Free Say You're Sorry by Michael Robotham

out, but she was gone.”
    “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
    “My brother told me not to. He said I’d be blamed.”
    “For the fire?”
    “For running that woman over.”
    He presses his chin into his knees. “I looked for her, but then I saw the snowman and I got frightened.”
    “The snowman?”
    “He came out of the forest covered in snow.”
    “You saw him
after
you saw the woman?”
    Augie nods.
    “This woman, what did she look like?”
    “She was beat up, you know, but it was weird. Her shoes.”
    “What about them?”
    “She wasn’t wearing any.”

7
     
    L ow gray clouds scud across a dirty sky and the dreaming spires are etched against the southern horizon like vague giants marching out of the mist.
    The cab driver maneuvers deftly on the icy streets, keeping the needle around 20 mph and rarely touching the brakes unless he has no choice. Victoria Naparstek is no longer with me. The moment I mentioned visiting Drury she grew quiet and began making excuses.
    “He has a family,” she said, as though that made a difference.
    The cab pulls up outside a two-story house with a gabled roof. A lop-sided snowman is standing inside the front gate dressed in a flowery hat and a Tottenham scarf.
    Drury is shoveling snow from his driveway. Working up a sweat, he’s peeled down to baggy chinos and a sweatshirt.
    A snowball explodes at my feet. A young girl peers from behind a makeshift fort of rubbish bins and a toboggan.
    “You missed,” I say.
    She holds up another snowball. “That was a warning shot.”
    Drury leans on his shovel. “Hold your fire, Gracie.”
    “I think we should arrest him, Daddy, he looks like a bad’n.”
    “Let’s see what he has to say first.”
    Gracie is wearing a woolen cap with earflaps that make her look like Snoopy in a Peanuts cartoon. Her pale cheeks are dusted with freckles and glasses are perched on the end of her nose. Her younger brother is sitting on the front steps, pushing a toy bulldozer through clumps of ice.
    “What are you doing here, Professor?”
    “I have a question.”
    “It could have waited.”
    “I talked to Augie Shaw again.”
    “On whose authority?”
    “His lawyer and his psychiatrist.”
    Drury sets the shovel aside, pulling off his gloves. “What’s your question?”
    “Why would a woman go out in the middle of a blizzard without any shoes?”
    “You talking about anyone in particular.”
    “You have an unidentified female found in a lake.”
    “What about her?”
    “Augie Shaw said he saw a woman on the road that night. He thinks he might have hit her. That’s why he drove his car into the ditch.”
    Drury doesn’t seem surprised at this. I try again.
    “You found a woman’s body in a lake. I saw the crime scene from the train. How far is that from the farmhouse?”
    Drury doesn’t answer. His wife has appeared at the top of the steps, her body framed in the doorway, standing with one hand on her hip. Pregnant. Pretty. Tired around her eyes.
    “Is everything all right, Stephen?” she asks.
    “Everything’s fine. This is the psychologist I was telling you about.”
    She smiles. “You should invite him inside where it’s warm.”
    “The Professor won’t be staying.”
    She picks up the young boy and rests him on her hip before turning inside.
    I notice the curtains moving at the front window. She’s watching.
    Drury rubs at his neck. “Get to the point, Professor?”
    “The woman in the lake—was she wearing shoes?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Did she have any injuries?”
    “I haven’t seen the post-mortem. Body was frozen solid. They can’t cut her open till she thaws.”
    The DCI plunges the shovel deep into a pile of snow.
    “I think she was at the farmhouse that night,” I say. “A dress was soaking in the laundry. Shoes were drying by the fire. Someone took a bath…”
    “You’re like a broken bloody record.”
    Gracie covers her mouth. “You said a bad word, Daddy. You know what that