Chapter 51
FIFTY-ONE
The sound of the firearm discharging is, ironically, deafening.
Instinctively, I place my hands over my ears, crouch down on the floor for cover.
Tilly Ward is down. She’s been hit. But she’s still alive.
I hear her moaning, where she’s fallen, next to the sofa.
I turn myself towards her, I can smell the blood and sulphur in the air.
‘Is she alive?’
Erin is standing in the same position as she was, pointing the gun at Tilly’s body on the floor. Her face looks pale with fear now though, like she can’t quite believe what she’s done. This is a disaster.
‘Please, Erin.’ I look up at her, implore her, ‘Not like this.’ I don’t believe that she plans to kill me, or even harm me in any way. It’s not me she’s after. It never was. But now I seem to have got in the way. ‘Put the gun down. Just… just put the gun down and we can talk, Erin.’
‘It’s too late for talking now, Dan,’ she says. ‘Seven years too late. Anyway, there’s nothing more to be said. It’s over.’
Tilly is groaning underneath me. The blood is starting to disperse in a river along the cheap laminate flooring. I think she’s slipping in and out of consciousness.
‘Help me, Dan. She’s crazy… she tried to kill me… I’m d… dying…’
‘Goddamn it.’ Erin steps forwards to look at her. ‘Did I miss?’
‘Stay back, Erin.’ I hold my hand up. ‘Don’t come any closer.’
She sighs heavily, goes to the table and takes a seat. She’s still holding the weapon.
I stay still. No sudden moves.
‘I was always a terrible aim,’ she says miserably. ‘Though maybe with a bit of luck, she’ll bleed to death.’
I check Tilly’s pulse. It’s slowing down, but it’s there. She’s alive. The devil really does look after its own.
‘We need to call an ambulance, Erin.’
‘Who is she, Dan? Who is she really?’ She drops the gun onto the table then and buries her head into her hands.
I sit up against the sofa, bring my knees up to my chest. Tilly’s blood is all over my shirt and trousers, I can feel it, wet against my skin as it soaks through the fabric, turning it crimson.
I see the coat then, a burgundy red coat, hanging up behind the front door.
It looks just like the coat the redhead was wearing at the press conference.
The one posing as a journalist who was seen coming out of Tilly’s apartment.
My God. It was her! She had been there, right in front of me, asking me questions! Taunting me.
‘Her name is Julie Edwards.’
Erin’s hands slide from her face. ‘Julie… who?’
‘Edwards,’ I repeat. ‘Julie Edwards.’
‘Noooo!’ she says, her brow wrinkling. ‘That sounds like a boring name, very… average.’ She snorts. ‘Huh, no wonder she preferred Samantha Valentine. Julie Edwards,’ she repeats, in a childish, silly high-pitched voice. ‘It makes her sound like she wears a tabard and works in Greggs.’
‘Samantha Valentine was the name of an old school friend of hers, from Perth, in Australia,’ I tell her.
‘Someone she knew as a child. Samantha hanged herself, when she was eleven years old, thirty years ago. No one knew why. I spoke to her mother on the phone. She told me that Samantha was a loving, happy little girl until she met Julie Edwards. Within a few months of them becoming friends, Samantha was dead. I suspect that’s why she used the name.
In some kind of homage to her friend, her first victim maybe? ’
Erin’s eyes are transfixed upon my own.
‘Nothing was proven, but it seems that there was suspicion, even back then, of coercive control, psychopathy even…’
‘Good God,’ she says. ‘Eleven years old.’ Her whole body visibly sags.
I can see that Tilly’s been hit in the left leg. Instinctively, I place my hand on the wound, try to stem the blood that’s flowing from it.
‘Her father was Ray Denis, Erin. The man who killed your mother.’
It’s a dangerous call, whether to impart this piece of information to her or not, though deep down I’m certain it’s true.
It could cause her to want to finish the job off properly, but I make that call anyway.
‘That little girl you told me you weren’t sure if you remembered, the one from your childhood, when you were just five or six years old, the one who came to stay over at your house, with you and your mum and Ray, once or twice… ’
Now she looks stunned, confused. She blinks at me, her brow fixed in disbelief.
‘Ray Denis’s daughter?’
I nod, the adrenalin rushing through me is restricting my larynx, making it harder for me to talk, to breathe.
‘I don’t believe it.’ Erin is shaking her head adamantly. ‘Every damn word that comes out of that maniac’s mouth is a lie.’
‘It’s not a lie, Erin.’ I meet her eyes with my own. ‘I’m not lying to you, I promise.’
She exhales in quick succession. ‘So, so… it was all personal then? This was to do with my mother? Her father?’
I can feel Tilly squirming underneath me as I apply more pressure on the wound. She’s trying to say something.
‘She… she took my… job.’ Her voice is a low rasp as she struggles to expel the words from her discolouring lips. ‘She… she took my father, and then she took my job…’
‘Her job?’ Erin scoffs. ‘The job at Austin Marz, you mean, the receptionist job? Jesus, how much of a psychopath are you, Julie? A job!’
