Chapter 34
Morrie
Ican’t believe Jo would betray us.
I may adore our gory-minded friend, but she’s far, far too moral for her own good.
That’s why we’ve never told her the truth about us.
As I stare at her now, her eyes flashing with desperation as she explains that Mina would come to the bookshop and that they should go easy on her, I wonder if maybe we’d be better off if Jo knew the truth…
Jo stops short as she sees Mina slumped over the desk, covered in blood. She blinks twice. “Mina?”
Hayes lumbers in the room after her, his foot landing in a veritable Mt Everest of horse poo. Wilson wrinkles her nose as she ducks around him.
“I see the constabulary is well ahead of us.” I drop my phone into my pocket and greet them with a sardonic smile. My mind whirs, considering all the ways we could play out this scene.
“Mina Wilde,” Inspector Hayes booms. “Breaking out of custody is a serious offence, and you’ll—”
“Ah, good, officers, you’re just in the nick of time,” I kick Darren’s limp foot with my Gucci loafer. Heathcliff tightens his grip on the broken killer. “Miss Wilde, Mr Earnshaw and I have captured Ashley Greer’s murderer.”
“What?” The inspector’s eyes flick between Darren’s prone body, Heathcliff’s murderous expression, and the blood splatter up the wall. Heathcliff is frozen in place by his own need for revenge. Quoth’s back up in his chandelier, croaking uselessly. Of course, it’s up to me to save the day.
“We did.” Mina nods vigorously. “No need to thank us. Just make our medals gold and shiny.”
I can’t help but grin. There’s a little of my criminal deviance in Mina.
“What’s all this about?” Wilson demands. “Wilde is the murderer. She’s proven that by making a run for it. Why are you two boys meddling in a police matter?”
“Because a great miscarriage of justice is about to be done on your watch,” I flash Mina a wicked grin. “And I’m a big fan of the justice-ing.”
“It’s not going to look good if you incompetent twits arrest the wrong person,” Heathcliff adds finally, as he lifts Darren off the floor and presents him to Hayes like a lover offering a rose.
“Help me,” Darren whimpers, gripping his bloody nose.
“What are you doing to that lad?”
“Saving him for you, Inspector. This here is the real murderer of Ashley Greer.”
“He broke my nose!” Darren yells. “I need an ambulance.”
“We have enough evidence to charge Miss Wilde with the crime—”
“But I didn’t do it. And I can prove it.
” Mina feels around on the desk for her drawing.
She holds it up triumphantly. “Ashley was selling Marcus Ribald’s drawings to Darren.
She used her social media page to send veiled messages about when to meet up and do the exchange.
What I told you back at the station was true – I had Marcus’ drawings in my purse because I took them from Ashley’s suitcase.
Once we found them, we realised that whoever was buying the drawings might have killed Ashley to silence her.
I created a fake post with a fake drawing on Ashley’s social media page, telling the killer to meet me here tonight.
And Darren showed up and tried to kill me. ”
Mina points to the knife buried in the desk. Jo leans forward to peer at the blade. “It’s the same size and shape as the blade used to kill Greer.”
“It could be her blade,” Hayes insists.
“Unlikely. Mina and Ashley sold their blades together. This young man’s been obsessed with Miss Greer ever since secondary school. He purchased them to own something she touched.” I set down my phone on the desk and hit the PLAY button. Darren’s voice pierces the air, unleashing his story of woe.
When the recording finishes, I hand my phone to a stunned inspector, making sure that all my ‘secret’ apps are closed and locked down.
“It’s all on there. How Darren followed Ashley to New York to buy the first set of drawings, likely bidding out other buyers so he could get the chance to be needed by Ashley.
I’ve also taken the liberty of downloading Darren’s flight itinerary and his hotel bill from the Big Apple.
If you pull security footage from the gala dinner that same week, I bet we can prove he was at the same location as the victim.
According to his confession, when he saw on her social media that she was returning to Argleton, he approached her to ask if she wanted to sell more designs.
She arranged to insert the drawings into a book in this very shop – a book she knew no one was likely to pick up – and Darren was supposed to pick them up later and leave the money.
But when he found out he wouldn’t even see Ashley during the exchange, he went about trying to find another way to reveal his love to her.
That’s the text message you found on her phone, begging her to meet in person.
