Simon arrived at the MCU a little after four that afternoon with both his parents and Billie Williams in tow. He had the look of a schoolboy called to the head’s office, with his parents also receiving a summons, and who thought the whole inquest a waste of his time. His father’s expression seemed to say that he knew as soon as they let their son back into their lives this would be the kind of place they’d inevitably end up in. At a police station.
‘Simon’s parents are here, Ms Williams. So why are you?’ Cross asked the head of the Hopewell Clinic.
‘I want to make sure that Simon comes back to Hopewell afterwards,’ she replied.
‘You’re that confident that this interview won’t result in his arrest?’ Cross asked innocently.
‘Simon didn’t kill Flick, accidentally or otherwise,’ she said.
‘You know him that well?’
‘I knew Flick that well,’ she replied firmly.
An interesting distinction, thought Cross.
Simon slumped into the armless sofa of the Voluntary Assistance suite next to the large indoor plant which had somehow found its way in there at some time in the past weeks. From the long roots dangling down it looked like it might have conceivably crawled in there on its own. The sofa was impossible to sit on comfortably or to strike an attitude in. Somehow its design made the occupant perch a little indignantly. Quite a useful characteristic for it, Cross thought.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’ Simon began.
‘Why do you keep asking that question when we’ve answered it several times already today?’ replied Cross.
‘Then why am I here?’
‘We have a few questions,’ Ottey replied. ‘When we saw you at the clinic you said you didn’t see Flick the day she died.’
‘Because I didn’t,’ said Simon.
‘But that’s not entirely true, is it?’ she asked.
‘It is.’
‘All right, let me put it another way. Were you in Flick’s building the day she died?’ Ottey asked.
Simon offered no reply.
‘Well, let me help you out. You did go there that morning and had an altercation with her downstairs neighbour, Brian,’ said Ottey. ‘Why didn’t you tell us that?’
‘Well, obviously, because I was in breach of the restraining order and you’re the police,’ he said in his best effort at a patronising monotone.
‘What was the fight about?’ Ottey persisted.
‘It was more handbags than a fight, let’s be honest. He’s such a loser, that guy.’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Ottey.
‘Because he has a hard-on, had a hard-on, for Flick.’
‘So you had something in common. Does that also make you a loser?’ asked Ottey.
‘She wasn’t interested. That makes him the loser, not me,’ he said.
‘Except that he wasn’t the one with the restraining order,’ Ottey pointed out.
‘Whatever,’ Simon muttered.
‘Were you jealous of him?’ she asked.
‘Like I said, she wasn’t interested in him.’
‘But they spent a lot of time together. She even left your daughter alone with him when she went to see her mother,’ Ottey went on.
‘How sweet,’ he spat.
‘Bet that pissed you off,’ she said. He didn’t answer. ‘Playing happy families, the three of them. Exactly what you were so desperate for. Did you try to go back to the flat after Brian had left for work that day?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Tell me about Dr Sutton,’ Cross said, entering the conversation for the first time.
‘He’s a creep,’ said Simon.
‘What makes you say that?’ Cross asked.
‘He just is. Loves himself. Just look at the way he dresses. Thinks he’s a god to addicts and behaves like it.’
‘Go on,’ said Cross.
‘You don’t have an appointment with him. It’s more like a bloody audience,’ Simon continued.
‘You don’t like him,’ said Cross.
‘No. Whatever gave you that idea?’ he replied sarcastically.
‘It seemed a little more than that when you ran off at the church,’ Cross observed.
‘No. Like you said, I just don’t like him.’
‘Why? Was it because he told Flick to stay away from you?’ he asked.
‘If that was the case I wouldn’t have anyone left to like,’ said Simon.
Cross said nothing further. But he sensed that Simon wanted to say more, now that he had the opportunity.
‘He was all over her,’ Simon continued. ‘I told her to be careful of him. But she was taken in. There’s a word for it. A Svengali, isn’t it? It’s like a cult the way he deals with his patients. I’d have said he had a thing for Flick, but Billie says that’s how he is with all of them. You either sign up for it or you don’t. Flick did. You should talk to him. He must have an opinion about what happened to her. He has an opinion about just about everything else.’
‘Have you ever had a session with him?’ Cross asked.
‘No. He “selects” his patients carefully. Only deals with the ones he thinks he can help, he says,’ said Simon.
‘He thought you were a bad influence on her, presumably,’ said Cross.
‘He signed a supporting letter for the restraining order. So what does that tell you?’
‘Wasn’t he just doing that to protect her?’ said Cross.
Simon said nothing for a moment then looked up. ‘I didn’t see her the day she died. Did I try? Yes. Brian stopped me. We had a scrap then I went into town and scored.’
‘Diamorphine?’ Cross asked.
‘No!’ Simon said.
‘But you have scored it before,’ said Cross, then without waiting for an answer, ‘Why did you tell us you don’t inject?’
