‘He’s lying,’ Ferreira said, the second Zigic stepped foot in the office. ‘I mean, as far as you can lie when you’re making such a basic statement. Why didn’t he explain himself? He didn’t even offer up anything in his defence. Surely his solicitor told him how that would play when it gets to court.’
‘Riggott’s happy enough with it,’ Zigic told her, aiming for the coffee machine. The DCS had forced a glass of whiskey on him in celebration of solving Corinne’s murder and he needed to wash the taste of it off his tongue. ‘Brynn ran, we can’t ignore the significance of that.’
‘But he didn’t say why he ran.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Did he think he’d get away? Disappear into Ferry Meadows and live like a wild man in the woods? Was he going to throw himself in the river? What?’
‘You saw the feed, Mel. I didn’t exactly get chance to press him on it.’ Zigic poured the last couple of inches of coffee into a mug. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be downstairs?’
‘This is my case too,’ she said, dropping onto the windowsill. ‘And I know you. No way are you satisfied with this outcome.’
She was right. He never trusted unforced confessions. They were the preserve of attention-seekers, the unhinged and people bent on sacrificing themselves for others. Brynn was most definitely in the last category and everything they’d heard about his relationship with Colin and then Corinne, his twenty-year affection for Nina and his fatherly attitude towards Harry, made Zigic inclined to doubt him.
Brynn had lingered at the periphery of that family since the beginning, wanting Nina, but too respectful of his friendship with Colin to act on his feelings. Even as he watched him cheat on her with one woman after another, then begin the process of becoming one. He put aside other relationships, presumably, the possibility of his own family, waiting for the Sawyers’ inevitable break-up.
He’d already sacrificed his life for them. A false confession to preserve their liberty didn’t seem out of character.
‘You know what I’m wondering,’ Ferreira said, pulling her tobacco out of her pocket. ‘What did Corinne do? Brynn reckoned she was trying to get between them, so how did she do that?’
Zigic frowned. ‘Maybe Harry knows. My guess is this all comes back to the fight at Christmas.’
‘You want me to see if he’s any closer to getting out of hospital?’ Wahlia asked.
‘Yeah, thanks, Bobby.’
Zigic replayed the moment it all erupted, seeing the hurt on Nina’s face and the absolute terror on Brynn’s.
‘We need to talk to Nina, sharpish,’ Zigic said. ‘Bobby, send a car over to the hospital to fetch her.’
It took almost an hour to retrieve Nina Sawyer and settle her in Interview Room 1. She arrived blanched and shivering in her fine-knit cardigan, looked shell-shocked, sitting there on the hard plastic chair with a takeaway coffee from the hospital cafeteria.
‘Did he do it?’ she asked, in a faltering voice. ‘Did he kill Corinne?’
‘Do you think he did?’
‘I don’t want to believe it.’ Nina leaned her elbows on the table, eyes losing focus. ‘But I can’t think of any other reason for him to run off like that. What was he trying to do?’
Zigic didn’t know, not for sure, and he had no intention of letting her direct the flow of this conversation, whether from confusion or design. She was weak right now, distressed and scared, and this was his best chance to lead her into admitting something she’d rather keep secret.
‘The morning of Corinne’s murder – you told us that Brynn left the house at half past seven. We now know that was impossible.’
‘I thought he did,’ she said. ‘He always left at that time, he was very particular about timekeeping with the men and he was always punctual himself.’
‘But not that morning. What time did he really leave?’
Nina bit her lip. ‘Maybe he did leave later. I was cleaning the house, I didn’t have my watch on. Perhaps it was ten minutes later.’
‘Back at the house, you were angry with Brynn.’ Zigic watched her face crumple for a moment before she straightened it out with visible effort. ‘You assumed right away that he was guilty rather than Harry. Why is that?’
‘Because I know my son. He isn’t capable of murder.’
‘But Brynn is?’
Nina didn’t answer, only frowned, evading his gaze. She drew her flimsy grey cardigan tighter around her body. The room was cold, the radiator against the opposite wall not working properly, and some of the late-afternoon chill was seeping in around the thin, high window, bringing the smell of exhaust fumes from the parkway and a hint of rain on the air.
‘If Brynn murdered Corinne he must have had a reason,’ Zigic said.
No reply.
‘You don’t seem shocked by the idea. Is Brynn a violent man?’
‘No. He’s always been very gentle.’
‘He’s never been violent towards you?’
‘Do you think I’d stand for that?’
He didn’t, but then you never could tell.
‘What about Colin and Brynn, can you recall them ever fighting?’
‘Not that I know of.’ A sickly smile lifted her mouth. ‘They were always very close.’
