Davie watches her on the monitor. He’s sitting in a small room that isn’t much more than a broom cupboard, but it has a large screen and three chairs. She is in another room, just along the corridor. She has a beige cup on the table in front of her. He has one just the same, sitting next to the keyboard. The machine said it was café au lait, but it smells of burnt tyres. Like his burnt-out scooter that he left on the side of the road. Louise Jennings sits beside him. She’s zooming in and out of the screen. Trying to get the best position so that they can see Marie, as well as those on the other side of the table. Malkie Reid and Simon Richards.
Simon was recently promoted to detective sergeant, according to Louise. Her tone suggests she’s not happy about it. He imagines that she wants to be in there, taking the centre stage. He can see the gleam in her eye. What an exciting case this is, she is probably thinking: I’d love to be involved. That should be me. He wants to be angry about it, but he sees a bit of himself in her eyes. He can almost smell the buzz coming off her and he wishes he could feel like that now. Eager. Enthralled. Involved.
Davie is involved, but not in the way he wants to be. He aches, looking at her there in that room. Sitting on the plastic chair. Her hands clasped in front of her. She has refused a solicitor. She will need one eventually, but it’s her choice to be interviewed without one. Davie wishes he’d had a chance to talk to her. He has no idea what she is thinking. He still doesn’t know exactly what she did, or why. Before her arrest, Marie was ready to tell them everything. But, sitting there in the interview room, she seems to have retreated into a shell. She is answering with one-word replies. Giving them nothing. Davie can sense that Malkie is getting annoyed.
Let me in there, Davie thinks. She’ll talk to me. Then again, though, would she? She had plenty of chances to do it before. Before her brother turned up at her flat. Before he followed her to the party and stabbed six people.
All six of them are dead. Two hung on for as long as they could, but they’d lost too much blood. The knife had been driven in too deep. The pathologist said it looked like the knife had been plunged in like a sword. There were a few defensive wounds here and there, slashes to palms and suchlike, but they had been attacked in their most vulnerable state. Off their heads. They never saw it coming. Were too slow to fight him off. They probably thought they were having a bad trip.
He hopes so. He hopes that they didn’t know what was really happening.
‘Marie, it’ll be easier for us all if you can just tell us everything now. If you’d prefer, we can still call in a solicitor for you. We strongly advise that you listen to us on this. Your brother might be the one who stabbed them, but something triggered his psychotic episode. The doctors have taken samples. They’ll find out what he took. You can save us a lot of time if you help us out.’
Marie shuffles in her seat. Looks up at the camera. Davie knows that she can’t see him. Doesn’t even know that he’s there. But it feels like she is looking straight into his eyes.
‘Wow, she’s creeping me out now,’ Louise says.
Davie wants to say: Shut the fuck up. You don’t even know her. But he realises there is no point. Louise isn’t doing anything wrong. Marie is a suspect now. No one is going to cut her any slack. Not if she’s responsible for this. Not if she gave something to her brother that set him off. Davie knows what she did. He knows she somehow got hold of some of that shitty herbal drug that’s been doing the rounds. He wants to burst into the room. He wants to save her. But it’s too late. He wants to take her in his arms and squeeze her. He wants to say he’s sorry. If he’d acted sooner. If only he’d got to her before she went to that party . . .
Marie is staring into the camera. Staring into his eyes. He shivers.
‘I just wanted him to go to sleep,’ she says. ‘I just wanted him to leave me alone.’