Snezia Jones was ready to run.
There was a black cab waiting for her outside the small modern block of flats overlooking Highbury Fields.
She came out of the apartment block’s lift with a small travel bag in either hand and suddenly stopped dead, staring at us through the tastefully tinted glass doors.
Joy cancelled the cab. The driver angrily flicked on his yellow For Hire sign, not happy at all. We went inside. Snezia led the way into the lift. Joy took her travel bag. She wasn’t going to need it after all.
It was a beautiful flat. We paused to take in the view across Highbury Fields. The remains of a Mexican takeaway for one was scattered on the coffee table. The roadside chicken tacos had hardly been touched. No sign of the boyfriend.
‘Anyone else at home?’ I asked.
Snezia shook her head.
‘Most people can’t do it,’ Whitestone told her, looking out at the rolling green field that stretched to Highbury Corner like a dream of the countryside. ‘Take a life, I mean. People say – I’ll kill you. But it’s not that easy.’
She turned to look at Snezia to make sure she was paying attention.
‘I never …’ she began. We waited. But she could not finish the sentence.
‘They can’t take a life and then carry on with their own life as though nothing has happened,’ Whitestone said. ‘Most people normal can’t do it. And when they do – if they do – then it stays with them forever. Always there. Every day. In their dreams. And that is what happened to you, isn’t it? No matter how much you may have hated Jessica Lyle.’
Snezia sank into a white leather armchair, so new that it still smelled of the showroom, and shook her head briefly, a final half-hearted denial of everything.
This is what they do in the last ditch, when they have realised that their life is about to change forever.
Not me, Officer. I didn’t do it. It was someone else.
I gave Joy the nod.
‘You are under arrest for Conspiracy to Murder,’ she told Snezia.
Adams smoothly lifted Snezia from the sofa, spun her around, snapping the cuffs on behind her back, remembering her training. A formal arrest will always be accompanied by physically taking control. Because some people go fighting mad when the end is near. At Newgate prison, when they had the public hangings that Charles Dickens watched, the corridor that led from the holding cell became narrower as it got closer to the gallows, because the condemned can fight for their life with an inhuman strength.
But that’s not what happened with Snezia. The fight went right out of her. And that can happen too, when the end is near. There are also people who are meekly led to their fate.
Snezia hung her head, and a tendril of her white-blond hair fell over her exhausted face.
‘You do not have to say anything,’ Adams said.
‘What happened to the ballet shoes?’ I asked.
Snezia blinked at me, not understanding.
‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court,’ Joy said, checking the locks.
‘When Jessica Lyle was taken,’ I said. ‘You showed me a pair of ballet shoes. Remember? When we were in the old flat. What happened to them?’
She shrugged. ‘I must have lost them during the move.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You placed them on a fresh grave in Highgate Cemetery. Because you thought it contained the body of Jessica Lyle.’
Her head jerked towards me. You thought …
Because she did not know. She still did not know.
‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence,’ Joy said.
There was a massive HDTV on the wall facing the sofa.
I picked up the remote and turned it on and scrolled through the guide for BBC News.
And the return of Jessica Lyle was the top story on the rolling news.
She stood on the doorstep of her family home, her baby son in her arms, her parents pressed against her on either side, her brother holding on from behind, a tangle of arms and love, and they were all one flesh. Her mother was smiling, a broad smile that seemed fixed to her face with stunned disbelief. Tears rolled down the haggard cheeks of Frank Lyle, and the old cop pressed his face into his daughter’s shoulder to hide them from the watching world. And Tommy laughed and baby Michael stirred in his sleep.
And I wondered what she told them. I marvelled at the conversation that I would never hear.
Did Jessica tell her family about the diet of Xanax and fear that had kept her from their side when their hearts were being shredded because they thought she was dead? Did she explain the unexpected mercy of Ruben Shavers? And I could not help but wonder – did they know that Jessica had been seeing another man at the time of her fiancé’s death? Did they think that their perfect girl was painfully human after all? Did they look into those blue eyes and wonder if they really knew her at all?
Or perhaps she told them none of it. Perhaps they just held each other and wept. Perhaps the presence of her was miracle enough for now.
