‘I’ll be staying here, thank you,’ Ciara says. ‘I don’t want you rifling through my father’s belongings without a family member present.’

Kathleen has stopped praying and finally speaks. ‘This has to be a mistake,’ she says. ‘I don’t care how experienced your pathologist is, he or she is wrong. No one murdered my brother! That’s ridiculous. It makes no sense. Who in here would be so brutal as to hurt a frail old man?’

Her voice is getting louder. She looks at me while she spits out her last few words and I have all the confirmation I need that I am very much in the frame for Joe’s murder. In the eyes of his nearest and dearest, at least.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Heidi

Now

The clock in the hall ticks loudly and the old radiators rattle as the heating comes on. It’s bitter cold outside now, I can hear the rain lash against the windows.

The police van has pulled up, officers are coming in, dressed in white suits, carrying cases and bags and lights, and people are asking questions. I can see curtains twitching across the street. A neighbour’s car pulls up, but he doesn’t go straight into his house, despite the cold. He stands and watches. I see him lift his phone. The word will spread quickly.

It’s late now. After ten. I’m exhausted and I can feel my nerves jangling. I want to do just what DI Bradley suggested and go elsewhere while the police pull the house apart, looking for God knows what, but Ciara has stated her intention to stay, as has Kathleen, and there is no way I’m leaving them to it. I dread to think what they could say or do to point the police in my direction. I’m still hoping the pathologist, for all his experience, is wrong. Not that Joe didn’t deserve to be murdered – but just that the thought of there being a killer in our midst is unsettling and exhausting.

I yawn. ‘I’m really tired,’ I say as Alex and I sit together in the living room.

We haven’t spoken much since DI Bradley left. I don’t think we know what to say to each other. We’re in shock.

I rest my head against Alex’s shoulder and feel that he is tense. Guilt washes over me for embroiling him in this mess. I feel him kiss my forehead. It’s typical of him that he is trying to comfort me.

‘Curl up here,’ he says, wrapping his arm around me. ‘Take a nap here on the sofa if you can. I’ll not leave you.’

He has barely finished talking before I’ve started to drift off.

I jump awake to Marie’s voice, loud and distressed, in the living room.

‘It’s a nightmare,’ she says. ‘A nightmare.’

Ciara walks into the room and flings herself at her mother as if she is still a child and the pair sob loudly, dramatically.

‘I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t do anything,’ she sobs, her shoulders heaving up and down.