‘Can I see him?’

‘Be my guest.’ The boy pointed towards the ceiling and flicked his ash towards the littered fireplace.

Susan walked up the broad staircase. It must have been wonderful once, with thick pile carpeting and guests in evening dress standing around sipping cocktails. But now it was just bare, creaky wood, scuffed and splintered in places, and the banister looked like someone had been cutting notches in it. There were pale squares on the walls showing where paintings had been removed.

Without a guide or directions, it took Susan three tries before she opened the right door. Her first try had led her into a bathroom, which seemed clean and modern enough; the second revealed the boy’s room, where the curtains were still closed and faint light outlined messy bedsheets and last week’s underwear on the floor; and the third took her into a warm, stuffy room that smelled of cough lozenges, camphor and commodes. A one-element electric fire radiated its heat close to the bed, and there, in a genuine four-poster with the curtains open, a shadow of a man lay propped up on pillows. The bags under his eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, his complexion was like old paper, and the hands that grasped the bedclothes around his chest were more like talons. His skin looked as if it would crack like parchment if you touched it. As she approached, his watery eyes darted towards her.

‘Who are you?’ His voice was no more than a frightened whisper.

Susan introduced herself and he seemed to relax. About Caroline?’ he said. A faraway look came into his ruined eyes, pale yokes floating in glutinous albumen.

‘Yes,’ Susan said. ‘Can you tell me anything about her?’

‘What do you want to know?’

Susan wasn’t sure. She had taken statements as a uniformed constable and studied interview techniques at police college, but it had never seemed as haphazard as this. Superintendent Gristhorpe hadn’t been much help either. ‘Find out what you can,’ he had told her. ‘Follow your nose.’ Clearly it was a matter of sink or swim in the CID. She took a deep breath and wished she hadn’t; the warmed-up smell of terminal illness was overpowering.

‘Anything that might help us find her killer,’ she said ‘Did Caroline visit you recently?’

‘Sometimes,’ he muttered.

‘Were you close?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘She ran away, you know.’

‘When did she run away?’

‘She was only a child and she ran away.’

Susan repeated her question and the old man stared at her. ‘Pardon? When did she go? When she was sixteen Only a child.’

‘Why?’

A look of great sadness came into his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Her mother died, you know. I tried the best I could, but she was so hard to manage.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘London.’

‘What did she do there?’

He shook his head. ‘Then she came back. That’s when she came to see me.’

‘And again since?’

‘Yes.’

‘How often?’

‘When she could. When she could get away.’

‘Did she ever tell you anything about her life down in London?’

‘I was so happy to see her again.’

‘Do you know where she lived, who her friends were?’

‘She wasn’t a bad girl, not really a bad girl.’

‘Did she write from London?’

The old man shook his head slowly on the pillow.

‘But you still loved her?’

‘Yes.’ He was crying now, and the tears embarrassed him. ‘I’m sorry… could you please…?’ He pointed to a box of tissues on the bedside table and Susan passed it to him.

‘She wasn’t bad,’ he repeated when he’d settled down again. ‘Restless, angry. But not bad. I always knew she’d come back. I never stopped loving her.’

‘But she never talked about her life, either in London or in Eastvale?’

‘No. Perhaps to Gary… I’m tired. Not a bad girl,’ he repeated softly.

He seemed to be falling asleep. Susan had got nowhere and could think of no more questions to ask. Clearly, the old man had not jumped out of bed, hurried over to Eastvale and murdered his daughter. Maybe she would get more out of the son. At least he seemed angry and bitter enough to give something away if she pushed him hard enough. She said goodbye, though she doubted that the old man heard, and made her way back downstairs. The boy was still sprawled on the sofa, a can of lager open beside him on the floor. Despite the cold, she could still smell, underlying the smoke, a faint hint of decay, as if pieces of meat lay rotting under the floorboards.

‘When did you last see your sister?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. A week, two weeks ago? She came when she felt like it. Time doesn’t have much meaning around this place.’

‘But she had visited you recently?’

Gary nodded.

‘What did she talk about?’

He lit a cigarette and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Nothing. Just the usual.’

‘What’s the usual?’

‘You know… job, house… relationships… The usual crap.’

‘What’s wrong with your father?’

‘Cancer. He’s had a couple of operations, chemotherapy, but… you know.’

‘How long has he been like this?’

‘Five years.’

‘And you look after him?’

The boy tensed forward and points of fire appeared in his pale cheeks. ‘Yes. Me. All the fucking time. It’s bring me this, Gary, bring me that. Go get my prescription, Gary. Gary, I need a bath. I even sit him on the fucking toilet. Yes, I take care of him.’

‘Does he never leave his room?’

He sighed and settled back on the sofa. ‘I told you, only to go to the bathroom. He can’t manage the stairs. Besides, he doesn’t want to. He’s given up.’

That explained the state of the place. Susan wondered if the father knew, suspected, or even cared that his son had taken over the huge cold house to live whatever life of his own he could scrounge from the responsibilities of the sickroom. She wanted to ask him how he put up with it, but she already knew the scornful answer she would get. ‘Who else is there to do it?’

Instead she asked, ‘How old were you when your sister ran away?’

He seemed surprised by the change in direction and had to think for a moment. ‘Eight. There’s eight years between us. She’d been a bitch for years, had Caroline. The atmosphere was always tense. People were always rowing or on the verge of rows. It was a relief when she went.’

‘Why?’

He turned away so she couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Why? I don’t know. She was just like that. Full of poison. Especially towards me. Right from the start she tormented me, when I was a baby. They found her trying to drown me in my bath once. Of course they said she didn’t realize what she was doing, but she did.’

‘Why should she want to kill you?’

He shrugged. ‘She hated me.’

‘Your father says he loved her.’

He cast a scornful glance towards the ceiling and said slowly, ‘Oh yes, she always was the apple of his eye, even after she took off to London to become a tramp. Caroline could do no wrong. But who was the one left looking after him?’

‘Why did you say tramp? How do you know?’

‘What else would she do? She didn’t have any job skills, but she was sixteen. She had two tits and a cunt like any other bird her age.’

If Susan was expected to be shocked by his crudity, she was determined not to show it. ‘Did you ever see her during that period?’

‘Me? You must be joking. It was all right for a while till mum got sick and died. It didn’t take her longer than a month or two, not five years like that miserable old bastard upstairs. I was thirteen then, when he started. Took to his bed like a fish to water and it’s been the same ever since.’

‘What about school?’

‘I went sometimes. He sleeps most of the time, so I’m okay unless he has one of his awkward phases. I left last year. No jobs anyway.’

‘But what about the health service? Don’t they help?’

‘They send a nurse to look in every once in a while. And if you’re going to mention a home, don’t bother. I’d have him in one before you could say Jack Robinson if I could, but there’s no room available unless you can pay.’ He gestured around the crumbling house. ‘As you can see, we can’t. We’ve got his pension and a bit in the bank and that’s it. I’ve even sold the bloody paintings, not that they were worth much. Thank God the bloody house is paid for. It must be worth a fortune now. I’d sell it and move somewhere cheaper if I could but the old bastard won’t hear of it. Wants to die in his own bed. Sooner the better, I say.’