by Jack Jordan
Something was blocking her way.
She held her toes with one hand and felt the obstruction with the other.
The sofa.
She ran her hands across the back of it and clambered over, landing on the seat cushions. Her kneecaps slammed against the front door.
‘What the hell?’
She crawled along the sofa and climbed over the arm, feeling for the rest of the room.
Bang.
Her knees smacked into something hard and low. It toppled to the ground with a loud crash. Objects flew off the top and scattered across the floor.
Someone had been inside her house while she slept and changed the layout. While she had been dreaming of the killer, he had been here below her.
Walk to the kitchen, reach the sink beneath the window and get your bearings.
She followed the map inside her head, feeling for where things should have been, waiting to pass the edge of the rug in the living room, the coat rack, the cupboard under the stairs.
The pain was instant, like teeth plunging into her skin. Her whole body rattled as she hit the ground. She ran her fingertips along the bottom of her feet and felt shards of glass poking out.
Her hands searched wildly to find where she was in the room, and felt the fire poker clink against its holder. She took it in her hand and sat up, swiped it through the air until it knocked something over with a crash.
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’
Her words filled the house and echoed in the empty rooms. She sat there with the poker shaking in her hands. Blood oozed from her feet and dripped between the floorboards.
Someone wanted her to be lost in her own home, the only place she felt safe. Someone wanted her to know that she had nowhere to hide.
The doorbell rang. Naomi sat on the floor as the sound ricocheted off the walls, thinking of where the door would be. She rose to her knees and felt around, shards of glass moving beneath her palms.
Knuckles rapped against the other side of the door.
Up to her feet and pressing down into the glass, she hobbled forward, tapping the poker on the floor like her cane and moving obstructions from her path with her free hand.
When she reached the foot of the stairs, she dropped the poker with a clang and pushed the sofa out of the way. She pressed her palms against the wall and felt her way towards the door, unknowingly smearing blood against the paint. Her hot, anxious breaths bounced back at her. Voices whispered on the other side of the door.
The key was cold, a lingering reminder of the night. She turned it in the lock and opened the door, squinting as the wind blew into her eyes and chilled the skin on her cheeks.
‘Hello?’
Her voice sounded quiet compared to the sounds of the day outside: a car whooshing down the road, a plane rumbling in the sky, leaves rustling on the trees lining the street.
‘Naomi Hannah, this is Detective Inspector Lisa Elliott and Detective Sergeant Blake Crouch, with two uniformed colleagues.’
‘I’m so glad you’re here—’
‘You are under arrest on suspicion of assisting in the attempted murder of Josie Callaghan. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Hands landed on Naomi’s shoulders and turned her roughly, twisting the glass in her feet like screws. Everything was happening so fast: her thoughts, her heart, the handcuffs biting at the skin on her wrists, chinking against the bones. Someone reached past her and began putting shoes on her feet as she waited with bloody hands behind her back.
I should have jumped, she thought. I should have freed myself when I had the chance.
PART II
THIRTY-FOUR
Something was happening around Marcus. He could feel it buzzing in the air. The office was empty when he arrived after meeting Anita Callaghan before his shift, and an hour later, Dane was brought into the station in handcuffs. A lawyer followed soon afterwards, and they were shut away in one of the interview rooms.
He called Lisa, who disconnected the call after three rings.
He drummed his fingers on his desk and listened to the tick of the clock. He watched the second hand travel around the face. Lisa would be back soon.
He looked up to the sound of voices along the corridor. A uniformed officer was showing a smartly dressed man into an interview room. Something was definitely going on.
‘Hey!’ Marcus got to his feet and bounded through the door, catching up with the officer. It was the female officer who had questioned him in the first case briefing. He still didn’t know her name. ‘Who’s he? What’s he doing here?’
‘He’s a solicitor for one of your cases. You should know, right?’
‘Well, I don’t.’
Marcus reached for the door handle to the interview room.
‘If Lisa hasn’t told you what’s going on, I’d wait.’
Marcus barged past her and marched into the room.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Marcus Campbell.’
The solicitor looked him up and down with beady eyes. The man was short and plump, with a horseshoe of hair thinning around his head and a thick neck dangling beneath his jaw.
‘Jeremy Winer,’ he said nasally.
‘Who are you here to represent?’
Winer pulled a file out of his briefcase, rested his reading glasses on the end of his nose, then pushed them to the bridge with a chubby finger. He had to squint to read the name on the top of the page.
‘Ms Naomi Hannah.’
Beads of sweat broke out on Marcus’s forehead.
‘And why does she need a lawyer?’
The solicitor sighed and peered at the file again.
‘She is suspected of assisting in the attempted murder of a Ms Josie Callaghan.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ Marcus exploded.
The solicitor jolted in his seat and his reading glasses slipped towards the tip of his nose. He pushed them back up again.
‘I’m here to defend her, DS Campbell.’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry,’ Marcus said.
