‘I was planning to track down Sienna’s dealer, get some pills off him when things had calmed down. So I kept her phone.Stupid.’ He shakes his head ruefully. ‘One night Zoe’s at my flat, we’ve both had a few drinks. She’s looking for a charger and she finds Sienna’s phone instead, recognises her stupid bloody butterfly-pattern phone case. She puts two and two together, we have a row and she storms out.’
‘So you had to silence her too. Except when you attacked her, you didn’t finish the job, did you?’
Gilbourne shrugs. ‘Best laid plans, and all that,’ he says, his voice back under control. ‘It only takes one piece of bad luck to trip you up. Zoe’s never going to wake up from her coma, but if they ever made a DNA match from Mia it would put me right in the hot seat as number one prime suspect, and then everything I’ve ever achieved would start getting pulled to pieces.’
I remember what Angela had told me yesterday about the search for Zoe’s boyfriend, the nameless man who had somehow evaded detection and faded into the background after she was attacked and left for dead.
They investigated, they pulled her private life apart, but they never came up with a name.
Of course they didn’t.
‘You investigated your own crimes,’ I say. ‘Tried to set up Dominic Church as your fall guy, paint him as some angry ex-husband out for revenge. When that didn’t work, you moved onto Leon Markovitz, a disgraced journalist who’d been pushed over the edge, before dropping just enough hints about DS Holt to put him into the frame too. How were you going to tamper with Mia’s DNA results? Which one of them were you going to frame?’
‘Doesn’t matter now, does it?’ He shrugs. ‘Now I’ve got you. The baby disappears and we have a brand new narrative, a story to fit everything into. Or at least muddy the picture enough to make sure no one can ever put the pieces together.’
‘They won’t believe you.’
‘I think they probably will. Decorated veteran of the Met versus a deranged divorcee cat lady desperate for a baby at any cost? Get real, Ellen: you’re the perfect patsy. I suspect you’ve been good enough to bring along the murder weapon used on Mr and Mrs Clifton as well, haven’t you? Where is it?’
My stomach drops.The shotgun. I picked it up next to Gerald’s body and assumed it was from his own gun cabinet, that he had been defending himself. Wrong again. I glance at my surroundings, at the lights, the stage, the set. A TV studio, an apt place for the fiction I have unwittingly helped him create.
‘It’s in the car.’
‘You took her Mercedes, didn’t you? Because of the car seat.’ He smiles when I nod an affirmative. ‘Good. So we’ve got the murder weapon covered in your fingerprints, which will be found in the car you stole from the Clifton house after killing them and taking the baby. Where on earth had they hidden her, anyway?’
‘In a chest of drawers,’ I say in a monotone. ‘You shot them both and set me up to take the fall for it. You knew I’d drive out there, find it all.’
‘Rather neat for a Plan B, isn’t it? Plan A had Kathryn doing all the legwork. I got her just nervous enough so she’d take the baby out of that house, but by then she was so confused she didn’t know who to trust. Dominic Church was so paranoid he convinced her that someone was tracking her phone – he was right, actually – and that she was about to get caught. Then she had the crazy idea to hand the baby to a stranger and that was whenyougot involved.’
‘You killed her too, didn’t you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re a manipulative psychopath.’
He smiles. ‘That’s not what you said in your hotel room last night.’
I feel a hot bloom of anger in my chest as I think of the hours we spent together, of the secrets I’ve shared with him, of taking this man into my bed.
‘Where’s Noah?’ I say again, fighting to keep my voice steady.
‘He’s safe and sound.’
I study him, the confident smile, the unkempt hair, the scattering of stubble across his jaw. The tiniest twitch at the corner of his eye.
‘He’s not here, is he?’ I say. ‘You’re bluffing. The picture’s a fake.’
He raises an eyebrow, gives me a little nod of respect.
‘Very good, Ellen.’ He takes a plastic cable tie from his pocket. ‘My own little deepfake image, but amazingly realistic, wasn’t it? Thought it might come in handy if you needed persuading at any point during these proceedings. All warfare is based on deception, right? Didn’t they teach you that one in the navy?’
‘This isn’t warfare, it’s murder.’
‘What’s the difference? Now put the baby down and take three steps back, like I asked you to already.’
‘Then what?’
‘It’s time for you two to exit stage left, in a puff of smoke.’ He raises the gun again. ‘I’m not going to ask you again.’
