by Gytha Lodge
There was a note of defensiveness in his voice, one that was possibly understandable in the circumstances.
‘She felt rejected?’ Lightman asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How did she react after you talked to her?’
‘She calmed down after a few minutes,’ Step said. ‘I think she was just drunk, you know? Anyway, she left him alone after that. I saw her talking to another couple of guys before I left, and she looked like she was having fun.’
‘I’m going to share a photo with you,’ Lightman said. ‘If that’s OK. A woman we know to have been at the club. Do you have your mobile on you?’
‘Yes, I can look now,’ Step offered.
He waited in silence as Lightman forwarded both the arrest photograph of Louise Reakes, and then another image of her captured from the CCTV. He heard a faint chime in the background as they arrived on Step’s phone.
‘Can you let me know if that’s the woman Alex kissed?’
There was a brief silence, and then Step said, ‘No, it wasn’t her. Sorry.’
Lightman found himself momentarily at a loss. Given everything that happened later that night, how could it possibly have been anyone other than Louise Reakes?
‘That’s fine,’ he said, as smoothly as he could. ‘Could you describe the woman you saw him with, perhaps?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘She was pretty noticeable. Blonde. Really tall in her heels. She had tattoos. One across her chest and another one on the small of her back.’ He looked away for a moment. ‘Oh, and she was American. Southern. Really, really hard to understand.’
‘Thank you,’ Lightman said. ‘I think we know who that is.’
Niall Reakes seemed a lot less panicked than he had during their last interview. It seemed, to Jonah, that he was expecting Dina to have backed him up. That this would all be cleared up shortly. He even smiled when Jonah apologised for the delay.
Daniella Hart, next to him, was all cool self-possession. She watched him with a faint hint of a smile, and Jonah returned it. He remembered this from the last time he’d met her. This slightly mocking air. He felt tempted to tell her he was immune to it now. He’d spent the last four months dating someone who mocked him incessantly.
Jonah decided to keep things friendly during the preamble, allowing Niall to remain confident that everything was running smoothly. And then, once the interview had officially started, he said very calmly, ‘So, we’ve now spoken to your ex-wife about the meeting at Gatwick on Friday night. Dina denies having met you at any time in the last few months.’
There was a momentary pause, and then Niall gave a short, almost explosive laugh. ‘Sorry?’
‘Dina Weyman has denied that you were with her on Friday night,’ Jonah repeated. ‘She said you asked to meet, and then stood her up.’
‘We’d like to know where you really were,’ O’Malley said.
Niall shot a glance of desperation towards his solicitor, who leaned to murmur rapidly in his ear. But Niall shook his head, violently.
‘I did meet her! What the hell is she …? Look.’ Niall leaned forwards and clenched his fist on the tabletop. ‘I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but I bloody met her.’
‘Why would she tell us she didn’t?’ O’Malley asked, conversationally. ‘It seems like a strange thing to do.’
Niall looked between them, his jaw visibly tightening. ‘You can’t … This is what she does.’ He shook his head, and Jonah could see a shake running through him now. ‘She plays games. I don’t even know why she’s saying it, but …’ He tailed off, and Jonah watched, in satisfaction, as some thought occurred to Niall.
‘I think you know exactly why she’d do that,’ Jonah said.
‘Asking my client to speculate on the motivations of his ex-wife seems counterproductive when you are able to ask her these questions yourself,’ Daniella Hart said.
‘It’s never counterproductive to respond to someone’s expression,’ Jonah replied, smiling. ‘That’s just good police work.’
Niall started to shake his head, and then laid his hands flat on the table, as if trying to control the situation and himself.
‘What about your little jaunt over to Zurich?’ O’Malley asked. ‘Why didn’t you fly home from Geneva? There were flights available, and they were a lot cheaper. You could have been home for dinner.’
Jonah watched Niall carefully, and was fairly sure that he lost a little colour just then.
‘Were you on your way to buy something?’ Jonah asked.
‘I’m not … going to say any more,’ Niall said, with difficulty. ‘Just talk to Dina again. Please. And tell her …’ Niall paused, almost as though the act of speaking had become difficult. ‘Tell her you know we’ve been meeting up for months. Maybe it’ll help jog her memory.’
‘We have two items we’d like you to look at,’ Hanson said, glad of the presence of the female PCSO. Louise Reakes looked a fraction closer to falling apart every time she met her. Her nervous movements and darting gaze were unsettling.
Hanson handed the first evidence bag over to Louise. It contained the woman’s glove they’d found on Asylum Green. There was condensation on the inside of the bag, presumably because the glove was still damp. But the shape was relatively easy to make out even so.
Louise took it, and examined it for a moment, before shaking her head. ‘It’s not mine, and I don’t recognise it.’
‘OK,’ Hanson said, and then passed the earring over. This time, Louise’s reaction was immediate. She nodded and ran her thumb over the length of the earring through the plastic.
‘It’s mine,’ she said. ‘I was wearing them on Friday. Where did you find it?’
‘On the route we think you took home,’ Hanson replied.
Louise nodded, and put a hand up towards her left ear, her gaze distant. Something changed in her expression. And then she said in a dull voice, ‘It got caught on his sleeve. When he pinned me down.’