‘If my dad had never met your whore of a mother…’ Tilly’s trying to sit up now, but I won’t let her. I place a firm hand on her shoulder.
‘Just stay where you are,’ I say, ‘help’s on the way.’
‘Your mother, that… bitch… she ruined his life, ruined mine. If he hadn’t gone to prison…
’ – she coughs, her breathing sounds laboured – ‘… he’d never have killed himself and my mother would never have become an alcoholic…
And I’d never have spent my childhood in and out of care homes… I was abused, thrown away like trash.’
Erin starts clapping her hands together in a slow round of applause.
‘Bravo, Samantha, sorry I mean, Julie… a consummate professional to the end! You’ve got to admit,’– she turns to me, dips her head as though appraising a particularly good performance – ‘she’s pretty great, isn’t she? So very convincing.’
I can hear the unmistakable sound of sirens screaming in the distance and only hope, pray, they’re heading this way. Erin hears them too, because she stands. Picks up the gun.
‘Listen, Erin. I really don’t want you to do anything stupid.’ Which sounds stupid itself, given the immediate circumstances we find ourselves in. ‘I don’t want you to harm anyone else, and above all, I really don’t want you to harm yourself. Promise me you won’t do that, Erin.’
Her lovely green eyes are heavy with sadness as they rest upon me, like she’s touched that anyone even cares.
‘Despite everything, Dan, in spite of the circumstances of how we have come to meet, I’m so very glad that we did, and that we have.’ She smiles back at me, genuinely. ‘You’re even nicer in the flesh than I’d expected.’
‘Don’t let Malcolm hear you say that,’ I reply, with a gentle smile of my own. ‘Look, it doesn’t have to be like this, Erin. I can help you sort through all of this mess. I’ll tell everyone the truth, I’ll make them understand. Just put the gun away and…’
Tilly is attempting to drag herself along the floor, towards the door. I reach out, try to pull her back by her legs. If she keeps moving, then at this rate, she’ll bleed out, if Erin doesn’t finish her off first.
‘Let me get something to stem the flow. Stay where you are, Dan. I’m going to go to the bathroom to get a towel. Please,’ she says, ‘don’t try anything stupid yourself, just sit here until I come back, OK, don’t move.’
I look at the gun, still in her hand and nod. Maybe she doesn’t want her dead after all.
‘OK, Erin.’
The second she leaves the room, I frantically scan the apartment for a phone. The sirens are getting louder now, closer. They’re almost here, literally less than a minute away. My trained ear tells me so.
‘Just hang on in there,’ I say to Julie as she continues to groan and worm away from me, the blood that’s pumping from her wound leaving a heavy burgundy paint trail on the laminate floor beneath her.
‘Hello! Hello! Is everything OK in there?’ Suddenly, I hear an unfamiliar voice, it’s coming from behind the front door. ‘It’s Yinka, your neighbour from Number 68… the police are on their way. Is everyone OK? What’s going on?’
Seconds later, I hear another voice, one I have no trouble instantly recognising.
She walks through into the apartment, her mouth falling open with each step she takes.
‘What the… Oh. My. God!’
Davis.
She surveys the scene through wide eyes, her hand over her mouth.
‘Boss! What the hell’s happened?’ She looks down at Julie Edwards, bleeding out on the floor. ‘Oh my God, Archer’s going to flip out.’
Within seconds, the room is filling up with emergency services, uniformed police and paramedics.
‘Is she alive?’ Davis asks.
‘Just about,’ I say, as the paramedics get to work on her. ‘How did you know I was here?’
She pulls her chin into her neck, gives me one of her looks. As if I had to ask.
‘Mitchell and Adriana told me about the photo, about Ken Edwards and…’
‘Have they got her?’ I say. ‘She’s in the bathroom – and she’s armed, Davis.’
‘Got who, boss?’ She shakes her head, confused.
My stomach lurches. Erin.
‘Oh no…’ I run to the bathroom, but the door’s open and it’s empty.
I sprint to the front door. There’s at least a handful of police officers standing outside now, and some inquisitive onlookers have started to gather. I look left and right. It’s only been a few seconds, less than a minute – she can’t have gone far. I call out to a couple of the young officers.
‘Suspect on foot,’ I say as they jump to attention. ‘Check the stairs.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I lean over the balcony, look down and around. Nothing.
I catch sight of the neighbour then, the woman from Number 68. She’s still in her dressing gown, with a towel wrapped round her head, and she’s talking, animated, to one of the female officers, an expression of shocked bewilderment on her face.
She shrieks in alarm as I seize her by the arm.
‘The woman!’ I say. ‘The one with the blonde hair and red lipstick. She had to have gone past you, while you were knocking on the door, did you see her? Where did she go?’
She looks at me in horror, backs away from me as I gently try to shake it out of her.
‘Woman? What woman?’