Read Online Without a Trace by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page A

never asked,’ Molly said. ‘I did think it was funny that she dressed up to go there, though.’
    ‘What do you mean, “dressed up”?’
    ‘Well, she looked really smart, glamorous even: a tight skirt, her hair up and high heels. If I was doing a cleaning job, I’d go in my oldest clothes.’
    ‘Did you ask her about it?’
    ‘I teased her,’ Molly said. ‘I said she was the smartest cleaner I’d ever seen. She just laughed and said she had an overall and some plimsolls in her bag but she liked to make out she was going somewhere lovely.’
    ‘So she might have been lying and, in reality, she was meeting a lover who gave her money?’
    Molly frowned. ‘Yes, I suppose she could’ve been, but she always looked awfully weary when she got back. Besides, if there had been a man, I think she’d have told me about him. She told me about the other men in her life.’
    DI Girling looked long and hard at Molly, as if weighing up whether she was telling the truth. ‘Getting back to the diary, it’s very strange that it’s gone,’ he said, pulling cushions and the gaily coloured crocheted blanket from the sofa to look underneath them. ‘It suggests to me that the person who took Petal thought there might be something in it to incriminate them. A family member, perhaps. Petal’s father?’
    ‘But I don’t think Cassie had any family,’ Molly said. ‘As for Petal’s father, she said it had been a brief fling, over long before she knew she was going to have a baby, and she never saw him again. She added that she didn’t regret it, though, as Petal was the best thing that ever happened to her. And, really, if a black man had come to the village, someone would’ve seen him, wouldn’t they?’
    DI Girling was silent for a moment, just standing there staring into space. Simon winked at Molly encouragingly.
    ‘You said it was a five-year diary?’ DI Girling said after a little while. ‘People who keep diaries on a regular basis tend to have a stack of old ones, too. Did she?’
    Molly shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. She never said she did.’
    ‘No, nor to me,’ Simon said. ‘But tell us, Detective Inspector, was Cassie’s death definitely murder?’
    DI Girling sighed deeply. ‘We’re not absolutely sure – it could be manslaughter, a fight that got out of hand. But I heard this morning from the pathologist that there are indications of a fierce struggle, bruising on her arms, face and to her neck, and he didn’t think falling back on to the hearth would result in death, only if her head had been banged hard against it, perhaps more than once. Then, of course, the daughter’s disappearance and the fact that some of her clothing has been taken adds another perspective. Someone intending to kill a child wouldn’t bother to take clothes or a toy. So it looks to me as if the target was Petal.’
    ‘You mean that this person wanted to take Petal away? But Cassie tried to stop them and got killed trying?’ Molly asked.
    ‘That may be the case, but I shouldn’t be talking to you about any of this so I’d be obliged if you’d keep my opinions to yourselves.’
    Molly told DI Girling about the man Cassie said she had met in the library, and then Simon told him a little more about how he had got to know her. ‘What about fingerprints?’ Simon asked. ‘Did you find any here?’
    ‘I’m not at liberty to divulge that,’ DI Girling said. ‘But on that note I’d like you both to come to the police station now to give me yours, so they can be compared with anyothers we might have found. After that, I trust neither of you will leave the village, in case we need you to answer further questions.’
    Simon and Molly turned down the offer of a lift back to the village, both saying they’d walk. Molly wanted to delay going back to work and seeing her father. Simon gave no reason.
    ‘I don’t get the impression the police are going to try very hard to solve this,’ Simon said thoughtfully as