'You couldn't have checked her DNA out so quickly,' says my lawyer, standing up confrontationally. 'It takes weeks.'
'Yes we could,' says the new detective. 'She's on the National DNA Register. It took us an hour to get a precise match.'
Sue looks at me with coldness. 'Why are you on the DNA register?' she asks.
'I got done for drink-driving years ago,' I say.
She sits back in her seat and scribbles some notes. I'm sure I know what she's writing 'This woman is fucked.'
'Police have been seen coming in and out of Rufus George's fabulous home all morning after the astonishing arrest yesterday of his girlfriend, Kelly Monsoon. Monsoon is being questioned at Richmond police station by police from the Scotland Yard murder squad in connection with the murder of leading fashion stylist Elody Elloissie. She's been in custody overnight but it's believed that her boyfriend has not been to visit her.
'We are joined again by Ex- Detective Chief Superintendent Mike Dover. Mike, what are the police doing?'
'Well, Felicity, they'll be taking everything away that they think will help with their inquiries . . . computers, discs, tapes, security footage, clothing . . . anything that will help pin down whether it was Kelly Monsoon who killed Elody Elloissie.'
'And they'll be able to tell that by looking at her clothing, will they?'
'Well, if they find the clothes she was wearing on the day that Elody was killed, they will.'
'OK, thanks, Mike. Back to you in the studio, Bob. Remember, there's a four-hour special on tonight with Lord and Lady Simpkins, former friends of Kelly Monsoon, describing the woman they got to know, and how they always believed she was capable of murder.'
I've gone over and over and over the situation with the dagger, and how I used it to smash open the drawer. I know that for every word I say, they'll have 526,000 questions about what time it was, what angle the clouds were sitting at and how many stones there were on the gravel driveway at the time. The questions come fast, thick and furious. They barely give me time to answer one question before another one's fired at me. They don't so much do that good cop/bad cop thing, as bad cop/bad cop/bad cop. It's the new, slim detective who does most of the questioning. The others chip in whenever they feel he hasn't asked quite enough questions in quite enough detail for their liking.
'So, tell us again where the dagger was when you last saw it.'
'It was on the chair,' I say.
'Which chair? Where? What colour was the chair? How was it lying? What time was it when you saw it?'
Chapter 24
Again, there's a knock at the door. Hell, what is it now? Oh great – the big guy's back again. Barnes. Shit. I don't like this man at all. He's convinced I'm guilty; I can see it in his eyes and in the way he stares at me constantly and asks all these nit-picky questions that I can't remember the answers to.
'DI Barnes has just entered the interview room,' says Detective Swann. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
'Hello, Kelly,' says Detective Barnes, pulling his chair forward and leaning right across the table. My palms have gone all sweaty and my heart's racing. Perhaps I did kill Elody? I don't know anything any more. 'Now, where were we?' he says.
Flippin' heck. I know exactly where we bloody were. We were with him going on and on about how I have no alibi for the time of Elody's murder, I had a reason to kill Elody, and the murder weapon belongs to me and has my DNA on it. Even I can see that this is not looking good.
'Let's go through this once again, shall we?' he says, looking at me like I'm some piece of dirt he's just kicked off the end of his shoe. 'Start right at the beginning . . .'
There's a knock at the door before we can begin. Bloody hell, it's like Piccadilly Circus. My solicitor looks as if she's about to have a nervous breakdown. She glares at me as if it's my fault that there's a knocking sound, and I instinctively bring my hands above the table to show that it's not me.
'Can I have a moment, sir?' says a woman I haven't seen before.
'DI Barnes is leaving the interview room,' says the other detective.
I drop my head into my hands. I'm relieved not to have to go back through this whole horrible bloody story again and again, but terrified of what new information is going to 'come to light'. Every time there's a knock on that door there's some other piece of evidence that indicates that I must have done the murder after all. All we need now is for someone to appear with a photograph of me stabbing her. I just can't believe it's come to this. We sit there, with me wringing my hands together and trying to understand what's going on. My solicitor stands every so often and paces around the room in frustration.
We sit there for another ten minutes. It feels like about forty-seven hours then, suddenly, the door swings open and Barnes comes back in with another man. They tell the policeman who's sitting there that he's no longer needed and the two of them sit down next to Detective Swann. Barnes can barely look me in the eye. Oh Lord, what now?
'My name's DI Smith,' says the new officer, talking to me as if I were about six years old.
'Hi,' I say.
'We've just had the final pathologist's report back which gives more precise detail on the estimated time of death and more detail on the manner of the death,' he says, slowly and patiently. 'The official time of death has come in and it is different from the estimated time of death. This can happen from time to time. The pathologist makes an estimate of time of death in the first instance while more detailed investigations take place.'
'Oh.'
'There's a discrepancy between the original estimated time of death, thought to be between 5.30 pm and 6 pm, and the more accurate prediction. We've been told that the time of death is now considered to be 9 pm.'
'How did you get the estimated time of death so wrong?' asks Sue, standing up and leaning over the table aggressively. 'We were explicitly told that the time of death was estimated at 5.30 pm. It is a gross miscalculation to now suggest that the time of death is wrong by some three and a half hours.'
