Chapter 6: Before He Knows We're Ready
Her name was Dorothea Marsh, and she lived in the same house she had lived in for fifty-four years, three doors down from where my childhood home had stood before the fire reduced it to a foundation.
The foundation was still there.
Someone had built a new house on top of it.
I had not been back to this street in over a decade.
I sat in the passenger seat and looked at the new house through the windscreen and felt nothing I could name.
"You don't have to go in," David said.
"Yes I do."
Dorothea answered the door before we knocked.
She had been watching from the window.
She was small and sharp-eyed, with white hair pinned back and hands that moved constantly, adjusting her cardigan, smoothing the door frame, folding and unfolding.
"I knew someone would come eventually," she said.
She stepped back to let us in.
"I told that young officer at the time.
I said, that man did not belong on this street.
I knew every face on this street.
I had lived here thirty years already."
She led us into a front room crowded with photographs and sat in a high-backed chair across from us.
"Tell me what you remember," I said.
"He arrived at half past nine in the morning.
I was deadheading the roses at the front.
He parked on the street — a dark car, I couldn't tell you the make — and he walked up to your door like he owned it.
Didn't ring the bell.
Used a key."
My stomach turned.
"He had a key."
"He let himself straight in.
I thought nothing of it at the time — I assumed he was family.
But then—" She stopped.
Her hands stilled in her lap.
"About twenty minutes later I heard shouting.
From inside.
Not words, just — the sound of it.
And then it went quiet."
"And then he left?"
"He came out the front door.
Walked back to his car.
And he stopped on the pavement and he looked directly at me." She held my gaze.
"I was still at the roses.
I hadn't moved.
He looked at me the way you look at something you're deciding whether to deal with.
Then he got in his car and drove away."
"Did you see his face clearly?"
"Clearly enough." She reached to the side table and picked up a photograph in a small frame.
She held it out to me.
It was a newspaper clipping, mounted behind glass.
A charity gala, fifteen years ago.
A group of men in evening dress.
She pointed to one of them without touching the glass.
"That's him," she said.
"I cut it out when I saw it.
I don't know why.
I just did."
Gareth.
Younger, heavier, but unmistakable.
The gold ring visible on his right hand even in the small photograph.
I passed it to David without speaking.
"The fire started that afternoon," Dorothea continued.
"They said it was a gas fault.
I never believed it.
But no one asked me twice."
I thanked her.
I told her a detective would be in contact.
She nodded like she had been waiting for that sentence for twenty-three years.
Outside, David held the car door open and I stood on the pavement and looked at the new house where my old house used to be.
"He had a key," I said.
"He was your father's business partner.
It wouldn't have seemed strange."
"He walked in.
They argued.
He left.
And then the fire started." I turned away from the house.
"He planned it before he arrived.
He already knew what he was going to do if my father refused."
We drove back in silence.
Halfway home, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Silence for a moment.
Then a voice I didn't recognize — male, low, deliberate.
"You've been asking questions," the voice said.
"Gareth wants you to know that whatever you think you've found, it won't be enough.
And that some things are better left buried."
The call ended.
I held the phone in my lap and looked out at the road.
David glanced over.
"Who was that?"
"Someone he sent." I put the phone in my bag.
"He knows we went to the solicitor.
He knows we're moving."
"Then we need to move faster."
I called Calloway the moment we got home.
I told her about the call.
I told her about Dorothea's photograph.
I told her Gareth had a key to my parents' house.
"That changes the evidentiary picture significantly," Calloway said.
"I'm going to apply for a warrant for his financial records.
That takes time.
But I want you to do something for me in the meantime."
"What?"
"I want you to meet with him.
Normally.
As if nothing has changed.
Can you do that?"
I thought about his voice on the phone three days ago.
The warmth.
The ease.
The complete absence of anything real.
"Yes," I said.
"I can do that."
"Don't push him.
Don't hint.
Just — let him think he's still safe."
I agreed.
I ended the call.
I went upstairs to find Mae.
She was standing in the doorway of the guest room, and from the look on her face, she had heard enough.
"He sent someone to warn you," she said.
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she straightened.
"I'll give the statement," she said.
"Whatever I remember, however broken it is.
I'll give it."
I looked at her — this woman who had lost everything, who had survived on nothing, who had come back to me without even knowing she was looking.
"Are you sure?"
May you like
"He took twenty-three years from me," she said.
"I'd like them back."
