by Tim Adler
"You do believe me, don't you?"
"Of course I believe you."
Was it just me, or was there was a scintilla of doubt in her voice?
I gripped the arms of her rocking chair, hanging on as if for dear life.
"For God's sake, Mole, you must believe me. You must."
Chapter Twenty Two
The policewoman with the ponytail showed me into the interview room. The detective inspector would be with me in a few minutes, she said.
Syal bustled in holding a manila file full of papers, accompanied by a younger man. Squeezed into a suit, he looked like a bodybuilder whose idea of breakfast was something powdered that you shook up in water. He even cracked his knuckles as he sat down.
"Are you comfortable?" Syal asked. "Do you want any kind of refreshment? Did they bring you a cup of tea?"
"I'm fine, thanks. It's been a long day. I just want to get this over with."
The DI reached across to the chunky Neal recorder sitting on the table. The red light came on.
"Thursday. March the seventh. The time is eleven thirteen pm. Present in the room are Hugo Cox; myself, Detective Inspector Deepa Syal; and my colleague, Detective Constable Dan Thomas. Could you identify yourself please?"
I did so.
"At eight thirty-four this evening, police were called to Brook Farm Cottage in Goudhurst, Kent. Breaking into the house, officers found the body of Alice Adams, a woman in her mid-twenties, lying on the sitting-room floor. She had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument, possibly an ashtray. Forensic tests are on-going. Would you say that's a fair summary, Mr Cox?"
"If you say so."
"Police were called to the house by Emily Cox, wife of Hugo Cox. Mrs Cox told me that her husband had driven to the house to collect their baby, who had been kidnapped by Alice Adams."
She waited for my approval, and I nodded for her to continue.
"According to Mr and Mrs Cox, the surrogate mother they employed had disappeared six months ago carrying their child. She then contacted them, demanding a ransom of a million pounds, which Mr Cox paid this afternoon."
By now Syal was writing on a pad of A4 paper, which I guessed was my witness statement. She put the pen down and looked at me.
"How did you pay that money, Hugo?"
"My financial adviser organised it. He transferred the money to a bank account in Panama." Syal shrugged and sat back in her chair, the corners of her mouth turned down. "And you can come up with that sort of money easily, can you?" In her tight-fitting trouser suit, you could see her thinking, entitled City boy brat. "A million pounds. Just like that." She snapped her fingers and raised her eyebrows. The junior detective beside her smirked.
I tried smiling. "It wasn't easy. I had to liquidate everything I owned and take a mortgage out on my flat. She wiped me out."
"And you hand over a million pounds, just on the basis of a text message? I can’t decide whether you’re naïve or gullible or both. There’s no guarantee you’re ever going to see your money again."
"I know. I realise I’ve behaved rashly," I said, shaking my head. "You have no idea what it’s been like. The strain has been intolerable."
"How would you describe Alice Adams?" the DC asked. I could tell that he disliked me, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it.
"She could be sullen. Not easy to live with, I'll tell you that. Either up or down. My wife and I had this nickname for her, 'Eeyore-ina'." Syal looked blank. "You know, like Winnie the Pooh?"
"So, mood swings," Syal said, writing it down. "What was your reaction when she disappeared carrying your baby?"
"Well, you saw when we came to see you. We were devastated. You know how upset we were, you were there. But you told us this was her baby, so there was nothing we could do about it. After a while, when it became clear that she wasn't going to get in contact, we hired a private detective–"
"–Yes, we're still investigating that. We believe we are looking at a murder case."
"Do you think there's any connection?"
"We don't know yet. The thing is, Hugo, I don't understand why you caved in so quickly. There were less than twenty-four hours between you receiving the ransom demand and you paying up. Why didn't you come to us first?"
"I told you. There was too much at stake. You would have told me not to pay or have sent somebody in my place. Either way it was too risky. She had us over a barrel."
"There's always another way. I think there's something else, something I'm not quite getting ..."
