no-one was living here.

  She drew the line at sorting out the unmade bed, not because she was squeamish but because she knew that Lane was going to be annoyed enough already that Emily had been into her house, looked around and interfered. In one of the spare bedrooms she found a work-desk and a rudimentary attempt to set up an office space. There was a laptop computer, a printer and one or two devices that Emily did not recognise, but no matter. On the table beside them, she found some papers that looked personal.

  CV. Curriculum Vitae. The course of a life. The story of a life, if one is able to read between the lines. Long, long ago, before the youn
g, good-looking bank manager had walked into her room one Monday morning, Emily Donaldson had been a personnel executive in the very same bank’s head office. A rising star, her own boss had said, and going places. Of course, it’s called Human Resources or some such thing nowadays, but people were to be her career, and she had learned how to read a CV before she fell in love for the one and only time.

  Emily glanced at her watch – Ronald’s Christmas present to her five years ago, and it hadn’t needed a new battery yet. Then, for a moment, she stared out of the window that overlooked their street, and thought. Still fifteen minutes before Robert was due to arrive. He was always punctual, like his father. Summer Lane might or might not spend another night in the hospital, but personally Emily doubted it. Very unlikely that she would arrive in the next quarter of an hour, though…

  Emily pulled the swivel chair out from under the desk, positioned herself on it with some care, and began to read between the lines.

  © Peter Grainger 2017 All rights reserved

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty