I cross my arms. ‘Being abducted at gunpoint sort of got in the way of my plans.’
‘After you’d decided to go to acafé.’ He strings the last word out, his eyes flicking up to mine. ‘Then a guy comes out of nowhere, threatens to kill you.’
‘He was waiting for me in his car. There’ll be CCTV on St George Street, something, won’t there?’
‘We’re checking that out.’
‘And the place he took me, the old studio complex, what about that? There must be some evidence there.’
‘The fire brigade were called out to it soon after you arrived here tonight, a blaze localised at the back of the building, second floor. By the time they got it under control, the whole wing of the building was gutted. Looks like there may have been some kind of accelerant used. We had a quick look at the scene earlier tonight, there’s some evidence there might have been a few tramps sleeping rough in parts of the building. But nothing useful from a preliminary search.’
‘He wasn’t a tramp,’ I say in exasperation.
Gilbourne sits forward in his chair. ‘Let’s rewind a little back to yesterday, shall we? Before this all happened. Can you tell us about your movements in the hours before boarding that train?’
‘Why?’
‘You boarded at Stoke Mandeville, correct?’
‘No, I had to go back via Aylesbury, some sort of problem on the line.’
‘Did that take longer?’
‘A little bit.’
‘And what were you doing there? Was that a work thing? Seeing a friend? Shopping?’
I have a sudden, powerful sense that he already knows the answer to this question. That he is testing me, probing, trying to catch me in a lie. I feel my anger rising, cutting through the pain and fatigue. I’ve coped with everything the last twenty-four hours has thrown at me but I’m not about to lay out my medical history in front of these three strangers.
‘A personal matter.’
‘Which was?’
I stare at him. He still has that half-apologetic, hang-dog expression on his face, as if it pains him to even have to ask.
‘Personal,’ I say again.
I feel the duty solicitor, Betteridge, shift in his seat beside me.
‘Perhaps you could give an outline of your movements, Ellen,’ he says. ‘In broad terms.’
‘I don’t see how it’s relevant.’
Gilbourne holds up his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘I’m sure it isn’t, Ellen, but it would be great to have the full picture.’ He gives me a tight smile. ‘For the sake of completeness.’
I cross my arms and sit back in the chair, the plastic edge hard against the backs of my thighs. ‘I had a doctor’s appointment.’
‘Where?’
I let a beat of silence pass.Don’t let them get to you.
‘The Macmillan Institute.’
‘What’s that?’ Holt says.
I glance at the younger detective, willing him to back down, to apologise, to move on. But he simply returns my stare.
‘It’s a specialist centre attached to the hospital.’ I swallow hard. ‘A fertility clinic.’