"My plan was always to call you once we had our baby. That way, you could arrest Alice, and our money would be returned."
"Except that Alice Adams is dead, and you don't know where your wedge has gone," the DC grunted.
Silence. The strip-light overhead was strobing ever so slightly, just enough to bring on a headache.
DI Syal shifted in her chair and did that thing of tapping her pen against her teeth. "Why don't we look at it another way? You get to the house, and Alice has changed her mind. Now she doesn't want to stick to her part of the deal; she wants to keep the baby. You're angry. Understandably. You want your child. You start fighting for your child and she attacks you. She's attacked you before. You reach out for anything to fend her off. Suddenly she's lying dead on the carpet."
The atmosphere in the room thickened. That’s not what happened, I thought, stop trying to push me into a corner.
"I've told you. I didn’t see Alice at the cottage."
Syal got up and started pacing, gesticulating with her hands as if this all now suddenly made sense to her. "So you're panicking. You take your baby and put her in your car. Then you go and knock on the neighbour's door, saying you're looking for Alice. You drive to Tunbridge Wells and pretend to go to the car park, isn't that right, Hugo?" She placed both hands on the desk and looked at me. "Why don't you just tell us the truth, Hugo? Wouldn't it be better than holding it all in? The strain must be killing you."
"I told you. I had nothing to do with Alice's death," I said coldly. Adrenaline was going through my body like a mob in a riot. "Why don't you check with the neighbour? She didn't plan this alone. A bank account in Panama? Come on."
Eventually Syal terminated the interview, and I asked her whether I was a suspect or a witness. "I don't know," she said. "I can’t make up my mind about you."
Mole had waited up for me, and I told her how the police were trying to push me, their only suspect, into a corner. Me, their sole witness. We finally staggered up to bed and Mole wrapped herself around me, but I lay there unable to sleep. The photograph the detective had slid across the table was tormenting: one half of Alice's face was beaten so badly it was almost black.
Next morning, DI Syal was waiting downstairs ready to take us both to the morgue. As we were the only people in London who seemed to know who Alice was, we had been asked to identify her. It was bloody cold in her car as we slid across the leatherette seats. Syal offered me a sip of her plastic cup of coffee, which I took. Laced with sugar, the coffee tasted delicious.
The waiting-room walls of the morgue were painted coral pink. Somebody had thoughtfully placed a box of tissues on the coffee table.
Syal sat with us while we waited to meet the pathologist. I squeezed Mole's hand, trying to reassure her. "It's going to be okay," I said. When the pathologist came out, my first impression was that this man was an angel. He was younger than I expected, tall with café-au-lait skin and startling blue eyes, bluer than his hospital gown. The four of us shook hands. "Shall we go through?" he asked. "We'll try and make this as quick as possible. I know how distressing it is." I stood up with a queer feeling that this was all happening to somebody else. I had to get through it, I must. Mole nodded when I asked her if she was okay. She looked as grim-faced as I felt.
The pathologist held the door open, and we walked through into the mortuary. The powerful air conditioning and glaringly antiseptic white walls made it colder on this side. One wall was taken up with drawers whe
re the corpses were kept. A sign read, "Please ensure all bodies are placed into storage units head first."
The pathologist was standing in the doorway. Beyond him you could see what looked like an operating theatre, except more basic. It was almost as if the pathologist himself was poised between life and death. A counter ran along the back wall that appeared to be used for eviscerating organs, blue hoses neatly coiled along the counter. Through the doorway I could see what must be Alice's body covered with a sheet, her head facing away from us towards a metal sink.
A memory of Alice, the curve of her waist where the sheet had ridden down back in the hotel room. I started to feel faint, and I almost had to grip the floor with my toes, determined not to embarrass myself. Mole looked unsteady as well, and Syal asked if she wanted a chair. The pathologist stood over Alice, ready to lift the sheet and reveal her bashed-in face.