And I was happy for them. Because the family of Jessica Lyle looked restored, intact, and happier than they’d believed they would ever be again.
And Snezia sank back into her new leather sofa, the handcuffs making her arms rise awkwardly behind her, unable to take it in.
Staring at a ghost.
‘Yes, she’s alive and kicking,’ said Whitestone. ‘And as gorgeous as ever, isn’t she?’
‘They didn’t put Jessica Lyle in that grave,’ I said. ‘They put a body in there, under the coffin that it was dug for. But it was not Jessica. Bumpus buried Minky in there.’
‘Minky?’
I nodded. ‘There was no sudden return home for Minky. There was no rich sponsor who discovered her at the Western World. Jessica Lyle was meant to die that night. But Minky died in her place.’
Snezia shook her head. It was not possible.
‘Change of plan,’ I said. ‘Because the original plan fell apart from the start. Who do you think came up with the plan, Snezia? A team of nuclear physicists? The people who do these things, Snezia, they are not smart people.’
‘No,’ she said.
Not to the team of nuclear physicists, but to the idea that the plan could have gone so catastrophically wrong.
‘The open grave was waiting at Highgate Cemetery,’ I said. ‘But when Shavers and Bumpus arrived with Jessica, there was a squad car parked outside the gates. Because you know what, Snezia? There often is. It’s parked there to discourage the local youth from partying among all those precious old tombstones. And it’s there to watch for drivers using their phones at the wheel. And it’s there because it’s a good spot for a couple of tired coppers to park up and take a breather. So they kept driving to Bumpus’s flat in Camden, where the ex-girlfriend who still had a key was collecting some stuff.’
‘Minky.’
‘Minky. Poor Minky. And she was unhappy when they walked in with Jessica – this stunning new woman – and Bumpus was unhappy that she had seen them with Jessica. A witness. The plan would not work with a witness. And somewhere between all that sexual jealousy and all the fear of getting arrested, Minky got hurt and then she died. Jessica went home with Ruben Shavers and Minky went into the grave. But you didn’t know that when you left the shoes and the flowers, did you? You thought the plan had worked. You thought Jessica Lyle was dead and gone.’
She still couldn’t take her eyes from the TV.
‘You set her up,’ I said. ‘Your friend in your car. You made it look like someone wanted to abduct you. And for what? Because you got dumped for someone younger and prettier? We all get dumped, Snezia. You know what happens after that? We find someone better. Nicer, hotter, kinder. That happens to everyone in the world.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Whitestone said. And then to Snezia: ‘You actually wanted Jessica Lyle dead just because she took Harry Flowers from you?’
Snezia’s milk-white face twisted with contempt.
‘I didn’t care about losing my boyfriend,’ she said. ‘Is that what you think? I can always get another boyfriend. I can always get another sponsor. I cared about losing my flat.’ Her eyes teared over. ‘I really loved that flat.’
We stared at her in disbelief. Now it was our turn to stare in wonder.
‘That’s your motivation for Conspiracy to Murder?’ Whitestone said. ‘The housing shortage?’
And I saw it was true.
For a woman like Snezia, it was easy to find a boyfriend in the city.
But almost impossible to find somewhere decent to live.
Adams began to lead her away.
‘It wasn’t my idea!’ Snezia said, desperate to tell us everything. ‘I would have found another flat! I would have got another sponsor! But she told me – she promised me – that things could stay the same only if Jess was gone.’
Whitestone placed a gentle hand on Snezia’s arm and I saw the same bleak light in her eyes that had been there when Jackson showed her the handgun in the back of that van.
‘We know, sweetheart,’ she said, a soft reassurance, almost maternal, as if all debts were about to be paid.
‘Jessica was my friend,’ Snezia said, something else on her face now, getting over the initial shock. ‘But she was the kind of friend who gets everything she ever wants. She was the kind of friend who is in a different league to you. Look at her! Just look at her!’
We all looked at the Lyles as they retreated back into the family home, the press calling questions and the cameras flashing and the uniforms holding them all back. Even as the family passed through the door, Jessica still held baby Michael in her arms and her parents and her brother still held her. I never saw a family look so complete, and I never saw a woman so loved.
‘Bitch,’ Snezia said.