Read Online The Reckoning by Jane Casey - Free Book Online

many children?’
    ‘Three. All boys. Four, seven and nine.’ Her face crumpled. ‘They keep asking me when Daddy will be home.’
    ‘That must be very difficult,’ I said quietly, knowing that nothing we could say would be of comfort to her.
    ‘Just give me a minute.’ She turned away, dropping her face into her hands. It was a pose that would have looked melodramatic had it not seemed so natural to her. I wondered if she’d ever been a model. There was a studied grace to her movements, but she was too tall to have been a dancer.
    While Claudia Tremlett was distracted DC Cowell seized the opportunity to flee. ‘That’s all I know, basically. If there’s anything else …’
    ‘We’ll be in touch,’ Derwent finished for him. Cowell handed him the keys and nodded to me before slipping through the door, and I listened with pure, uncomplicated envy as he ran down the stairs and slammed the door behind him. Escape was a good idea. There was nothing like speaking to grieving relatives to make you feel grimy in your soul. Especially when the questions you had to ask were far from easy.
    With a sniff and a shake of her shoulder-length hair, Mrs Tremlett announced herself as ready to be interviewed. Derwent surprised me by showing a degree of sensitivity as he steered her out of the ransacked office and through the dismal reception area.
    ‘Let’s talk out here in the hall, if you don’t mind.’
    She looked around, at a loss. ‘There’s nowhere to sit.’
    There was nowhere in her husband’s office either apart from his greasy old armchair, but I had enough tact not to point that out.
    ‘You could sit on the windowsill. I’ll be okay here.’ As I spoke, I perched on the third-from-bottom step of the stairs that led to the second floor.
    ‘And I’m happy to stand.’ Derwent shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall, the picture of barely tempered masculinity. I was meanly pleased that she hardly glanced at him as she brushed dust off the ledge, meticulous even in her distress. She was wearing pale grey jeans and a denim shirt that occasionally slid off one narrow shoulder. It was carelessly sexy in an unforced, unconscious way and I wondered what Ivan Tremlett had been like in life – how charismatic he would have to have been to marry and keep the aristocratic lovely in front of me, even without the criminal conviction.
    Derwent must have been wondering the same thing. ‘Did you love your husband, Mrs Tremlett?’
    If he’d been hoping to wrongfoot her, he failed. She met his gaze unwaveringly. ‘Yes. Of course I did.’
    ‘You never thought twice about your marriage? Even with the fact that he pleaded guilty to downloading illegal images of child abuse?’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’ She drew in a breath and let it out slowly; I recognised it as a trick she had probably learnt from a therapist, a means of easing tension and focusing her thoughts. Derwent was going to find it hard to shake her if she insisted on taking her time before answering his questions. ‘I had a difficult time when Ivan was being investigated. Of course I did. But we talked about it, and we had counselling, and our marriage was stronger afterwards.’
    ‘After he came out of prison.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How did he find it?’
    ‘It wasn’t a holiday. But he was well treated. He was able to teach computer skills to some of the long-term inmates, so they respected him. He was worried, of course, that he would be a target for abuse because of his conviction, but they left him alone. They believed that he hadn’t done it, as did I.’
    ‘That was my next question. How did you convince yourself he was innocent when he pleaded guilty?’
    ‘He was advised to plead guilty because it looked, on the face of it, as if he’d downloaded hundreds of images to his work account. But it was a set-up. One of his subordinates wanted his job and framed him. She had access to his password because she used to do bits and