Free Chimera by Celina Grace Page B

floor. Unwept, unhonoured and unsung … Kate poked up the fire, lit an expensive scented candle that she’d kept ‘for best’, and wrapped herself in a woolly throw. The crackle of the burning logs sounded too loud in the silent house and she felt the weight of the empty rooms above her. She tried putting on some music but it seemed to just make things worse – an echo in the void. Oh, get a grip of yourself, woman, she told herself, but in the background, all she could hear was the same word, repeated over and over again. Alone .
    She passed a bad night and got up the next morning feeling as though she hadn’t slept. Olbeck, by contrast, almost bounced into the office, tousling Kate’s hair as he passed her desk, which made her swat him away in annoyance.
    “What’s up with you?” she asked grumpily, sliding out of her chair and following him to his office.
    “Nothing,” said Olbeck, grinning. “Just full of the joys of spring.”
    “It’s October.”
    Olbeck dismissed her comment with an airy wave of his hand. “Full of the joys of autumn, then. Hey, you doing anything next week? Thought you might like to come for dinner.”
    Kate felt a pang of anxiety, despite her tiredness. “I’ve got to study, actually. My exam’s coming up soon.”
    “When?”
    “On the fourteenth.” Kate felt a stronger pulse of nervousness. She’d hardly done any studying at all. What had she been thinking? She straightened up a little and vowed that studying and only studying was what she would spend every spare waking moment doing.
    Olbeck rummaged in his desk. “Right, right,” he said. Kate wondered whether he was even listening. “No problem.”
    “Let’s make it a date after my exams,” Kate said, feeling that at least that would be something to look forward to afterwards.
    “Hmm?” Olbeck looked up and blinked. “Oh right, yeah. Let’s do that.”
    Kate rolled her eyes and went back to her desk.
    “You look knackered,” Theo observed, busy at his computer.
    “Gee, thanks,” said Kate. She rubbed her face and tried to get her work head on. “Did Anderton interview Jacob Arlen yesterday?”
    “Nope, don’t think so.”
    “Anything else I should know about?”
    “Don’t know. Haven’t even seen the boss yet.”
    Kate sighed. “Anything from forensics?”
    Theo reached for a pile of folders. “Now, that I can help you with. Here you go.”
    Kate opened the first file and did her best to follow it but the scientific jargon blurred in front of her tired eyes. She made herself and Theo another coffee and tried again, making notes of her own. She murmured the names under her breath.
    “Fingerprints found in the master bedroom of the farmhouse were those of Trixie and Jacob Arlen, their children, Kyla Mellors, another child’s and an unknown female.” Kate read through the list again. The unknown child could well turn out to be Kyla Mellors’ daughter, although that would have to be checked. But the unknown female…?
    She really needed to talk to Anderton but, as before, he seemed to be absent from the office again. Had he ever been so hard to get hold of? His office was empty and his mobile went straight to voicemail. Kate emailed him and left a post-it note on his computer, hoping to cover all bases. She grabbed a salad from the canteen and ate it back at her desk, still wading through all the forensic reports from the Arlen case.
    That night, Kate attempted to study. She cleared the small dining room table and set up her books, folders and study notes. She set her kitchen timer for forty minutes and sat herself down at the table, bending her head industriously to her books. She conscientiously read for five minutes, wielding her highlighter pen – the lazy person’s way of making notes, she had always thought. After five more minutes she slumped back in her chair. Nothing was going in; nothing. She might as well be reading Swahili for all the sense it was making.
    Kate got up and made herself a