Chapter Twenty-Two
EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING JEN WAS outside Daniel Miller’s home, banging on the door.
It was opened almost immediately by a woman.
She wore leggings and a loose T-shirt and carried a rolled yoga mat under one arm.
In the other hand she had car keys. It seemed she was on her way out.
She might have been the same age as Jen, even older, but she had the taut, toned body of a woman who worked out regularly with a personal trainer. Who didn’t drink and never ate cake.
‘Yes?’ She seemed twitchy, an addict scared of missing her exercise fix.
‘Sergeant Rafferty.’ Jen made sure she blocked the door, so the woman couldn’t get past her. ‘I’m looking for Daniel. I left you a message. He missed work. Is he at home?’
‘No.’ Her eyes were on the car in the drive. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but if I don’t go now, I’ll miss my class. Beach boot camp.’
‘Where is Daniel? You know he’s a person of interest in a murder inquiry? We asked him to stay in touch.’
Suddenly, the thought of weight training on the beach seemed less important. ‘What do you mean, a person of interest?’
‘He was present at Millscombe the weekend before the girls’ bodies were found.
He admitted talking to one of the victims. He gave us a dodgy alibi.
’ Jen knew she wasn’t being entirely professional, but this woman had got under her skin.
‘And he didn’t turn up for his shift at the pub yesterday.
’ She was about to pass on Mag’s message word for word but thought better of it at the last minute.
She needed the woman’s co-operation and describing her son as an entitled, arrogant arse might not help.
‘He was going to call the Fisherman’s Arms to explain,’ the woman said.
‘Well, he didn’t. And explain what?’
‘He’s gone back to Cambridge.’ She propped the mat she was carrying against the wall. Perhaps the beach boot camp didn’t seem quite so important now. ‘A friend was going through a bad time, and he said he’d go, give him a bit of support.’
Convenient.
‘I’ll need contact details for the friend.’
Stop pissing me about, lady.
‘I’m not sure that I have them. Daniel’s an adult now. We don’t track his movements.’ But even she could tell that this was serious, and Jen would need more than that. ‘Look, do you want to come in and I’ll see what I can find?’
They sat in the kitchen. There was no sign of her husband.
Perhaps he was on an urgent call to Hong Kong or Singapore.
Fending off alligators. Daniel’s mother was called Belinda, and she offered Jen coffee.
There was a fancy pod machine on the bench, along with a milk steamer, so she provided a very good cappuccino.
‘When Daniel said he was planning to go back to Cambridge before the start of term, we thought that might be a good idea.’ Belinda, it seemed, didn’t drink coffee.
She pulled a jug of homemade smoothie out of the fridge.
It was the colour of rotting seaweed. ‘I mean, he hasn’t been doing brilliantly at university, and we thought a bit of time in the library before term starts … ’ Her voice tailed off.
‘Nothing to do with two murdered young women, and not wanting to answer difficult questions about his whereabouts on the last morning they were alive?’ Jen thought she’d put up with enough.
‘You’d better tell him to get his arse back down here before the end of the day, or we’ll ask the Cambridge police to pull him in for questioning there.
That won’t look good for his university career. ’
The woman stared at her, shocked, the reality finally hitting home. ‘You’re not saying that he’s a suspect? He’d never met those girls before. Why on earth would he kill them?’
Jen wanted to tell her about some of the killers she’d known.
The pathetic men who’d killed without any real motive.
Because they needed to feel powerful for one moment in their lives.
Because they couldn’t bear to be laughed at.
Because they were so drunk or so high that they hardly knew what they were doing.
Motive was often irrational, a fleeting moment of rage or despair.
‘He’s not a suspect at the moment,’ she said.
After all, she didn’t want Daniel disappearing altogether.
‘But he is a person of interest and if he doesn’t come home under his own steam, we’ll have to pull him in, and he might be arrested and cautioned.
’ She met Belinda’s staring, rabbit in a headlight eyes.
‘Would you let me have a look at his room? There might be something there to tell us where he really was that morning.’ When there was no immediate response, she added, ‘We probably have enough to get a warrant, and then you might get a police car and uniformed officers turning up on your drive. That would get the neighbours talking.’
Belinda paused for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Sure. I don’t think he’ll have anything to hide.’
