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Forty-Four
Matt
Lorraine Stephens returns the next day to confirm. The body is Abi’s. They will not be called to identify her. The police will use her DNA samples. Matt doesn’t ask why. He knows why.
‘Have they charged him?’ Ava asks – these last days, she has become the stronger of the two of them, he realises.
‘They’ve charged him with prevention of proper burial and with perverting the course of justice, but nothing else yet. We’re still waiting for the post-mortem results, but we’re looking at manslaughter on the grounds of professional negligence.’
Their daughter. Under post-mortem. Such a small mass.
‘Try not to think about it,’ Lorraine says.
She stays an hour or two before leaving them in the shattered peace of their new reality. Abi is dead. There is no doubt about that now, only horror and hope. Horror at what his best friend has done; hope that Abi did not suffer at the end. Neil killed their baby girl and hid her away. The fact of it is astonishing. It cannot be and yet it is. Neil. Matt can barely even remember a time when he didn’t know this man, when he wasn’t his friend. Friend goes nowhere near what Neil is to him – not even best friend can convey what he is, what they are. Was. Were. Friends no longer, just like that – a severing, a laser cut so precise the pain is yet to make its way through the fog of shock. A best friend will have your back, buy you a beer, turn up. But Matt trustedthisfriend with his daughter as with his very life, and now, feeling himself falling, what he has known bodily since he took the call his brain begins to frame in thought: Neil might not have murdered Abi, but Matt knows with total clarity that he can never forgive him for what he has done, that he will not, can never, see him again for as long as he lives, and that he will think of him and miss him every day for the rest of his life.
A little after seven in the evening, Sharon Farnham is sitting on their sofa once again. The light is falling. Ava has a glass of brandy in her hand. His own is on the coffee table, untouched.
Farnham is here to talk to them about the post-mortem. She addresses them as a couple still together, and there is no reason to tell her otherwise – that they share a roof, their grief, their son; that they have survived, and that is all. Out of the eye of the storm, Matt can see how careful these people have been with them over this time and wonders at how they can put themselves here, in the middle of other people’s horror, for no other reason than to try to find the truth, whatever that truth turns out to be.
In the strange enforced intimacy, Lorraine brings in three mugs of coffee and a large glass of water for Ava. She is feeding Fred, as she has been for most of the day. He needs the comfort, she has said, more than once, though Matt knows that in reality it is Fred who is the soother here.
‘Are you OK?’ Farnham asks them.
‘We’re ready,’ Ava replies.
Farnham brings out a notebook from her pocket, shifts her weight, seems unable to get comfortable on the sofa. A heavy exhalation and, with apparent physical effort, she begins.
‘The post-mortem revealed that Abi died of a trauma to the head. This is consistent with the fall into the building trench. The trauma caused bleeding to the brain, which proved fatal.’
The air thins. Ava opens her mouth but just as quickly closes it again.
‘Did she suffer?’ Matt asks, glancing at Ava, who meets his gaze with silent acknowledgement.
‘A blow to the head is quick,’ Farnham replies. ‘The concrete surrounding the bag preserved some tissues and remnants of her clothes. From those, we estimate she was buried approximately twenty-four hours after her death, which would tie in with Mr Johnson’s account of events. He says he returned to work the following morning, having removed Abi from the site in the large tool bag and stored her body in his van, as I told you on the phone. He told us he parked on the Lovegoods’ drive after they left for work the following morning, lifted Abi into the house in the bag and placed her, inside the bag, into the first trench as you come into the kitchen site. From there he was able to cover her under the pretence of concreting in the RSJ beams according to the building schedule. The lad who was labouring for him, when questioned again last night, believed Mr Johnson when he told him the site would be closed for a few days due to the police investigation.’
‘So while we were looking at the picture of her coat,’ Matt says slowly, aware that he is processing what he has just heard even as the words fall from his mouth, ‘he was next door burying her in…’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Matt smothers a gasp in his hands, his vision clouding.
‘Sharon.’ Ava’s voice is no more than a croak. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Does this mean you’ll be arresting Neil now for murder?’
The room stills. Matt makes himself look up. Farnham and Lorraine are not exchanging a glance, not exactly. It is smaller than that. They adjust their backsides forward on the sofa. And they do it at exactly the same moment.
‘I was coming on to that,’ Farnham says. ‘The trauma to the head wasn’t consistent with the angle it would have been had she simply fallen into the trench. There were also other internal injuries not consistent with the fall. And there was a small flake of paint found on her bracelet – I think it was a christening bracelet?’
‘Yes,’ Ava rushes in. ‘It was getting too small.’
‘We’ve sent it to forensics, but I don’t have the results yet. We’ll be in touch as soon as we do.’
Forty-Five
Ava
