The officer at reception was expecting them. Alex Hadley met them on the landing, shook Elder’s hand, enquired about his journey without really listening to the response. A certain amount of deference due but no more.
As they were approaching the interview room, Hadley held back. ‘You might find some of this hard going.’
Elder nodded, stone-faced. ‘We’ll see.’
The room itself was airless, anonymous, little different from the many he had been in before. The other side of the table now, he waited for Katherine to be seated then pulled his chair in alongside her, the two police officers opposite. After they had all identified themselves, Katherine was, again, cautioned. Told, again, she could leave at any time.
‘I’d just like you to remind us, Katherine,’ Hadley began, ‘about your relationship with Anthony Winter.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘The nature of that relationship, how would you describe it?’
‘I worked for him.’
‘As a model?’
‘Yes.’
‘A life model?’
‘Yes.’
‘And besides that?’
Katherine blinked, glanced at Elder, reached a hand up to her hair.
‘When we spoke before,’ Hadley said, ‘you suggested your relationship with Winter was also personal.’
A moment before answering. ‘Yes.’
‘Could you amplify that a little?’
Katherine pulled at a strand of hair. ‘We were friends.’
‘Friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘Close friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this friendship, this close friendship, would you say it was physical?’
Another glance towards her father. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘You suppose …?’
‘Yes. Yes, then. Yes.’
‘You were lovers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Up until the time of Winter’s unfortunate death?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘It finished before that.’
‘How long before?’
Katherine shifted sideways on her seat, shifted back. ‘A month. Six weeks. I’m not sure.’
Hadley let that slide. ‘And who ended the relationship, you or him? Or did it just come to a natural end?’
A breath, long and uneven. ‘Anthony did.’
‘Did he give a reason?’
‘No, not really.’
‘He must have said something.’
Katherine looked at her father.
Elder leaned forward. ‘Is there really something to be gained from this line of questioning?’
‘Yes, I think so. If you’ll bear with me a little longer.’
With a brief nod of the head, Elder leaned back.
Hadley refocused on Katherine, waiting.
‘He said … he said there was nothing more we could do for each other. It was … it was time to move on.’
‘And you were upset by that?’
Katherine nodded.
‘Katherine?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I was.’
‘So upset that you cut your wrists?’
Katherine flinched. Elder rose partway from his chair. ‘I don’t see that has any relevance. Not to your investigation.’
Hadley held his gaze. ‘I’m trying to establish the strength of the relationship that existed between Anthony Winter and your daughter, in order to explain any later behaviour.’
‘What later behaviour?’
‘We’ll come to that in due course.’
‘Katherine,’ Alice Atkins said, speaking for the first time. ‘Would you like anything? Some water, maybe?’
Katherine shook her head.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re okay to carry on?’
‘Yes.’
Hadley cleared her throat, glanced in Elder’s direction before speaking. ‘Would it be correct, Katherine, to say that your physical relationship with Anthony Winter was characterised by the giving and receiving of pain?’
Katherine screwed up her eyes, clenched her hands into tight little fists.
Elder began to protest but swallowed his words.
‘Katherine?’ Hadley said quietly.
‘No,’ the answer quieter still, eyes still closed. ‘No, that’s not right. I don’t know why you’re saying that.’
Hadley’s face opened into a faint smile. There, then gone. ‘Did you know that Winter was in the habit of filming the various sexual activities that took place both in his flat in Chalk Farm and in his studio?’
‘No.’ Eyes open wide, voice loud. ‘No, he couldn’t have.’
‘I’m afraid he did.’
‘He couldn’t have. I’d have known.’
‘There were hidden cameras in both locations. We found the results, some of them, on one of his computers. Others stored on a hard drive.’
‘But not me. Not with me. He wouldn’t have done that.’ She turned towards her father, alarmed.
Elder’s skin had gone cold. He smiled back at Katherine as reassuringly as he could; rested a hand for a moment on her arm.
Alice Atkins raised the lid of the laptop and, after a glance towards her boss, switched it on.
Katherine glanced helplessly back at her father, head shaking from side to side. ‘No, you can’t. Please, please. Don’t. Not in front of …’
As the first image appeared on the screen, she jammed her open hand into her mouth and bit down hard.
Elder slammed his fist on the table.
Alice pressed a key and the image disappeared.
Katherine was rocking backwards and forwards, tears running down her face and on to her neck, blood speckled across her mouth and cheek, divots of blood on the fleshy part of her hand between finger and thumb.
‘We’ll take a break,’ Hadley said, ‘and get that seen to. Continue later.’
‘What the holy fuck d’you think you’re doing?’
Elder had demanded to speak to Hadley alone and, reluctantly, she had agreed. They were standing in the car park at the rear of the station, Hadley, who never smoked, not since she was in her teens, with a cigarette she’d begged from Chris Phillips.
She drew the smoke down into her lungs and slowly exhaled. ‘Pursuing a line of inquiry.’
‘Treating my daughter as if she were a suspect. A hostile witness at best.’
‘Just trying to get at the truth.’
