Page 13 of Her Hidden Shadow

‘Where’s Mummy?’

A pause filled the hallway. ‘Erm, look, it’s Peppa Pig.’ She closed the door. ‘I can’t do this. How do I tell Dora that her mother’s dead? How?’

Gina didn’t have the answer. There was never an easy way to break such tragic news.

‘Please find Gerard. Find out who did this. I really do think there was someone else in the picture, another man. Maybe she confided in him.’ Patsy sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

‘Ms Griffin, would you mind if we took a look at Sienna’s room?’

The woman nodded. ‘It’s the first bedroom on the right. She shares it with her daughter.’

Jacob took a deep breath as they reached the landing. ‘I’m not feeling too well, guv.’

Gina left him there and had a quick look through Sienna’s paltry belongings. What she saw was a woman who’d been living frugally to save all her money to get on the housing ladder. Photos of her daughter were pinned all over a corkboard. Gina’s eyes watered slightly. She took a deep breath and went back downstairs with Jacob.

‘Once again, I’m so sorry for your loss. If you think of anything, however small it may seem, please call me.’ She passed the woman a card.

A few minutes later, they were back at the car. Jacob leaned against the passenger door. ‘Are you getting in?’

He held a hand up and ran to a nearby bush where he vomited. Walking back, he loosened his tie and got into the car.

As she started the engine up, he opened a packet of mints and began to suck on one. ‘Jacob, please. I can tell you’re not right. Are you ill?’ Gina really didn’t want to probe but she was sure she could see him shaking.

‘Yes, I’m okay now. Better out than in as they say. I had a curry last night. Probably a bit of dodgy chicken or rice. All better now.’

She reversed out of the space. He was far from alright, and she knew it. She almost gasped inwardly as she thought of Sienna’s relationship with Gerard, knowing how easy it was to feel like a prisoner in a possessive relationship. She tried to imagine his anger as Sienna cut him off by changing her phone number. Had he taken to physically stalking her instead? Her phone beeped and she saw Bernard’s name pop up. ‘Can you read that message?’

Jacob picked up her phone. ‘We can search Lauren’s house at lunchtime.’

‘Great. Contact the incident room and arrange for a team to meet us there at noon. Ask Wyre to find out if Brunswick Security have an out of hours number. Being a firm in this line of business, I’m sure they will. We need to find Gerard. O’Connor and Kapoor can visit Dee’s home, and we’ll have just enough time to speak to Maxine. We need to know if either of them saw Sienna or Robbie.’

Eight

Tiffany

‘That was the police.’ Tiffany placed her phone on their little bistro table in the kitchen.

‘What did they want?’ Kieron buttered a piece of toast and passed it to her, along with a cup of tea.

She shrugged. ‘They need to speak to me about an incident. Maybe they’ve found the man who attacked me.’ Her heart began to hum as she hoped they had. Finally, she might have some answers. Her mind whirred. ‘If they’ve found him, I’ll have to go to court, relive everything again. Maybe he’s struck again and hurt someone else.’

Kieron finished buttering his toast and joined her at the table. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. We’ve been here before.’

Her shoulders dropped and she hunched forward. ‘Maybe it’s nothing to do with me. It could be something else.’ She furrowed her brows as she tried to recall any of the previous evening. She remembered drinking a glass of red wine and then another before drifting off into the deepest of sleeps. The night before that, she’d barely slept. The jitteriness that worried her so much had plagued her all that night. She’d been convinced she had a neurological disorder. Then she had to get to work for seven in the morning. The day had seemed long so falling asleep on the settee after a couple of glasses of wine was expected. ‘You fell asleep too, last night, in the living room?’

He nodded and tore the corner of the toast with his front teeth. ‘I was so tired. I think all the overtime finally caught up.’

‘Do you know how long I was outside for?’

He shook his head and chomped on the toast. ‘No. I’m sure it wasn’t long. It can’t have been.’

‘Maybe I did something. Damaged a car, shouted at someone…’

He sighed. ‘Tiff, you’re the loveliest person I know. I can’t imagine you vandalising a car or being horrible to anyone. You can’t have been out there that long. Seriously, don’t worry about it.’

‘But you can’t be sure how long I was out there and you don’t know what I was doing.’

He dropped his toast onto the plate with a deep sigh. ‘Tiff, I love you to bits, in fact, I adore you. I’ll say it again, you didn’t do anything. Whatever the police want, it’s not about you sleepwalking last night so don’t let that worry you.’

---