Page 107 of Dead to Me

Anna felt something in her chest drop.

‘He what?’

‘Reid realised Philip was in a relationship with Esther,’ her dad said, sounding tired.Heartsick.‘But James thought it was Holly, didn’t he?Reid thinks he killed her and Philip kidnapped you to cover it up.He tried to, didn’t he?Or was itNed?Reid went to rescue you, anyway.He came through in the end, you know.’

‘Shit,’ Anna said, her heart squeezing like mad.‘Shit, shit, shit.I need to get over there.He’s got it wrong and he’s going to get himself killed.’

44.Reid

There was only one car parked outside the huge sprawl of Philip and Marcie Sedgewick’s house.

Reid had readied himself for no one to be home.For Anna not to be here and for the backup squad car he’d requested to be as pointless as his visit.

He’d had some hope, though.He’d managed to put through an urgent authorisation to access Philip Sedgewick’s phone location at the start of the journey and the last ping had been here, at his home, only two hours ago.Yet the Jaguar that Philip usually drove, according to Kav’s careful research, was not here.

He climbed out of the Uber and looked over the house itself.The red-brick building had strangely shoved-together sections that must have been built at very different times, and every one of them looked empty.There was no sign of movement at any of the windows.

But the place was vast.Multiple people could be hidden away inside.

The driver left as he was walking towards the door, and Reid hoped he wouldn’t have to wait long for the squad car, for a number of reasons.He was out in leafy Great Shelford now, on the ultra-expensive side of Cambridge where cottages and ordinary houses vied with a few massive piles.Philip and Marcie lived on what seemed to be the most expensive and manor-house-heavy road of them all.

And all of it paid for by Marcie,Reid thought, darkly.While Philip fools around with students.

He rang the bell and was relieved when a figure appeared behind the slightly crazed glass.It was Marcie’s tall, slim form, he realised.He recognised her from the photographs he’d been sent during the drive here.

Ryan’s phone had proved to have exactly what he’d suspected: a mine of images from the ball last year, including several that showed a very significant interaction between Esther and Philip.

Marcie looked, Reid thought, almost as glamorous in her lightweight fitted top and trousers as she had in the ballgown she’d worn in some of Ryan’s other photos.Though her hair had been longer a year ago.Her face perhaps a little rounder.

Reid readied a professional smile for her.She looked unflustered as she opened the door, perhaps expecting to see a neighbour.But something changed the moment she saw his swollen jaw.The bruising.

‘Oh, are you…?Are you all right?’

‘I’m DI Reid Murray,’ he said.‘I was hoping to speak to Philip.Your husband, I think?’

‘Yes.Oh.Sorry.’She shook her head, glancing behind him at the driveway.‘He’s whizzed out.Had to pick our son up.’She looked over his jaw again, her forehead knitting.‘That looks recent.I’ve got ice.It’d probably still help.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Reid said, remembering that Marcie was a senior medic.‘Sorry, am I interrupting?You must be working.’

‘I’m on paperwork for now,’ she said with a faint smile.‘I can spare a little while.’

She turned and led him down the hallway.

‘Do you think he’ll be long?’Reid asked.

Marcie glanced at her watch, a delicate, silver thing with diamonds set into it.‘I’d guess a quarter of an hour or so?’

On the inside, the house was expansive and beautiful.Marcie led him into a huge room that must have consisted of at leastfour original rooms knocked together.It was now an enormous open-plan sitting room that became a vast kitchen, with floor-to-ceiling windows at the back showing off a sweeping lawn.They stood open, and through them came an intoxicating smell of jasmine.These people had serious, serious money.

‘Can I help?’Marcie asked, settling herself into one of the sitting-room chairs.

‘You might be able to,’ Reid said, thoughtfully.He took a perch opposite her and tried not to sag too obviously into the cushions of the sofa.‘I’m investigating a missing person.She vanished from Trinity May Ball.’

Marcie looked startled and Reid felt a moment of pity for her.It was clear that Philip had kept her out of all of this, just as he’d kept his affair from her.He wondered what else Marcie didn’t know about her husband.And how much more therewasto know.

That had its downsides for Reid: Marcie may well not know enough to help him.But there was also an upside.If he could seed doubts in Marcie now, he might get her talking to him and giving away more than was good for her husband.

‘Her name is Aria,’ he began.

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