Fever of the Bone Read Free Page B

where Mr Maidment is either. Like I said, it’s a bitch, this one.’ He sent a quick text to Ambrose, instructing him to interview the friend Jennifer had claimed to be with, then closed down the BlackBerry and rolled his shoulders inside his coat. ‘We ready?’
    They braved the rain and walked up the path of the Maidments’ family home, a three-storey Edwardian brick semi fronted by a well-tended garden. The lights were on inside, the curtains pulled wide open. The two cops could see the sort of living room and dining room that neither of them could afford, all gleaming surfaces, rich fabrics and the kind of pictures you didn’t find in IKEA. Patterson’s finger had barely hit the bell push when the door swung open.
    The state of the woman on the doorstep would have provoked a reaction in any other circumstances. But Patterson had seen enough frantic mothers to be unsurprised by the wild hair, the smudged eye make-up, the bitten lips and the tight clench of the jaw. As she took in the pair of them with their hangdog faces, her puffy eyes widened. One hand went to her mouth, the other to her breast. ‘Oh God,’ she said, her voice tremulous with the tears that were about to come again.
    ‘Mrs Maidment? I’m Detective Chief Inspector—’
    The rank told Tania Maidment what she didn’t want to know. Her wail cut Patterson off in mid-introduction. She staggered and would have fallen had he not moved rapidly towards her, an arm round her slumped shoulders, letting her collapse into him. He half-carried her into the house, DC Patel at their heels.
    By the time he lowered her into the plump living-room sofa, Tania Maidment was shaking like a woman on the edge of hypothermia. ‘No, no, no,’ she kept saying through chattering teeth.
    ‘I’m so sorry. We’ve found a body we believe to be your daughter, Jennifer,’ Patterson said, casting a desperate glance at Patel.
    She picked up his cue and sat down by the distraught woman, taking her freezing hands in her own warm ones. ‘Is there someone we can call?’ she said. ‘Someone who can be with you?’
    Mrs Maidment shook her head, jerky but clear. ‘No, no, no.’ Then she gulped air as if she was drowning. ‘Her dad . . . He’s due back tomorrow. From India. He’s already flying. He doesn’t even know she’s missing.’ Then the tears came with a terrible storm of guttural sobs. Patterson had never felt more pointless.
    He waited for the first barrage of grief to lessen. It seemed to last a hellish length of time. Eventually, Jennifer’s mother ran out of energy. Patel, keeping her arm round the woman’s shoulders, nodded almost imperceptibly at him. ‘Mrs Maidment, we’re going to need to take a look at Jennifer’s room,’ Patterson said. Heartless, he knew. There would be a forensic team there soon to strip the place properly, but he wanted first dibs on the dead girl’s private space. Besides, the mother might be in bits now, but it wasn’t unusual for parents to leap to the realisation that there might be elements of their children’s lives they didn’t want the world to know about. It wasn’t that they wanted to impede the investigation, more that they didn’t always understand the importance of things they considered irrelevant. Patterson didn’t want that to happen here.
    Without waiting for a response, he slipped out of the room and headed upstairs. Patterson thought you could gauge a lot about the condition of family life from its environment. As he climbed, he made his own judgements about Jennifer Maidment’s home. There was a gloss to the place that spoke of money, but it lacked the sterility of obsession. A splay of opened mail was scattered on the hall table, a pair of discarded gloves lay on the shelf above the radiator, the vase of flowers on the windowsill of the half-landing needed winnowing.
    Five closed doors faced him as he reached the first floor. A home where privacy was respected, then. First came the master suite, then