“We left at about quarter past ten, drove across to the mainland and we got to Morpeth at around eleven. We looked around the shops, I… I…” she covered her face with shaking hands and Ryan looked away.
Minutes passed, until there was another break.
“Could you tell me what time you arrived back on the island after your shopping trip?” Ryan needed to know, had to piece together some sort of timeline.
“It was around four,” Daniel answered for his wife. Ryan cocked his head towards Helen and waited.
“Yes, it was around then,” she agreed. Only then did Ryan pick up his pen and write it down.
“After then?”
Helen Mathieson looked up and seemed to see Ryan properly for the first time. Her blue eyes cleared briefly to assess the man sitting in front of her. She saw a tall, good-looking thirty-something with a serious face and sad, striking grey eyes. Something about his intent expression gave her comfort enough to carry on.
“We had an early tea, because Lucy wanted to get ready and head out to meet her friends. Rachel Finnigan and Ellie Holmes,” Helen added, anticipating him. “They live on our street,” she gestured out of the window, “Ellie’s right across from us and Rachel’s at number 34 at the end.”
Ryan nodded. “Where were they meeting, and at what time?”
“Ellie came by around six to call for Lucy and the girls said they were planning to walk past Rachel’s house and pick her up on the way to the pub. They both left here around ten past six.” Ryan didn’t need to ask which pub; there was only one on the island.
“Was that the last time you saw or spoke with your daughter?”
Helen could barely manage a nod.
“I have to ask,” another sticky question, he thought, “could you please confirm your whereabouts during the hours of eleven-thirty last night and five this morning?”
He looked at both of them, tried to look apologetic although he knew that this was a necessary question.
“We were both in bed, asleep,” Daniel answered.
“I went up to bed around ten-thirty,” Helen agreed.
“I came up half an hour later, I wanted to put the dishwasher on overnight, check the back door and that sort of thing. I like to leave the porch light on for Lucy,” Daniel swallowed.
“Lucy usually let herself back in the house?”
“Yes,” Helen nodded. “She’d done it a hundred times before.” Lucy’s keys? Ryan made a note and circled it twice.
“Did either of you hear anything or see anything else during the night?”
“No, nothing at all,” Daniel said quietly.
Helen paused. “I went out like a light and slept pretty heavily. I always do, but, sometime during the night, I thought I heard an engine backfire. It sounded like it was quite close by.” She looked over at her husband. “Did you hear it?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
Ryan looked between the two people in front of him and knew that there would be very little information he could get from them now. Shock had settled in. He rose, took out a card with details of a family liaison officer and set it on the coffee table in front of them. Neither of them moved from their huddle on the sofa.
“Thank you both. I’m very sorry for your loss,” Ryan murmured. Then, to the father, he added that there would be an officer along to take a formal note of what they had just told him and ask some more questions. There would also be a CSI team along to do a standard sweep of the house. They would need to take fingerprints. To himself, he had added that he would need to take another good look at the people in Lucy’s immediate circle; family, friends, lovers.
As he was leaving, he turned one last time. “One final thing,” he said belatedly. “What was Lucy wearing when she left last night?”
“Wearing?” Helen shook her head as if to clear it. “Jeans and the new red top I’d bought her. Some black boots.”
“Were the boots heeled?”
“Why…yes, they were, quite high.”
“Thank you, Mrs Mathieson, Mr Mathieson. I’ll leave you alone now. ”
* * *
Ryan found himself in the main square, standing beside a worn statue of Saint Cuthbert. He looked up at the carved stone and wondered what Cuthbert had seen as he stood vigil over the people of Lindisfarne.
CHAPTER 4
Anna knew her first priority should be to find the Senior Investigating Officer, but nerves fluttered at the thought. Ordinarily, she kept herself to herself and preferred not to become embroiled in other people’s dramas. She understood that was the main attraction of a career as an academic historian, the erstwhile realm of middle-aged, balding men in tweed blazers. When you were looking at the history of a civilisation, speculating about the lives of others who had lived hundreds or thousands of years earlier, you could avoid thinking too hard or looking too closely at your own life in the present and there was no pressure to worry about the future.