47

Leonard can feel the grief coming through his laptop screen. He soaks it up. Feels it light up every cell in his body. In the middle of the night, just a few hours after Matt Davis drowned, his brother was seeking comfort and understanding. From him. Not his mother or any of his friends. Him.

A message alert. And then.

‘What the hell was he doing? Why were those guys chasing him? I can’t believe my brother is actually…’

The words tailed off.

Then.

‘Are you there? Can we talk? I REALLY need to talk to someone who understands.’

‘I’m here for you, Simon,’ Leonard typed and felt the electric charge of triumph.

‘I can’t type fast enough,’ Simon writes. ‘Can we meet up, please?’

‘Of course. When?’

There’s a delay of a few moments before Simon replies.

‘Sorry. My mum needs me. I’ll get back to you later, if that’s ok?’

Then a message came up to say that Simon was now offline.

* * *

Ale parks the car, pulls on the handbrake and looks over at Daryl Drain.

‘Ready for this?’ she asks.

‘What else should you be doing at eight o’clock in the morning, other than arresting the twin brother of a drowning victim?’ He adds as an aside, ‘In front of his grieving mother.’

‘When I come back, I’m coming back as a nail technician,’ Ale says, ‘cos to hell with this shit.’ She can already see Helen Davis’s face twist with grief when she delivers the news that her son is in fact a murder suspect after all. Just a couple of days after her other son dies. She’d asked Peters for a day’s grace before she arrested Simon Davis. Hoping for a couple. But Peters was under pressure from the suits, and they wanted this case put to bed long before now. Any delay when there was an identifiable chain of events was just not feasible. He finished with a withering look and the command: do your job.

‘Ale, you didn’t make the world. Nor do you make people do the things they do,’ says Daryl.

‘The world is populated by bloody idiots, if you ask me.’

‘Right,’ says Daryl. ‘No time like the present. Let’s go.’

Ale’s legs feel like they’ve been coated in fast-drying concrete as she walks up to the front door. Daryl knocks.

Helen Davis answers even before the sound stops reverberating. She must have noticed them waiting and deduced why.

‘You’re not taking my son,’ she says.

‘Can we come in, please, Mrs Davis?’ Ale asks. ‘We can’t really discuss this on the doorstep.’

She turns to the side and allows them entry. Closes the door behind them. Crosses her arms. ‘There’s something you should know, before you speak to Simon.’ Her face is lined and grey. Her eyes are heavy and their light is dim. She looks about ten years older than the last time Ale saw her, just a few days ago. ‘Aileen Banks was having a thing with both my boys. Playing one off against the other.’ She pauses. Steels herself against what she is about to say. ‘Matt was with her on the night she died. Not Simon.’

‘Just what are you saying, Mrs Davis?’ Ale asks.

‘Simon did a DNA test? The results are in, yes?’ She sticks her chin up, challenging us for the information.

‘We can’t divulge that information at this stage,’ Ale says, suddenly doubting whether or not this was the case.

‘Well, let me save you the trouble of arresting my son.’ She gulps back some tears. ‘Identical twins have identical DNA. True? Yes? The result you have matches with Simon. But it wasn’t him who left the…’ her expression sours, ‘…sample. It was Matt. Because, if you were listening earlier, Aileen had both my boys twisted round her finger. And that night, she was with Matt.’

‘Mum,’ says a voice from the top of the stairs. ‘What are you doing?’ Feet drum down the stairs and Simon is beside her mother. He looks as if his eyes have slipped half way down his face. He’s wired, anxious and utterly fatigued. He tugs at her sleeve. ‘Mum,’ he admonishes her.

‘On the day after … the day after my son dies,’ she draws herself up to her full five feet. ‘The police have arrived to arrest my son. I’m finally … finally telling them the truth. Can’t hurt Matt now, eh?’ Her smile is twisted with determination to protect her one surviving family member, and Ale wonders if the truth has also been twisted to help.

‘Tell them, son. Tell them,’ Helen speaks quieter now.

‘Tell them what, Mum?’ Simon takes a step back as if he wants to run back upstairs to the safety of his room.

‘That Aileen was playing you off one against the other.’

‘Mum, please,’ says Simon. Ale’s reading of this is that the boy is clearly conflicted. But is it with this version of events, or does he want to protect the good name of the girl he was in love with?

Helen is in his face now. ‘Was Aileen seeing Matt before she died?’

Simon is a study in pain and silence. He looks like a man about to be placed in front of a firing squad.

‘Simon,’ Helen says.

A whisper. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you see Aileen on the night she died?’

His voice remains low. ‘No.’

Helen is almost at breaking point but manages to ask, ‘And did Matt see Aileen on the night she died?’

Simon’s silent response stretches on for more seconds than is comfortable. Helen doesn’t press him this time. She simply places a hand on his forearm. Simon almost slumps at the touch.

Then.

‘Yes. Matt told me later…’ Simon looks from Daryl to Ale. ‘But you have to believe me. Aileen was alive when he left her.’ He stares his certainty into her eyes. ‘You have to believe me. Matt didn’t kill Aileen.’