Free The Helper by David Jackson Page A

distract herself with work while the tears run down her face.
    ‘Mrs Mellish,’ he begins. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. This won’t take long. There’s just a coupla questions—’
    ‘I haven’t seen you before,’ she says.
    Doyle wonders if she’s heard any of his words.
    ‘No. You haven’t. I’m just helping out on the case. Do you mind if—’
    ‘What was your name again?’
    He had given it at the door, but he obliges nonetheless.
    ‘Doyle. Detective Callum Doyle. I just need a little information from you. Would that be okay?’
    Silence. For what seems to Doyle like a full minute. He is beginning to think it was a mistake coming here, intruding into her grief. It’s too early. She needs more time.
    But he needs to know.
    ‘Will you catch them?’ she says finally. ‘Whoever did this to my daughter. Will you catch them?’
    ‘I’m sure we will,’ Doyle answers. ‘We’ll do everything we can, I promise you.’
    She gives a slight nod, then stares at the carpet. Doyle waits what he thinks is a decent length of time before he tries again.
    ‘Mrs Mellish, do you know—’
    ‘Why?’
    For a second, Doyle is flummoxed.
    ‘Excuse me?’ he says.
    ‘Why do you think he did it? Killing her in the way he did. So savagely, I mean. Why would he do that to her? I keep asking myself that question. What sort of bad thing could Cindy have
done to anyone that would make them think she deserved this in return?’
    Doyle shakes his head. ‘Cindy didn’t deserve it. It just . . . happened. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Please don’t go thinking this was any
fault of Cindy’s. The only person to blame here is her murderer.’
    She nods again and returns her gaze to the carpet. Doyle knows she is trying to make sense of something which defies reason. We all do it, he thinks. When something terrible happens in our
lives, we want to know why. Sometimes it can be hard to accept that there are no answers.
    When he begins his question again, he half expects another interruption, and so he pushes his words out in one fast burst: ‘Mrs Mellish, do you know if Cindy kept a diary?’
    She raises her head, and Doyle is convinced he sees a flicker of puzzlement and interest in her eyes.
    ‘I . . . A diary? I don’t think so. No.’
    No. So that’s it, then. The caller was wrong. There is no diary. What a fucking waste of time and effort this little trip has turned out to be. And from the looks of her, it hasn’t
done Mrs Mellish any favors either.
    ‘Why?’ she asks.
    For a moment Doyle thinks she is continuing her quest for philosophical answers he is not equipped to supply, but then she adds, ‘Why do you ask about a diary?’
    He realizes now that he has stirred all kinds of possibilities in her mind. Perhaps even jostled some expectations to the surface. A detective schlepping all the way over here to ask about
something as specific as a diary? That has to be important, right? That has to signify a lead of some kind, right?
    I should get outta here, thinks Doyle. This is wrong.
    ‘Girls this age, sometimes they keep journals. Sometimes they put stuff in there they might not tell anybody else about, you know? Thoughts they’ve had, people they’ve met,
things that have happened to them. It can help us build a picture.’
    And now he can see a light returning to those sad eyes. She is latching onto this. Making it into something more than the nothing it probably is. Perhaps there are answers here, she is thinking.
Perhaps there is meaning.
    ‘You think this was done by somebody she
knew
?’ she asks.
    He catches the incredulity infused into that last word, and he knows he has to move quickly to stop her joining dots which aren’t in sequence.
    ‘No. I’m not saying that at all. We don’t know if she met her killer before or not. All I want to do right now is learn a little more about Cindy. Maybe it’ll
help.’
    He hates the fact that he’s hiding things from her,