Forget Me Not. Claire Allan
people and I’ve made myself sick with worry that I’ve not been able to warn anyone. Patricia – Constable Hopkins – asked me not to say anything to the family.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back in his chair. ‘I know this must be very difficult for you. We’re asking you to stick with us. Just as it’s important that information gets out there, it’s important that some information is held back – for the sake of the investigation. I’m not at liberty to go into it all, but we have good operational reasons.’
Frustration niggled at me. ‘But what if someone else gets hurt? Won’t it be my fault then? I mean, it’s bad enough now, knowing I couldn’t help her. I don’t want to feel worse if something happens to someone else. And I felt awful lying to her family yesterday – telling them she hadn’t said anything. I mean, they’ll find out eventually, won’t they? They’ll think me a liar. I don’t understand why they haven’t been told.’
‘This is a complex investigation,’ DI Bradley said. ‘We have to play our cards close to our chest at the moment until we’re able to identify a clear suspect. We have concerns that revealing her last words could, in fact, place you in a position of some jeopardy.’
My heart thudded. ‘Me? Why?’
‘Because if there are more people out there who this killer might target, you warning them might make him, or her, unhappy.’
I felt sick. Why had no one mentioned to me before that I could possibly be in danger? Didn’t I have a right to know?
‘We’re doing our best to protect your identity. We’ve not released any of your details to the press; nor have they been discussed outside the confines of the incident room.’
He must have noticed the colour draining from me. The police may have kept it under wraps, but I’d been to see the Taylors. Had they been warned to say nothing about my identity? And those two women who’d been drinking tea with Ronan in the kitchen. Who were they?
‘Mrs O’Loughlin, at the moment we have no reason to believe at all that you’re in any danger,’ DI Bradley said, cutting through my thoughts. ‘We intend on it staying that way, but we’re reviewing the situation as often as the need arises.’
I nodded, but I couldn’t push down the nausea increasing in my stomach, nor stop the thudding of my heart. I’d have to check all the locks in the house. Get that security light in the yard fixed. It had broken at least six months ago and I’d kept meaning to get it looked at.
‘The investigation’s proving more complex than we thought,’ he said. ‘We hope the press conference later will jog some memories or bring some more information to light. We just ask that in the meantime you trust us and trust what we’re doing.’
I was hardly in a position to say no.
As I left the police station and walked out into the hot morning air, the brightness of the sun in my eyes, I felt a growing sense of unease wash over me. I cursed myself for going for my walk on Wednesday morning. I should have stayed inside. Things would have been easier if I’d just stayed inside.
My body tensed, my muscles aching. Stress, they say, makes every ache and pain flare up. Fibromyalgia, the doctor told me. On top of the nerve damage from my fall. Physical pain to match the mental anguish I lived with every day.
As I walked my ageing, aching body back to my car, part of me hoped that whoever it was that had brought this horrific end to Clare Taylor would come back and end my life, too.
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