‘How would you characterise your relationship with Jenny Groves, Jonah?’ asked DI Kahn.
Jonah rolled his neck. They’d have to charge him or let him go soon. It would’ve usually happened already as they had already detained him for over twenty-four hours, but the little side trip to the hospital to check his self-inflicted injuries had stopped the clock on that. His actions had given them a few more hours to question him until they maxed out their time limit and had to decide if to apply for authorization to continue holding him.
‘Jonah?’
‘Sorry, can you repeat the question?’
‘How did you get on with Jenny Groves?’
‘Jenny and I were cool.’
‘So you would say you were friendly?’ asked DS Foley.
Did the police know that they’d slept together? Did it matter?
‘Yeah, we were good friends. Just mates, you know?’
‘Did you want to be more than mates, Jonah?’ She said it in that consoling way, intimating that she knew all about frustrated hopes.
Jonah rocked on his chair, realised that gave away too much, so sat back down firmly. ‘We were mates. End of.’
‘Did you look into her past? Maybe so you could understand her and know how best to relate to her?’
They were fishing for him to own up to the creepy scrapbooks. ‘No. I knew she’d been hurt. Obvious, isn’t it? The not-talking thing is a bit of a giveaway. But her past was hers to share or keep to herself.’
‘You were sometimes asked to research characters for your coursework. Perhaps you made a study of Jenny Groves?’ suggested Khan.
‘Why are you talking about that as if it is in the past tense? I’ve still got a year to go at RADA.’ Act like an innocent man and maybe you’ll convince the audience.
‘I’m talking about past actions. Did you research Jenny Groves?’
‘No. I’ve already answered that question.’
‘But your tutor said you used her as an example in a mime class.’
Fucking Maurice. So that’s what the police had been doing in his twelve-hour break: interviewing everyone who knew him. He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So you studied her. Closely. Intimately.’ Khan didn’t do the innuendo well. He should’ve left it to his sergeant with her husky voice.
‘OK, this is how it is. I’m an actor. I watch people. I observed the way Jenny got round the problem of not being able to speak. I thought it beautiful.’ There: he’d given them the truth. The word ‘beautiful’ felt unnatural on his lips, not part of his usual vocabulary. ‘I observed her – just as I observed Mrs Whittingham – I used her in a class too. Are you going to arrest me for that? I observed the guy on the train opposite me – the old woman feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square – I’m even observing you both now in case I ever have to play a tight-arsed policeman and his scary sidekick.’
Foley smiled acerbically at her superior. ‘At least I get scary.’
‘Yeah, you look all soft then you bite, like a fox. You’re the threat in the room.’ Jonah made a snapping motion with his teeth. He knew it would either rile her or bring her a little over to his side: either reaction would be interesting.
‘Jonah, where were you fifteen years ago? asked Khan, flicking through the manila file. They knew the answer, of course.
Jonah wrinkled his brow as if thinking. ‘Fifteen years ago? I was what? Thirteen? Fourteen?’
‘That’s right. Where were you?’
‘I’ll have to consult my engagement calendar.’ He was now acting out in his head super important businessman, not a role he ever expected to play on screen. ‘I moved around so much, I find it hard to remember. Places to go, people to see.’
‘Then let me remind you. You were taken into care when you were nine.’
‘Oh yeah, I definitely remember that. Got beaten up the night after my mum’s funeral by another fucking foster kid. Happy days.’
‘You were moved from that house to a children’s home in Romford. You didn’t settle.’
That was an interesting way of characterising his reaction to the relentless bullying he’d experienced from the other boys. He had been younger than most, and vulnerable. That had been one of his most important life lessons: don’t let the fuckers see you’re hurting.
‘After that, you were put with a foster family in Harlow. You stayed with them for a few years.’
He remembered the Walshes. They’d been OK. He’d actually gone to school fairly regularly and got on well with the other foster kids, an older girl and a younger boy.
‘Were you aware that your foster sister was having music lessons?’
‘Yeah. She tortured us with her Grade One violin for a year until she gave it up.’
‘Do you know who her teacher was?’
Where were they going with this? ‘No idea. Enlighten me, Sherlock.’ Why was he acting so cocky? He didn’t understand himself sometimes. It was like he had behavioural Tourettes.
‘Nikki Groves, Jenny’s mother.’
‘Really? Small world.’ Was he surprised? His life was such a tangle of awfulness, of course they’d dug that up. ‘Though I suppose there are only so many violin teachers in Harlow so maybe not so much of a coincidence.’
