Page 77 of Finding Jacob
“I’ve no idea, to be honest. We’re dealing with an amateur, for sure. And I do believe there were two people in your house.”
“How?” I asked.
“Outside the wall was a collapsible ladder. No disrespect to your sex, but I don’t see a woman being able to scale that wall, but a bloke might. On the outside there is flint that makes great footholds. There is a partial footprint, the police took a mould of that. To me, it looks small, maybe a size five or less.”
“Do you think the woman had the syringe?”
“Yep. And perhaps the bloke was there just to ensure she could get the job done. Where it went wrong was someone falling over a chair and you alerting them that you’d heard. Which brings me to this... Whoever it was knew you. Knew your mobile number and it’s that person who called pretending to be the police.”
“Did you find my phone?” I asked.
Nathan shook his head. “No. I searched inside and out. I’ve asked the police if they picked it up and it’s nowhere to be seen.”
I didn’t know exactly when I’d dropped my phone. I’d assumed it would have been in the bedroom when I was throwing things at the intruder, but I couldn’t be sure. The intruder ran before the police could break in, so he couldn’t have taken it.
“The police have to have it. They searched the bedroom, didn’t they?”
Nathan nodded. “So did I, no phone.”
“I don’t get that,” I replied.
“I do. One of the officers has your phone and isn’t letting on,” Jacob said. Nathan nodded again.
“Stop playing fucking Poirot and tell me what you think,” I said, getting annoyed.
“Do you know this man?” Nathan pulled up a photograph on his phone.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He’s a policeman, obviously. He was at your house; you probably didn’t take much notice at the time.”
I frowned trying to work out why that was important information.
“He’s also now missing.”
“And?” I asked.
“And,” Nathan said, dragging out the word. “He drove Hannah to Jules’s house the night before she died. When I saw him at your house, I knew I’d seen his face before but couldn’t place him. And I knew I’d seen him recently, so I retraced everything I did. I had a copy of the CCTV on my phone, so I checked that. He knows Hannah, he must have known Jules, your phone is missing, so is he and the flatmate.”
“What does Hannah say about this?” I asked.
“She doesn’t know that I’ve made the connection yet.”
I sat in silence, still trying to process what it all meant. So, a policeman drove Hannah to her daughter’s house. That didn’t mean anything. Hannah confessed to being at Jules and her flatmate witnessed that. The flatmate was missing. Again, that didn’t mean Hannah had anything to do with her daughter’s death. The flatmate might have been distraught enough to move out for a while.
“It’s loose, for sure, but it’s a connection,” Nathan said, and I wondered if my face showed any signs of not being convinced.
“Why would Hannah know this guy?” Jacob asked.
“That’s what I want to know. I’m going to visit her tomorrow,” Nathan replied.
“This is all too much for me. Where do I come into this?” I asked.
“I think Hannah believes that when I saidwedidn’t believe Jules took her own life andwewere looking into it, she assumed you and me. She came to you with her fears, but what if it was more just to find out what you knew?” Nathan said.
“She thinks I know something, so she wants to harm me or my baby?” It still seemed tenuous to my ears.
“We don’t know what she thinks the heroin would do. Like I said, I don’t believe she knows anything about the drug, but it killed her daughter. Perhaps she thought it would do the same to you.”