'It happens,' says the detective. 'The first estimated time of death is rarely more than half an hour out but, in this case, officers discovered that the heating was switched off at night, meaning that the body decomposed at a slower rate, thus forcing us to conclude that the time of death was actually much later in the day than we originally predicted.'
I have to admit that I'm hardly listening to the exchange. They've changed their minds about what time Elody died. Until they change their minds about whether I killed her or not, there's not too much interest in all of this for me.
The same cannot be said for my glamorous lawyer who is up and bouncing around like Tigger, all animated and excited and demanding to know precise details about what the official time of death is to be recorded as.
There's a conversation about the moisture levels in the vestibule where Elody's body was found, and temperature variations through the evening.
'My client has an alibi for 9 pm,' says Sue.
Oh. Now I get it.
'She couldn't have killed Elody. She was at the airport.'
'I know,' says the policeman, looking at me. 'Can you tell us exactly what you were doing between the hours of 9 pm and 10 pm on the evening of Thursday 3 December?'
'That's easy,' I say. 'I was meeting my boyfriend at the airport.'
'Did anyone see you?'
'Yes. There were security officers helping me through, and there was Henry the driver and Rufus's assistant.'
'What's her name?'
'It's Christine,' I say, but Sue interrupts.
'You've spoken to her about this. She's talked at length about what she was doing at this time. There's footage from the airport. I think it's time to accept that my client couldn't possibly have committed this crime.'
The policemen both nod. 'We also have video footage of you at Hampton Court Palace, sitting in the Rose Garden talking to the elderly gentleman. We spoke to him too. Frank Gower. He confirms your time of arrival and time of departure. Why did you lie to us?'
'Rufus always told me not to tell people about our special place or everyone would want to go there. He has so many fans and they follow us everywhere. I just wanted the Rose Garden to be special – you know – for it to be our special place. It never would be if I mentioned it. It would end up in the newspapers and that would be it . . . my favourite place in the whole world ruined for ever.'
'Yes, thanks, Bob. That's right; you come to us live outside Richmond police station where we have just been told that Kelly Monsoon is to be released without charge. You'll remember that the girlfriend of Hollywood star Rufus George was arrested yesterday and held in police custody overnight. Well, today, in a shocking twist to this story, we hear that she is to be released later today without charge. Police have not said whether they have another suspect in mind but sources close to the police reveal that they are questioning Dr Isabella Bronks-Harrison inside the station at the moment. She's a former friend of Elody Elloissie, but fell out with the fashionista several years ago. Police are insisting that she is just helping with inquiries but we believe that she is now the main suspect in this most incredible of murder investigations. Back to you, Bob.'
'Thanks, Bindy. Now, in a change to tonight's scheduled programme Evil Women Murderers there will instead be a panel discussion on the difficulties of being accused of a crime that you did not commit. What does it feel when the world turns against you? That's tonight at 10 pm, here on Sky One and features a discussion with Lord and Lady Simpkins, the couple who have known Kelly all her life, and say they knew from the moment she was arrested that this was a huge miscarriage of justice.'
Chapter 25
Mum stands there, clinging on to her handbag in front of her with both hands, the strain showing in her fiercely knotted knuckles. She has her heavy dark-blue coat pulled tightly around her. She looks nervous, understandably, and much older than last time I saw her. When she sees me, her eyes light up, she smiles, and loosens that fearful grip on the worn leather straps of the only handbag I've ever seen her with. Dad's there too, trying to look relaxed and in control, but looking utterly deflated and unable to make sense of the events that have forced him to bring his wife to a police station in south-west London.
He relaxes too, when he sees me walking towards them and I force myself to smile and greet them warmly, pretending that nothing's wrong.
'A simple misunderstanding,' I say. 'Please don't worry. Everything's going to be OK.'
I might be more assured that everything is going to be OK if Rufus were here to meet me too, but there's no sign of him. I'm led out through a heavily guarded, dark-blue back door and moved through ranks of police officers positioned so as to hide me from the waiting paparazzi. No Rufus anywhere. Shit. I know it would be mad for a huge celebrity film star to be here. I know it would make the whole thing much harder to manage but, but . . . I kind of just really wish he was here anyway. I wish he'd sat at home and thought, I know it's mad for me to go to the police station but, sod it, I'm going anyway, I want to see Kelly.
Why isn't he here? Why didn't he visit me at the police station?
They put a blanket over my head as they lead me the final half-metre to the car; my lawyer was very insistent on this before we left the station. Sue said that pictures of me today would keep resurfacing for the rest of my life, long after the details of this case had drifted to the backs of people's minds, and though I was released without charge and thus had nothing to hide my head in shame from, it was still better that no pictures were taken of me. Did I agree? I didn't care. I was just looking out for Rufus, vainly peering through the gaps in the blanket at the scores of people assembled to witness my release from custody in the hope that I'd see him standing there.
A car driven by a specialist police driver will take me home. It turns out that Henry came to the police station to collect me but was sent away by police when they realised how many people were gathered at the big metal gates. It was considered to be safer for a specialist police driver to make the short journey up the Hill to my 'home'.