Even though Alice's good side was turned towards us, I saw a row of battered teeth. The pathologist was careful to shield most of the damage with his hands, but one of Alice's eyes had rolled open, looking as dead as the dead eye of a fish. She looked at me accusingly, as if to say, look at me, look at the state of me, look at what you did to me.
Chapter Twenty Three
"Who could have done that to Alice?" said Mole. "Why would anybody want to hurt her?" We were walking shakily back from the mortuary to the waiting police car. "I mean, I know that she did a bad thing, but nobody deserves to die that way. It was so–" she searched for the right word "–undignified."
"Maybe you're right," I said. "Maybe there was a boyfriend telling her what to do. Like the police said, perhaps she didn't want to give us our baby girl."
"I still don't understand how Nancy got to the car park." We had decided to call our baby Nancy after my deceased mother-in-law's middle name, which she had always hated, apparently.
"The police still think that we fought over Nancy, and that I hit Alice when she wouldn't hand her over."
"The neighbour didn't see anybody in the house?"
"The police aren’t telling me anything. As far as they’re concerned, I’m their only witness and right now their only suspect." I pulled my hand through my hair distractedly.
"What a fucking mess. Somebody must have seen something. It was a public car park."
"You’re right, CCTV cameras. Somebody must have gotten out of the car."
Mole looked really shaken by what we had just been through. I was worried about her. Hell, we were both upset, but she still stopped and touched my face.
"Poor darling," she said. "It's you I'm worried about. Are you okay?"
"It's all only just beginning to sink in. Alice dead, Christ."
I held the door open for her as we got to the police car. The muscle-bound detective constable from the interview room was behind the wheel. For me the most poignant moment had been when the mortuary attendant pulled the sheet down revealing Alice's Twitter hashtag tattoo. #Dirtygirl. This really was her, and now she was dead. Mole slid across the back seat. "Back home?" the detective constable said. I was about to say yes when I heard my name being shouted. Syal was running out of the mortuary, her raincoat flapping and her chest jiggling as she waved at us to stop.
When Syal caught up with the car, she rapped on the window and said, "I need you to come back inside, Mr Cox. There's something you need to see."
"Both of us?" I asked, reaching for Mole's hand.
"Just you, Mr Cox."
Soon we were once more in the ghastly pink waiting room and, to my surprise, DI Syal pulled out an iPad from her shoulder bag. Were the police now being issued with tablet computers? "You need to see this," she said.
The YouTube page buffered for a moment before showing a couple lying on a bed in a dimly lit room. The sound was muffled, too. The video had obviously been shot on a camera phone, but there was no doubt who it was.
The video showed me alone in the hotel bedroom with Alice.
Syal slid her finger along the time bar a little further on. Now we were going at it like two animals, and the sound was full of lusty cries.
"Turn it off," I said. Cold shame spread over me, combined with the growing apprehension that everything was about to change. This was it, then. Now they had a motive. "How did you get hold of this?"
"Somebody emailed the link. We don't know who."
"I don't understand how–" and then, "Whoever it was is trying to frame me, you do realise that?"
"So you lied. You were having an affair with Alice Adams."
"No, it wasn't like that. It was a one-off. Alice must have planned this from the start, filming me on her phone. Right from the get-go she planned to blackmail me."
My mind was racing, trying to catch up with what had happened. Had she really planned this right from the beginning? Had she set out to ruin me before we had even met and, if so, why? It was too much for me to take in, and I desperately needed somebody to believe I was telling the truth. Mole was the one whose support I most wanted and, of course, she was the last person I could turn to.
"Did she threaten to tell your wife? Was that why you were so quick to pay up?"
I nodded guiltily. Now the detective knew everything, and it was all going to unravel. The ground was opening up beneath me, swallowing me whole. I felt as if I was being buried alive and it was useless struggling against it. But I was also relieved that the truth was coming out, and I felt like an alcoholic who had taken the pledge: no more lies. Except now the police had a motive for my killing Alice, and the noose was tightening around my neck. I thought of my wife, sitting outside in the car, completely oblivious to what had just happened. I felt like a speck of shit for doing this to her.
