Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘I know. I saw.’ She points her pen out the little window. ‘But that doesn’t really answer my question, does it?’

‘I guess not,’ I say. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

The woman lays her pen atop the papers covering her desk. Bowls are stacked on one side. I remember Fred at dinner, eating from one bowl and leaving the other untouched.

‘Did Frederick send you?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Actually, he said not to come up here.’

‘But you did anyway.’

‘I did.’ She’s already set up the rhythm of this conversation. Controlling its structure, if not its content. ‘You’re Fred’s mother?’

‘Correct. Welcome to my home. Can I get you something to drink?’

‘Uh, no, thank you.’

‘I was joking.’ She gestures at the little room, which has no refrigerator or glassware, although I assume the doorway in the corner leads to an ensuite. ‘What do you want?’

I speak carefully. ‘Did you know someone was murdered downstairs?’

‘My son informed me that there had been a suicide.’ She speaks like a school principal, her age creating a sense of authority rather than weakness.

‘Fred thinks Samson might have been murdered,’ I say. ‘He asked me to help him work out who did it, and why.’

I realise my mistake, but too late to stop the words coming out of my mouth. Fred spotted the signs of murder as fast as I did and asked me to investigate almost immediately. There would have been no time to talk to his mother in between. Therefore, when he told her it was a suicide, he already knew it was murder. He lied, and I just exposed him.

But his mother doesn’t look surprised. She didn’t believe him anyway. ‘Is that so?’ she says. ‘Interesting. How do you two know each other?’

‘We met on the internet,’ I say. ‘Can I ask you some questions?’

‘About what?’

‘Did you hear any voices before the gunshot on Tuesday?’

‘I didn’t hear any gunshot.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘I sleep pretty heavily.’

‘It was the middle of the day,’ I say.

‘Time doesn’t matter much up here.’

I look down at the floor. Fred’s bedroom would be directly below my feet and Samson’s was next door. Is it really possible that this old woman didn’t hear the shot?

‘Do you have trouble with your hearing?’ I ask.

The woman avoids the question. ‘It’s interesting that Fred asked you to investigate, rather than any of the other people in the house. He must really trust you. You met on the internet, you say?’

I feel like she’s learning more about me than I am about her in this conversation. ‘What’s your name, ma’am?’

‘Oh, I’m Penny,’ she says. ‘Forgive me, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to introduce myself to anyone.’

‘Do the others know you’re up here?’

‘They know, yes,’ Penny says. ‘But they may have forgotten. It’s surprisingly easy to forget about a woman you never see, even if she lives right above your head.’

She doesn’t sound bitter about this. It’s as though she prefers to be invisible.

‘You never come down?’ I ask.

‘No. Aren’t you going to ask me if I saw anyone approaching the house around the time of Samson’s death?’

‘Did you see anyone?’

‘I did not,’ she says, and leaves a significant pause. She’s trying to tell me that the killer is one of the Guards, which I had already surmised.

‘You were looking out the window the whole time?’

She looks pleased. ‘That’s more like it. No, I was not.’

‘How long have you lived up here?’ I ask.

She points to some notches carved into the wall. There are hundreds, and I don’t know if they measure days or weeks.

‘You have paper to write on,’ I point out.

‘Old habits,’ she says. ‘Sit down, Lux.’ It doesn’t sound as if she likes the name.

I approach. The floorboards don’t squeak under me, even though I’m heavier than her.

I sit on the bed, which lets out a sick moan and a bad smell. No fancy memory foam up here.

‘If you really want to solve this,’ Penny says, ‘you’ll have to pay attention not only to what you hear, but what you don’t.’

She clearly knows something. I see no reason not to just ask what it is. ‘Do you know who killed Samson?’

Penny raises her eyebrows. ‘I haven’t left this room in years. How could I know anything?’

So she knows something she doesn’t want to share, at least not directly. The best way to find out what it is might just be to let her talk.

‘Perhaps you’ll save me some counting and tell me the date,’ she says.

I’ve been thinking about it since Sue wished me a Merry Christmas. ‘December seventeen.’

‘Ah.’ Penny looks up at the ceiling. ‘Frederick will be twenty-eight soon. If his father and I were still together, last week would have been our thirtieth wedding anniversary.’

‘Is Fred’s father still alive?’

Penny shrugs and gestures at the room. As if to say again, How could I know?

‘You’re divorced?’

‘Neither of us underestimated how hard it would be to raise a child, but both of us overestimated our own strength. Being a man, he felt like he could leave.’ She says all this impatiently. It’s not what she wants to talk about. ‘Anyway, I used to be a police officer. Did my son tell you that?’

‘He’s told me nothing,’ I say, suddenly uneasy.

Penny notices this, and smiles. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to rat you out for coming up here. I appreciate the company. And as for whatever’s going on in the shed, well … who would I call, and how? You boys have your fun.’

I wonder how much she knows, and how much she’s chosen not to.

‘Anyway, I have a test case for you,’ she says. ‘One from my own experience.’

I’m starting to fall behind. ‘A