Bad Blood by Aline Templeton Read Free Book Online

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    He comes down the ward and sits next to her bed. ‘How are you feeling, lassie?’ he says.
    She ignores the question. ‘Where’s my mum?’
    She was having to peer through what was running in her head and it was very distracting. She saw Hepburn looking at her strangely. Reckoning she was just another nutter, probably – and perhaps that wasn’t wrong.
    ‘I’m afraid he’s off duty.’
    ‘I’ll come back when he’s on duty again, then.’ Marnie made to get up. ‘Tomorrow?’
    Hepburn shook her head. ‘He’s away tomorrow. And I couldn’t say when you’d get him – we work shifts and we’re out on calls a lot.
    ‘Look, why don’t I find a cup of coffee for us and you can give me some idea what this is all about – OK?’
    She was out of the room before Marnie had a chance to respond. She sat back on the padded bench and closed her eyes, allowing the interview with DS MacNee play on in her mind. There was, she realised, very little to go on there. He’d just asked her standard questions, giving nothing away, and unlike PC – no, sorry, Detective Inspector – Fleming he’d had no previous connection with her mother. And it didn’t look as if she’d get to see Fleming without talking to this girl. She had resigned herself to it, though with a bad grace, by the time Hepburn came back carrying two paper cups.
    ‘It’s not great coffee – warm and wet is about the best I can say for it,’ she said cheerfully, setting them down on the low table and producing cartons of creamer, packets of sugar and a wooden stirrer from her pocket.
    ‘Just black.’ Marnie sipped at the greyish liquid, though shenoticed that Hepburn didn’t pick up hers. She put down the cup again, deciding to follow her example.
    ‘Is it all right if I call you Marnie?’ Hepburn barely waited for her nod. ‘Right, Marnie. Talk to me. What do you want to ask DI Fleming about?’
    ‘I want to know why I never heard anything after my mother disappeared and I was taken into care all these years ago. I want to know if she’s alive or dead. I want to know whether she chose to disappear or whether somebody killed her.’
    She had the satisfaction of seeing Hepburn’s eyes widen in sudden interest, then added, ‘And why there was never an inquiry.’

    Having bashed out her report, Hepburn saved it and left the CID room. She picked up her rain jacket from her locker, pulling up the hood after a glance out of the window. There was a steady drizzle and under the leaden sky it was getting dark already.
    She paused on the doorstep of the police headquarters to light a Gitane, an addiction acquired during visits to her French mother’s family, cupping her hands round the lighter to shield the flame, then taking a long, luxurious, and yes, faintly desperate draw.
    She should give it up. The cost was becoming ridiculous, on her wages, and she was beginning to feel a bit of a sad loser, huddled round the back by the dustbins in her break, with winter ahead. Yes, she should definitely give it up. Just not now.
    She was still reeling a bit from the impact of what Marnie Bruce had told her. A kid of eleven, assaulted and abandoned in a remote cottage with her mother gone – and no follow-up? It couldn’t be like that, surely. There must be more to it, but she’d had to be careful that her report didn’t have a hint of criticism since it was obviously a case that Big Marge had worked on in the dim-and-distant. She’d stressed, too, that there was something odd about the woman – not exactly a nutter, but definitely strange. There had been hesitationsthat suggested Marnie might be hearing voices that certainly weren’t coming through to anyone else.
    It was a pity she couldn’t have talked it over with Big Marge today, but she’d had her instructions. She’d just have to go back home now. She inhaled a last lingering puff, then crushed her cigarette out against the waste bin.
    Hepburn’s feet were dragging as she