Chapter 28
Thomas walked around in a stupor, surveying the mess in his house.
It was dark out by the time the forensic people and search team left his property.
Empty-handed. He’d agreed to a DNA swab being taken; it would have looked suspicious if he’d refused.
Maybe he should have checked with his solicitor first. Too late now.
He began to clear up in the kitchen. Then gave up. He was not that domesticated. He’d ring a cleaning company in the morning. He checked Google and found a local place, saved their number and pocketed his phone before heading upstairs.
The bedroom was in chaos. He noticed the specks of blood on the floor.
Must have flown from Sadie’s nose when he’d hit her.
She had provoked him, with her insolent face and taunts.
She was all about Lily. What about him? He had needs and wants, and she had denied him for so long, it was natural that he looked elsewhere.
It was his misfortune that the elsewhere was somewhere too close to home.
Now he was in the shit with the guards. He’d been careful.
Pay-as-you-go phone. Burner. Whatever. His lover had bought it for him.
That caused a stab of concern. Would she have kept the receipt?
Would the guards find it? They had nothing to connect him to her except for their suspicions and Sadie’s lies.
Sadie had brought him nothing but trouble from day one.
Her deep depressions and the secrets he’d never been able to unlock.
The shining light had been Lily, until Sadie had tried to turn her against him.
Now both of them were gone and he realised it would all come out. He hadn’t thought it through properly.
The bouncy castle was packed away in the back of his transit van.
Christy Kearney had got it back after it had been forensically examined.
If they’d got DNA from it, he figured it might take them a year to process it all because of the amount of people who had used it.
Then again, the rain might have obliterated most of it.
But he wasn’t savvy enough to know if DNA remained after such a deluge. Not that it mattered.
He had to get to the next house, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Maybe he should just cancel, but then he’d be leaving kids disappointed.
Not that they would have much fun, with all the weather warnings issued.
It was teeming down outside and he wasn’t sure how safe it would be for kids slipping and sliding around a bouncy castle.
Not his problem. He had enough to think about without that.
‘Christy, are you wetting the tea or have you travelled to India to pick the leaves?’
‘Doing it now, Dad.’
‘Taking your time about it, aren’t you?’
‘Be there in a minute.’
‘You said that ten minutes ago. Hurry up now, you thundering eejit.’
The old man’s voice carried through the house like a rusty razor blade, tearing strips off Christy.
He poured the tea into the china teacup that his father insisted kept the beverage warm for longer.
The brew looked stewed and his dad was likely to throw it at him, but in that moment, Christy didn’t care.
He had other worries besides his bed-ridden father.
Worries that a cup of tea could never fix.
His trauma sprang from an old place and it ran deep.
So deep that sometimes he could hear its echo like a drumbeat in his head.
And now it had exploded into the present.