Like This, for Ever

was on her arm. ‘There’s another matter we need to ask Mr Roberts about.’
    Was there? Christ, she really wasn’t up to this. Thank God for Neil.
    ‘Our crime-scene investigators found traces of blood on your boat,’ said Anderson, as Dana sat back down. ‘We can’t identify whose yet, but we will. Anything you want to say?’
    Stewart glanced at his solicitor. ‘Where was the blood?’ he asked.
    ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ said Anderson.
    Stewart sighed. ‘Gilly cut herself a few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘She bled quite a lot. On the bed and the cabin floor. I thought I’d cleaned it up.’
    Anderson glanced at Dana. She nodded. The report had referred to traces of blood on the wooden floor of the boat and to a half-washed-out stain on bed-sheets that was almost certainly blood.
    ‘How did she cut herself ?’ asked Dana.
    Stewart looked down at the tabletop. ‘She was trying to take the foil off a bottle of wine with a knife,’ he said. ‘It slipped. Can I go now? I want to look for my son.’
    Dana got to her feet again. ‘You’re going to have to leave that to us for a while,’ she said. As she left the room, Stewart dropped his head into his hands. It could have been a gesture of guilt, but it looked an awful lot like grief and fear to her.
    ‘I’ll get someone to bring down information-release forms,’ she said to Anderson, once the door had closed. ‘We might as well check the haemophilia business with his GP.’
    ‘So Stewart Roberts’s girlfriend is married to Huck Joesbury’s football coach, whom we still haven’t managed to track down,’ said Anderson, as they made their way back up the steps to brief the team. ‘Is this starting to feel a bit incestuous to you, Ma’am?’
    ‘It’s starting to feel a bit beyond coincidence.’
    ‘Are you going to phone Mark?’ Anderson asked, bringing apicture into her head of Mark, alone at home, sitting in the dark, staring at the phone. Dana shook her head. She couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t tell him they’d spent hours chasing a lead that was now slipping away.
    Gilly Green had the sort of looks that other women rarely notice but that men find quietly intriguing. Dana, being a woman who habitually noticed other women, spotted her appeal immediately. She was slim, with clear, fair skin and a small, neat face that was pleasantly pretty rather than striking. Close to midnight, she was still dressed.
    ‘My husband isn’t back yet,’ she was saying as she led them to a small, snug sitting-room to one side of the hallway. ‘He’s not been answering his phone. Is there any news of Huck?’ She looked at the clock above the hearth and frowned.
    A coal fire was burning in the grate and scent sticks in a jar gave off a smell of apples and cinnamon. The walls were a soft shade of mushroom and there was a lot of natural wood. It was the sort of room in which Dana felt instantly at home. There was a pile of exercise books by one armchair, one of them still open on the padded seat. Mrs Green had been marking class work, probably to take her mind off where her husband might be. ‘Has something happened to Daniel?’ she asked.
    ‘Not to my knowledge, Mrs Green,’ Dana replied. ‘And Huck Joesbury is still missing. Can I ask where you were on the evening of Saturday the sixteenth of February?’
    Mrs Green stared at her for a second, glanced at Mizon, then seemed to shrink a little. She sat down, pushing the exercise book out of the way. To her credit, she made no attempt to look as though she were thinking about the question. She didn’t look puzzled, didn’t ask to see her diary, she just looked resigned. And rather sad.
    ‘I was on a boat at Deptford Creek,’ she said. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine. I left around eleven o’clock.’
    Dana asked permission to sit down and then both she and Mizon perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Were you aware the body of a young boy was found there that evening?’
    Blue-grey eyes looked directly back at Dana. ‘Yes, of course. I saw it on the news the next day.’
    ‘And you didn’t think to let us know you’d been there? That you were a material witness in a murder inquiry?’
    The woman’s head jerked back a fraction, registering the criticism. ‘If I’d seen or heard anything I would have been in touch with you immediately,’ she replied. ‘I teach children of that age. I teach Huck Joesbury. But I couldn’t have told you anything. I was below deck the whole