The Girl Next Door. Phoebe Morgan

Six

      DS Madeline Shaw

       Tuesday 5th February

      Ashdon is a small town, population 3,193. The town sign sits in the centre, opposite the primary and secondary schools and beside the River Bourne. On it are three farmers, a sheep, and a strangely oversized ear of corn. The town has a doctor’s surgery, a pub and a church, a newsagent, a ceramics place and a lot of middle-class mums. It is not the kind of town where bad things happen, and the death of Clare Edwards comes as a horrible shock.

      Madeline has lived in the town for just over eighteen months. When the DCI formally assigns her to work underneath him on the Clare Edwards case, she is drinking coffee at her desk, black for the calories, and playing back the recording of Nathan Warren’s phone call, made to Lorna after he came across Clare’s body. She knows about the allegation made against him a few years ago, the report of him following a girl home from school, and has already asked Ben Moore about it. DS Moore had shrugged, waved a hand in the air.

      ‘If you want my honest opinion, it was all nonsense,’ he said. ‘The people of Ashdon, well, the impression I get is that they don’t like anyone who’s not like them. The woman whose daughter it was never pressed charges; some people said she was making it up because she was pissed off at the school about something. They moved not long after, over to Saffron Walden.’

      Madeline had nodded, noted it all down just in case.

      ‘I want you on this, Shaw,’ the DCI says now, ‘you know the town, you know the people. You’ve got the edge.’ He looks at her, eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t let me down, Madeline.’

      She grits her teeth; not likely. She’s spent the night thinking about the look on Rachel’s face when they told them the news; the sound of the woman’s knees hitting the floor, the way her husband’s arms wrapped around her tiny waist. In her experience, the family is never quite as innocent as they look, but these two are doing a good job so far of convincing her otherwise.

      ‘I’m so very sorry for your loss,’ she told them both, the words sounding wooden in her mouth. She handed them the list of Clare’s personal items, the ones they have had to take in for evidence. Clare’s watch, the hair tie from around her wrist, her school things and her purse.

      ‘We are still looking for Clare’s phone,’ Madeline told the parents. ‘We’re working on the assumption that whoever attacked Clare took it with them.’

      ‘Can’t you trace it?’ Rachel asked, her breath ragged, snotty.

      ‘My team are working on that,’ the DCI said, ‘and we’ll be looking at the phone records too – finding out who Clare had been speaking to recently, eliminating people from our enquiries.’

      Both of them looked back down at the list.

      ‘And her necklace?’ Rachel had asked, touching a hand to her own throat, grasping at her neck as though she’d like to snap it in two. Ian reached up, clasped her hand in his and pulled it gently back towards the table.

      The police exchanged glances. ‘Necklace?’

      ‘For her sixteenth,’ Ian said. ‘We gave it to her as a birthday present. It was only two weeks ago, 14th of January. A gold one, a locket with her name on.’

      Madeline thought back to the sight of their daughter on the ground, her blonde hair shining in the light of the torch. Feeling for a pulse at Clare’s neck. There was no necklace.

      ‘Is there any chance your guys could have missed it?’ Ian said, looking between them, colour rising a little in his face.

      ‘No,’ Madeline said, ‘that’s extremely unlikely. Everything that was recovered from the scene is on this list.’

      ‘But we’ll double check,’ Rob added, just as Rachel began to sob again, the sound echoing around the kitchen.

      ‘She’s a good girl,’ her stepdad kept saying, over and over again as the police stood to leave, the breakfast things still piled up by the kitchen sink, a stack of Clare’s clothing freshly washed on one of the chairs. ‘She’s a good girl, our Clare.’

      ‘We’ll be in touch,’ Madeline had said, ‘as soon as we can be, Mr and Mrs Edwards. We’ll be back first thing tomorrow.’

      But she’d checked the list this morning, rang the pathologist to check there was nothing else with the body. No necklace. No phone.

      The two of them spend the morning searching the Edwards’ house from top to bottom. The parents don’t look any better than they did yesterday – there’s a bottle of wine by the front door, empty, and another half full on the windowsill. Someone’s already left a bunch of bedraggled-looking flowers on the lawn outside, red roses, no note.

      Rob and Madeline go upstairs, leaving Rachel and Ian sitting downstairs with Theresa, the family liaison officer who arrived just as they were leaving last night. She’s nice, is Theresa, Madeline likes her. Nice but new, good at making tea. Madeline has told her to let the police know how the Edwards are together, what they say in the privacy of their own home. Theresa looked at Madeline like she’d said something awful.

      ‘You don’t suspect them?’

      ‘Theresa,’ she’d said, ‘in a case like this, we can’t rule anyone out.’

      Ian Edwards has told them that both he and his wife were home that afternoon, that he’d left work early with the plan of taking Rachel out for dinner. Rachel had confirmed that she’d been back from her job at Saffron Walden Estate Agency by four, following a viewing of a house in Little Chesterford, eight miles west of Ashdon. The couple had met back at home.

      ‘The family who viewed the house weren’t interested,’ she’d said between sobs. ‘They didn’t stay long, you can check.’

      ‘We will,’ the DCI said, his voice deliberately neutral.

      Clare’s bedroom is tidy, everything in its place – pale pink duvet, wardrobe full of clothes. Madeline runs her hand through the hangers, her gloved fingers brushing over Clare’s dresses and cardis. Her eyes scan the bookshelves, the bedside table with its cluster of hair ties and roll-on deodorant. There’s a pile of jewellery, stud earrings and a silver charm bracelet, but no sign of the gold locket necklace. There’s a string of photos dangling from the mirror – black and white polaroids of two girls sticking their tongues out. One of them is Clare. Not recognising the other girl, Madeline gently tugs the strip of photos and holds it in her gloved hand. Two sets of bright eyes stare out at her.

      ‘She was just a child,’ Madeline says aloud. The DCI doesn’t reply.

      ‘No photos of her father,’ Madeline says, gesturing around the room. There are none downstairs either; Mark is absent from the house altogether. Instead, Ian’s face beams down at them, his arms around Rachel and Clare. The replacement.

      ‘Odd,’ Rob says, ‘to have none whatsoever.’

      There’s nothing in Clare’s bedroom to suggest anything untoward, but they photograph the entire room just in case, bundle her still-winking silver laptop into an evidence bag. Back downstairs, Theresa hands out fresh mugs of tea.

      Madeline shows the parents the photograph of Clare and the other girl.

      ‘Lauren,’ Rachel says immediately, ‘she’s Clare’s best friend.’

      Madeline nods. ‘Thank you – we’ll need to speak to her, to find out if she knew any more about Clare’s movements on the fourth. Can I take a last name, please?’

      ‘Oldbury, Lauren Oldbury,’ the mother says, her voice cracking a little. Her face is very pale, her lips look almost bloodless.

      ‘Mind if I keep this?’ Madeline asks, the photograph of the girls between her fingers. Both parents shake their heads mutely, their eyes fixed on the static face of their daughter.

      ‘Mr and Mrs Edwards,’