I sit in the back of the car, still beneath the blanket but peering out through small holes at the world as it passes. It feels as if I've been locked away for years. Time's a strange enough concept anyway – sometimes days fly past, other days drag, the minutes moving so slowly into hours that you begin to think the clock's taken leave of its senses – but when you're locked away from the signs of normal life, your sense of place and time, and your sense of your-self within that place and time disappear completely. I might as well have been locked away for a thousand years because, though it's only been two days and one night, I've come out a different person. I didn't kill Elody and I can prove I didn't kill Elody, but it's as if my innocence is an entirely meaningless concept. I'm still at the centre of everyone's story.
The Hill remains closed off to traffic while police analyse and interrogate to find out who killed Elody. Their main suspect is innocent and out of custody, so I guess they start again, combing through her possessions and reading every note she ever wrote.
Mum looks round at me and smiles warmly. 'You all right, love,' she says with a smile.
'I'm fine,' I say but I'm not. I want Rufus to be here.
'I'm sorry we're in a police car, love. We were going to bring your father's car but Aunt Maude weed in the back and it smelt dreadful so Henry offered to drive, then the police said no to that.'
I smile briefly, but behind the gesture is a whole bloody world of pain. Where is Rufus?
'We knew this was all a terrible mistake and you could never have killed anyone. Everyone knows. I don't know what the police were thinking of,' says Mum kindly. 'We've had so many letters of support for you from people all round the world, and the staff in the house have been amazing to us. They've been telling us how much you mean to them and how kind you are. Love, we're so proud of you.'
I was arrested for murder. She's still proud of me. Thank God for mums.
I walk into the house flanked by Mum and Dad, and Dad gasps when he sees just how amazing the place is. I forget that he's not been to visit yet. When Mum came with Aunt Maude a few weeks ago Dad didn't come. (Was it really just a few weeks ago? It feels like it happened about forty years ago.) He looks around the place, trying to look nonchalant but I can tell he's thinking, Bloody hell! This place is amazing!
I give him a little hug. 'Nice house,' he says, gravely. 'Very nice. Better than that bloody awful flat you lived in before. Do you remember when I painted the door and the nightclub man from next door came across. God he was awful. You've done well here, love.'
I notice straight away that things have been moved around and that the computer is missing. It must have sent poor Rufus up the wall to have all these police crawling over the house. Shit. I really messed this up, didn't I? Everyone's been through so much because of me, and I still can't work out exactly what I did that was so wrong.
I mean – I can, I'm not stupid. It's just that I can't believe the way it's all panned out.
'You'll be able to carry on with organising the wedding now, won't you?' says Mum. 'You won't change your mind and go for summer, will you? I've bought a beautiful chocolate-brown coat that will really only work for an autumn or winter wedding.'
'Leave it, Jayne,' says Dad. 'I think the poor girl's been through enough this past week without you hassling her to organise a wedding.'
'Oh a wedding will be a lovely thing for us all,' says Mum. 'Imagine! We'll be able to show the world that the problems are all behind us and we're setting off on a new road to a bright future.'
I'm thinking that it'll take more than a bright and gorgeous wedding for the British population to forget about what's just happened. I can just see the headlines now. Instead of PRETTY BRUNETTE TO MARRY HOLLYWOOD STAR they'll be saying MURDER SUSPECT IN SHOCK MARRIAGE TO HOLLYWOOD'S FINEST. Shit.
My fears about the future, and particularly about our proposed wedding, are not allayed by the sight of Rufus. He comes through the door from the sitting ro
om looking twenty years older than he did when I last saw him. He practically pushes past my parents, kisses Sue Lawrence lightly on the cheek and stands in front of me. 'Welcome home,' he says, with not an ounce of conviction. I feel my heart fall through the floor and I want to scream. I feel like shouting, 'I know I did badly. I know I shouldn't have hidden things from the police, but everything I did was to protect your friend Elody's memory and to protect our relationship from public scrutiny and public interference.' But I don't of course. What's the point? Rufus has clearly made up his mind about me.
'Can we talk?' he says, just standing there, making no effort to touch or comfort me.
'Sure,' I say, looking back at my parents as I follow him into the den at the back of the house. Mum is smiling from ear to ear while Dad's face reflects the concern that I feel.
'Why did this happen, Kelly?' he asks. His manner and the way he is looking at me are so grave. It's like I'm back at the police station again, being grilled by those aggressive detectives.
'Because I didn't tell the police the truth. I didn't want to mention the Rose Garden to them so I said I was at the flat. They thought I was covering something up.'
'I can't believe you lied to the fucking police,' he says with such fury, that I find myself stepping back away from him.
'You told me never to mention that we go there,' I try.
'Yes I did, Kelly. But when I said that I had no idea that you were going to be arrested for murder, did I?'
'No.'
'I'm finding all this very difficult to come to terms with. My mother's furious,' he says.
I just look at him then. He's worried about what people think. He's worried about his reputation. He couldn't give a toss about me.
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