The man nodded and made a note on his pad. There was a recorder running, which he had pointed out to her at the start. Then he went through the exact state of the house doors, which felt superfluous to Thea. She had explained all that the day before to the officers who came to the house. When she suggested this was repetition, her interviewer put his pencil down and adopted a severe expression. ‘It was not an official murder investigation at that point,’ he reminded her.

‘Point taken,’ she conceded. ‘And I admit it was very sloppy of me when I knew Grace was so frightened. I should have been more careful for her sake, but she 134was up in the attic and I wasn’t scared at all. I suppose I thought all danger was gone, with a new day and everything seeming perfectly normal.’

‘It’s still not easy to understand,’ he insisted.

‘But isn’t that always how it goes? Real people doing unpredictable things for no apparent reason. Not just telling lies and keeping secrets, but being thoughtless, acting on impulse, contradicting themselves. Real life is terribly messy, don’t you find?’

‘No, not really,’ he disagreed. ‘Most people are very predictable, and their lies are usually easy to spot. Even the secrets generally boil down to love affairs or stealing money.’

‘Not in my experience,’ she insisted.

The man gave himself a little shake. ‘We’re not here to discuss human behaviour. Let’s stick to this specific case, all right? Can we go back to when you first met her? She told you her shoulder was dislocated, but what did she want from you? What did she ask you to do for her?’

‘Um … nothing, really. She left it all to me. I told her I hadn’t got a car, but I could offer shelter and a bit of food. I hardly had anything. I didn’t bring nearly enough with me on Saturday. I’m always hopeless with food. The whole business is so boring.’

‘Was she hungry?’

‘Very. Even though she was tired and overwrought, she managed to eat and drink everything I gave her. She said she’d been out in those woods all afternoon, and was thirsty.’

‘All afternoon?’135

‘That’s what she said.’

‘So, according to her, she was up in Manchester for some reason – you think she must have just landed at the airport, do you?’

‘She must have said something that implied that, but I can’t remember what. It could be that I assumed it and she agreed. I might have put the idea in her head.’

‘Well, we have to check it as far as we can. So, she could have been met there and driven to the small village of Barnsley by people she decided were posing a threat to her, so she ran away from them − all during Saturday morning – right? That’s entirely feasible. She could have been telling the truth.’

‘Can’t you check the passenger lists? They probably have photos of everybody, don’t they? You can easily find out if she was on a plane.’