Free The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) by Alison Bruce

in the Fibonacci series. First Gully, then Goodhew, then two more uniforms . . . and a few minutes after that, another three, including the boss. He was older than the rest, thin in a steel-rod kind of way. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Marks, and I got the impression that he thought that would put me at ease, but by then, I was unable to know how I felt.
    After that there were others, too, but all we were thinking about by then was how soon we could get on with whatever was going to come next.
    PC Gully stayed in the room with us, fielding questions. ‘We will need a statement from each of you,’ she repeated.
    ‘Separately or together?’ Meg asked.
    ‘Separately.’
    ‘Can I have someone with me, though?’
    ‘Yes, but as I just explained, it can’t be Phil.’
    ‘So we’re suspects, then?’
    ‘Significant witnesses.’
    ‘No, we’re suspects. If you thought we were innocent, you wouldn’t now be trying to stop us talking to each other, would you?’
    ‘We need to have statements that are made independently.’
    ‘So Phil speaks to you first, then sits in along with me and he doesn’t speak at all, what’s wrong with that?’
    ‘We may need to revisit the various statements.’
    ‘So now we can’t talk to each other at all?’ Meg’s mood was fast escalating towards a full-blown screaming match, but the only thing missing was an adversary. Gully remained resolutely patient, and none of us tried asking Meg to calm down; because we knew better. Without warning, Meg changed tack. ‘So how did she do it?’
    ‘Meg, I’m sure you realize why I can’t comment on—’
    ‘Was she hanging, or what?’
    ‘Meg, please lower your voice.’
    ‘Has she been dead since Friday?’
    One look at Gully’s face would have told Meg that she stood no chance of an answer, so she turned to me. I was still sitting on the same chair, but with my knees raised to my chest and my arms clutched round them.
    ‘Libby, what did you see?’ Meg shouted suddenly.
    I pressed my forehead flat against my knees and stared at the fabric encasing my thighs. I pictured a mouse, and I pretended that it had been the cause of it all. A dead grey mouse, with its form and features fading. A mouse left with more dignity than that glimpse of Shanie I had caught reflected in her bedroom mirror.

TWELVE
    Both Matt and Libby were picked up from Parkside by Matt’s sister Charlotte, and the contact address now given for both also belonged to Charlotte. Brimley Close was a cul-de-sac of post-war semi-detached homes, once carbon copy three-bedroom, two-reception houses, but now embellished with a variety of extensions and improvements. Number 14 looked tidy but tired, maintained but not polished; everything about it said ‘domestic’ and Goodhew wasn’t surprised to learn that it was the house inhabited by the Stone family throughout Matt and Charlotte’s childhood.
    Charlotte was about five foot four; she was dressed in battered jeans and a pink scoop-necked top. Her hair was light brown and blessed with exactly the kind of curls that straight-haired people spent a fortune trying to replicate, and which she had probably spent hours trying to tame.
    She shook his hand, then led him along the short hallway and into the lounge. The room was dominated by an oversized flat-screen television and a chunky three-piece suite. The TV was new enough for the instruction manual to still be in use, as it lay on top of several issues of the free weekly paper and a pile of letters resting on their empty envelopes. By comparison, the sofa and armchairs seemed twenty years out of date. They had been uniformly upholstered in a leaf-patterned chenille, using a colour palette that might have been entitled
shades of goat and cow.
When Goodhew first sat down, and each time he moved, a fresh plume of dust took to the air.
    ‘Are your parents home?’
    ‘There’s only Dad now. He’s at work.’
    ‘And where is that?’
    ‘He works for a