‘What did he do?’
Lizzie sighs. ‘It’s not what he did that’s the problem. It’s what he didn’t do and what he didn’t tell them . . . or me. There was a high-profile case he was working before the heart attack – the abduction of a young girl. It consumed him. He worked all hours, I hardly ever saw him, and when I did he was distant and didn’t want to talk. He looked sick – pale and clammy a lot of the time – but he insisted he was fine, just a bit tired from all the long hours.’
‘Was that normal for him?’ asks Moira.
‘Sort of, he always got tunnel vision on cases he worked, but being distant and looking so pale was different. He usually liked to talk things through – said it helped him crystallise his thinking.’ Lizzie shakes her head. ‘But not that time. The only thing he said to me was that he felt he wasn’t seeing everything.’
‘And then?’ Moira’s voice is gentle, encouraging.
‘A tip came in through the tip line that’d been set up. It was solid, they fast-tracked the checks because of the urgency, and then they passed it to Philip, as DCI in charge of the case.’ Lizzie bites her lip.
Moira nods. ‘What was the tip?’
‘The location where the girl was being held.’
Neither of them speaks for a moment. Then Moira asks, ‘What happened?’
Lizzie feels the rage churning in her stomach. The nausea is getting stronger. She tries to swallow it down. ‘Nothing. He didn’t do anything. I read the first interview transcript with him in the file. He said that he read the email with the tip details, but he was due to leave for lunch and decided to deal with it afterwards. So he left it and went out for lunch, or that was his original story anyway. It was over two hours before he was back at his desk and passed on the tip. Three hours before the team arrived at the location mentioned.’
‘And she was gone?’
‘No. The child was dead. The coroner put her time of death within the hour.’ Lizzie blinks back tears. Her voice falters. ‘If Philip had acted on the tip straight away she would still have been alive when they got to her.’ She feels anger flare inside her. Blinks back the tears. ‘He told me at the time it was a lapse in judgement. That he was tired and there were so many tips coming in they couldn’t follow everything up immediately. He felt awful, I know he did, but I always felt like he was holding something back from me.’
‘And was he?’
Lizzie nods. ‘He’d led me to believe that he was stuffing himself at lunch as that poor child was dying, and that’s why he was forced to retire. He said it was because his actions made him negligent in his duty. He could have saved her, but he didn’t.’ She clenches her fists. Can’t keep the anger from her voice. ‘That he as good as killed her himself.’
‘Mistakes happen in the field,’ says Moira, gently. ‘It’s not good, but it happens. There are so many variables and—’
‘Mistakes that kill people?’ says Lizzie, narrowing her eyes.
Moira doesn’t quite meet her gaze. ‘Sometimes.’
‘But that isn’t the full truth of what happened here.’
Moira says nothing.
Lizzie continues. ‘A few days after they found the child dead, Philip had the heart attack. I blamed the pressure of work and guilt about the young girl’s death, but it wasn’t just that, it was the stress of an internal investigation into what happened and him knowing what they’d find. That and the fact he had been having serious health problems for months and hiding it.’
Moira frowns. ‘Didn’t you know about—’
‘No, all I knew was that he didn’t look great and seemed tired all the time, but I had no idea what he’d been battling and for how long. He’d hidden it from me and the kids, and he’d hidden it from his employers too.’