‘Yes, everyone keeps telling us that. Like brothers, right?’ Zigic said. ‘And yet Brynn has just confessed to murdering Corinne.’
Her eyes widened and was that relief he saw? It certainly wasn’t shock, not anger or disgust but something far more complicated. Relief and amusement? Was he reading her wrong? It seemed such a bizarre reaction he couldn’t entirely believe it.
‘What did Corinne tell you about Brynn?’ he asked.
She touched her tongue to her lip and he gave her a moment to consider it, but when he realised an answer wasn’t coming, said, ‘Corinne was trying to get between you – Brynn’s words. So, how did she do that?’
Nina’s hand strayed to her throat, fingertips pressed into the hollow there and Zigic thought of Corinne, the life choked out of her.
‘She was never going to let me be happy,’ she said. ‘The girls think I was a terrible wife, they think I pushed Colin away because I was intolerant and selfish, but they have no idea what a nightmare he was to live with. All the demands. The endless accommodations I made so he could live how he wanted to. The moment they saw him as Corinne that was the end of any semblance of normality. He looked ridiculous,’ she spat. ‘You only saw him after the surgery, but before all of that he was … a joke. And he knew it. So, he started trying to rip away my confidence. I was too fat then when I lost weight I was anorexic. When I didn’t want to have sex with him as Corinne I was frigid. He actually made me doubt my own sanity for years, because I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I knew he was just trying to undermine me, but if you hear those things for long enough you start believing them.’
Zigic resisted the urge to ask questions, letting her talk as the first drops of rain pattered against the window.
‘He wanted to be a better woman than me,’ she said. ‘And he thought he could achieve that by destroying me. If I became unattractive and weak then by comparison he would be strong and beautiful. But he wasn’t. He was a neurotic mess. That’s why he was such a whore when he was still a man. He didn’t want to screw those women, he wanted to be them.’ She brushed the back of her fingers across her bottom lip. ‘I saw one of them, once. They were together. They didn’t see me and I wasn’t going to make a scene. She was tall – statuesque, I suppose you’d say – too much make-up, this black hair like a goth. And then, a few weeks later, Colin bought a black wig and started dressing up just like her.’
She smiled without humour, shook her head.
‘That’s what women were to him. Templates.’
Zigic realised where she was going. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner, but the photograph on the murder board was old, taken in the summer before her latest round of surgery. ‘When Corinne died, she looked like you.’
Nina nodded. ‘The hair was new, my colour, my cut. For all I knew she was going to my hairdresser. She changed it just before Christmas. She’d never dressed like that before and there she was – my double.’
‘Did anyone else understand what she’d done?’
‘Harry saw it right away.’
‘But not Brynn?’
‘Brynn never notices things like that,’ she said, eyes watering. ‘That’s why I love him. He doesn’t care what clothes I wear or if I don’t bother with make-up. You have no idea how liberating that is after having every tiny detail of my appearance scrutinised and judged for so many years.’
‘Is that why Harry was so angry with Corinne?’ Zigic asked. ‘Because she was – what – mocking you?’
‘She was making a point. She was the new and improved version of me. It wasn’t enough that Lily and Jessica considered her their mother.’ Nina pressed her hand to her chest. ‘Whatever you might think of me I love my children. They are my whole life. But Corinne took them away from me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It was like she wanted to erase me completely and that was the last part of the process, stealing my appearance.’
It was a calculated and vicious move on Corinne’s part, Zigic thought, but Nina mentioning it now felt like a distraction technique, or even another small attack on Corinne designed to excuse Brynn.
‘Nina, what did Corinne tell you?’
‘She was lying.’
‘I don’t think you believe that,’ Zigic said. ‘And I think whatever Corinne told you had a direct bearing on Brynn confessing to her murder. So, you need to tell me.’
Nina blinked a few times, drying her eyes.
‘Corinne told me Brynn came on to her.’
‘At Christmas?’
‘Yes, but she was lying, obviously. Because that’s what she did. She was so furious that we were happy, she wanted to destroy us.’ Nina’s hand curled into a fist in her lap and she shook her head, disbelievingly. ‘How the hell she thought I’d actually buy that …’
Zigic leaned forward in his chair, knee throbbing as he moved. ‘What exactly did she say?’
‘That I should throw him out.’ A narrow, bitter smile twisted her mouth. ‘She said he was in denial about his sexuality and if I stayed with him he’d hurt me. The irony. Can you imagine?’
‘Did you ask Brynn about it?’
Nina waved a dismissive hand at him. ‘Of course I did and it was complete rubbish. I’d spent long enough with Corinne to know when she was lying.’