Chapter 6
SIX
DAN
‘Have you found her yet?’ She jumps up from the sofa the second I enter the living room. ‘Have you found Samantha?’
She has blood on her, dark splashes of the stuff splattered all over her baggy cardigan and jeans.
‘Tilly Ward? I’m DCI Dan Riley…’
‘Please—’ Her fingernails dig into my flesh as she grips my arm. ‘You have to help me! You have to help us!’
Her voice is urgent and anguished, but I detect something else, something in the tone, or lack of, perhaps?
‘OK, it’s OK, Tilly.’ I approach her gingerly. She looks out of her skin with distress. ‘Let’s sit down, shall we?’
Hyperventilating, she grips me like a frightened child as I help lower her, shaking, down onto the sofa. I notice a couple of empty, discarded chocolate bar wrappers on the seat, incongruous to the rest of the pristine apartment.
The TV is on and it’s playing the 70s musical Grease, though the sound is muted. My eyes are drawn to it for a brief moment as John Travolta effortlessly leaps from the bonnet of a 1949 Ford De Luxe, wearing tight black trousers with a slicked-back quiff, before I switch it off. Show-off.
Diminutive and waifish, Tilly Ward appears more like an adolescent teenager than a grown woman; even the thick black-framed glasses she’s wearing seem a little oversized for her doll-like face.
‘Are you OK, Tilly? Have you been checked over?’ I glance at the two uniformed officers standing to the left of the room and they both nod. ‘You’re not hurt or injured in any way?’
She looks down at herself, at her vibrating, bloodstained hands, and shakes her head.
‘OK, take a deep breath… in and out… innnn and ouuuuut, that’s it.’
I demonstrate with her, try to help her regulate her breathing.
‘Do you want to tell me what’s happened here today, Tilly?’ I keep my tone calm and reassuring.
‘Is he dead?’ she sputters, wiping mucus from her nose and mouth with the back of her cardigan sleeve.
‘I’ve killed him, haven’t I?’ She drops her head into her lap, causing her mouse-brown hair to sweep in front of her face like a curtain.
That’s when I glimpse it, behind her left ear, a hearing aid.
My stomach tightens.
‘Are you registered deaf, or hard of hearing, Tilly?’ It makes sense now, the slight, flat monotone in her voice.
Some months ago, Jude, my now one-year-old son, was confirmed deaf.
The news hit me and my wife, Fiona, hard.
After all, it’s not something you would wish for your child, is it?
I suppose we’re still struggling to come to terms with it, but the difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling a story with the same facts, and so we’re learning sign language in case the cochlear implant device we’re hoping he’ll eventually be fitted with doesn’t work for him.
Learning to sign is harder than I’d imagined it would be, though the wife seems to have taken to it like the proverbial duck to water, and Jude’s protective big sister, our three-year-old daughter, Juno, or ‘Pip’ as I call her, has almost mastered the basics already.
‘Yes, I’m hard of hearing.’
I glance down at her bare feet and feel a rush of protection towards her.
‘Where’s Samantha? Is she OK?’ She grips my arm again. ‘Please tell me she’s OK.’
‘We don’t know yet, Tilly. We’re hoping you might be able to help us with that. You told my colleague that Samantha lives here, at this address…’
‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘They live here together, her and Milo. He’s attacked her before, you know, this isn’t the first time…
but I never thought it would come to this!
I never thought… Oh God…’ She starts to rock back and forth on the sofa, hugging herself.
‘He came at me… I was in fear for my life… it all happened so quickly…’
‘OK… it’s OK.’ I touch her forearm gently. It’s hard to imagine someone of her stature attacking anyone. Overall, her demeanour smacks of a victim’s, though I know that at this stage keeping an open mind is essential.
‘Have you any idea where Samantha might be now? Could she have gone to a friend’s house perhaps, or a family member?’
‘She doesn’t have any family, or none that I know of anyway. I’m her best friend, her only friend. Milo, he didn’t like her having friends, you see. He was trying to isolate her. He was so controlling…’
‘Does Samantha have a job?’
