Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
Erin had killed the call before we were able to get a trace on it, and before I could tell her about the probable alibi, about the street cam footage in Leeds.
‘Damn it!’ I bang my fist on my desk, which I find myself back behind just a few hours after half a night’s fitful attempt at sleep. ‘Where is she?’
Lucy is accustomed to my occasional outbursts of frustration, but poor Adriana, the new college recruit here, looks a bit rattled.
‘Erin said something about a view of the city, during the call…’ Lucy glances at me.
‘Well, that narrows it down, doesn’t it?’
Lucy’s also used to my facetiousness. Actually, I think she secretly enjoys it sometimes. ‘London is one big bloody view.’
‘Yes, but only if you’re up high, looking down, gov.’
‘Come on, Lucy,’ I whine, ‘there’s a million high-rise buildings in London. Apartment blocks, office towers, hotels, restaurants, the London Eye… she could be in any one of them, looking down, or out, for that matter. Damn it,’ I say again, softer this time, ‘we really needed that trace!’
So the day was starting off well.
‘Maybe you’re out of your depth on this one, Dan,’ Fiona had said to me as we’d finally fallen into bed together the night before, though I knew I wouldn’t manage much sleep anyway, not after my conversation with Erin. I was too pumped up, too wired to nod off.
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
My heart sank. Even my biggest champion had lost faith in me it seemed.
‘Erin Santos is clearly a woman with serious mental health issues… Why don’t you let the NCA get involved? You know, she really could be dangerous, Dan.’
‘No.’ I spun over in bed to face her, tickled her waist. ‘I’m “Dangerous Dan”, remember?’
She giggled, touched the tip of my nose with a finger.
‘Seriously, I’m worried about you, Danny.’ My wife never calls me ‘Danny’ unless she’s genuinely concerned. ‘This case has really got under your skin, I can tell.’
I didn’t want Fiona to stress about me – she’s got enough to worry about – but she’s not wrong. Just when I start to believe one thing, a new piece of conflicting information comes along to smash it to pieces and flip it on its backside.
‘She’ll have you going round in circles, Dan. Tie you up in knots.’ I hear DI Amanda Pritchard’s slightly sanctimonious voice in my head, swiftly followed by Archer’s, ‘It happens to the best of us, Dan. Don’t beat yourself up over it.’
‘How could Erin’s hair be found at a crime scene and yet we now have a very possible positive ID for her on CCTV that places her in a different city at the time? She couldn’t have been at a crime scene some hundreds of miles away. No one can be in two different places at once.’
‘Not even me,’ Fiona said dryly, closing her eyes.
‘Not unless they’re a ghost. The only other explanation can be the one Erin gave me – the hair was planted there.’
‘Maybe she really is two people and it’s some kind of spooky supernatural thing. Wooooo!’ She was clearly teasing me now. ‘You don’t really believe her story, do you?’
I stayed silent. The truth is, I’m unsure exactly what I believe anymore.
‘Seriously?’ She opened her dark, almond-shaped eyes then, and I was reminded just how beautiful they are as they shone back at me in the dark.
I rolled over, exhaled loudly, let my arms flop beside me.
‘She probably planted it there herself, when she was being the Samantha Valentine part of her character, the part that seems to want to sabotage Erin, and hence, sabotage herself. And maybe it’s just someone who looks like her on the CCTV footage?
’ My wife always managed to summarise things so succinctly. I suppose it’s the journalist in her.
‘Well, someone is pulling my chain, I know that much. Tonight, Erin said that she’d kill Samantha Valentine if she ever saw her again face-to-face.
And I believed her. I heard it in her voice, Fi, all that anger and resentment…
all that loss and sadness. It’s difficult to fake that level of emotion convincingly.
But if Erin has this dissociative-whatsit disorder, this split personality, then effectively, she’d be killing herself, wouldn’t she?
In killing Samantha, she’d have to murder herself. ’
‘And that’s what you’re worried about, is it, that she may try and kill herself?’
‘Yes, no. I don’t know, maybe. Only I get the impression that the Erin part of her character doesn’t want to die.’ I thought of the budding relationship between her and Malcolm then, the connection I’d sensed – another thing that’s difficult to fake.
As crazy as it sounds, if I can just save one of them – Erin or Samantha – then by default I save Erin from herself.