Jonah left the interview room with the conviction that there was a lot more going on between Niall Reakes and Dina Weyman than he yet understood.
‘Can you run a check for Dina’s licence plate, too?’ he asked O’Malley. ‘If Niall Reakes didn’t drive himself to Southampton, maybe she gave him a lift.’
He took himself back to his office, wondering how this was connected to Alex Plaskitt’s death, if at all, and why Niall had looked so sick when they’d mentioned his journey to Zurich. And, on top of that, why he was so set on them talking to Dina again.
Lightman tapped on his door, and Jonah nodded him in.
‘Ben. How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘Interestingly,’ Lightman told him. ‘Alex Plaskitt did, in fact, have a romantic liaison in the club, but not with Louise Reakes. It was with April Dumont.’
Jonah gave a slight, shocked laugh. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘His description didn’t leave much doubt,’ Lightman said.
‘OK,’ Jonah said, growing more serious. ‘I want her here, as soon as possible.’
‘She’s unfortunately now in Leeds until late tonight so I told her nine o’clock tomorrow. Sorry, chief.’
‘Nine tomorrow will have to do. Did Step have anything to say about Niall Reakes?’
‘No, nothing,’ Lightman said. ‘He didn’t recognise photographs of either Niall or Louise when I sent them over, either.’
‘That’s useful. Thanks, Ben.’
Ben let himself out again, and Jonah’s thoughts bounced between Louise Reakes, her husband, and the sudden introduction of April to the proceedings. He mentally balanced up the time they still had in which to charge Louise Reakes, and his determination not to arrest her husband until they absolutely had to. If they were going to mount an entire new case against him, Jonah didn’t want to be rushing to make another custody deadline.
He approached O’Malley again, where he was still working at his desk, his eyes bloodshot.
‘You’ve definitely drawn a blank on Niall Reakes’
s car?’
O’Malley nodded. ‘He’s not on any cameras until Saturday morning. Dina Weyman likewise.’
‘Louise has identified the earring as hers,’ Hanson chipped in. ‘And she’s added to her statement. She says she remembers a man holding her face down on the ground and pressing what he said was a knife into her back. She remembers the pain of her earring catching on his sleeve as he adjusted his grip, and it coming free.’
‘Anything direct about an assault?’
Hanson nodded, her face a little grim. ‘He pulled her dress up and dragged her underwear down. That’s all she has, but assuming her account is true, it sounds highly likely that she was raped. She’s accepted an examination this time.’
Jonah tried to fit in this idea of rape. Could Niall have raped her after finding her with Alex Plaskitt? Had he stabbed Alex and raped his wife? What, then, had happened to Alex while the rape was happening? And was it really nothing more than coincidence that Alex had kissed Louise’s best friend only an hour or so before?
‘Have we managed to raise Dina Weyman yet?’
O’Malley shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve tried both numbers. Want me to send a uniform round there?’
Jonah looked at his watch and let out a long sigh. ‘It’s seven forty-five. That might have to be one for the morning. We can’t keep Niall much longer without arresting him.’ He nodded to himself. ‘OK. I want to get Louise Reakes released on bail as soon as the examination is done. I’ll tell her husband he’s free to go, too, and ask him back in here tomorrow. The house has been thoroughly searched, so there’s no evidence there to destroy or dispose of. I suspect we may have more to gain by letting some kind of confrontation happen between them. And we’re going to be there to see it.’
O’Malley grimaced. ‘And there was I thinking you might be about to send us home.’
‘I don’t mind being on stake-out,’ Hanson said. ‘In case that helps.’
Jonah nodded. ‘I’ll see whether Ben can go along, too. If you can manage until one, that’ll probably cover it. We’ll get some uniforms to do the night shift. Domnall, perhaps you can take over in the morning. In place by eight?’
‘Thanks, chief,’ O’Malley said. ‘Very kind of you.’
‘Boss of the year, me,’ Jonah agreed.
Hanson had another message from Jason as she was getting herself ready to leave and felt impatient with it. There was paperwork involved in getting Louise Reakes out of the station, and Hanson needed to be in the car park by the time she and her husband left, ready to ease out into the traffic after them. Assuming, of course, that Niall drove his wife home.
She thought about ignoring whatever Jason had sent. She didn’t want to read anything more from him. Right now, she didn’t want to lay eyes on him again.
But she wasn’t going to get her wish. She had to sit in the same room with him tomorrow, and on all the upcoming tomorrows. And so, once she had her coat and scarf on and her bag looped over her head, she opened up the message.
So you don’t want to tell me your side? To actually discuss this like adults?
It was a good thing Jason wasn’t here in person. The anger she felt towards him then was a fierce, blistering thing. She felt her thumbs punching at her phone screen as she messaged back.
I don’t have anything to discuss with someone who’s willing to take a conversation with some guy he’s met at the pub as absolute truth when it is so very much at odds with the person you claim to know I am. There has clearly been no point to the time we’ve spent together. If there had been, you wouldn’t have been so ready to believe the incredible manipulations of a man I have been trying to block from my life for a very long time.