He backed out of the room and marched towards the office. He paced from wall to wall.
‘She can’t … she can’t do this …’ he muttered under his breath.
Voices echoed up the corridor. Marcus stopped and listened to the pounding footsteps. He marched to the door and got there just in time to see two uniformed officers escorting Naomi towards the interview room.
She looked a shell of who she used to be. Her face was thin. She wore pyjamas and a well-worn dressing gown, with shoes on her bare feet. She was ushered into the interview room. The door clicked shut behind her.
Lisa walked towards the office with her head down. When she looked up, their eyes met.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Move aside.’
Marcus stepped out of the doorway and watched her head for her office. He followed her.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked.
‘My job, Campbell. You should try it.’ She swung her bag on top of her desk, then turned to him with a smirk on her face.
‘That’s it? That’s all you have to say?’ His whole body was trembling.
‘Outside,’ she said, as she zipped up her coat and grabbed a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.
She had lit up before they had even reached the fire exit to the alley. It was like she was marking the office as hers, like a dog cocking its leg and pissing up the wall.
They walked through the rain and stooped under the bike shed. Smoke billowed out of Lisa’s mouth and disintegrated in the rain.
‘Get it out of your system,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Say what you have to say. You’re clearly struggling to keep it in.’
‘Okay. You’re wrong. Naomi isn’t a killer, or an accomplice. She’s an innocent woman and you’re only making her life worse.’
> ‘Dane is the killer, Marcus.’
He stared at her, words forming and dying in the back of his throat.
‘It was his watch at the scene of Josie’s murder, and witnesses have attested that he had sexual encounters with both Cassie and Amber after the breakdown of his marriage, which phone records confirm.’
‘Why didn’t I know about this?’
‘Because you’ve become a liability. You see what you want to see. You want Naomi to be innocent, so you won’t let anything get in the way of that, even when the truth is staring you right in the face. She is in a sexual relationship with her ex-husband, and she survived the night in the woods when Josie barely made it out alive. She was supposed to be there. She led Josie into the woods, not the other way around. She stood by while her ex-husband attempted to kill his lover. She facilitated the whole thing.’
‘You can’t know that for sure.’
‘Well, it seems to me that she is manipulating him into getting Josie out of the way so they can be together again. Josie wasn’t going to let him go without a fight, so they gave her one.’
‘That’s an accusation, not a fact.’
‘Female killers work differently, Marcus. They manipulate people into acting for them. Look at Lizzie Borden and the family maid, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, Rosemary West and her husband Fred. They had accomplices besotted with them, ready to follow any orders sent their way. It’s time you looked at Naomi for who she really is.’
‘You didn’t have to handcuff her; she wasn’t a threat.’
Marcus was shaking, but it wasn’t from the cold. He hated Lisa. He hated everything about her: the smug slant of her lips, every freckle on her nose. She couldn’t see that her description of him as a detective unable to see past his own opinions and desire to make them fit would perfectly describe her too. She couldn’t find out the truth so she ran with a lie, anything to settle the case and move on, even if it meant tormenting a disabled woman. She didn’t want justice – all she wanted was prestige and pats on the back, and she didn’t care how she got them.
‘She needs to understand how serious this is,’ Lisa said. ‘She needs to be scared into telling us the truth.’
‘Don’t you think she’s scared enough already, with everything that’s happened?’
‘You need to stop seeing her as the helpless damsel, Marcus. She’s just as much of a killer as her ex-husband is.’
‘What about Amber and Cassie? You think Naomi is responsible for their murders too?’
‘She’s capable of it.’
‘What motive would she have?’
‘Her ex-husband had sexual relations with both of them.’
‘So that gives her a reason to kill them?’
‘We’ll find out.’
‘You’re pinning murders on a woman who is a victim herself!’
‘Lower your voice, Campbell,’ she said sternly.
He clenched his teeth and looked away. Lisa sighed.
‘One of my first cases when I was with the Met was the murder of a couple who’d been locked inside a house that was then burned to the ground. The perpetrator was never found. They were survived by their fourteen-year-old daughter, Rebecca. The girl was obviously distraught at losing both parents. Four years later, after Rebecca had won a scholarship to university, she killed her boyfriend in the halls of residence by stabbing him twenty-two times and setting him on fire while he was still alive. Why? Jealousy.’
She took a long drag on the cigarette.
‘We overlooked Rebecca because we didn’t look past the facade. She played up to the image of a young girl incapable of anything more than tantrums and acne, and we let her kill again. I won’t let Naomi pass me by without being sure she isn’t involved.’
‘But you have no evidence to convict—’
‘Yet. We got a warrant to enter her home. Blake is orchestrating the search as we speak.’
‘But you can’t arrest her without evidence.’
‘One day you’ll understand that this job can’t always run on what the rulebook allows us to do.’
The words I quit squirmed at the back of his throat, but Naomi needed him. If he wanted her to get the justice she deserved, he had to stay.
