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NOW I KNOW you’re thinking I’ve completely lost it, and maybe you’re right. I mean, here I am in Sophie’s room where I’ve stayed all day not sure how to deal with anyone. I’ve got my mobile on her desk that Trin’s mum is using to keep me updated. Trin is still unconscious but she’s stable and the doctors are hopeful she’ll regain consciousness.
I’ve got my burner cell beside my mobile that Fiona is using to update me on Rhys Mead—the guy who made off with Sophie’s accounts—and on their pursuit of whoever attacked Trin—even with Wood’s account, they can’t find a name or identity of Trin’s lover.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that I’m torn between feeling sick and guilty, ready to run for it and go to Wood; or try to prove to myself that Sophie is either lying to me about being a killer and try to find out why or that Sophie is a killer and try to understand why.
I also have this little piece of legislation floating around and around in my brain until I can see prison bars:
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“Where a person has committed an arrestable offence, any other person who, knowing or believing him to be guilty of an offence . . . does without lawful authority or reasonable excuse any act with intent to impede his apprehension or prosecution, shall be guilty of an offence.”
Criminal Law Act 1967, section 4
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I even dragged it up on my web browser to make myself stare at it. And so you know, that would be the least of my worries if anyone did discover Sophie was guilty. I’d actively hidden a possible murder weapon and provided an alibi.
But, I know you’ll think I’m stupid and right now, I’m half with you, but . . . and this was a big, big but . . . in my gut, there was what Sophie was saying and all she wasn’t and if she was so happy to come out and confess twice to me that she’d murdered a person why would she not confess to the other murders?
Not only that, she was using betrayal as a reason to have killed Eugenie but her timeline was, what an investigative interviewer might call, a hotspot. It was a straight short account. She showed no emotional response, no change in her baseline behaviour when she talked about how this woman she’d been utterly consumed by had said she meant nothing.
Something didn’t fit. A lot didn’t fit.
Next up for your scrutiny is Max’s report. Now Max had worked for over fifteen years with some of the nastiest, manipulative people in society. I’ll say that again, he worked with them to the point he saw them in everyone else who would be considered “normal.” You had to read it the right way.
He’d said, the suspect holds herself in a superior way. It’s clear that she has a dominant role and personality. She shows little reaction to the interviewers other than the occasional look of distain. She rarely makes eye contact, not even to signal that she is allowing the interviewer to continue taking the stage.
When informed about her lover’s death, she is matter-of-fact and said. “No comment.” No differently than her baseline. She does not look away when she says it but neither does she stare. It’s almost as if you are asking if she ate lunch.
When shown the evidence linking her to the scene, she reacts by rolling her eyes and then returning to her baseline. If she wasn’t obviously aware of the circumstances, I would assume she didn’t have the capacity to understand how serious a situation she was in. The interviewers quickly struggle to cope with her behaviour and react emotionally. I recommend pulling in Morgan Lloyd here. If anyone can use the correct psychology to interview this suspect, it will be her.
Other than the fact Max had been lovely about my skills, I disagreed with him. So much so that I wanted to throttle him. I’d spent time in Sophie’s presence and yes, she rarely made eye contact with anyone unless absolutely necessary. She used eye contact as a way to gain submission, instil fear, seduce, study but she rarely just looked at you. I knew I was different in that respect but I thought, and you might say, “Morgan, get a grip,” but I thought it had to do with introversion. Sophie, to me, didn’t want to make eye contact because that meant a conversation and she rarely felt happy holding them.
Investigative interviewing took patience and an understanding how people lie. Passive lying was the most common, which included evasion—and yes, the “no comment” method was one way. The half-way-house method took more mental pressure and involved being ambiguous but being non-specific often led unwitting interviewers into making their own assumptions. Then there was active lying which was the hardest to pull off, took the most mental effort, and created “pressure tells” such as: a thin account; contrast in narration; an account with unimportant details but no important ones; inconsistencies, contradictions, imprecise illustrators—when you use gestures or movements to show an action . . . and wait for it . . . the matter-of-fact manner. That’s what Max picked up on and unfortunately, I could see his point. I mean, she was more worried about the flowerbed, right? What was with that flowerbed . . . unless Eugenie was buried under there?
I leaned onto the fireplace which was difficult as the mantlepiece was the height of my shoulder. Outside Sophie’s window, I could see the driveway lit up. Raquel and her baggage were making their way up with Malcom in the electric 4x4. Good. Sophie needed to keep her close.
