‘If you find out, let me know. I remember her going away for a rest when she lost the baby. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I remember her taking Rachel and I out in the car at 2a.m. one morning to get ice cream. Obviously there was no one open, but it was fun and kinda weird at the same time. To us it was an adventure, but Mum seemed genuinely surprised that there was nowhere open. That was a couple of weeks before Dad found her wandering the grounds with the pushchair. Later we understood what having a rest entailed and where she’d been, and eventually she came back and things returned to normal.’
Kim wondered if Helen had ever returned to normal or just appeared to do so.
Gavin cooed softly at Mia, who was giggling and gurgling again.
‘Do you recall anything before that?’ Kim asked, unsure how much Zach knew.
He shook his head. ‘Why would I? That was when it all started, when the baby died.’
Or she just hid it better, Kim thought.
Whatever the reason, Helen had been struggling around the time when she was pregnant with the twins. It had been a secret shared only with her husband and social services by the looks of it.
‘Why all the interest in my mother?’ Zach asked, narrowing his eyes. ‘You haven’t asked one question about my father. Surely you can’t think either one of them did anything to provoke this?’
‘We’re going where the evidence takes us, Zach, but rest assured that we will find the person who murdered your family.’
Kim had wanted to ask him about the therapist Helen had been seeing for so many years, but she didn’t want to unnerve him anymore. He seemed sensitive about excess attention on his mother.
‘Okay, thanks. We’ll be in touch when—Oh, actually there was one more thing. You’ve been reasonably kind about your brother-in-law, but he didn’t extend you the same level of courtesy and hinted that you like to take whatever you want.’
Zach and Gavin exchanged a look.
‘He means me,’ Gavin said, placing a sleeping Mia in her Moses basket.
She waited for further explanation.
‘Rachel and I were together first,’ he said, taking a seat beside his husband. ‘Only for a few months, until I met Zach. Hit me like a tonne of bricks. Obviously, it was difficult for a while, but there’s no one for me but him.’
It explained so much; Rachel’s barely hidden expressions of tenderness when she looked at Gavin, her brief flashes of animosity towards her brother.
‘We’re all good now,’ Gavin said. ‘Now she’s just like my own sister.’
Kim didn’t think Rachel’s feelings for Gavin were remotely sisterly.
‘Again, thank you for your time,’ she said, heading for the door.
She’d learned little more about Helen but a great deal more about Zach.
She’d learned that when Zach saw something he wanted, he didn’t care who he had to hurt to get it.
FORTY-FOUR
‘It’s not beyond the realms of possibility you know,’ Stacey said, bringing him back into the room.
The usual easy silence had fallen between them as they’d worked for the last couple of hours, interrupted only by the boss calling to request the address of Helen Daynes’s therapist.
‘What, that you’re gonna leave that last cookie in the tub?’ he asked, nodding towards the Tupperware bowl.
‘Yeah, get real,’ she said, leaning across and plucking it out.
He’d been about to suggest they split it, but the ship had sailed on that one, he thought as she took a good bite.
‘I’m talking about finding Rozzie’s address. This Martey person could have tracked her down. There are posts where she’s checked into different places, liked local businesses, not to mention the photos giving away enough pieces of the puzzle to fit together. Up until Martey started harassing her, you could have written her daily itinerary from the information shared across all forums.’
‘I think the boss is focussing more on Helen being at the centre of it,’ he said.
‘I get that, but this Martey is vicious. I mean, short of deleting her social-media accounts completely she was at a loss. She tried to shrug him off. She blocked him countless times, didn’t respond or react to his threats, which appeared to piss him off even more.’