Page 108 of The Family Remains

Lucy swallows. An image flashes through her mind. The elephant tusk in Henry’s hand. Birdie on the floor. But the bit inbetween is blank, voided. She looks up at the detective and says, quite firmly, ‘No.’

‘What happened that night, Miss Lamb? What happened when the adults died and your baby was left behind?’

‘I don’t know. They died. They killed themselves. Probably because they knew they were evil.’

‘But Birdie did not kill herself.’

‘No. They probably killed her. David probably killed her. And then killed himself. And took my poor stupid parents along with him.’

‘That would indeed be the obvious explanation, Miss Lamb. I agree. But it’s much more complicated than that, you see. Because someone has tried to dispose of the remains. Has taken them from the roof of the property and thrown them in the Thames. And this within the last year. It could not have been David Thomsen covering his tracks because he is dead. So, it is someone else. Covering their own tracks.’

Lucy flinches. Fucking Henry. He said he’d got rid of them, that no one would ever find them. What was he thinking, dumping something that incriminating in the River fucking Thames? Did he honestly think that they would never be found? But she can’t let this unravel so easily. She straightens her neck and says, ‘If you found the bones in the Thames then she could have been killed anywhere. What makes you think she was killed in our house?’

‘A small thing called forensics, Miss Lamb.’ The detective smiles benignly as he says this, and Lucy nods, tersely.Of course.

‘So, the person who removed the bones from the roof of the house in Cheyne Walk, this person needed to have had access tothe house in the past few months to a year. And we know that Libby took ownership of the house around a year ago and that thus, it could only have been you, Henry, Libby Jones, Miller Roe, or the solicitors. Libby tells me that Phineas Thomsen is currently there in Chicago but that he works as a game ranger in Botswana, and we have spoken with his employers, who confirm that he was in Botswana every day for the previous two years. So you see, don’t you, that – unless it was Libby who moved the bones, which seems unlikely as she didn’t know they were there – something else is at play here. Something beyond a suicide pact. That a crime has been committed and that really, in all reasonable probability, Birdie’s bones were moved and disposed of by either your brother or yourself. So if it wasn’t you, Miss Lamb, then please, can you tell me where will we find your brother?’

Lucy glances up at the man on the screen. He is staring at her, and where she expects to see dispassion, she sees great compassion. He is not out to get her. He’s just out to solve a puzzle. But still, she thinks, still, if in order to solve his puzzle he unlocks too much of her, follows her too far down this path, who knows where it will end up? It could, she realises with a cold shudder of dread, end up in the basement of Michael’s house in Antibes, and then she would lose everything. Absolutely everything.

She glances up at the man on the screen, and she nods, just once.