Read Under the Harrow: for Free Online Page B

have grounds to arrest him. Our technicians are still performing tests on the van. He’s not to leave the area.”
    “Did you check him for injuries?” Rachel had defensive wounds, and the dog was trained by a security firm. He would have tried to protect her.
    “We haven’t found any evidence to incriminate him. According to him, Rachel was alive and well when he left her house.”
    “Where was he between three and four?”
    “Resting.”
    “Where?”
    “In his van at the pond. He was up the night before on a job in Kidlington.”
    “Did anyone see him?”
    “We’re confirming his movements with witnesses and CCTV.”
    He must have something to gain from telling me this. It must be a technique. I wonder if he thinks the information will trigger some memory for me. That Rachel met lovers at the pond, maybe, or that the location has some meaning.
    “Was he the person watching her from the ridge?”
    “Nora, I don’t know yet. We’ll know more when the results return from the lab.”
     • • • 
    The high street appears almost preternaturally beautiful and civilized, and I am shaky with relief to not be alone with him anymore.
    The yellow awning of the Miller’s Arms thumps in the wind. Soft clouds marble the windows of the library. There are a dozen people on the street, and one of them, a woman with dark hair and kaleidoscopic blue eyes, stops in front of me. “Nora. I’m so sorry about your sister.”
    “Are you from the hospital?” I ask.
    She shakes her head. “Do you want to get a cup of tea?”
    She smiles and squeezes my arm, and I have the sense that people here will look out for me. We go to the Miller’s Arms. She sets the tea in front of me and gives me an encouraging smile. The relief of being with another person, in the warmth of company, sinks me into my chair.
    I might have just met her murderer. This knowledge roars in my ears. A few minutes, somewhere safe.
    I’ve only been to the Miller’s Arms once before. My drink was pale and frothy and it had a violet floating on its surface. This delighted me. “Bloody hell,” said Rachel. Her fish piearrived with one speckled blue-and-red crab claw pointing from its crust, which mollified her a little. “Does it make up for the violet?” I asked. “No, definitely not.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say now. “I don’t remember your name.”
    She sets her cup down and the clink of it on the saucer is so domestic, so incongruous.
    “Sarah Collier. I work at the
Telegraph
.”
    I notice, with a whip of vertigo, the other people in the room looking at us. I stand and walk out.
    Sarah catches me up outside. She left her coat indoors and stands, shivering, in a cream-colored jumper, her hands tucked under her arms. “I’m not going to ask you any questions. I’m just here, if you need to talk.”
    “I’m not talking to the press.”
    “Did Alistair tell you to say that?” she asks. “You don’t need to listen to everything he says.”
    I don’t want Sarah to know where I’m staying, so I walk toward the common. When I look back, the door to the Miller’s Arms is swinging shut behind her. I pass the common and turn down Salt Mill Lane. At the side of the road is a memorial, and my first thought is that it is for Rachel. My hand goes to my mouth. There are candles and piles of pale cut flowers. Then I notice the football jersey pinned to the fence, and a card with the name
Callum
across it.
    The small semidetached house behind the fence looks vacant. Rachel told me he died in September, his family won’t have sold it yet. I wait until the lane is empty, then kneel to read some of the cards. The messages show people gripped by his death, and anguished by it. A lot of them describe him as a hero. Either no one knew what he was like, or they knew and didn’t care.

8
    I AM CROSSING the high street when I see Lewis in the newsagent’s shop, speaking with the old man who owns it. I wait for him to come out.
    “Is he a