She wasn’t certain, though. Jen thought her son was a mystery to her. She understood what that was like – kids could be that way. Hidden, full of secrets. It might be an indication of independence. Or it could be a sign of guilt.
Belinda led her up the stairs. The house was quiet.
‘Where’s your husband?’ Because his office door was open and there was no sign of him.
‘He’s in London. Business. He got the train yesterday evening.’
Jen wondered if that was important or relevant. ‘He didn’t go with Daniel?’
‘No. Daniel took his car.’
The son’s room was at the back of the house, big but a little dark, even though it faced east. The garden behind the house was steep, a series of terraces.
Well-kept but bland. Jen thought they’d have a gardener, someone local to come in every couple of weeks to keep things tidy. Someone who didn’t really care.
Belinda hovered in the doorway. Jen turned and gave her a smile.
Perhaps it wasn’t her fault after all that Daniel was so screwed up.
Perhaps she too found him difficult to like.
To love. There was an older sister after all, who’d moved away from home.
Perhaps she was compliant, more like her parents.
‘It’s okay. I can take it from here. I won’t be long.’
The room had even less character than the garden.
There were a couple of photos, of a young man, presumably Daniel, riding the surf, dwarfed by huge waves.
Otherwise, nothing personal. Had he resented the family’s move from the city more than he’d let on?
Was the entitled exterior masking loneliness?
Certainly, it was hard to believe that a student lived here.
Even Jen’s Ella, who’d always been easy, too sensible for her years, left unwashed clothes around, books in piles, the occasional dirty mug.
Ben’s gaff was a pigsty of discarded pizza boxes and evil-smelling underwear.
Perhaps the Miller family had a cleaner as well as a gardener.
And perhaps she’d been in since Daniel had done his disappearing trick the morning before.
Jen pulled on gloves and began her search.
There was one wall of bookshelves. There were a lot of books; many looked daunting.
There was nothing she’d be tempted to dip into and no sign that any had been recently read.
Perhaps Daniel wasn’t an academic type but had been forced to apply to a good university to please his parents.
He might be bright, but once away from their clutches, he’d struggled to be engaged.
Another wall was covered with built-in wardrobes and drawers.
Boutique hotel grey. When she opened the doors, she was pleased that this was a tip.
Either Daniel or the cleaner had just thrown in anything that would get in the way of a duster and Hoover.
Clean and dirty clothes mixed. Damp swimwear and work polo shirts.
She pulled out the shirts that had been worn.
One smelled of woodsmoke, perhaps from the barbecue where Brennan had cooked his high-class burgers at MillsFest. No sign of blood spatter, but she took an evidence bag from her tote and put the shirt inside.
Belinda Miller wouldn’t miss it. Jen thought it unlikely she’d be the person doing the laundry.
Under the window there was a desk with a laptop on it. Surely that wouldn’t have been left behind if Daniel had actually gone back to university to study, even if he’d intended on spending some time supporting a friend? He’d done a runner, encouraged by his parents.
In one of the desk drawers, Jen found Daniel’s passport. At least, then, the runner had only been to Cambridge, not overseas.
There was an en-suite bathroom. Again, it was spotless, with an overwhelming smell of bleach.
Jen suspected that if Daniel had tried to wash blood or any other trace of the dead girls from his body or clothes, there’d be no sign of it now, even if they checked the drain.
It seemed a very convenient coincidence.
Belinda was waiting for her in the kitchen. She was anxious, edgy. Jen had started feeling sorry for her.
‘Have you been in touch with Daniel?’ She kept her voice easy. ‘Is he heading back?’
‘He didn’t answer,’ Belinda said. ‘He’ll still be asleep. I’ve left him a message.’ With a spark of defiance, she added, ‘Do you want to check my phone?’
Jen shook her head. ‘No need for that. It’s in everyone’s interest to get him back here as soon as we can.’ She dropped her card on the table. ‘Give me a ring, will you, when you hear from him?’
Belinda nodded. She picked up her house keys and followed Jen to the door.
‘You off to boot camp?’
‘Too late,’ Belinda said. ‘But I need some exercise. I’ll go for a run.’
In the street Jen watched the woman jog easily up the steep bank until she disappeared from view.
Like I thought. An exercise junkie.
She decided that she’d go to the greasy spoon at the harbour for a full English. She hadn’t had time for breakfast before leaving home. Besides, the Kinzalows might appear again.