Chapter 18 #2
‘“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; loving kindness and truth go before you.” Psalm 89:14. I learned the Bible by heart while I was in Larksmere,’ she tells me, proudly.
‘“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.” Psalm 82:3.’ Her voice drops, hardens suddenly.
‘I know what my justice looks like, Dan.’
This is doing nothing to assuage my concerns.
‘Who is she, Erin? Who is Samantha Valentine?’
She bursts into musical laughter.
‘Ha! You tell me. You’re the detective. What does the devil look like, Dan?
I’ve spent every single day since I met her asking myself this very question – that together with why?
You get a lot of time to reflect when you’re locked away in a cell, zombified by the anti-psychotic drugs they pump you full of to keep you compliant and ensure you don’t have a single human thought left inside your head.
’ She takes a breath. ‘Do you know the worst part of all of this?’
‘There’s a worse part?’
She laughs.
‘Ha, yeah, I like you, Dan, you’re funny – and you’re right! It’s all pretty much a shit show, but the truth is…’ – she pauses – ‘… I was never happier than when I was with Sam. Those months we spent together were some of the best of my life. Actually, maybe the best.’
It sounds as if she means it. ‘Do you know, throughout my first year at Larksmere, even then, I was still hopeful that she might just somehow magically reappear and explain everything, tell the truth about what happened and that it was all a mistake – can you believe that, Dan? I was in denial – trauma bonded me to her, you see, even after I knew the truth, even after everything. I still missed her. I still loved her.’ Emotion catches in her throat. ‘What a sad, pathetic fool I was.’
‘Why aren’t there any photographs of you and Samantha together, Erin?
It says in your file that you knew each other for a good few months before what happened.
Surely during that time you’d have at least one or two pictures?
Presumably you did stuff together, you went places together…
Why couldn’t you produce any? We can’t find any, and Tilly—’ I stop, curse myself inwardly.
It was a sloppy slip-up born of sleep deprivation, but that’s no excuse.
‘Ah, so her name is Tilly, this new victim of hers that you’ve arrested?
You do realise, Dan, that Tilly’s no more a murderer than I am.
Well, I know that technically she is, and technically I am too, but she never would’ve been, if she hadn’t had the misfortune of meeting Samantha Valentine…
If I’d never met Samantha Valentine… You really don’t seem to know what you’re dealing with here, do you?
’ She sounds a little irritated now. ‘So let me tell you. I am of the belief that Samantha Valentine is a very slick, experienced con-woman; she’s a trickster, a fraud, a charlatan, a scammer, a swindler, whatever you want to call her, or whatever she wants to call herself on that particular day, I should imagine.
She’s a chameleon, a shapeshifter, someone who, I suspect, can, in an instant, morph into anyone she chooses to become with an authenticity that you or I could never hope to imitate, even with a BA from RADA.
Because this is what she does, Dan, she fools people, she lies about everything, and she’s extremely good at it, I must warn you.
She had me hooked on the line good and proper.
I fell for her fictitious abuse story like a burning building. I was the perfect prey.’
She breathes deeply, as though her diatribe has taken it out of her.
‘But getting back to your original question, I took many photos of us together, though Sam would often delete them immediately. She didn’t much like herself in photographs, or so she said.
I always thought she was just being self-critical and humble, because of course she was – maybe still is – very beautiful, only now of course, I know the real reason for her camera shyness.
We even set up a photo-sharing library. When I was arrested, I tried to access that shared library to prove to that stone-cold bitch, Detective Pritchard, that I wasn’t lying, but when I tried, the whole thing had been deleted.
Pouf. Gone. Like it had never existed. Like she had never existed. ’
‘Did she ever defraud you financially? Take money from you?’
‘No, though I’m sure if she’d wanted to she could’ve.
I don’t believe money was ever her objective.
Not in my case at least – I didn’t have much to extort – though I’m sure she has conned many men out of it in some way, shape or form over the years.
She didn’t have much respect for men; we were alike in that way and I mean no offence when I say that, Dan.
I get the feeling you’re probably the exception to the rule.
I realise that not all men are monsters – some women are too. ’ She pauses.
‘Anyway, Sam always seemed to have a lot of expendable cash. I just assumed it was “Ari’s” money that she was spending. She told me that he worked in the city, that he was wealthy. It was a complete fabrication of course. Because Ari Hussain never even existed.’
‘So why then, Erin, if it wasn’t for money, why do you think she did this to you?
What was her motive?’ If what she’s saying is true, then why would Samantha Valentine want either of these men killed?
What was her connection to them? Had those men wronged her in some way?
And why would she groom two innocent women into murdering them for her?
‘I’d really like the answer to that myself, Dan.
’ Her bitterness crackles down the line.
‘I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know why she chose me.
I had very little for her to gain from me in any way.
Over the years I have wracked my brains, what’s left of them, to try and come up with a viable reason as to why this happened.
I never had any enemies, or none I was aware of.
I thought about ex-boyfriends. I’d had a few messy break-ups in the past, but nothing that would warrant the revenge of my complete destruction.
I didn’t go around deliberately wronging people or hurting them.
Truthfully, I can think of no one who would want to destroy my life for any reason. ’
She sighs heavily again. ‘Maybe she just liked the look of me? Or didn’t like the look of me?
Or perhaps I reminded her of something, of someone from her past that triggered a bad memory?
Maybe it was because there was a “y” in that particular day, or maybe it was just my rotten luck, a case of wrong place, wrong time?
You, the police, should’ve been the ones who found the answers to those questions, Dan.
’ Her voice tightens. ‘Questions that were never asked at the time because I wasn’t believed.
The scam she did on me, and, I suspect, also on this Tilly woman, was an emotional one, a psychological con.
Maybe she simply targeted those men just like I suspect she targeted me and Tilly – on a whim?
She knew an awful lot about Radulovic as it turned out though, so I suspected that she was familiar with him in some way, or was stalking him perhaps.
But equally, it could all have just been a sick, twisted game, her victims targeted at random.
You tell me how the mind of a psychopath works… ’
She exhales through her nose. ‘On some level I think it was driven by her need for power, some deep-rooted, twisted, inadequate desire to gain control of another person so completely that they no longer have an autonomous thought of their own and exist only for her and her desires. I realise now that I was just a vehicle, someone to do her bidding for her. Perhaps she wanted to see how far she could take it – how far she could exert that level of control over another human being – and what measure of her power and my loyalty could be greater than killing for her? It’s the closest I’ve ever got to finding some way of explaining it all, of understanding it. ’
Tilly Ward’s terrified and confused face suddenly flashes up in my head. If all of this is somehow true, then I have to find this Valentine woman; I have to find her fast.
‘I was a normal person once, you know, Dan.’ She sounds different now; there’s a desperate edge to her voice.
‘OK, so I’d experienced some trauma in my childhood and that led to me making some bad decisions in my teens and twenties.
I had some personal issues to work through, like many people.
My mental health had deteriorated and I was depressed, I was taking drugs and eventually had a breakdown…
But you have to understand, I was turning my life around when I met her, I’d turned a corner.
I had started to believe that I had the chance to have a normal, happy life and move forward from the trauma of my past and start again… but instead… instead, I met her.’
I hear the pain in her words.
‘Tell me your story, Erin,’ I say. ‘Tell me about Samantha Valentine. I want to know everything. Start from the beginning.’