Dirty Little Secret by Jonathan Peace

Author:Jonathan Peace [Peace, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hobeck Books
Published: 2022-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Helen Holland brought a tray of tea in and set it down on the lace-covered table between them. Danes smiled. Louise thanked her as she poured them each a cup. It was just the three of them in the room; the family liaison officer had gone outside for a smoke while the father, George, was upstairs somewhere.

‘There’s biscuits if you’d like,’ Helen said, passing Danes his tea. He took the saucer, the spoon rattling as he did so.

‘This is fine, thank you,’ he replied.

‘They’re chocolate bourbons. Jessica’s favourite.’

Louise leaned forward. ‘Mrs Holland, we’d like to ask a couple of questions about Jessica’s boyfriend if we may?’

For a moment, Helen said nothing. Her gaze was caught by the biscuits, which she kept rearranging on the plate. At first she laid them out side by side, then she stacked them, creating a small tower in the centre of the plate.

Neither Louise nor Danes said anything, but they watched her. Carefully.

‘She would always steal a few with her to her room of a night,’ she said, talking more to herself than the two police detectives. A soft smile briefly caressed her lips and then was gone, her mouth once more a harrowed line. ‘There’d be crumbs all over her bed come the next morning. Except this morning there wasn’t. Because she didn’t come home.’

Tears now fell, released from their prison by her own words, as though she had given herself permission to cry.

Danes gave a self-conscious cough and stood.

‘If it’s all right with you, I’m just going to take another look at her bedroom.’

Helen didn’t reply. She had her head down, her hands covering her face as she continued to cry. Louise moved to sit beside the grieving mother, one arm instinctively going towards her shoulders as they started to shake.

‘That’s okay,’ she said, catching herself and letting her arm drop to her side. ‘You let it out.’ Delivering warm empathy and cold scrutiny at the same time was always a struggle. To those outside the job it could seem cold, cruel even. To those inside the job, it was a harsh reality. Every fibre of her being as a human and a woman screamed at her to reach out and take some of the mother’s pain from her with but a simple touch, and yet the detective that she was forbade her from this simple act of humanity. There had to be a line between them, one that separated hot emotion from the cold logic needed to scrutinise every detail.

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