Too Good to Be True

4 The House

Anna’s house was sad. Perez could see the story of her growing depression in it. She must have painted the kitchen when she first arrived, he thought – it was bright yellow. Tom might be the landlord, but he was boring and he wouldn’t have chosen anything so colourful.

As Jimmy walked around, he noticed the floors were sticky and there was dust on the bookshelves. It looked as if Anna had given up on the place. Only a bunch of flowers on the living-room windowsill showed any sign of hope. They were drooping and brown, but they would have been alive on the night that she’d died.

Nobody had been in to clean up since her death. The wine bottle had gone and the glass was on the kitchen counter. The police must have put it with the other mucky pots that stood there waiting to be washed up. Perez could imagine the woman sitting here, alone. He could believe that she’d killed herself. He decided he’d tell Sarah to take no notice of the gossips. This was not a murder after all.

In the living room there was a file on the table where Anna had been sitting when she died. Perez pulled on gloves and looked inside. There were lesson plans and notes about each of the children in her class written in neat, round handwriting. Even if she’d been ill, Anna had cared a lot about her job.

He walked upstairs. The child’s bedroom had been emptied of most of her clothes. A doll lay on the bed. Perez hoped that a loved soft toy had been taken into care with her.

He looked into Anna’s room, then went inside and opened the curtains and the window to let in some clean, cold air. The room was untidy. There was a pile of clothes on a chair and make-up on the pine dressing table. Along with the lipstick and perfume, Perez spotted an empty plastic bottle which had once contained Anna’s pills.

He tried to picture what might have happened on the night of her death. She’d been drinking. Had she roused herself to walk upstairs? Had it been a sudden impulse to take the pills in the bedroom? Why would she then go back to her chair downstairs? It seemed a little odd.

If Anna had planned to die, wouldn’t she lie on the bed? A final sleep. When Fran, the love of his life, had died he’d thought of killing himself, and had imagined how good it would be to go to sleep and never wake up. But he’d had their daughter Cassie to look after.

And Anna had had Lucy, he thought, so perhaps it wasn’t suicide after all. He kept changing his mind about what might have happened here. By the bed there was a photo of a woman and a girl. Anna and Lucy. They both had dark curly hair and dark eyes. Both of them were laughing.

Perez looked at the dressing table again. Along with the clutter of make-up there was a scrap of paper. He’d missed it before because his attention had been caught by the pill bottle. The police must have been so certain Anna had killed herself that they hadn’t done a proper search of the house. Or perhaps the paper had meant nothing to them.

It was a note written in pencil. It looked as if it had been written in a hurry.

Got your message. Friday 10th will be fine. Wine will be in the fridge! See you then. A x

It was in the same handwriting as he’d seen in the file downstairs. The 10th was the day before Anna’s body had been found. The day she was supposed to have killed herself. Perez read the note again. These didn’t sound like the words of a depressed woman. They were almost hopeful, looking forward. Like the flowers in the pretty vase in the living room.

But if Anna had written the note to confirm a meeting, what was it still doing in her bedroom? Had she never sent it? And if someone had been in this house drinking wine with Anna on that evening, why had they never come forward to the police?

He went back to the kitchen and looked in the cupboards. Anna had only brought the basics with her. This could be a student house. There were a few mismatched bowls and plates, some cutlery in a tray. Most of her stuff was still dirty on the counter. Perez was tempted to wash it up. In the cupboard there was one clean glass. It still had a white thread of cotton inside from the tea towel, so it had been dried quite recently.

He stood looking at it and pictured again the evening of Anna’s death. Perhaps there had been a visitor, someone who’d had a glass of wine with Anna? Someone who had taken the trouble to wash up the glass and put it away before leaving the house. And that definitely suggested not suicide – but murder.