‘Because I don’t.’
‘But you have in the past,’ Cross went on.
‘Says who?’
Cross didn’t reply.
‘You must’ve known we’d look at your record, Simon,’ said Ottey. ‘You were convicted of possessing a Class A drug. Namely, diamorphine.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Simon said.
‘So?’ she said.
‘So I haven’t done it since because I haven’t needed to.’
‘But look at it from our perspective,’ she went on. ‘Flick died from a diamorphine overdose and you have a past conviction for possession of diamorphine.’
‘Sure, but this wasn’t me. How am I supposed to make you believe that?’ Simon protested.
‘By helping us,’ she said.
‘I’ve told you I’ll do anything to help. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to know you’re wasting your time talking to me, when I know I didn’t do it and you could be looking for who really did it?’ he said miserably.
Cross thought his body language looked sincere.
‘So you want to help?’ asked Ottey.
‘Of course. Someone killed my girlfriend,’ he said.
‘Ex-girlfriend,’ Cross pointed out, not to be cruel, but accurate.
They pushed Simon for a further couple of hours. What Cross wanted to know was where Simon had obtained the diamorphine from all those years before. Was it readily available on the street?
‘Sometimes. Sometimes not,’ Simon replied.
‘Where did you get it from?’ Cross asked again.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’ asked Ottey.
‘What’s the difference? The end result is the same,’ he said.
Ottey had become fed up with Cross’s circling. His dogged persistence wasn’t getting them anywhere. She was bored, was the truth of it. Interviews like this often became interminably boring, particularly if you were in the room with Cross, who could go along with the same monotonal line of questioning for hours. At times it was enough to make her want to bash her brains out against the wall. Cross was about to repeat the question when she stepped in.
‘So here’s what’s going to happen in the next five minutes if you don’t tell us. I’m going to arrest you on suspicion of the murder of Flick. You’ll spend the night partly in the cells, but mostly in here with another detective who works nights and who will take over from us and ask you the same single question. Again and again. Repeatedly. Where did you get the diamorphine from? We will come back tomorrow after breakfast and a good night’s sleep and start asking the same question. Again and again. If we don’t get an answer we’ll get an extension from a judge, who, based on the evidence we have, will grant it, and so for a further seventy-two hours you will be asked the same one question over and over again. Wouldn’t it be easier just to answer it now, not be arrested and leave in twenty minutes?’ Ottey said, practically in a single breath.
‘You’re saying I can leave in twenty minutes?’ he asked, making sure he’d heard her correctly.
‘I am.’ She smiled as if to show him how ready she was to let him go and how easy all of this could be.
It transpired that Simon had obtained his diamorphine from a dealer named ‘Thatch’ who was currently in prison. Cross found himself wondering whether this was a reference to the former prime minister or the man’s hair or lack of, but he didn’t ask. What they discovered was that prescribed drugs that were no longer needed by people – mostly the relatives of a recently deceased person – were often taken back to a pharmacy to be destroyed. Even brand-new unopened packets couldn’t be passed onto other people in need. Cross thought this was a terrible waste, particularly as the National Health Service was always struggling financially. No record was ever made of these returned drugs. The pharmacists would then utilise the services of a pharmaceutical waste company to dispose of them. Thatch had a good line of business going with an unscrupulous pharmacist in Bristol who sold him diamorphine and other opioids, instead of having them destroyed.
As promised, they let Simon go. He went back to Hopewell. From Simon’s expression as he re-joined his parents, Ottey wondered whether he was thinking that seventy-two hours in a cell might have been preferable to enduring the journey back to the clinic with them.
‘How did he seem to you?’ Ottey asked Cross as they made themselves coffee. They each made their own. She had given up offering to make his several months ago as he never seemed satisfied with her efforts, always leaving his cup untouched on the desk.
‘His behaviour wasn’t such that I thought he might be concealing something,’ Cross replied.
In the interview Simon had repeatedly asked them how they thought he would’ve been able to inject Flick. What possible scenario ended in that way? They’d never injected together before, so how, on what pretext, would he have been able to persuade her to let him put a needle in her arm, even more so, now that she was clean and sober?
Cross had made no comment but thought it was a very valid point, and not just for Simon. It applied to anyone they brought in. The blow to the head had to be material. She was struck on the head then injected and placed back in the chair. Ottey wasn’t sure that Simon was capable of such violence against Flick, but Cross made the point that he could’ve been so high he just lost control.
Ottey said that, for what it was worth, she didn’t think Simon killed Flick. Cross inevitably pointed out that what she thought was irrelevant unless she had evidence to back it up. At times like this she found his pedantry irritating. Hadn’t he just said in as many words that he thought Simon hadn’t done it?
‘I said he didn’t behave like he was hiding something,’ Cross replied. ‘An entirely different thing.’