Her eyes were teary again, but the tears were angry ones. She was so very, very done with feeling betrayed.
Louise stood silently as they handed back her personal effects. They weren’t returning her earring. She supposed that was still some kind of evidence. But her handbag, keys and phone were there. She signed for them and slid everything into its slot in the bag, taking comfort in organising it. It was good to think of that, and not the probing examination that had happened a while before.
Niall was a wordless, looming presence over her shoulder. He seemed unable to bring himself to say anything to her. Which suited her just fine. She couldn’t bear to talk to him. The thought of being trapped in his stupid flashy car was horrible and she was considering telling him to leave. That she would prefer to pay for a cab.
But then she realised how it would look to the police. She was being judged on everything. She knew that. From the clothes she wore to the way she spoke; the way she treated her husband to the way he treated her in return. And so she walked out alongside him without speaking, and climbed awkwardly into the low passenger seat of the Jaguar, her body feeling stiff and underused.
She needed some exercise, she thought, as she closed the door. A run. A swim. And then she needed to play something. God, she needed that. To let her hands move over her harp strings, and blot out the last nightmarish forty-eight hours.
They were halfway home when Niall broke the silence, and he did so hesitantly.
‘We need to talk about – things,’ he said.
‘Do we?’
She saw the way he grimaced before he said, ‘Yes. We do. I think we both owe each other some kind of an explanation.’
‘I tried to give you one yesterday,’ she said, coldly. ‘But you wouldn’t see me.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t quite … You need to understand what a shock it was.’
She found herself looking at him in dumb shock. ‘You want me to understand how shocking it all is for you? To find out that your wife had woken up next to a dead man? You want me to sympathise with that?’
‘How do I even know that’s true?’ Niall countered, loudly. ‘I have no idea what happened.’
‘And neither do I,’ Louise told him, wondering why she didn’t feel more as she said it. ‘And we should both have faced it, together. We should have been a team. But we haven’t been a team for a long time, Niall. And I’m so sad that I’ve wasted so much worry over us when we were dead in the water months ago.’
He stopped trying to talk, after that, and Louise turned sideways to lean against the door. There were so many things she should have been asking him, really. Whether he was in love with Dina. Whether they’d agreed to get back together. And what the police had asked him about, too. But she felt too tired for all of it.
Tailing a vehicle was both easier and more challenging than people thought. It was easier because most people were so poor at checking the rear-view mirror. You could be behind someone for miles without them even noticing, and even when they did notice, they didn’t necessarily think anything of it. Cars generally followed major routes, and if you peeled off at some point before their destination, you were usually forgotten pretty quickly. Assuming, of course, that they weren’t looking out for you.
The difficult bit was keeping them in sight. At each junction there was a chance of missing them, and the one thing that would bring attention to you was to hustle through a set of lights on their tail when they were already changing.
Luckily, there were only a few cars around tonight, so it was easy enough for Hanson to keep behind Niall’s Jaguar. To him and Louise, she was probably nothing more than an anonymous set of headlights.
It was going well enough that she was able to spare some thought for the traffic around her. She noticed that the car behind had one badly adjusted headlight. It was much brighter than the other, and occasionally struck dazzling reflections off her wing mirror. It was irritating, and she waited impatiently for it to turn off onto another route.
But it stayed where it was, resolutely following her every move. And, after a few miles, it occurred to her that she might not be the only person following.
And she thought again of Damian, who had taken unreasonable steps to wreck her life, and who loved nothing more than to frighten her. And she
wondered whether she actually ought to be growing frightened.
26
Louise
All of this has brought us, inevitably, to tonight. To our silent, unhappy return from the police station. To a home that feels like it’s made of nothing but paper. As if it’s about to float away.
I keep imagining I can hear you moving around upstairs, even though the door shut behind you hours ago. The fact that you’ve gone makes me rage and hurt even while I wanted you out of my life. I’m a mess of conflict, and I wonder if you are, too, or whether that silence of yours was the mark of someone who’s already moved on.
I spent almost an hour cleaning a house that was already clean, and then I suddenly just ran dry. Poised with a cloth in my hand, I felt the urge to move drain away, and I felt really, truly bereft.
It was you I was thinking about. You and Dina. I found myself finally wanting to know everything. Every detail of what’s been going on between the two of you.
And so, for the first time, I loaded up the desktop computer in your study, grateful that it had been inconvenient to take to a hotel with you. I’d always been afraid of looking at it, despite how many times it had occurred to me.
There turned out to be a mine of information on there thanks to it synching with your phone. Hidden amid innocuous photos of us and of your work events and of scenery you’d enjoyed, there were photos of Dina. Images she’d clearly taken of herself and then sent you. They spanned years, these images. Terrible, painful little points scattered through stills of our everyday lives.
There was only one of the two of you together. It had clearly been taken by Dina, evident from the edge of her bronze forearm in the frame. She’d lifted the phone over her head and snapped the two of you next to each other, your head close to hers and a slightly dazed expression on your face. The two of you were illuminated by the camera flash, in sharp contrast with the dim lighting of what looked like a nightclub scene behind you.