‘You type your diary?’ Waterhouse cuts me off. ‘Onto your computer?’
I nod. ‘Haven’t always, but I do now. Perhaps if it had been handwritten, it wouldn’t have felt so much like I was typing up an official execution order.’ I shudder. ‘When I read it back … It sounds like a cliché, but every part of me turned cold. I knew I had to try and stop it, but at the same time I …’
There’s no reason to hold back. He knows why I’m here.
Say it.
‘At the same time, I wanted to kill her so much. I still do. And I’m also glad I didn’t, glad I thought of this as the only way out: coming here, telling you everything. It was the only way to make sure I didn’t ruin my daughter’s life by ending up in prison.’
‘The plan can’t have been foolproof, then,’ says Waterhouse. ‘Not if you were worried about prison. Make up your mind.’
‘Nothing like that’s ever foolproof.’ I shouldn’t have to tell him this. ‘When you start to feel sure you’ll get away with it, that’s when you’re really in danger.’
‘Is that a fact?’
He seems to hate me. I’m not sure why. I’m trying to do the responsible thing and prevent a crime from happening. ‘I think so, yes,’ I say. ‘Anyway, this is going to work, this … deterrent I’m creating for myself now, by telling you. 5.15 on 30 October has come and gone, and if anything ever happens to Mariannein the future, I know I’m the first person you’ll suspect, which is enough to make me drop the whole idea. And … I mean, I’m assuming you’ll be making contact with her at some point and telling her there’s been a threat against her. Isn’t it normal to … I don’t know, warn people in situations like this? Not that you need to, because, like I said, there’s no way I’ll do anything now.’
I have to hope Marianne won’t risk harming me either, if she finds out about this. Surely knowing that she and I are now on the radar of a murder detective will be enough of a deterrent.
‘I just need to tell you how I planned to do it, and then I can go,’ I tell Waterhouse.
He yawns. Makes no attempt to rein it in, either.
Time to ramp things up.I hadn’t been planning to bring up what happened eleven years ago, but desperate measures and all that … ‘In case you’re wondering, it wasn’t me last time,’ I say matter-of-factly. ‘It was someone else who tried to kill Marianne in 2012. I’ve no idea who.’
Ha.That got him. His eyebrows just shot up, like they were trying to slap his hairline.I guessed right: he had no idea. Neither he nor Sergeant Zailer reacted with particular interest when I first mentioned Marianne’s name.
‘There was an attempt on Marianne Upton’s life in 2012?’ he asks.
I nod. I’ve become expert, by now, at detaching my concept of what happened from the scene itself. I can talk about it easily these days, without seeing what I found when Paddy and I got back that night: the blood on the kitchen floor, the shrunken, grey skin around Marianne’s bulging eyes, the red and white inside of her neck … I translated it into image-and-emotion-free words soon after that night, and now I can think and say all the colours and the adjectives, and use them as adistraction from what they mean and a barrier to stop me going back there in my mind.
‘She survived, and the person was never caught,’ I say. ‘If that hadn’t happened, I’m not sure killing her would have occurred to me as a possibility earlier this year. I’d probably have carried on thinking murder was something that only affected other people, never me or anyone close to me.’
‘This is starting to make more sense.’ Waterhouse inspects his hands. ‘It was you in 2012. You got away with it, and it’s been eating away at you. The guilt, the regret. You want to see if confessing makes you feel better, but can’t risk admitting to an attempted murder because that’s an actual crime. Obviously it hasn’t occurred to you that conspiracy to commit murder is just as much of a crime, but leaving that aside for now … How am I doing so far, guess-wise?’
I feel as if I’ve just been addressed in a language I don’t speak. ‘What?’
His head dips forward, though he keeps his eyes on me. Can’t be bothered repeating himself.
Standing up, I say, ‘Is that the best you can do? No wonder you and your cronies screwed it up in 2012. They must all be as shit as you.’
‘I didn’t get anything wrong in 2012,’ he fires back and, at last, there’s some energy in his voice. ‘Hadn’t heard of Marianne Upton until you mentioned her today.’
‘Really? Well, it was detectives from Culver Valley CID, your colleagues, who made no progress whatsoever and let an almost-killer go free. Tell you what …’ I move towards the closed door. ‘I’m going to find another police station, one with proper professionals in it who—’
‘Leave whenever you like. I’m not stopping you. None of this is going on the record, by the way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. There’ll be nothing in our files or on our system to say you ever made a threat against Marianne Upton. And no one’s going to be warning her about anything.’
I don’t understand. If he isn’t planning to put any of our conversation on the record …
Does he … Is it possible that he wants me to kill Marianne?
As if on cue, he says, ‘She must be a pretty unpleasant character if all these people keep wanting to murder her. So go on.’ He gestures in the direction of the door, a sweeping motion. ‘Do it if you want to. Get away with it if you can.’
5
