Chapter 40
FORTY
Cain was alone for the time being. Stan had been cornered by Bigfoot and dragged off to his office whilst he’d been brewing up.
Cain had heard his voice booming down the corridor and dived into the stationery cupboard until the coast was clear.
He should finish work and call it a day.
Go home and maybe cook something nice for Angela.
Then he remembered the flowers and bag of shopping in the boot of the car for Amy and stood up.
He’d go see her first, Angela wouldn’t mind, and Ben was at the post-mortem with Morgan.
They would be gone for hours and no doubt go straight home.
They’d well and truly lost the golden hours on this case, he thought.
It was too complicated and, if he was being honest, they had dropped the ball from finding Sharon Montgomery, the first victim in this weird, messed-up case, and now three sisters were all dead, brutally murdered and they were no closer to ending this than they had been from finding Sharon’s body.
He’d looked through all the social media posts he could stomach for one day, looking for any mention of a brother.
It was messing with his head. He looked on Facebook occasionally, but that was to be nosey, to see what his mates were up to.
Who was seeing who, which cars they were driving, the latest vacation they’d been on.
He wasn’t really into social media, so he reckoned he was wasting his time by mindlessly scrolling through it.
He had no idea what to look out for. Amy was the expert.
He wondered if she’d want to take a pop at it.
He could feed and bathe Ava whilst she had a mooch around the Williams sisters’ accounts.
Amy would probably jump at the chance for a little normality; spending all day feeding a baby and changing its dirty nappies wasn’t exactly riveting fun, even as gorgeous as Ava was.
That was as long as he could get out without Bigfoot catching up with him.
He left the office and headed towards the back stairs that were technically the fire escape, but everyone used it when they needed to be discreet.
It would take him away from everyone else’s offices, straight down to the changing rooms and out of the exit in the Task Force changing rooms that only they ever used.
He made it to the car park unscathed and a free man, driving out through the gates as if he was on his way to an IR with his blues and sirens on.
When he knocked on Amy’s door it was less than seven minutes later. She opened the door, took one look at him, the flowers and bag of junk food, and burst into tears.
‘Oh, I can come back tomorrow. Is now not a good time?’
She shook her head, wiping her damp cheeks with the sleeve of her dressing gown. ‘No, it’s perfect timing. I look a mess, I feel a mess and all I want is a hot shower, but Ava’s not settled long enough all day for me to even pee properly. Is Angela okay?’
‘Uncle Cain is here; I’ll sort Ava. You go do something with that hair, I mean I’m not sure what look you’re going for but wild is pretty accurate.
And yes, thank you, Angela is fine. She met her friend for lunch and probably got a bit carried away with the old Prosecco.
’ He grinned at her, and she smacked his arm, but gently, and smiled back.
‘Don’t know what I’d do without you, Cain. As much as you get on my tits, you’re a lifesaver.’
He shrugged. ‘Can’t be a hundred per cent perfect all the time.’
He squeezed past her, handing her the flowers and bag with nappies and chocolate in it, making a beeline for Ava who was restless in her baby chair. Scooping her into his arms, he held her close and began to gently rock her. Ava looked at him, and he was sure she smiled.
‘Hey, she just smiled at me. Can she do that yet?’
‘No, she’s not old enough.’
‘Well, I’m pretty sure she did.’
Amy was ripping the wrapper off a bar of Galaxy. Breaking off a strip of chocolate, she crammed it into her mouth and sighed.
‘She probably did for you; she’s like a different baby when you enter the room. Maybe you and Angela should take her for a couple of weeks and give her back when she’s more than just a crying, feeding, crapping machine.’
Cain gently covered the baby’s ears and whispered, ‘She doesn’t mean that, sweet girl, don’t listen to her. She’s grouchy and tired, the worst combination for your momma.’
‘I do mean it. This is much harder than I ever anticipated.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not being funny, Amy, you didn’t anticipate having to do this on your own, did you? I mean you thought Jack would be here—’ He stopped talking, watching her expression to see how much he’d put his foot in it.
Amy didn’t burst into tears, she shrugged.
‘Well, I didn’t think I’d be alone that’s true. Not only did he dump me, but he also went and died too. Talk about selfish.’ She winked at him, and he released the pent-up breath he’d been holding.
‘Hey, leave the jokes to me. You’re rubbish at them, but yes, nobody saw that one coming, bless you.’
Amy didn’t answer as she broke off another strip of chocolate. ‘Are you good whilst I go cry in the shower for ten minutes?’
He nodded. ‘We are good.’ He walked over to Amy and stroked her face. ‘Cry as much as you need to, you got served the most awful lot in life that you didn’t deserve. At least you have Ava though, she is precious.’
He had a sudden urge to lean forward and kiss Amy.
He felt his head moving closer to hers and he was sure she was leaning up towards him, and he wanted to more than anything.
As if sensing something epic was about to happen, Ava began to squirm and let out a high-pitched cry, breaking the spell between them both.