I stuck my tongue out and chomped my bottom teeth to it which was something that used to drive Trin nuts. She’d tell me that it looked like my brain had fallen out. I rubbed the side of my head. Felt too close to the truth but stay with me here because if you’ve been keeping up, these were the facts: First known victim was Eugenie Forthwright whose father was a property developer from Australia. Yes, underline property developer, Edwina was handy. Eugenie was cut down with a sword if Sophie’s confession was real and Henry was cut to shreds but survived.
There was no real evidence other than the two missing women, Sophie’s confession, and the fact Henry was given treatment. But, I’ll draw your attention to the fact Sophie, who had been so specific about sabres, had only said she’d killed Eugenie with a sword. If you were listening earlier, that is a form of active lying which produced a thin account . . . and yes, that matter-of-fact tone.
Victim two: Maggie Peters, who’d been a businessman’s daughter. Mr Peters was well known for buying established businesses, cutting them to pieces, and selling them off for profit. His daughter, from what I could get from the media—hey, they were there, I might as well use them—was a bit of a girl. She’d dated a couple of dodgy looking artists and had her licence taken off her for driving while under the influence of goodness knows what.
Peters had gone missing after sleeping with Sophie or at least going to the same hotel. I’d probed Edwina a bit and it turned out that high-profile people didn’t always do what they appeared to but when they needed some promotional spotlight, they picked someone to generate it with. Sophie had been twenty at the time, and her father seemed to have been in some financial trouble. Sophie and Peters’ affair oddly changed his fortunes. I don’t know how, but then Peters went missing in a Ferrari and was never seen again. She hadn’t been alone on one camera but no one could see who was with her.
I’d double checked what Sophie said about there being pictures of her leaving without Peters and there was one with her getting into a car with a blonde female. I couldn’t see the face but definitely could match the old picture of Eugenie, which matched Sophie’s account they’d been having an affair.
I leaned both hands to the mantlepiece. Victim three came three years after Sophie comes out of hiding to inherit the estate. Sophie had announced that she was going to open the conference centre and Salisbury starts to message her. In fact, it had been the same day that the conference centre opening is announced. Coincidence? Maybe. But the messages from Salisbury are something out of a porn movie. Seriously, I was surprised Sophie rose to it. Don’t get me wrong, phone sex is hardly going to be literary but this sounded like she was talking to a heavy breathing guy in a Mack on a payphone.
That aside, they only meet once. The other people at the party came out with outrageous statements saying how Sophie beat her and Salisbury was scared of her when they’d only met that evening? Come on.
Yes, there was GSR on Sophie’s hands, yes Salisbury had her DNA on her, and the grip wounds . . . I looked at my own wrists. I’d been on the receiving side of Sophie in a fiery passion but she rarely left marks on my upper arms. My wrist, yes, upper arms, no. Hmmm.
Did Salisbury bruise easily? Did they have a fight? What happened between Sophie taking Salisbury into the manor and her leaving?
I wandered to the window and waved to Raquel who was trying to take out Malcom’s shins. She stopped and waved back. Good eyesight.
Victim four: Clive Bunion and the flowerbed. He thought Eugenie was buried there. He never gave up his sources but he had made a huge career out of getting celebrities in trouble. Some of the countless exposés included Salisbury’s father, Peters’ father, Eugenie Forthwright’s father . . . and Sophie’s.
I personally was thinking stalking offences right now but why was Bunion following those people in particular? What did they all share in common? Business. The others wanted Sophie’s money and estate.
I rubbed over my face. Can you see why I used to get stressed? I always found myself with a mind map of like a million questions and hardly any answers.
Victim five: The security guard. Other than he worked on the estate for a few years, was an ex-security guard in a supermarket and was divorced with kids, I didn’t know much. He had been near the forest where I’d been attacked so was it connected? Had I disturbed the killer?
Victim six: Jackie Rampone née Mead. Ex-con artist and serial offender’s wife who dobbed him in for fraud and drugs’ trafficking offences which saw him in prison and she was placed in a witness protection program but never seemed to have an audit trail after. Fiona had looked and looked. Now Jackie had somehow become an accountant for Sophie, stolen half a million of her money—Edwina was my source there—and her son found his way into working in a pottery shop.
The DNA at the crime scene was Sophie’s hair but then Jackie had been her accountant. And if a singular hair of a customer near their service provider was conclusive evidence then I should have been convicted of several crimes in the past and hairdressers didn’t stand a chance.
But, Jackie had definitely been something to Sophie, had betrayed her, and the anger shrank her pupils every time you mentioned Jackie’s name.
Victim seven was Mead himself: They’d found him in one of his taxis with a hosepipe attached. Would have been more convincing if they hadn’t shot him several times first.
