Benedict and Smart exchange a glance. ‘What do you think she’s accusing you of?’ he asks slowly.
‘Murder.’
‘Murder?’
‘Yes. She thinks I asked Lewis to help dispose of Mabel’s body and then pretended she’d been abducted.’
She realises – too late – that she’s just stepped into a mire of quicksand. She can feel herself sinking down, down …
‘Is that what happened, Ruby?’ says Benedict.
‘No! Absolutely not. I would never … I was just saying …’ she flounders. ‘It’s obviously why you’ve called me back, although you can’t have a scrap of evidence against me. If Amber is the one accusing me, then yes, I feel extremely angry with her.’
‘Fair enough.’ He coughs and adjusts his position in the chair. ‘You see, we have a problem here. Our scene-of-crime officers are baffled as to how Mabel was removed from the house.’
‘They’re not the only ones,’ she snaps.
‘As you were the only other person there at the time, it can’t surprise you that that we need to question you further about this particular issue.’
‘Yes, I understand, and I’ve been racking my brains to work out how it happened, but I’ve drawn a blank.’
‘Hmm,’ says Benedict. ‘We couldn’t find any evidence of forced entry, which means that whoever took Mabel had means of access to the flat. We have to consider the possibilities. Maybe the front door was simply left open and an opportunistic burglar got in, then saw Mabel and decided to take her.’
‘I didn’t leave the front door open. It’s the middle of winter, I would have noticed.’
‘Yes, we think so too. Which leaves us thinking that either this person had a key, or they were let in.’
‘I didn’t let anyone in.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes!’
DI Benedict nods at his sergeant. She takes a sheet of paper from a buff folder and passes it to Ruby, describing her action for the recording. ‘According to your mobile phone records, you called Lewis Chambers at sixteen minutes past one on Sunday morning.’
Ruby feels her stomach tighten. ‘Okay.’
‘But you didn’t mention it in your witness statement,’ says DS Ali Smart.
‘Didn’t I?’ Ruby blushes. ‘Sorry. I forgot. I suppose it didn’t seem relevant.’
‘The conversation was four minutes long.’
‘Was it?’
‘Can you remember what it was about?’
‘Um … not really. We were just saying goodnight.’
‘Do you normally go to bed so late?’
‘At the weekend, yeah. Sometimes later.’
Benedict signals to his colleague and she takes a photo out of the folder, turning it around and pushing it towards Ruby. It’s a grainy black-and-white shot taken on a CCTV camera of somebody walking along clutching a large object to their chest. She reels off the exhibit number for the tape. ‘Do you recognise the person in this picture?’
Ruby pales. ‘Oh my God. Where was that taken?’
‘Please answer the question. Do you recognise them?’
‘No. How could I? It’s really unclear. Is that … are they … are they carrying Mabel?’ She gasps, clutching her throat.
‘Why did you call Lewis Chambers?’ presses DS Smart.
‘I already said, to say goodnight. No other reason.’
‘Was Mabel awake during the phone call?’
‘No. She’d woken up about an hour earlier but I’d managed to get her off again.’
‘Did you ask Lewis to come over and join you?’
‘No.’
‘And how was Mabel?’
‘Fast asleep, like I said.’
‘It had been a long day. On your own, without any help.’
‘I didn’t need help.’
DI Benedict makes a grunting noise, signalling that he wants to take over. ‘Tell us again about this call with Lewis,’ he says. ‘Four minutes is a long time just to say goodnight. What else were you talking about?’
‘I can’t remember exactly, just normal stuff about how our days had gone … What are you trying to say? That I asked him to come over?’
‘You tell us, Ruby.’ He folds his arms across his chest.
A feeling of dread starts to wash over her. She points at the photo. ‘This isn’t Lewis, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Because he had nothing to do with it.’
‘To do with what, exactly?’
‘Mabel’s disappearance!’
She stares at the image. The abductor is wearing a hood and a scarf around their face; it’s impossible to tell whether it’s Lewis or not, whether it’s even a man or a woman. If it’s a still taken from security footage, the forensics team should be able to analyse the person’s height and even their gait. But what if there’s not enough footage to make accurate calculations? What if Lewis happens to be the same height or walk in a similar way? She remembers now that