The Survivors, стр. 51
Audrey was grizzling again on his knee, still trying to reach the black electrical charger.
‘For God’s sake, Audrey.’
Kieran tried to wind the cord out of the way but it was plugged in under the desk. He began to push it out of sight instead, then stopped. Something was edging its way into his thoughts. After a moment, he slowly reached down to the skirting board and pulled the plug free.
Beside him, Olivia extracted a set of keys from a drawer with a noise of relief.
‘Finally.’ She held them up in faint triumph, then looked over to see Kieran holding the charger. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yeah,’ he said but, curious now, he stood and ran his eye once more over Bronte’s minimal belongings. The bed, the clothes rail, a small chest of drawers, the desk, the mirror propped against the wall, a small bookshelf. Not many places to put something, and yet the whole room had that same rummaged-through feel as the rest of the house. More so, in fact, which was not surprising. The police would have been particularly thorough in here, he guessed.
Kieran wound the cable around his hand, still keeping it out of reach of Audrey, much to her disappointment. He could see no sign of what he was looking for, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. For the sake of completeness, he put Audrey over his shoulder and leaned down to check under the bed. A few pairs of shoes were lined up beneath, along with a battered suitcase. Streaks in the dust suggested the police had already checked there, and more than once.
‘What are you doing?’ Olivia’s voice had an edge to it and Kieran looked up. The daylight streaming through the window cast her face into shadow.
Mia appeared at the doorway. ‘What’s going on?’
Kieran stood again and frowned. He held out his hand, dusty now from where he’d pressed it against the floor. The black charger dangled from his palm.
‘That first day we saw Bronte on the beach,’ he said. ‘Didn’t she have a camera?’
Chapter 20
Kieran held out the camera charger. Olivia looked at it, then over to Bronte’s desk, where the black length of cord had been plugged into the wall at one end, and into nothing at the other. Finally, she reached out and took it from Kieran, winding the cord slowly around her palm.
‘Excuse me.’ Olivia’s voice was strangely calm as she edged past Mia in the doorway, walking down the hall to the living room, where Sergeant Renn had her overnight bag open and was writing down the contents in his notebook. It was very difficult not to look furtive carrying out a task like that, Kieran thought, and Renn was no exception, straightening quickly as they came in.
Olivia went up to him, the cord in her outstretched hand.
‘Is it her camera, Chris? Is that what you’re looking for?’
Renn’s eyes went to the charger, then to Olivia’s face. He didn’t reply out loud, but at last his head inclined a fraction. Yeah.
‘Do you think someone took it?’ Olivia’s voice was very quiet. ‘The person who hurt her?’
A small shrug this time, perhaps involuntary. Possibly.
‘Why, though?’ she said. Renn didn’t react at all to that one, Kieran noticed.
Olivia was staring up at him. ‘Why didn’t you feel you could ask me? Chris? You could have just asked me if I knew where it was.’
‘We did, Liv,’ Renn said finally.
‘No. No, you asked if anything was missing.’ Olivia sounded like she wanted to be angry but didn’t have the energy to be anything but sad. ‘That is a very broad question, isn’t it? I mean, Bronte kept all her stuff in her own room.’ She looked down at the charger in her hand. ‘She had to keep all her stuff in her own room because I had a go at her in her first week for leaving things lying around the house.’
Olivia squeezed her eyes shut at the memory.
‘I answered everything you asked me, Chris, the best I could,’ she said when she finally opened them again. ‘If I missed something, it was because I’d come home to pick up my mat on the way to yoga with my mum and found Bronte was dead.’
Sergeant Renn looked at her, and Kieran remembered the hot flush that used to creep up his neck. There was no sign of that now, but his expression had softened a notch.
‘Yeah. All right,’ he said quietly. He nodded at her overnight bag. ‘Look, I’ll help you carry this to the station. Get someone to give you a lift to your mum’s.’
‘I was going to stop by Ash’s place.’
Renn stroked his chin, almost certainly thinking of Trish Birch outside the police station. ‘Not really any of my business, Liv, but I reckon your mum might need to see you more.’
Fresh anguish crossed Olivia’s face, and she bent down to zip up her bag.
A figure was trudging along the road as they all stepped out through the front gate. Sean, Kieran could see. He turned his head as he passed Renn and Olivia setting off together towards town and slowed his pace. They acknowledged him, but didn’t stop.
‘What’s happened? Is Liv okay?’ Sean asked as he reached Kieran and Mia outside Fisherman’s Cottage. He looked fresh from the sea, his skin still damp where it met his shirt. The Nautilus Blue must be back in the marina. Sean clocked his own torch in Kieran’s hand, then looked up, confused. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The good news is that you get this back.’ Kieran handed over the torch and explained about the missing camera. Sean’s face creased as he listened.
‘Do they think something’s on the camera?’
Kieran shrugged. ‘Renn didn’t say. It looked to me like Bronte was more into drawing than photography, anyway.’
‘Yeah. That’s what I heard.’ Sean stared at the