Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
Tilly Ward lifts her head up from the photograph of Erin Santos that I’ve placed in front of her on the table and fixes her eyes on me.
‘Oh my God!’ Her hand shoots up to her mouth. ‘That’s definitely her – yes, that’s Samantha!’
‘And you’re sure about that? You’re absolutely one hundred per cent sure that this woman in this photograph is the person you know as Samantha Valentine?’
She meets my eyes once more. ‘It’s her.’
I nod, drag my hand down my face. This is insane.
Immediately, I send Davis a text message.
Positive photo ID on Erin Santos from Tilly Ward.
But I couldn’t quite get my head around it still.
Katy Russell had identified Erin Santos as being a girl named Julie Edwards, who she went to school with, only when I sent Shona Valentine the same photo of Erin, she swore blind to me that it wasn’t her.
So who’s right and who’s wrong? Both? Neither? Which the hell is it?
‘I’ve got a whole heap of old photo albums from her school days,’ Shona had told me.
‘And Julie Edwards is in some of them, though not many. For some reason, I didn’t want to have to look at her face whenever I went back through them.
Like I said, Detective, there was just something about that kid that I didn’t like, didn’t trust.’
She’d promised to dig a photo out and send it to me.
Tilly had looked pleased to see me as she’d opened the door to her apartment.
‘It’s nice to see you, Dan,’ she signed to me. Or at least I think she did.
‘Hello, Tilly,’ I signed back, a little awkwardly. ‘How are you?’
‘Wow,’ she said, her eyes widening, ‘I’m impressed. Have you been taking lessons?’
I shrugged. ‘Not as many as I would like, Tilly. Can I come in?’
‘Yes, of course, please.’ She stood back from the door and I stepped inside, wiped my feet on the doormat.
‘Um,’– she looked down at them – ‘would you mind…’
‘My shoes? Oh, yes of course.’ Professionally, I’m not obligated to take them off, but I choose to comply.
She watches as I remove them and place them next to her own, positioned neatly by the front door, which makes me think of something Erin might have told me during our phone conversations, something about shoes being by the door…
‘I thought perhaps you had already seen the photograph that we released to the press.’
‘No,’ she says, visibly upset. ‘I haven’t switched the TV on in days, or looked at my phone.
I’ve been completely alone. I don’t want to read the news.
I’m too frightened to go out of the house, even.
I’m jumpy, loud noises scare me… well, they sound loud to me, even though they’re probably not loud to you!
’ She tucks a piece of her hair behind her left ear, and I catch a glimpse of her hearing aid.
‘I can’t sleep, can’t eat…’ Admittedly, she looks pale and drawn in the face, like a ghost, and her green eyes are sunken and a little bloodshot.
There’s something different about her to the last time we met though.
I’m not sure what it is yet, can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s definitely something.
‘I must look like such a fright,’ she apologises. ‘I’m glad my colleagues can’t see me now.’
‘I’m sorry, Tilly,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry any of this has happened to you. Is this from your colleagues?’
I nod at the greeting card on the table, one that says ‘You will be missed’ on the front. She nods solemnly.
‘The whole team signed it,’ she says. ‘I’m really going to miss them too. I can’t go back now, can I, even if they’d have me? Are you here to charge me, Dan?’ She blinks up at me, her eyes widening. ‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘No, no…’ I soften my voice, reassure her. ‘Just to talk. Let’s sit down, yeah, try to relax. I know it’s not easy with everything you’re dealing with right now.’
She slides into the seat at the kitchen table.
‘That is not a good photo of Samantha.’ She looks down at it. ‘She won’t like that one bit when she sees it. She’s much prettier in the flesh. When was it taken?’
‘When she was arrested, Tilly, in 2019, for the murder of a man named Bojan Radulovic. And her name is not Samantha Valentine, it’s Erin Santos.’
‘Erin Santos… Er-in San-tos…’ She lets the name roll off her tongue. ‘So who is she then? Why is she pretending to be someone called Samantha Valentine? What will this mean for me, Dan? Will you find her? Have you found her?’
‘Not yet, no. But we will.’ I nod.
‘I just can’t believe any of it.’ She lets her hands fall onto the table with a slap.
‘Was it all lies? Was there really no abusive boyfriend? Did I kill an innocent man because I believed, because she made me believe, that we were in danger, that he was going to kill us? Why would she do such a thing? Why would anyone?’ She covers her face with her hands, shuts her eyes.
She’s painted her fingernails red – I’m sure they were natural when I last saw her. Seems a bit out of context somehow.
‘Tilly, have you had any contact with Erin Santos?’
‘What?’ Her brow wrinkles.
‘Did you send Erin Santos an email?’
‘No! Why would I do that? I’ve never even heard the name Erin Santos until you just told me. The woman in the photo is Samantha… my friend…’ her voice trails off. ‘Or I thought she was. I’m sorry,’ she drops her head, ‘this is all so much to take in, to process…’
I reach across the table, place my hand on top of hers. It feels soft and cold to touch.
‘I know, Tilly.’ I pat it. ‘But you’re sure you have never contacted Erin Santos by email, or otherwise?’
‘I swear to you,’ – she pulls her hand away, starts to cry – ‘I have no idea who Erin Santos is, let alone have an email address for her. I don’t even own a laptop anymore – it’s with the police, and you can check my phone if you like.