‘Did you know Jenny Groves before she moved into Gallant House, Jonah?’ asked Foley.
‘No. Did she go to my school then? The intake was about two hundred each year so I didn’t know everyone. I spent most of time off my head.’ He fantasised about a cigarette. He could feel himself drawing the smoke into his lungs and expelling it in the police officers’ faces.
‘No, you didn’t attend the same school.’
‘OK then. I didn’t know her.’
‘And you didn’t know anything about the attack on her at the time? It was massive news, locally and nationally: I find it hard to believe you didn’t notice.’
He wasn’t sure what they wanted from him. ‘No, it must’ve passed me by. We didn’t live in Harlow itself but in Nazeing.’
‘Nazeing?’
‘Yeah, it’s a funny little village a couple of miles away. Nothing happens there. I wasn’t the kind of kid to take much notice of the news.’ He’d spent those two years getting drunk on the allotments if he remembered rightly. Cheap cider bought from the local Spar where the bored assistant turned a blind eye to underage drinkers. It was why the Walshes eventually handed him back. They couldn’t curb his habit because they were powerless to isolate him from himself. He’d been in a deep self-hatred and drank to escape. He’d tried to keep it out of their house though, as he respected them.
‘Jenny Groves was attacked in her bed on the night of her fourteenth birthday. The assailant silenced her by strangling her and left her for dead. He’s never been caught.’
Shit. He’d suspected something like this. They were trying to frame him for a sexual assault and an attempted murder fifteen years ago. This was fucking reaching. He must’ve really pissed them off. ‘I didn’t know Jenny. You have my DNA. You won’t find it at that crime scene.’
Khan tapped the file. ‘Unfortunately, the samples taken from that crime were tested by a company that has since been proved to have lax laboratory procedures. Their evidence has been discounted and people convicted on the strength of it have been released on appeal.’
So they didn’t have shit.
‘Why are you asking me this? I was thirteen years old!’
‘Why did you move so abruptly?’
‘Let me introduce you to local government bureaucracy.’ Hatred for their complacency filled him. They didn’t have a clue. ‘I was put in Nazeing by Essex County Council for a few years then transferred to Redbridge. None of it was my choice. It should be in the file. When there, I got into trouble with some older boys and served my first period in a juvenile detention centre; the rest, as they say, is history.’ He waved away the cycle of burglary and drug offences and increasing time in prison.
‘Odd that you should mention history,’ said Foley.
‘Is it?’ He was so tired of this. He just wanted to rest his head on the table and sleep – or was that weep? ‘Look, are you going to charge me with anything? I’d thought I’d left all this behind but my life is going up in flames the longer I sit here, and you’re asking me about a crime committed when I was a kid!’
‘I’m mentioning it because someone remembers that crime very well, despite it being fifteen years ago.’
‘I imagine Jenny does.’ Just like he hadn’t forgot a single second of any of the assaults he’d suffered as a child for all his efforts to blank them out.
‘And her attacker. Have you been leaving flowers on her pillow? Have you been sending threats to Jenny, telling her to keep quiet about what happened that night?’
‘What?’
Foley put Jenny’s phone on the table between them. It was held in an evidence bag but he recognised it from the music notation cover. ‘We’ve had our people going through this. Jenny’s been getting messages from an unrecognised number. We think it’s from a burner phone, no way of tracing the source. They refer to details only Jenny and the assailant knew about the incident. They mention the flowers.’
‘Nothing to do with me.’ Jonah took his hand off the table as he could see his fingers quivering slightly. This was getting deadly serious.
‘Jonah, did you assault Jenny Groves when you were fourteen?’
‘No.’
‘When she moved into your house, did you fear that she would recognise you and threaten her?’
‘No. Have you even thought through what a coincidence that would be – her moving into same house as her old attacker? I lived there a year before she was even mentioned.’
‘Not so big a coincidence if you engineered it – kept tabs on her all these years and suggested her as a suitable housemate once the opportunity arose. Did you pretend to be her friend, start an intimate relationship with her, so that you’d have more power over her? Did she come to realise who you really were?’
‘No. Did Jenny accuse me of any of this?’
Khan sighed. ‘Jonah, you know full well that Jenny can’t say anything. You made sure of that, didn’t you?’
OK: a line had definitely been crossed. ‘I want a lawyer.’