Page 66 of Vengeance is Mine

‘I’m going to get off now. I’m cold. Your fault for having a birthday in January. If you’d been a July baby like me, I could stay with you all day. I’d have brought some sandwiches, and we could have had a proper chinwag.’ He half-smiled. He remained crouched in silence for as long as he could manage it before his legs began to stiffen. ‘Sleep well, sweetheart.’ He struggled to stand up, using the gravestone as leverage.

Anthony turned and walked away, wiping his tears as he left. She would have been seventy years old today. Fifty-one was no age to die. He kept looking back over his shoulder, until he could no longer see her grave, then he headed for home. A quick stop off at the Co-op, then back to his bungalow. He had a cake to make.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dawn felt like a criminal. She was sat in the back of the police car being driven through the streets of Newcastle to the station on Forth Banks. As she looked out of the window at the people heading for the shops or to work, wrapped up against the elements, she couldn’t help thinking they were all looking up at the sight of a brightly coloured police car, glimpsing the person in the back and thinking she was guilty of something. She suddenly felt incredibly nervous.

Once in the station, she was taken straight into an interview room. She’d asked if her mother could sit in with her but that wasn’t allowed, apparently. She felt like she should have known that, working in the legal profession. Being denied access to her own mum made Dawn feel even more like she’d done something wrong.

Twenty minutes later, the door opened, and DI Terry Braithwaite entered with a female colleague. He looked even thinner than when Dawn first saw him last year, older, too. His hair was flecked with more grey, and he had two-day stubble, which, Dawn admitted, looked sexy on him. His face looked lived in, but there was no getting away from those ice-blue eyes. Piercing. Electric. Hypnotic.

He introduced himself, then his partner as DS Kyra Willis. She was at least a decade younger than him, a good few inches shorter, but not much thinner, despite her being slight. Her shiny brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that looked almost painful. Her face wasn’t creased or lined. There were no marks, blemishes or scars. It was a perfectly smooth caramel colour. Dawn hated her on sight. At only twenty-two, she was already using anti-wrinkle cream and a serum to help fade the dark circles beneath her eyes.

‘Ms Shepherd,’ Terry began. ‘You’re not under arrest. You’re free to go at any time. However, this interview will be recorded for investigative purposes. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice quivering slightly.

‘First of all, I’d like to say I’m truly sorry about your father’s death,’ he said earnestly. ‘We will do everything in our power to make sure whoever did this is caught.’

Dawn gave a weak smile.

‘Now, when was the last time you saw your father?’

‘New Year’s Eve,’ she said, without having to think. ‘I went over there at lunchtime to have a coffee and a chat.’

‘Did he have any plans for New Year?’ Kyra said. Her accent wasn’t local, and Dawn couldn’t place it.

‘No. He was staying in.’

‘Was that unusual?’ Kyra asked, making a note in her pad.

‘Well, seeing as I’d only known him for about ten months, and he’d been in prison for twenty years before that, I doubt he usually did very much on New Year’s Eve,’ Dawn replied, an edge to her voice.

‘Sorry,’ Kyra said quietly.

‘How did he seem on New Year’s Eve?’ Terry asked.

‘Same as always. Relaxed.’

‘There was nothing worrying him?’

‘No.’

‘No money or health problems?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Had he received any animosity from his neighbours?’

‘Well, they didn’t know who he was when he first moved in, so he’d receive smiles and the odd hello then. But it wasn’t long before the rumours started. When news got out, the smiles stopped, and people kept a wide berth. Some even crossed the road when they saw him.’

‘How did that make him feel?’ Kyra asked.

‘Like a leper. He’d expected it, though. He tried to make out it didn’t bother him, but I could see it did,’ Dawn said, playing with her fingers.

‘Was he considering moving out of Newcastle?’ Terry asked.

Dawn looked up. She could see in his eyes he wasn’t asking this question as a detective, but as someone close to Stephanie White and her family.