Amy withdrew and he straightened up, gently rocking the baby to soothe her.
‘I’ll be in the bathroom if you need me.’
‘We won’t, we’re good, aren’t we, Ava?’
He could feel his cheeks burning. Amy disappeared upstairs, taking the chocolate with her, and he wondered what the heck had just happened between them.
What was he thinking? He’d almost kissed her, and she’d wanted to kiss him back, he was pretty sure she had.
He couldn’t do that to Angela, he loved her.
He was besotted with her elegant, ageless charm.
Her easy-going, supportive manner that never questioned why he was late home.
She didn’t feel threatened by Amy and Ava, felt no jealousy towards Amy because she knew they were just very good friends.
But he had nearly thrown all of that out of the water.
If he’d kissed Amy, it would have ruined everything, their friendship and his relationship with Angela, yet none of that had stopped him from almost doing it.
He looked at the baby who had settled herself again. ‘You have Spidey senses, kid; I owe you big time for that. Thank you.’
Ava let out a loud burp which made him grin. ‘Just like your mother.’
He gently lay her back into her Moses basket and began to pick up the wet wipes, nappy bags and empty baby bottles.
Busying himself tidying up the living room.
Then he went into the kitchen, rolled up his sleeves and washed the pots, before cleaning out the bottles and putting them into the steriliser.
Cain made up a fresh batch of bottles to see Amy through the night, then opened the fridge to see what he could make her to eat.
The only ingredients she had that he could scrape together was for chili.
Taking out his phone, he ordered pizzas from Gino’s to get delivered, then set about making a pan of chili.
She could freeze it and then microwave it, so she at least had something a bit more substantial to eat.
By the time he’d finished, there was a knock on the door.
The pizzas smelled like heaven in a cardboard box.
He cleared the table got out plates, knives and forks just as Amy came back downstairs.
Taking in her sleeping baby, the tidy house, row of freshly made bottles, chili cooking on the stove and the piping hot pizza on the table, she burst into tears again.
Cain rushed to hug her – briefly this time – and pulled away. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s my hormones, they’re a mess. Nothing is wrong, I can’t believe what I did to deserve a friend like you. Thank you, Cain.’
He smiled at her. ‘Phew, I thought you were going to go crazy with me or something. You are welcome, Amy. I did what I could. Is that enough bottles for Ava?’
She nodded. ‘Perfect and you even used up my out-of-date mince and peppers, how thoughtful.’
Cain laughed loudly. ‘Yeah, I did sniff it before I started cooking it. Smelled okay, didn’t have that rank, gone off odour mince sometimes has. Although I’ve cooked it when it has and by the time you add the sauce you can’t tell.’
Amy pulled a face. ‘Christ, I’m glad you don’t work in a restaurant. You’d get it shut down straight away.’
‘For your information I bet some places do much worse than cook out-of-date mince. Eat your pizza, I got you a meat feast with extra cheese.’
She let out a contented sigh as she opened the box and inhaled. ‘You’re going to make Angela the perfect husband one day.’
He beamed at her. ‘I try, although she’s not bothered about getting married. She said she’s happy being engaged, there’s not much point at her age.’
Amy shrugged. ‘I suppose so. Why don’t you ring her and invite her over for pizza? I’d love to see her, is she okay Morgan mentioned you were worried about her?’
‘Yeah, false alarm. I’ll message her, but I don’t want to disturb her, they probably have a lot of catching up to do.’
He didn’t want to talk about how he hadn’t been able to get hold of her for a few hours and that he’d almost gone out of his mind worrying about her.
‘Hey, how do you feel about doing me a favour and doing some of your excellent detective work after you’ve eaten?’
‘You bought me pizza to butter me up?’
He nodded. ‘Yep, I did.’
‘Cain, what do you need me to do?’
‘Well, these murders are a nightmare full of complications. Did you know that Lydia Williams had two sisters, and they were both found murdered the last couple of days?’
‘No way.’ Amy spoke through a mouthful of pizza.
‘Yes, way. Apparently, there is a stepbrother, half-brother somewhere. Me and Morgan are worried that he could be in danger, though she’s leaning more towards thinking he’s the killer, but up to now I haven’t been able to find anything on him.’
‘What about Morgan?’
‘She’s had a look, but Ben dragged her off to the post-mortems. I wanted to be useful in the meantime and try and come up with a lead, but you know how rubbish I am with Facebook and Instagram, it’s not my thing.’
‘Yeah, I’ll take a look, but you have to mind Ava if she wakes up, and you also need your work laptop so you can save anything I find, and you have proof. Have you brought it with you?’
‘It’s in the car.’
‘Go get it then.’
Cain saluted her. ‘Yes, boss.’ Then shoved almost a full slice of pizza into his mouth.
‘You’re still a complete pig.’
He gave her a thumbs-up, afraid he might choke if he tried to talk, and went out to the car to grab his laptop.