"The video," I said. "Are you going to show it to my wife? Please. I've told you everything."
Syal looked at me and you could see her thinking, why are men so stupid? Why do they let themselves be led around by their cocks?
"Please. Let my wife go home. I don't want her to see me like this. I'll answer all your questions."
Syal looked dubious. "You wait here. I'll get another car to take us to the police station. We need to interview you again."
"You didn't answer my question. The video. Will you show it to her?"
"She'll find out eventually. It's up to you whether you want to tell her yourself."
My cell consisted of two grey slabs to lie on and a couple of blue vinyl mats. You could smell the fear and the body odour. I sat down and drew my knees to my chest. The duty solicitor had informed me I could be held for twenty-four hours without being charged. Under arrest and being charged were two different things, he explained. I thought about calling Nigel Rosenthal, but what I really needed was a criminal lawyer, not a company secretary. Best not drag the company into this. Whoever had killed Alice had pushed me into this tight corner, although the police had only circumstantial evidence against me: the video footage, the neighbour surprising me as I lurked outside the cottage, and now a motive for wanting Alice dead. Sitting there, listening to doors bang and shouts from other cells, I felt as if I was trapped in some outer rim of hell.
The cell door opened, and I looked up expectantly. A guy younger than me was being led in, held by the blond policewoman. He was in his early twenties, scrawny with a frizz of black hair. "Here you go, you've got company. You two play nice," she said, closing the door. My new companion threw himself at it, banging and kicking for all he was worth.
"What you fucking looking at?" he said, sliding down the wall to sit opposite me. "I'll break your fucking legs. Don't look at me, bruv."
"Nothing," I said, turning back to the white tiles. He hitched up his jeans, showing his underpants, and I wondered which local estate he had come from. Christ, was this what my life had become? Flashback. Another of Mole's impromptu art history lessons, this time at Sir John Soane's Museum in Holborn, where we had met after work. The Rake's Progress by Hogarth: Hugo Cox, the rake's progress. Discuss. I tried closing my eyes, but the electric light was never switched off.<
br />
"What they got you in for?" my cellmate challenged me.
"They're holding me for questioning." Even as I said it, I realised how pompous I must sound.
"It says murder on the door."
I wanted to talk some more, ask him why he was under arrest, but it was clear our conversation was over. My guts twisted with anxiety: so far there was no hard evidence against me, although the video did not look good, the solicitor admitted. Everything in the cottage was being swabbed and dusted in the hope of finding a match to my fingerprints. Well, there was some comfort in knowing they would come up empty handed.
My cellmate had ugly marks on his arm, and he compulsively scratched his face. Drugs, I guessed. After a while he started shivering, and he wrapped his arms around his chest trying to control himself.
"Are you okay?" I said. "You don't look well."
"I shouldn't fucking be here. This is the third nick they've moved me to. I'm on my way to Belmarsh."
I rubbed my sweaty palms down my jeans and remembered the wad of tissue paper stuffed into my front pocket. I had completely forgotten about the couple of sleeping pills I had pilfered from Dad's medicine cabinet. It was something the police had missed when they had taken away my belongings. Being fingerprinted and photographed and swabbed for DNA had been another humiliation.
"Here," I said, offering my cellmate the wadded-up tissue. "These might help. They're sleeping pills."
The young man looked at me suspiciously before dipping into the tissue and swallowing the pills. "Thanks, bruv," he said, closing his eyes. "I'll be all right once I get to pen."
Eventually the cell was unlocked again, and Miss Perky Pony put her head round the door. We both looked up. "Cox, you're wanted outside," she said.
I got up, feeling stiff from sitting for so long on cold cement. Syal was standing in the corridor, and I noticed how tired she looked. "You're free to go home," she said with a sigh. "For now. A couple walking their dog saw a car parked outside the victim's cottage. A black Range Rover. A couple of hours before yours arrived. We're trying to trace it using CCTV."