Free By Death Divided by Patricia Hall Page A

unshaven and in his dressing gown but awake enough to recognise Vicky and offer her a shamefaced smile as he held the door open. He was, Laura thought, a normal enough looking man, attractive even in a slightly overweight way, with clear blue eyes and tousled fair hair, nothing like the monster she had been half expecting to confront.
    ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Did Julie send you?’
    ‘She asked me to pick up one or two things for Anna,’ Vicky said. ‘This is Laura, another friend.’
    Holden’s eyes flickered in Laura’s direction without interest. He waved the two women into the sitting room, where a thin veil of dust over every flat surface indicated as clearly as anything the abandoned state of his home.
    ‘I want her to come home,’ he said thickly, not sitting down himself but beginning to pace around the room with a sort of restless irritation. ‘She knows I love her and Anna to bits. Will you tell her please to come home? I need them here.’
    ‘I’ll tell her,’ Vicky said. ‘But that’s something you’ll have to resolve between you. In the meantime, she wants this stuff for Anna.’
    She handed Holden a list handwritten on a sheet torn from an exercise book, which he glanced at cursorily. For a moment Laura thought he was going to screw it up, but he seemed to overcome whatever surge of emotion the list had prompted and nodded dully.
    ‘Most of it’s in her room,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go and look? I don’t think I can.’
    Vicky nodded and made for the door.
    ‘I’ll wait here,’ Laura said quickly, thinking that would give her a chance to talk to Holden privately. She guessed that he did not trust Vicky but might regard her as a more or less unknown quantity in his marital war. And that he might be looking for allies.
    Holden kept on pacing for a moment as they listened to Vicky going up the stairs and opening the door of Anna’s room. Then he flung himself down into a chair opposite Laura and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to whatwas happening around him. He was a tall man, carrying his superfluous weight easily, but now she could see that the skin around his eyes was slightly puffy and putty coloured, and he constantly licked dry lips.
    ‘Has she persuaded you to put her up then?’ he muttered resentfully. ‘Given poor little wifey sanctuary, have you?’
    ‘Not in my tiny place, even if my partner would put up with it,’ Laura said.
    ‘So where the hell is she? I know Vicky knows, though she won’t bloody tell me, will she? I never liked that woman, chattering away about my affairs at the school gate. She put Julie up to this nonsense. She’s got a vivid imagination, has Julie. Makes things up a lot.’
    Laura opened her mouth to protest that bruises could not be imaginary when she had seen them with her own eyes, and then thought better of it. It would do no good to provoke Holden, she thought, and in spite of his relatively normal demeanour he might actually be dangerous. But it seemed to be too late. Her scepticism must have shown in her eyes.
    ‘Do you know where they are?’ he shouted suddenly, his colour rising.
    ‘She and Anna are safe enough,’ Laura said. ‘I don’t think they feel safe here at the moment.’
    ‘I haven’t even been here much,’ Holden said, his face as sulky now as a spoilt child’s. ‘I’ve had to go to my mother’s to get a square meal. Anyway, it’s Anna I want to see. That bitch has no right to keep my daughter away from me. I’d never hurt Anna. I love her to bits. I have rights too, you know. I’m her father.’
    ‘You would need to talk to a solicitor about that,’ Laura said.
    ‘Has she gone to the bloody police?’ Holden asked furiously. ‘Why do I need a solicitor, for God’s sake? They’re all bloody sharks.’
    Laura floundered for a moment, unable to grasp how thoroughly Holden seemed to have blanked out the implications of his recent behaviour.
    ‘When a marriage breaks down you usually need a