would have to soldier on without her for Helen Greene was not coming back. Now she lived in a nursing home on the South Downs, a few miles out of Brighton.
Joe had been forced to give up his job as a director with a small experimental theatre in London and become Peter’s business partner. It had made up Laura’s mind. She was burning herself out working for a big London legal firm and beginning to wonder why. Yes, she had a big salary and a glittering CV and great prospects, but she was into her thirties now and she wanted other things in life, was keen to have a family. She had been happy to scale down, move out of the fast lane. She would aim for a partnership in the provinces and maybe become a big fish in a regional pool.
Joe had not been so happy. He loved the theatre and found it hard to knuckle down to the hotel business. He’d had a few run-ins with Peter but Laura was keeping her fingers crossed it would work out in the end.
She felt his hand massaging the back of her neck, soothing and reassuring.
‘If he did post that message, maybe he also had something to do with what happened last night?’ she said.
‘I think that was just some scumbag who thought it would be fun to scare the life out of a woman in a sports car.’
‘I guess so. Probably worrying about nothing.’
‘Of course you are, hon. You’ve had a lousy day and it’s no wonder you’re stressed out.’
He was right, she thought, and felt some of the tension leave her. She sat up, pushed her hair back behind her ears and took another large swig of the white wine, draining her glass. She picked up the bottle and frowned at it. It was empty too.
‘I think we might need one of the Greene specials.’ Joe grinned and went to get another bottle, one of the good ones he liberated from the hotel supplies. By the time she had drunk another glass or two, the cares of the day – and the night before – had slipped from her shoulders. She leaned her head on Joe’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and began to giggle.
‘What’s the joke?’ he said, laughing too.
‘I was thinking. Married couples – the awful things they do to each other.’
‘And that made you laugh?’
‘I know. Not funny. Sad. Did I ever tell you about this guy, this husband with really, really long hair who came in wanting a divorce? They’d been having problems for a while but the thing that brought it all to a crunch was when his wife told him he couldn’t have a cat. So he said, right, I shan’t cut my hair until you let me have a cat. And so it went on. No cat, no haircut, until by the time I saw him he had hair down to his waist.’
‘Sounds a bit of a shaggy cat story to me.’
Laura opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Love you,’ she said.
Detective Inspector Barnes called Laura at work early the next day and told her what she had expected – that Harry Pelham would not be held in custody. He also told her what she hadn’t expected – that Harry was suspected of being a paedophile. That was the main reason for the raid on his home though the emails were also being investigated. They’d seized computers from the house and from his offices in Hove, which they’d raided simultaneously.
She pressed the policeman for more details, but either he didn’t know any more or he wasn’t going to say. He agreed to tell her when Harry was well enough to be questioned again. Doctors at the Royal Sussex had not been able to find anything obviously wrong with him, but he was being kept in for observation for the next few days. At the moment, Barnes said, officers were guarding him but he didn’t have the resources to leave them there for long. It was likely Harry would be given bail later that day and the officers would be withdrawn.
Laura pushed for conditions on the bail preventing Harry from going anywhere near his wife or threatening her in any way and Barnes agreed to consider that. He told her that after they’d finished questioning Harry and looked at what was on his computers, they’d decide if there was enough evidence to charge him, either over the child pornography or the death threats. If there was, in either case he’d most likely get bail. Regarding the pornography, it would depend on the seriousness of the offence – was he part of a paedophile network, had he been distributing the material, was it for his own use, how much did he have and how long had he been doing it. But it would have to be very serious for him to be locked up; just downloading and possession of indecent material would not be enough.
It was the same story with the death threat emails. If the police could prove that Paul Giles was in fact Harry, by finding evidence on his computers, they would charge him with harassment. But it wouldn’t warrant a custodial sentence – a restraining order only, would be the likely result. There was a silence on the phone. The conversation was over unless she had any more questions. She hesitated. She told Barnes about the website posting but decided against mentioning the car chase. She was afraid he might think her a little over-anxious.
Laura had slept well after the wine and a couple of Nytol and she felt a whole lot better today. The car incident didn’t seem so threatening. She liked that description – the ‘car incident’. It minimized the whole thing, brought it down to manageable proportions. The thought of it didn’t make her heart beat as fiercely as it had.
Twenty minutes later, after talking to her friend Emma Fletcher, Laura felt better still. Emma always cheered her up, right back from when they were at school together. Laura’s mum had used to call Emma ‘Mrs Brightside’ because she was always so positive.
Emma’s life had been very different from Laura’s – she had a husband and three sons and a part-time job as a primary school teacher – but the two women had stayed close friends and now Laura had moved back to Sussex, they saw each other a lot.
‘I agree it sounds like a random piece of bad luck,’ she said, when Laura told her about the chase. ‘Joe’s probably right that it was some nutter who wanted to frighten a woman in a sports car. Why not go green and trade that gas guzzler in for a smart car. No one will be chasing you then. Not even Joe.’
Laura laughed, said she’d give it some thought, and Emma suggested meeting up on Sunday to go shopping. Her husband was taking the boys to Speedway and she’d have most of the day to herself.
That suited Laura well because she wanted to chat to Emma about her father. He had been in touch again, asking to meet up, and Laura wasn’t sure what to do. She hadn’t seen him for nearly seven years, not since her mum’s funeral, and most of her didn’t want to see him now or ever again. But a part of her did, an annoying, nagging part; despite everything he had done to her mum, he was still her dad.
Michael Maxwell had never been aggressive towards his daughter, he loved his little girl and, although Laura heard his verbal attacks on her mother, she never once considered he might be hitting her. He made sure none of his bullying and abuse happened in front of Laura, not the shouting, not the humiliating, and certainly not the punching. He did it in the evening, after dark, when he thought his daughter was safely tucked up in bed. He was not the only wife beater to act that way. Anna had said the same about Harry Pelham – he only hit her when Martha was not around to witness it.
But from her bedroom, Laura could hear her father’s hectoring, intimidating voice. She would get up and creep closer, listen to him rant at her mother, telling her how stupid and worthless she was, laying down the law about who she could talk to, and where she could go. It upset Laura but it also irritated her. She wished her mother would fight back, would stop letting herself be such a victim. If she would only stand up for herself, her father would back off, Laura was sure.
She felt guilt flood her, the way it always did when she remembered her young, self-righteous self. She should have done more to help her mum, she should have confronted her father. She should have understood. She had never been able to forgive herself for not realizing how serious the