Ruthgow stands up, too, looking pained. ‘I don’t want to upset you. We have to look into every possibility. You know Flora’s case isn’t closed. It’s cold, that’s all. Margot, please …’ He holds out a hand and in his expression she sees the man he used to be, the man she cried and got drunk with, opened up to – about Keith and how much she missed him even though he hadn’t always been the perfect husband or father. And, in turn, he’d confided in her about coping with his wife’s sudden death in a car crash. But now she was on the other side: no longer the innocent victim whose precious daughter had been snatched away so cruelly. Now she was the mother of a killer.

‘She was just a kid,’ she says hotly, as she walks him to the front door. But Ruthgow leaves without saying anything further.

Heather was only ten years old when Keith died. She was only ten years old when she pulled the trigger on the gun that killed her father.

Chapter 17

17

Margot

Margot watches from the living-room window as Ruthgow gets into his unmarked police car and drives away. How did he find out about Keith’s accident? When Flora went missing it never came out – the police force in Kent had handled it, and back then Margot hadn’t thought of the implications. Heather had been fourteen when Flora had disappeared. And it had never once occurred to her that Heather was responsible. Why would it? But now … No. She refuses to believe it. Heather loved Flora more than anyone in the world: she would never have hurt her. If anything, what had happened to Keith, then to Flora, has obviously destabilized Heather to such an extent that she’d flipped. Maybe Deirdre and Clive Wilson were targeted completely at random. Heather probably didn’t even know what she was doing. Surely it was temporary insanity.

Yesterday she’d contacted a defence lawyer in the likelihood that Heather will go to court – because her daughter will wake up, and when she does they need to fight her case. Together. Damn Ruthgow. He must be near to retiring. Does he want to solve Flora’s case before he leaves the force? Is that what this is all about? And if he and the rest of his team pin it on Heather, it’s a closed case, ends neatly tied up. Ruthgow can walk off into his future with a clear conscience and a pat on the back.