Eeny Meeny

44

Her excitement was short-lived. As she exited the Anderson house, Helen clocked Emilia Garanita’s tell-tale red Fiat, parked sideways across the drive, blocking her departure. And here was Emilia approaching, a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile pasted on her face.

‘Do you know what you get for obstructing police business, Emilia?’

‘But I can’t talk to you any other way, can I?’ she replied innocently. ‘You never return my calls and your media liaison people know less about the case than I do, so what’s a girl to do?’

‘Move it.’ Mark was growing impatient but his reward was a look of utter scorn.

‘I want to talk to you about Peter Brightston,’ Emilia continued.

‘Tragic.’

‘Odd that he should kill himself so soon after Ben’s accident. It was only an accident, right?’

‘That’s what we believe.’

‘Only some colleagues at his firm are spreading rumours that he killed Ben. Would you care to comment on that, Inspector?’

‘People will always speculate Emilia, you know that.’ Helen refused to play the game by somebody else’s rules. ‘If anything changes I’ll let you know, but it’s not an active line of -’

‘What did they fall out over? Love? Money? Were they gay?’

Helen pushed past.

‘You’re wasting my time, Emilia. And the last time I checked that was a criminal offence.’

Helen and Mark climbed into the unmarked car. Mark pointedly started the engine, staring daggers at Emilia. She looked down her nose at him, then slowly walked back to her car. Helen was relieved and pleased that Anna and Marie hadn’t featured in their discussion – it had been put out as natural causes and no one seemed to be challenging that – yet.

As they drove away, Helen glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure she wasn’t following them. For once, Emilia had decided discretion was the better part of valour and given up the chase. Helen breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way she could have an audience for what she was about to do.