Free The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah Page B

and flower-beds as soon as they moved in. Now they had colour-coordinated borders: red, white and blue flowers in a pattern that was overbearingly regular. What a waste of time, when your garden’s the size of a fingernail.
    Charlie felt something touch her and cried out in alarm before realising it was Simon. He put his arms round her waist.
    ‘Well? Did you read it?’
    ‘Slander,’ he said. ‘Like the way you described yourself tonight. ’
    ‘It wasn’t negligent, to take no action over Ruth Bussey?’ She knew he was talking about the party, but chose to misunderstand.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ said Simon. ‘As we both keep saying, no crime’s been committed. Bussey told you Trelease was alive and well—turns out she is.’
    ‘So Sam Kombothekra will tell you to leave it. It’s not a police matter. Just three oddballs behaving oddly, none of our business.’
    Simon sighed. ‘Are you happy with that explanation? Seed and Bussey come in on the same day, separately, and tell two versions of almost the same story? You want to let it lie?’
    ‘Ruth Bussey said she was frightened something was going to happen.’ That was the part Charlie kept coming back to in her mind, now that she knew the whole thing hadn’t been about her.
    ‘One thing’s going to have to happen if we want to take it any further,’ said Simon.
    ‘What?’
    He’s still touching me. He didn’t have to, but he did, he is.
    He started to hum a tune, Aled Jones’ ‘Walking in the Air’.
    ‘You, not we,’ said Charlie. One of the advantages of leaving CID—the only one—was that she no longer had to negotiate with the Snowman. She tried not to sound as if she was crowing when she said, ‘I don’t work for him any more.’

3
    Sunday 2 March 2008
    A noise startles me: my house, breaking its long silence with a sharp ringing. The woolly feeling in my head clears. Adrenalin gets me moving. I crawl into the lounge on my hands and knees to avoid putting weight on my injured foot, and manage to grab the phone on the third ring, still holding the blanket I’ve been using as a shawl around my shoulders. I can’t say hello. I can’t allow myself to hope.
    ‘It’s me.’
    Aidan. Relief pours through me. I clutch the phone, needing something solid to hold on to. ‘Are you coming back?’ I say. I have so many questions, but this is the one that matters.
    ‘Yeah,’ he says. I wait for the part that comes next: I’ll always come back, Ruth. You know that, don’t you? For once, he doesn’t say it. The thudding of my heart fills the silence.
    ‘Where have you been?’ I ask. He has been gone longer than usual. Two nights.
    ‘Working.’
    ‘You weren’t at the workshop.’ There’s a pause. Does he regret giving me a key? I wait for him to ask for it back. He gave it to me when I first started to work for him, the same key for Seed Art Services as for his home. It was a sign that he trusted me.
    I spent parts of both Friday and Saturday nights in his messy room behind the framing studio, crying, waiting for him to come back. Several times, drained and exhausted, I fell asleep, then came to suddenly, convinced that, if Aidan returned at all, he would go to my house. I’m not sure how many times I drove from one end of town to the other, feeling as if wherever I went I would be too late, I would miss him by a fraction of a second.
    ‘We need to talk, Ruth.’
    I begin to cry at the obviousness of it. ‘Come back, then.’
    ‘I’m on my way. Stay put.’ He’s gone before I can reply. Of course I’ll stay. I’ve got nowhere else to go.
    I crawl back to the hall, where I was before Aidan phoned, where I’ve been sitting cross-legged since six o’clock this morning, staring up at the small monitor on the shelf above the front door. My body is stiff and sore from being in one position too long. The underside of my damaged foot looks like decayed puff pastry. I don’t feel strong enough to clear up two days’ worth of mess, but I