Sophie had been in London but there was no trace evidence linked to her found in Mead’s car. There was countless DNA from all sorts as you could imagine with a taxi, but nothing to do with Sophie.
Victim eight: the guy from the conference centre. He was missing and someone had wiped his records but then Jake had wanted to bury Bunion so my guess is that if Sophie found bodies first, they were quietly disposed of.
Eight victims, four attempted murders if you counted the crash with Wood and Trin, Trin’s assault and the two attacks on me.
So what was going on? Any ideas? Me neither. I was rusty at this and I’d had people to bounce off in the police. I slouched back over to the fireplace and leaned on the right side of the mantlepiece.
Then fell through the fireplace onto hard floor in darkness.
What?
I pushed myself up and sighed. Passageway. Of course, creepy old estate had hidden passageways. I walked back out and retrieved my torch, stuck on some slippers (investigating in pyjamas needed slippers) and examined the space. Oh look, blood soaked clothes in a plastic bag. How nice.
I sighed.
There was a lot of blood on the clothes.
I flicked the torch upward then downward. Did I follow the dark passageway or not? I glanced over my shoulder. Did I really want to? It could be like the ruin and someone could have a sword or I could slip and concuss myself and Sophie would growl when she found me.
Creak.
Thinking it was the fireplace shutting me in, I ducked back into the room. I was shaking. I was sure it took far more guts to be a lone private detective than it did to be a police one. You had people to cling to or hide behind in the police.
Creak.
I pressed the mantlepiece again to make the fireplace close and headed to the door. Maybe it was Sophie? Only she never made a noise.
I went to my phone and texted her.
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Are you in the wing? Xxx
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Sophie would probaby laugh and jump out at me which, as you can imagine, was an even scarier thought as she’d implied she was a serial killer. Could you imagine my mother’s face, not that we really bothered with each other, because I’d gone from “Hi, Mum, here’s my fiancé. He’s a barrister, and we’re having our first baby” to “I’ve left my fiancé but I have a new one and oh, she’s a woman”; to “Hi, Mum, this is Sophie, I love her more than I ever loved the other two, she has a great house, nice cars, great education . . . oh, and she’s a serial killer.”
I rolled my eyes. Don’t laugh, it’s not funny.
Creak.
That one was elongated and made me grip my phone. It buzzed.
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I am not in the wing. Xxx
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Oh no. I opened the door, slowly, and peered out. Yep, there was the intruder with a hood on trying to get through the door opposite.
I pulled out my phone, took a picture, and sent it to Sophie.
Creak, crack.
The hinge on my door groaned. Shit. I ducked out of sight but footsteps pounded away down the corridor. I sprinted after them. The intruder sped toward the stairs only for Sophie to appear from the gloom. The intruder skidded to a halt, spun, then bolted down a narrow passage.
Sophie met my eyes. “Let me deal with this.”
I held up my torch. “You can butcher people on your own time, I want answers.” I hurried to her and kissed her, hoping she didn’t decide she was mad at me. “I’ll chase, you head him off.”
Sophie nodded.
I sprinted up the narrow passageway in my pyjamas, trying to ignore the glint in Sophie’s eyes. Max would have had a field day.
There. The intruder hurried toward some drafty bare stone section all in darkness and I slowed. Oh no. What idiot ran to the dark creepy bit? I trotted after him. I didn’t want to be in the creepy part. I eyed the suits of armour. Creepy. Far too creepy.
The intruder turned to the right and slowed.
I crept after him, each suit of armour catching the odd silvery glow of moonlight.
The intruder glanced behind, and I ducked out of sight. Then the intruder crept onwards but hunched as they reached a set of windows and bare stone wall. Hah, stuck. I sneaked onwards only for a suit of armour behind the intruder to move, then grip the intruder, and snarl into their face.
Fuck, shit, fuck and then some.
I dropped my torch as the intruder wriggled free and sprinted at me. I slammed my fist upward into the intruder’s jaw. They slumped to the ground . . . and the suit of armour stalked toward me.
“Er . . . I know Sophie . . . I work here . . .” I held up my hands. “I love her. I love Sophie.” I backed up.
Sophie stepped into a shaft of moonlight and raised her eyebrow.
“I thought you were a suit of armour.” I shrugged, hurried over, kissed Sophie on the lips, and hugged her, just to make sure. “Yay for no creepy moving suits of armour.”
Sophie’s lips curled into a smile. “I am going to take your books away.” She shook her head and hauled the intruder up by the scruff, then ripped his hood down. “Frank?”
Uh oh. This was not going to help staff relations.