No One Saw It Coming by Susan Lewis

Author:Susan Lewis [Lewis, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2022-11-24T17:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The house was full of people, coming and going, climbing the stairs, searching the gardens. Hanna, still damp from the lake, was in the drawing room with Cait and Leo either side of her on a sofa, both leaning into her and holding her hands so tightly that the blood couldn’t flow. Every now and again she turned to press a kiss to their heads, dutifully, tenderly, her eyes not focusing. She wasn’t going to look at anything properly until Jack came in, laughing and demanding to know what the heck everyone was doing here.

‘Let’s have a party,’ he’d cry, rubbing his hands keenly. ‘Han, you sort the nibbles and I’ll get the drinks.’

A sob caught in her throat as the image faded, leaving her with the horror of what had happened. It was so hard to process, impossible to believe it was real.

She watched Jenny, white-faced and seeming suddenly aged, put a hand to her head as though to block any more tears. Florina, red-eyed and shaky, was passing around coffee and biscuits. It was her day off, Hanna remembered; she didn’t need to be here.

Seb, also still damp from his rescue attempt, got to his feet and walked to the window. Hanna’s eyes didn’t follow, but she was aware of him, and of her useless anger that he hadn’t gone down to the lake at the same time as Jack. It surely wouldn’t, couldn’t have happened if he’d been there.

There was a Family Liaison Officer in the room with them, a slight, elfin-faced woman with warm brown eyes and curly blonde hair. Hanna couldn’t remember her name. Right now she couldn’t remember much of what had happened since the police had arrived, only that they’d come in great numbers and in so many vehicles it didn’t seem possible to get in or out of the drive. They were all over the grounds, down at the lake and here in the house.

She didn’t know if Jack’s body had been taken away yet.

She flashed on his head in her lap, wet, muddied, eyes half-shut, lips pale, hair plastered to his skull. His blood still stained her jeans – it was stuck to her fingers – she needed to wash it off.

She couldn’t bear this, she really couldn’t.

She heard voices coming from the kitchen, but not what was being said. Seb turned to her. ‘Maurice Guest has just turned up,’ he said.

She flinched. Guest was Avon and Somerset’s most senior officer, a friend of Jack’s, a fellow Merchant Venturer and keen cricketer, she recalled irrelevantly. It would have taken no time at all for news of Jack’s death to reach him, or for him to cancel whatever he was doing and make his way straight here. If she’d thought about it, she’d have known he’d come.

No one had questioned her yet. Maybe he wanted to do it himself, or be there when someone did.

Seb had been with the detectives since they’d arrived. It was only a few minutes ago that he’d come back into the room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.