Page 18 of Her Deadly Promise

She flinched as Jacob stood by the window. ‘You okay, guv?’

Nodding, she turned off the engine and got out of the car. ‘Yes, I was just hot. Let’s go.’ As they approached the house, the sticky dampness Gina could feel under her armpits made her flush again with embarrassment. The blonde woman opened the door. ‘Mrs Reeves?’

She nodded. ‘Call me Kath.’ Her nose was red and scabbed underneath from all the blowing and wiping.

‘Kath, thank you for calling us this morning. May we come in?’

She nodded and opened the door fully, exposing a hallway that led up some stairs. She led Gina and Jacob out of the kitchen patio doors and onto a small, slabbed area in a large cottage garden. They all sat around the glass table.

George poked his head around, glasses balanced on his head. ‘I’ll stay with Kayden, love. Are you okay?’ There was a girl in the kitchen, pouring a glass of pop and Gina thought how much she looked like Billie, except her hair was a dirty blonde colour and her dark eyeliner had smudged. She looked a little thicker set around the waist.

Kathleen nodded as she pulled a tissue from her trouser pocket and dabbed her red-rimmed eyes. ‘My other daughter, Serena, is helping with Kayden too. She came back from uni last night to be with us.’ The creases around her lips puckered as she popped an unlit cigarette into her mouth. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Of course not.’ If the woman needed to smoke to process what had happened to her daughter, who was Gina to stop her or judge.

She took a lighter from her other pocket and lit up, inhaling deeply before blowing the smoke out. Gina leaned back slightly on the creaky chair to avoid getting a nose full, her arm brushing a drooping foxglove.

‘I stopped for a year but yesterday I needed a smoke more than anything. When can I see my daughter? I need to see her.’

Gina tilted her head sympathetically. ‘I can call the pathologist this afternoon and let you know.’

‘Thank you.’ She sniffed and used the crumpled tissue again.

‘I know I said when I called that you might be able to talk to Kayden, but he said he doesn’t want to speak to anyone. He’s so upset, as you can imagine. It broke my heart to tell him that his mummy was no longer with us.’ Tears flooded her face. ‘It doesn’t feel real. I keep thinking that it’s all some nightmare and I’ll wake up.’

‘We are so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now.’ She glanced around, noticing that she hadn’t seen the family liaison officer as expected. ‘Is Ellyn still here?’ Ellyn always used her first name while around the families. It put the children and the bereaved more at ease.

‘No, we sent her home. It gets to the point when a grieving family need to be on their own and that was us this morning. Lovely girl, but nothing she can say or do will bring my daughter back. Nothing can take this emptiness… this pain away.’ She took another drag of her cigarette. ‘Right, I suppose we should talk. Kayden told me things last night, things that I can’t shrug off and I knew I had to call you.’

Jacob took out his Biro and began scrawling a few notes across a blank page.

‘Thank you. We want to do everything we can to bring your daughter’s killer to justice. My DCI has put an appeal out today, which I know you’ve been told about. We’re hoping someone will have seen something, maybe someone in the area acting suspiciously.’ Gina was a little deflated at not being able to speak to Kayden, but she knew that they all had to do what was best for him. His welfare was their priority and if speaking to him would upset him more than he already was, she didn’t want that. ‘Can you tell me what Kayden said to you?’

‘I lay with him for hours last night. He cried, he held on to me, and he kept saying, “Nanny, don’t go”. He was scared that if I left him alone, I’d die too. It’s understandable, so I stayed with him. While he was lying there, he said that Billie had often sent him to his room and made him promise that he wouldn’t come down. She said that if he ever heard her shouting or banging, he was to hide at the back of his wardrobe and not come out. I don’t know what was going on in my daughter’s life, but she was terrified of something… of someone.’ A tear plopped onto the patio table as she stubbed her cigarette out. ‘He heard her screaming the night before she was murdered. He said he often heard her screaming and when he did, he’d first hide under his bed sheets and when it got scarier, he’d hide in the wardrobe like she told him.’

‘Did he ever ask her why she was upset or screaming?’

‘She told him it was nothing to worry about and to just do as he was told. He didn’t know what was going on. Yesterday, she made him promise that he wouldn’t come in the house until she told him to come in. He said she was shaking, and he thought she’d been crying but he heard her telling her friend Meera that she had a migraine.’

‘So, Billie was worried about someone, and she knew they were coming to the house, which is why she made him promise not to come in.’

Kathleen nodded. ‘She was protecting him from that monster who killed her. My daughter was scared, petrified and I want to know why.’

‘Do you know who Billie was expecting?’

‘No.’ She pulled another cigarette from the packet and began rolling it between two fingers. ‘She didn’t tell me anything. George, bless him, seemed to think she was happy, but I told him something was wrong. I could see that she was struggling so I used to give her money but, of course, it’s never enough. She was struggling for work, and we argued a little and now I wished we hadn’t.’

‘What did you argue about?’

‘Her work. I told her she really needed to get a proper job now. The candy carts and children’s parties, it just wasn’t making the money she needed to bring Kayden up. I told her that maybe she should try to get a job in an office or shop, get some regular money in and she looked at me like I was the devil for even suggesting it. As an alternative, I said she should move back in with us so that we could look after her, but she insisted she was going to be okay, that she had some good work coming in. She said things were going to change for her and Kayden but when I pressed her, she wouldn’t tell me how. I loved her with all my heart, and I just wished she’d moved back in here. We still have her room. We could have looked after her.’ The cigarette was shaking in Kathleen’s trembling hand and a snake of ash fell to the patio.

‘Do you know if she was seeing anyone?’

‘She wasn’t. She’d have told us if she was.’

‘Her neighbour mentioned a new boyfriend and there was another man, someone who visited the night before last. He went in through the back door. Do you have any idea who that might be?’

A bee buzzed by. Kathleen held up her hand and steered it away from her face. ‘It seems that I didn’t know my daughter at all. Promise me you’ll find him, and he’ll pay for what he did?’

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