Bloodline

‘So he will still inherit her house. Now there’s a motive for murder if ever there was one.’

Angela, I thought, was also guilty of watching too much television, but it made about as much sense as anything else.

‘I am sure the police will have interviewed him,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, they will have inspected his car. There must be some damage to the roof where I hit it.’ And some blood underneath, I thought, where Emily had gone.

‘How are you getting on in the kitchen?’ I asked, changing the subject.

‘Done,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘At least, I’ve thrown away the food that was off and stacked up on the worktop everything that wasn’t on the inventory list. But we need some boxes to pack it into.’

‘I’ll get some,’ I said. ‘Just as soon as the hire car arrives.’

‘Do you need me any more, then?’ she asked, getting to her feet.

‘Not if you’d rather get off,’ I said, also standing up. ‘Thank you so much for coming to collect me. It’s made a huge difference.’

We both hugged each other again, neither of us seemingly wanting to be the first to pull back. I felt closer to my elder sister at that point than I had ever done so before.

‘Is everything all right in your world?’ I asked, perhaps sensing something.

‘Oh, yes and no,’ she said with a sigh. ‘We’re just desperately short of money, like everyone else, and that was not helped by that damn party. And then the bank keeps talking about making Nick’s job part-time, or even non-existent altogether, and where would he get another job at his age?’

‘But you and he are all right?’

‘We seem to argue a lot more these days, mostly about money, but I think we’re fine.’ She didn’t sound too convinced. ‘Though I don’t know how we’re going to afford Tatiana’s university fees next year.’

It was she who was now close to tears.

‘How about a student loan?’ I said. ‘Get her to apply now.’

‘But it would saddle her with so much debt for the future.’

‘Better for her to have a debt in the future,’ I said, ‘than to have her parents split up in the present due to worries over money.’

‘You make everything sound so simple.’

‘I’d happily talk to Nick if you would like me to.’

She laughed. ‘We always said that you couldn’t arrange the proverbial piss-up in a brewery, but now you’re more organized than the rest of us.’

Was I? I didn’t feel like it at the moment.

The telephone rang and I picked it up.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Mr Shillingford?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Detective Sergeant Sharp.’

‘Oh, right. Thank you for calling back. Can you hold a second?’ I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s the policeman dealing with Clare’s death,’ I said to Angela.

‘I’ll go,’ she mouthed at me. ‘Call me later.’

She gave me a peck on the cheek and left.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said to the detective sergeant. ‘Someone was just leaving.’

‘You said in your message that you have some new evidence?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It would seem that one of the Hilton Hotel staff believes that there may have been a man in my sister’s room when she fell from the balcony.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

‘Did you actually interview any of the hotel staff?’ I asked. ‘It seems that my sister’s arrival at the hotel caused quite a stir because she had no luggage.’

I could tell from his continued silence that the answer to my question was no, he hadn’t interviewed anyone at the hotel.

‘But the suicide note,’ he said.

‘I don’t care about the note,’ I said angrily. ‘I want to know why my sister died.’

‘The inquest will establish that in due course,’ he said formally.

‘But not if no one investigates anything first.’

‘It’s the coroner’s staff who are responsible for investigating the death,’ he said. ‘The police would only be involved if a crime had occurred.’

‘But I think a crime might have occurred,’ I said. ‘And, anyway, the coroner’s office hasn’t been in touch with me. I haven’t even had a copy of the report of her post-mortem.’

‘I did discuss the cause of death with your father, as next of kin,’ he said, somewhat defensively. ‘And it would not be usual for copies of a post-mortem report to be issued to the family prior to the inquest. That’s when the coroner will deal with any matters that might have arisen from the examination of the body.’

‘What sort of matters?’ I asked.

‘Any medical conditions that might have been present.’

‘And were there any medical conditions present?’ I asked.

‘Nothing pertinent to her death.’

‘Hold on a minute.’ I took in what he’d just said. ‘So there was something, then, but it didn’t have anything to do with her death.’

‘There was nothing,’ he said, ‘other than her being pregnant.’

21

‘What did you say?’ I asked him in astonishment.

‘I said there was nothing else, other than her being pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’ I almost shouted it into the phone.

‘I assumed you knew,’ DS Sharp said. ‘Miss Shillingford was six or seven weeks pregnant when she died.’

I was flabbergasted. I sat there staring at the wall above the desk not really knowing what to think.

‘But surely you might have thought that being pregnant could have been pertinent to her death,’ I said.