‘The truth is, Katherine had nothing to do with Winter’s death and you know that.’
‘Do I?’
‘You really think she could have been in any way responsible?’
‘I think there are questions about her involvement that remain unanswered.’
‘Christ!’ Elder swung his head away, looked up at the sky.
‘What?’
‘You ever listen to what you’re saying? You sound like some bloody automaton.’
‘It’s about maintaining a level of detachment. Not getting emotionally involved. I thought you’d have known.’
‘Yes? Well, you’ve got that off to a fucking T and no mistake.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment, even though that’s not how it was intended. And I do realise how difficult it must be for you to do the same. These circumstances especially.’ Another pull at the cigarette. ‘If you’d like to arrange for someone else, someone less close, more detached, to take your place as an appropriate adult, then I’m sure it can be managed.’
Elder shook his head.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure.’
‘There may be other things which come up that you’re going to find difficult to hear.’
Elder looked at her before speaking. ‘You can push so far and no further. Anything more aggressive and I’m going to suggest in the strongest possible terms she takes the option to leave.’
‘You really think that would be good advice?’
‘If you don’t like it, charge her.’
‘You think I won’t?’
‘I think if you were going to, you’d have done so already. I think you’re still trying to force the pieces together and finding they just don’t fit.’
Hadley took a last drag on her cigarette. ‘Time we were getting back inside.’
Katherine’s face was unnaturally pale; her hand bandaged and resting in her lap.
‘Katherine,’ Hadley said, ‘are you feeling okay to continue?’
‘Yes.’
Elder nodded agreement. He’d done his best to suggest to Katherine she should make what she justifiably could out of the injury to her hand and put off the remainder of the interview until later, possibly the following day, but she had wanted to get it over.
‘And I must remind you,’ Hadley said, ‘that you are still under caution.’
‘I know.’
‘Good. Well, then I’d like to ask you about the last time you say you saw Anthony Winter – which would be the Monday, I think you said? The Monday before the exhibition …’
‘Yes.’
‘The Monday before he died.’
Katherine made no reply.
‘You went to the studio at his invitation to see the paintings for which you’d earlier been posing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And while you were there, did anything else happen? Looking at the paintings aside.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Did anything happen between the two of you, yourself and Anthony Winter?’
‘We …’ Pulling at her hair, avoiding her father’s eye. ‘We made love.’
‘You had sex?’
‘Yes.’
‘You had sex on the day bed in the studio?’
‘Yes.’
‘And on the floor.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps you can remember what else took place? When you were both making love on the floor?’
‘No!’
‘Not something involving the chain?’
‘What?’
‘The chain, Katherine. The same chain as in the painting. You don’t remember Winter taking hold of it and fastening it across your body?’
Katherine let out an anguished cry.
Elder was on his feet. ‘All right, this is going to stop, right now. I assume you know this as it’s all there on tape, along with the time and the date. So asking my daughter those details can only be for the purpose of breaking her down even further in the hope that she’ll admit to something she didn’t do.’
‘Or it could be,’ Hadley said, ‘in order to establish, once and for all, how it came about that, in addition to her prints, there are multiple traces of your daughter’s DNA on the implement that was used to murder Anthony Winter.’
Elder slowly sat back down.
‘Katherine,’ Hadley said, calmer now, ‘there’s just one more thing. When you were here before we asked you to look at two sequences taken from CCTV cameras close to Winter’s studio. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Alice positioned the laptop so that both Katherine and Elder could see the screen.
‘When you were shown these images before, you maintained that the person in them was not you, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure about that? Positive? Having seen them again you don’t want to change your mind?’
‘No, it’s not me, you can see. Dad, you can see, surely? And besides, it couldn’t have been me because I was at home.’
‘In Dalston?’
‘Yes.’
‘The flat in Dalston? The Wilton Estate?’
‘Yes, where else?’
‘The flat you share?’
‘Yes, yes. You know all of this.’
‘So there will be someone, one at least of your flatmates, who can vouch for you being there, at the flat, between the hours of, say, ten o’clock and twelve on the night in question?’
Katherine looked away, looked for a moment at her father, looked at the floor.
‘Katherine?’
‘No.’
‘So none of your flatmates can vouch for you, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because they were out, out clubbing, and I … I stayed home.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes, alone.’
‘How come, when they were …’
‘I had a headache, a stomach ache, I thought I was getting my period. I took some painkillers, made a hot-water bottle and went to bed.’
‘And that’s the exent of your alibi?’
Katherine hung her head.
‘You’ve asked your questions,’ Elder said, ‘and you’ve had your answer. Either move on or we walk.’
‘All right,’ Hadley said, ‘but first, Katherine, I’d like you to look carefully again at the screen and, in the light of some of the other things we’ve talked about, things you’ve admitted, tell me if perhaps you were mistaken and that is, in fact, you?’
‘No. No, it’s not. It’s just not. Dad, it’s not – you can see, can’t you? You can see.’
Elder was looking carefully at the screen. The build, the shape, what little you could see of the length and colour of the hair, even the way she moved, it could just be Katherine. It just could.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not you.’