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Back The Family Next Door Save as PDF
Chapters (117)
  1. Also by
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Epigraph
  5. PROLOGUE
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
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  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The blood flowed dark, the thinnest of trickles against the smudge of her face. Rat poison in her mouth to finish the job. Even then, the disorder of death made him uncomfortable.

Bridget Sawyer’s body was slight enough to hide in one of the hand-carved chests decorated with the alphabet, all pastel flourishes and curls.

His wedding gift to Audrina, the woman he loved.

102

102

Wednesday 1st August 2018, 6:28 A.M.

27 The Avenue

Cooper Clifton let go of his wife’s hand and held out his wrists in submission, his fingers loosely curled into his palms.

“I know why you’ve come,” he said.

In all her years of policing, Detective Sergeant Wildeve Stanton had never heard a suspect say that.

As the police cars had pulled up outside 27 The Avenue with its flower-filled garden and freshly painted brickwork, she had thought how it was always the same: that seam of darkness hemming the lives of ordinary folk. That so much of the ugliness of her job was found not in city alleyways or late-night street stabbings, but behind the mown lawns and washed cars and laundry on the line, the mundane and everyday.

Inside lives quietly lived.

She stared at his face. The white softness of his hair. The smile lines that fanned out from his eyes. The inoffensiveness of his ironed polo shirt.

This limp effort of his body.

This man had killed Adam.

The urge to fly at him surprised her. She dreamed of plucking out his eyes and dragging her nails down his face, of holding his wrist over the flame of the stove’s gas ring until the skin blistered.

She felt all these things, but she believed in the process of law. Instead she spat out his rights—“arrested on suspicion of murder”—and handcuffed him.

“What on earth’s going on?” The older woman had stumbled into the hallway and collapsed into her wheelchair. She wore a look of perplexed mystery.

“Try not to worry, my love.” Mr. Clifton attempted to pat his wife’s hand, but the bite of the metal forbade it. “Things will be as right as rain. I’ll be home before you know it.”

Mrs. Clifton’s face crumpled and Wildeve felt a tug of sympathy for her.

“Someone will stay with you,” she said kindly. “They’ll explain what’s happening.”

Officers were spreading out across the house, a thorough search already under way. In a minute, Wildeve and Mac would escort Cooper Clifton to the car parked outside. But both of them were distracted by Mrs. Clifton, who was clutching at them, plucking at their clothes.

“Please, my husband wouldn’t hurt a fly. There’s been a terrible mistake. He’s not capable of something like that.”

More officers were entering the house, the front door wide open. Noise and chaos. A sense of relief.