Page 139 of No Safe Place

He was bewildered. He’d seen people manic, people in full-blown psychosis, and this wasn’t it. Ruby was still on her feet, chest heaving now, tears rolling down her face.

At least Lily was safe, out of sight upstairs.

‘Do you think I wanted this?’ She spread her arms, knife pointed at the ceiling. ‘I never knew, I never fucking knew, because she didn’t tell me. Butyouwere in the hospital with her. You were there with her andhimand you should have known—’

‘Ruby,’ Callum said. He lifted his hands up in front of his chest. ‘You’re not making sense—’

Ruby’s tears were carving inky black trails down her face, and she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve, smearing most of the eyeliner away.

Callum tried again. ‘Is this about the accident? About what happened to Paige?’

‘Don’t say her fucking name,’ Ruby screamed.

The neighbours had to be hearing this. They knew what had happened on Thursday, so surely someone would phone the police? He needed DCI Field to smash through the front door and—

‘I always thought it was an accident,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘So fucking cruel, after everything she went through, to die just as she was better. But do you know what I think killed her?’

‘The car. It was raining, she skidded—’ he stammered.

‘It was him,’ Ruby cried. ‘What he did to her. She must have wanted to make the pain stop—’

Callum wanted to screw his eyes closed but he didn’t. Ruby was pointing at him with the knife.

‘She was all on her own. Maybe she didn’t want to die, maybe the crash was supposed to be a cry for help.’

He was lost again.

‘I think you knew, all of you.’ Ruby was staring at a point past his head. ‘But even if you didn’t, it’s not fair, is it? That you all got to go on living your lives, being happy. An author. A teacher. Sam studying a PhD. Andy and his well-paid job.’

He stayed still. Perfectly still – like playing dead with a bear, in case his breathing, or flinching or anything set her off again.

‘But, yeah. I think she did it on purpose. After the trauma, she wanted to die—’ Ruby wiped more tears away, shrugged at Callum, helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know any more.’

‘What trauma, Ruby? I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

She snorted, then turned and walked to the kitchen, bending down for the bag, and in the few seconds she wasn’t looking at him, Callum threw desperate looks around the room. No phone, nothing he could use as a weapon. If he screamed or cried out, she’d probably go for him.

Ruby came back, holding a plastic wallet stuffed with paper, starting to split down the edges from being overfilled.

‘What is that, Ruby?’ he asked, hoping he could keep her talking.

Ruby threw the folder over to him, and it landed between them, on the table.

‘Pick it up,’ she barked.

‘No,’ he said, flatly.

Ruby’s eyebrows disappeared into her fringe. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I said no,’ he said, more loudly. ‘Tell me what it is.’

He met Ruby’s eyes, and she didn’t blink.

If she was going to stab him, she’d have burst in and done it. She was toying with him, but Lily was okay. If Ruby was focused on him, maybe he’d buy enough time to figure out how to get them out of this.

‘What is it?’ he said, pointing at the folder. ‘Tell me.’

‘That file is the reason David Moore is in the fucking morgue,’ Ruby said quietly. ‘Where he belongs.’