He watched her from his flat as she walked past the shop that night and realised the door was open, so she snuck upstairs to try to talk to Mina.
He followed her to propose to her. She laughed in his face, of course—” I can’t help but smile at this.
Darren shakes his head angrily. “I didn’t get that on tape, but we know that’s what happened – and he became angry and killed her.
Case closed. If you can’t wrap your pea-sized minds around everything I’ve just said, I’ve recorded his entire confession. ”
“If you search under his bed, you’ll find a folder of Marcus Ribald’s pictures,” Mina adds. “And probably some weird stalker photographs of Ashley.”
“I bet he keeps a whole box of her used handkerchiefs,” Heathcliff growls.
“Mate, no one uses handkerchiefs anymore,” Mina grins at him. To the surprise of literally everyone in the room, the edge of Heathcliff’s scowl turned up, ever so slightly.
Oh, Mina Wilde, you fit here. You fit here so perfectly, you’ll drive us all to ruin.
“Er… right you are, then.” Inspector Hayes scratches his ear.
He clicks play on the audio file again. Darren’s tinny voice fills the room.
When the confession finishes, he turns to Wilson.
“Get a search warrant for this man’s home.
Find those drawings. Ms Wilde, it looks like we owe you an apology. ”
“But… but she broke out of prison!” Wilson stutters.
Now Heathcliff moves. He hauls his delicious bulk off Darren and strides over to the sergeant, towering over her.
“My client is duly remorseful about fleeing from the law,” he says in his smooth lawyer voice.
“But I think, given the circumstances and the fact that we solved the murder and did all your work for you, that you might overlook Mina’s transgression.
She is, after all, a woman, and prone to fits of hysteria. ”
“Hey!” Mina growls.
“Watch yourself,” Wilson says. “That’s not how the law works.”
“The alternative is that our friend Mr Earnshaw here, expert legal mind that he is, makes a lot of trouble for you regarding the mistreatment of his client,” I pipe up. “And since you’re up for promotion in the next couple of months, I don’t think you want that.”
“We never mistreated her!”
“It’s not about what actually happened,” I grin. “It’s about what a court of her peers believes happened.”
Wilson pales. The inspector picks up Darren by his collar and shoves him at his officers, then pushes Wilson toward the door. “We’re sorry about arresting you, Ms Wilde. You understand there was evidence that suggested—”
“It’s cool,” Mina grins. “We’re good.”
The officers follow behind with Darren in handcuffs. Jo lingers at the doorway, her laughter finally breaking through her concern. “A court of her peers? You really are something, Morrie. I don’t know how you convinced them to let Mina go, but I’m bloody glad you did.”
“Mina was the real hero,” I say. And Lancelot, but the less said about him, the better. “She’s the one who figured out how Ashley was getting word about the drawings to her buyer, and that led us to Darren.”
“It sounds like she’s just the girl to keep you on your toes, then.” Jo gives Mina a wave. “It looks like I’ll be working tonight if they remove more evidence from Darren’s room, but how about I call tomorrow and we can grab that coffee?”
“It’s a date,” Mina beams.
Jo whistles a Clash song under her breath as she follows the officers out the door. As soon as it slams shut, I grab Mina around the waist and lift her off the ground.
“You’re free, Mina!” I cry. “The English criminal justice system triumphs again!”
“I can’t believe it!” she grins back, her fingers digging into my shoulders in a way that makes me imagine all the I-didn’t-get-convicted-of-murder sex we’re about to have—
But then I see Heathcliff, standing beside his desk, eyes on the ground, fingers dripping with Darren’s blood.
And my poor blackened heart knows what I have to do.
“It just goes to show…” I say, setting Mina down and sending a message telepathically to Quoth that we should leave the two of them alone.
“As an old colleague of mine always said, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ We none of us predicted the true motives of the killer, and yet, the clues were right there. The beer cans in the garden outside, the ring in her pocket, and the fact that the killer left behind the images—”
“It’s going to take a mighty scrubbing to get those bloodstains out of my desk,” Heathcliff growls.
“Leave them,” Quoth suggests as he transforms out of his bird form. He comes to stand beside me. “As a warning to anyone who dares cross you.”
“This calls for celebration. I’ll get the wine.” I grab the birdie and usher him out of the room and up the stairs. It’s time for literature’s greatest gothic antihero to do something he’s never done before – apologise.