She shakes her head.
‘She wanted to work, but he wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t let her do anything. She was practically a prisoner in her own home.’
She looks up at me then, and I notice that beneath the large black frames, her eyes are a bright emerald green.
‘I got a message from her earlier today, on Snapchat. She said he’d really flipped out this time and that he was going to kill her!’
‘Why didn’t you call the police, Tilly? That would’ve been the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it?’ I keep my voice soft, mindful not to sound like I’m chiding her. I can tell she’s teetering dangerously on the edge as it is and I don’t want to push her over it.
‘I know!’ she wails. ‘But she begged me not to! She just wanted me to come and get her, take her away somewhere safe… I know I should’ve called you, but she said it would only make it worse for her. She wouldn’t listen… and… and now look! Oh my God, I’ve killed him! I’ll go to prison!’
She starts bawling again, stringy mucus streaming from her nostrils and mouth as she sobs. I take a pack of tissues from my inside jacket pocket and pass them to her.
‘I’ve always got some to hand.’ I smile, trying to bring the emotionally charged atmosphere down a notch. ‘I’m a dad of three.’
‘I can tell.’ She manages a thin smile in return as she wipes the snot bubble from her nose.
‘Listen, we’re going to get you down to the station soon, Tilly, get you cleaned up and checked over by a doctor, take some samples for forensic purposes, and then we can talk all of this through properly.’
I squeeze her arm in reassurance.
‘The officer here will need to caution you, OK?’
She gives me a terrified nod without looking up.
‘Try not to worry.’ I realise the ridiculousness of this statement given the gravity of the situation, but it’s the best I can do in the circumstances.
‘Are you going to cuff me?’
My stomach lurches again.
‘It’s standard practice, Tilly, given the nature of the incident, but it’ll be OK, OK?’ She grips onto my arm once more.
‘Will you be there, at the station? Will you come with me?’
‘One of the officers here will be with you the whole time, OK? You need anything, then you speak to one of them, anything at all.’
She drops her eyes back down into her lap. She’s shivering, and I suspect she’s going into shock. I need to get a grip on exactly what’s taken place here, but realise she’s in no fit state to give a coherent statement at this point.
‘Tilly, I need to ask you, could your friend Samantha be using a different name for any reason?’
‘A different name?’ Her brow crinkles with confusion. ‘No, I don’t think so… Why?’
‘Well, we’ve run some checks on her and that name doesn’t come up as being registered to this address.’
She looks at me blankly.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Do you have a phone number for Samantha? A photo of her? We’ll need to take your phone, Tilly.’
‘Of course.’ She retrieves it from the pocket of her cardigan and hands it to me.
DS Davis is once again standing, pensive, in the doorway, and I momentarily leave Tilly’s side and go to her, half closing the door behind me.
‘What you got, Lucy?’
She’s shaking her head in a slow motion that instantly unsettles me.
‘This really doesn’t look right, boss. Reports are coming in from door-to-door.
As it stands, it seems Milo Harrison lived alone.
No one has seen him with a woman, any woman, since he’s lived here.
And the guy next door claims to have heard a commotion around the time of the incident today.
He says he heard raised voices, a male and female shouting. ’
‘One male voice, one female?’
‘So he says,’ she nods. ‘There’s something odd about this set-up, gov. Take a look around you. There’s nothing to suggest anyone else but Milo Harrison lives here. Do you think she’s lying? I mean, she sounds genuine enough, but…’
I pause.
‘Let’s get her down the station, Davis. Get her looked over by medics. We’ll need a psychiatric assessment as well, make sure she’s fit for interview.’
‘Yes, gov.’
‘And just so you’re aware, Lucy, she’s hard of hearing – she’s wearing a hearing aid.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice drops in tandem with her expression. It’s a delicate subject.
‘I want her carefully looked after, everything by the book, OK?’
‘Yes, boss, of course.’
I drag my hands down my face.
Something tells me I won’t be getting to sample that pad thai this side of midnight after all. I suppose it’s just as well. Like our witness, it seems my appetite has completely vanished.