Chapter Forty-Two #2
Back in the room, the laptop was shut down and the light switched on. They sat in silence for a moment, until Venn and Jen moved back to their original position on the other side of the table.
‘I suppose,’ Venn said at last, ‘Hannah was starting to realize that Lottie wasn’t such a great friend after all, and that she had her own reasons for lying about what happened.’
That she was dangerous and sad.
‘Yes!’ Jake seemed pleased that Matthew understood.
‘That morning in the combe, Hannah was screaming that she didn’t care at all if the truth came out.
It had been eating away at her. She was going to find the Kinzalows and tell them exactly what had happened.
She didn’t mind if they went to the police. ’
He looked up at the detectives. ‘She was calmer in the end, more the Hannah I knew. “I was wrong about you all the time,” she said. Not shouting but speaking so softly that I had to strain to hear her. “I thought you cared about me, about the effect the publicity would have on my dad’s career. But that wasn’t it at all, was it?
You wanted my gratitude, and a hold over me. It was all about the power.”’
‘Did Hannah say anything else?’ Jen leaned across the table, so her hands were almost touching Jake’s.
‘Yeah, she said she’d come to offer Lottie a lift to Tiverton station so she could get the train back to London, but Lottie could make her own way now. Get a taxi. Hannah just wanted her to pack up all her stuff and leave. Hannah never wanted to see her again.’
There was another silence in the room. Again, Jake seemed to be running the scene in his head. He’d started to cry. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand before continuing.
‘Lottie really lost it. I mean, really lost it. Maybe she’d been drinking all night or taking drugs too.
Whatever, she was completely out of control.
Shaking with anger. Maybe nobody had ever talked to her like that before.
Hannah was quite calm then. She turned away from her.
She’d been further down the path than Lottie, and Lottie was blocking the path.
Hannah had to walk round her, on the edge of that patch of woodland and closer to the mill to get back to Tide House. ’
Jake was staring at a point on the opposite wall now, unfocused, lost. ‘I stayed where I was, hidden. I knew Hannah would soon be close enough for me to put my arms around her. I wanted to tell her how proud I was, tell her she’d done exactly the right thing.
I didn’t want to provoke Lottie by shouting or joining in the fight. I thought it was all over.’
‘But Lottie didn’t need any provoking?’ This time the question came from Jen.
Venn was thinking of the state Lottie must have been in. She’d asked Daniel to stay with her after their night together, and he’d walked away. She was rejected and lonely, and now Hannah was standing up to her for the very first time.
‘No.’ Jake shook his head. ‘She picked up this rock and she hurled it at Hannah as she was walking past. I don’t know.
Maybe it was just frustration. Like a spoiled kid throwing away a toy.
Or maybe, she really wanted to hurt her.
That was what it felt like at the time. Hannah collapsed to the ground.
I ran over to her and saw blood through her hair, and shattered bits of bone.
I couldn’t believe she could still be alive, but I had to try to get help.
I’d left my phone at the farm, so I yelled at Lottie to call an ambulance, just in case.
But she just ran away back towards the house.
Hannah’s phone had fallen from her pocket when she fell.
I took that. There was no signal there in the combe, so I followed Lottie, looking for signal all the way.
’ He was speaking very quickly now, the words spilling out, mirroring his panic and desperation to get help for his girlfriend.
‘And then?’ Venn asked. ‘What happened then?’
When Jake continued the story, he was calmer. ‘Lottie was standing on the terrace close to the pool, just humming some stupid song. The same phrase, over and over. Something one of the bands had been playing at the festival. It was as if the assault hadn’t taken place.’
‘What did you do next?’ Venn’s voice was low and kind.
Jake looked up at him, tears still running down his face. ‘I lost it too. It made me as bad as her. I pushed her into the pool. I was so angry. I didn’t mean to kill her. She could swim, couldn’t she? She was always boasting about how well she could swim.’
‘But she hit her head on the side going down, and as you said, she’d been drinking all night.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jake said. ‘I didn’t wait to see what happened next.
I ran back to Hannah. I was hoping it was all a dreadful dream and she’d be alive, and I could hold her and tell her how proud I was of her, just like I’d been planning.
But it was all real, and I could tell that she was dead.
Nobody could survive a head wound like that. ’
The detectives waited in silence for him to continue his story.
‘I went back to Tide House. I still had Hannah’s phone, and I was going to call for help.
But Lottie was floating in the pool, her face in the water.
She was bleeding.’ Now Jake turned and looked straight at Venn.
‘I couldn’t bring myself to go in and pull her out. She’d killed Hannah and I hated her.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I walked home,’ he said, ‘and started picking up the litter from the weekend. It needed doing.’
The room fell silent.
‘Why didn’t you call the police and explain what had happened?’ Jen asked at last. ‘Why didn’t you talk to us when we turned up with our questions?’
‘At first, I couldn’t believe any of it.
Shock, I suppose. None of it seemed real.
This whole week has been a kind of dream.
And then, when it did become real, and Inspector Venn turned up with his questions about Lottie, all I could think of was my parents, and how ashamed they’d be and what it would do to their business.
I’d always been a bit of a failure, dropping out of uni, going a bit mad.
I thought I’d have to live with what I’d done.
A sort of penance. I’d have to see it through.
’ He paused, jolted by a sudden thought.
‘If you’d arrested anyone else, I’d have confessed. Honestly.’
Venn gave a little smile. ‘You took me in,’ he said. ‘It was clear how much you cared for Hannah. I didn’t believe that you could be involved. From the start, we assumed that the girls had been killed by the same person.’
‘We’d had such a wonderful weekend together. At least I have that.’ The red-faced solicitor called for a break then. He seemed as emotional as everyone else in the room. Venn thought he was probably a friend of the Brennans, and this would be hitting him hard.