‘Are you going to help me bring this killer to justice? Amber deserves it. Cassie deserves it. Josie deserves it.’ Lisa looked at him intently, and Marcus realised that she truly believed she was right. If he wanted to protect Naomi, he would have to play along.
‘I’ll try,’ he lied.
‘I need more than that, Marcus.’
‘I will.’
I will unearth the truth.
‘Good.’
She dropped the cigarette butt into a puddle and started back towards the door, coughing into her hand. Marcus marched behind her through the rain, his hands clenched into fists inside his pockets.
‘Dane is in Interview Room Two,’ she said, turning back to him as he shut the door. ‘I need you on my side in there.’ She eyed him for a beat, searched his eyes for submission, before heading towards the interview room.
Dane was waiting.
THIRTY-FIVE
Dane was a handsome man beneath the fear, but Marcus struggled to see him with Naomi. His muddy blonde hair was thinning and the hairline was slowly creeping from his forehead, making his face out of proportion. He stank of stale whisky, exuding from his skin in nervous sweat. His right leg was jittering, a jumpy response to distract himself. Marcus had seen it all before. He had to fight the urge to wince at the thought of Dane on top of Naomi, grunting, sweating, thrusting into one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Dane must have felt like the luckiest man alive when he was with her, before the divorce, before the murders.
‘Dane,’ Lisa said. ‘I’m not here to bully you. I’m here to find out the truth about what happened to Josie. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. The truth should clear all this up.’
Dane glanced at his solicitor, a tight-faced woman with permanently puckered lips, and frown lines that never left her face. ‘I am innocent,’ he said.
‘Of what, exactly? Because I believe you’re responsible for more than just the attack on Josie Callaghan.’
Dane’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. Marcus imagined it sliced by the killer’s knife, and saw the man’s blood spray across the table. He closed his eyes for a beat to wash his mind of the sight of death. He’d never look at necks the same way again.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The other women. Murdered in cold blood.’
‘Do you have evidence for this?’ his solicitor asked.
‘We have evidence that Dane was at the scene of Josie’s attack, which was played out in the exact same way as two murders in the last two weeks. And …’ Lisa drew it out, playing with them, ‘we have been made aware of Mr Hannah’s previous sexual relations with each of the women.’
His solicitor shot him a quick look. Dane didn’t meet her eye. ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘Let’s see what else your client is hiding.’
‘My client has denied the attempted murder of Miss Callaghan, Inspector Elliott.’
‘And I don’t believe him.’
The solicitor sat back in her chair with a quiet sigh, settling in for a long afternoon.
‘Did you ever hit Josie, Dane?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Verbal abuse, perhaps?’
‘We had arguments like any other couple.’
‘Did she ever hit you?’ Marcus asked. Lisa shot him a look.
‘She slapped me a couple of times.’
‘Why?’
‘She thinks my ex-wife and I have an inappropriate relationship.’
‘Which you do, right?’ Lisa said.
He fell quiet, picking at the skin around his thumbnail. ‘No.’
‘When was the last time you and Naomi slept together?’
‘Is this relevant?’ the solicitor asked.
�
��Very. Please answer the question, Mr Hannah. Remember, lying will only make things worse.’
Dane looked at the solicitor. She nodded. He sighed and looked down at his hands, quivering against the tabletop.
‘Not long ago.’
‘How long?’
‘About two weeks ago.’
‘So you were unfaithful to Josie.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that why she attacked Naomi?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t tell her about it.’
‘You wanted to stop Josie from hurting Naomi, didn’t you?’
‘Had I been there, I would have stopped it.’
‘But you did, Dane. You saved Naomi’s life.’
‘I told you, I wasn’t there.’
‘Then why did we find your watch at the scene?’
‘If it really is my watch, someone’s framing me.’
‘You believe someone is framing you for the attempted murder of your girlfriend for harassing your ex-wife, your current lover? Why would someone do that? Who else would have a plausible reason to intervene the way you did?’
‘I know how it sounds.’ He looked from Lisa to Marcus. ‘But I promise you, I wasn’t there. Someone is setting me up.’
‘I’ll need a better answer than that.’
‘I don’t have one.’ His voice grew louder, defensive. ‘All I know is, I wasn’t there. I was at home.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘So no one can verify your whereabouts the night Josie left your flat, entered the woods with your ex-wife, and almost died?’
He looked at his solicitor again, who nodded at him to continue.
‘No. No one can.’
‘So for all we know, you could be lying.’
‘I’m not lying!’
‘But you lied to Josie, didn’t you? You were having a relationship with your ex-wife behind her back. I’d say that makes you a pretty good liar.’
‘You’re twisting everything …’ His words caught in his throat.
‘No, Mr Hannah, I’m trying to get the truth out of you.’
‘I didn’t hurt Josie!’ he yelled, and slammed his fist on the table. The solicitor’s coffee jolted in the Styrofoam cup and spilled onto the table.