’ She pushes it across the table towards me.
‘Will I go to prison?’ Her bottom lip quivers.
‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill Milo Harrison. She told lies, so many lies…’
‘I know she did, Tilly.’ I take a packet of tissues from my inside pocket and give them to her.
‘Father of three,’ – she holds them up – ‘always prepared, right!’
I smile. She remembered.
She takes a tissue from the packet and blows her nose, hard, into it.
I glance around her small, sparse apartment. It’s neat and tidy, but not what I’d call homely. I stare at a lone cup and a single used plate on the kitchen work surface.
‘It’s tricky to explain it all to you, Tilly, but you’re wrong in some ways.’
‘I don’t follow.’ Her green eyes are glassy with tears.
‘Samantha Valentine was, is, real, but only in Erin Santos’s mind. It would seem that she’s suffering from something called dissociative identity disorder, you may know it better as split personality. In effect, she’s two people in one mind, two very separate people.’
‘Oh God.’ She covers her mouth with a hand. ‘How do you know this?’
‘Erin is a former patient at Larksmere High Security Psychiatric Hospital.’ Her eyes widen.
‘She killed a man in what’s almost an identical crime to your own, citing the same defence, the same story…
that Samantha Valentine had coerced her into it, that she’d controlled her, and brainwashed her into believing that abuse was taking place and…
’ – I take a breath – ‘… well, it’s one hell of a messed-up story, Tilly.
I’m only sorry you ever had to be involved in it. ’
Seems I’m nothing if not the king of the understatements right now.
I sigh. ‘There’s no escaping a charge, Tilly, I won’t lie to you. Right now I’d say you’re looking at manslaughter, possibly with diminished responsibility, given the exceptional circumstances.’
‘So I am going to prison then?’ she says in her flat monotone that’s sometimes less flat and monotone than it is at others.
‘I’m not a judge, Tilly,’ I say, not wanting to give her any false hope, ‘I can’t say what the outcome will be, but given your exemplary background, given the fact that that I hope, by then, Erin Santos will be safe in custody, it could well be that a judge looks leniently upon you and understands the complexities of this unprecedented case.
Maybe you’ll be given a suspended sentence?
I don’t know. Let’s hope so, eh?’ I give her arm a little reassuring squeeze.
‘Why do you think she chose me, Dan? Why do you think Samantha, or Erin, or whatever her name is, chose me to do this to?’
I shake my head, let out a long breath.
‘I don’t know, Tilly.’ Though it’s fairly obvious why, looking at her.
‘Is it because of my hearing aid, do you think? Maybe she saw me as more vulnerable than most people, easier to manipulate?’
I drop my head slightly to the side. ‘Maybe.’
She nods, pulls her tatty beige cardigan around her small frame, like she has a sudden chill.
‘I was lonely,’ she says, ‘I think she saw how lonely I was, how lonely I am.’
I keep my hand on her arm.
‘I hope it’s not the same for your son, Dan.
Being deaf, being hard of hearing, it makes you different, and people…
well, people look at you differently, treat you differently, view you as somehow lesser than them.
They can’t even help it most of the time, it’s not their fault, it’s just… instinct.’
I have to look away. It pains me too much to think that this could be true and that my son may experience similar discrimination in his life because of his condition.
‘May I use your bathroom, Tilly?’ I need to excuse myself.
‘Of course, just through the door, to the left.’
I make my way into the bathroom, close the door behind me. I take a few deep breaths and try to compose myself, stare at myself in the cabinet mirror before I open it. I know I’m being nosy, but it’s almost instinctive. Doesn’t everyone do it?
As I peruse the bottles of shampoo and soap, the toothpaste and sanitary products, I see it, hiding behind a box of old-fashioned bath salts, that large, red, square bottle of perfume.
Baccarat Rouge. A rush of adrenalin bolts through me as I take it from the cabinet and squirt a tiny amount onto my wrist, wave it around a bit, like I’d seen Archer do that time in her office.
It seems odd and out of place, this exorbitantly expensive designer perfume, sat alongside all her other basic, cheap toiletries.
I know it’s the same perfume that Samantha Valentine/Erin Santos wears – and the redhead. The redhead, that reminds me!
‘A woman was seen leaving this address the day before yesterday, sometime in the morning. A red-haired lady in a purple coat.’ I walk back into the small kitchen. ‘Do you know who I’m talking about, Tilly?’
She’s silent for a moment.
‘Have you been watching me, Dan?’ I think I see a tiny flicker of surprise on her face.
‘Just keeping an eye out for you, Tilly.’
‘She’s a journalist, I think. She must’ve got my name and address somehow. She doorstepped me, just turned up out of the blue. I told her she’d got the wrong house, the wrong person, and she went away again.’
I hold her gaze for a moment.
‘She didn’t give you her name, the name of who she was working for, she didn’t say which publication?’
‘No. And I didn’t ask. I just wanted her to leave.’
I nod. ‘OK, well, be prepared for this story to break, Tilly.’
I’m not going to sugarcoat it for her, that wouldn’t be fair of me. She needs the heads-up. ‘There’ll be a swarm of “redheads” when it does, trust me. You want my advice? Have your say when you decide to have it. And just tell the truth.’
‘Yes,’ she agrees with me, perking up a bit. ‘I always do.’