She exhales, checks her watch as if this is all growing tedious and she needs an escape.
‘“No” would have to be the answer to that, Dan,’ she says flatly. ‘I can’t say forcertain.’
‘Why do you think Erin targeted Bojan Radulovic in the first place? What was her motive for killing him? No connection was ever established between the two of them. Erin says she’d never met him in the flesh until the day she killed him.’
‘I think she was lying,’ Pritchard says with a degree of conviction. ‘I believe that shedidknow Bojan Radulovic. She probably knows your new victim too.’
‘But there was no evidence of that – of her knowing Radulovic prior?’
She holds my gaze.
‘No. Just a hunch.’
‘I know Erin had historic mental health issues, but she also had no previous history of violence and was lucid, cognisant and communicative at the time of her arrest, wasn’t she?’
‘Yep,’ she agrees, nodding, ‘she was all of those things, and perhaps you could include articulate, amenable and recalcitrant to that list as well, if you like. Look, you can use whatever fancy words you want, but just because she wasn’t barking at the moon doesn’t mean she wasn’t insane, or capable of committing murder and attempting to cover it up with an elaborate piece of fiction.’ She fidgets, a touch agitated in her seat and knocks back some more coffee. ‘The truth is, I don’t know exactly why she targeted Radulovic. Of course, she told us at the time that she believed he was someone else.’
‘Ari Hussain, Samantha Valentine’s fiancé. Erin said she’d never met him, yet she seemed to know an awful lot about him –or the “him” she believed he was. She knew where he lived, she knew how old he was, his birthday – even his star sign – Pisces, in case you’re interested.’ Though judging by her expression, I suspect that she isn’t. ‘She correctly named his mother, the company where he worked, and she identified a car that she believed was his. There was a lot of detail in her statements, don’t you think, a wealth of information?’
‘Yes.’ She nods. ‘Like I say, she was extremely good at creating fiction, it was all just a narrative that she concocted. I don’t know her exact motive, but I suspected that she was most likely stalking Radulovic. I thought that maybe they’d had some sort of tryst, a brief sexual encounter – Erin was a young, attractive woman, if I remember – and she became obsessed with him, fixated upon him. My theory is that he probably realised fairly quickly that she was a complete wacko and no doubt tried to distance himself. Her psychopathy, however, was such that she couldn’t allow a rejection like that to go unpunished, so she killed him.’
I think of Milo Harrison’s neighbour then, the witness who mentioned something about him being harassed by a woman he’d had a one-night encounter with, and the CCTV I saw of the hooded person I felt sure was female, that flash of blonde hair.Could it actually have been Erin Santos?
TWENTY-SIX
ERIN
Present day
‘Now what would a pretty little thing like you want with one of those?’
Pierced Pete is looking at me with amusement, like it’s a trick question.
‘Same reason you’re looking for a quick shag.’
‘Oh yeah, and what’s that then?’
‘None of my business,’ I shrug.
‘Ha!’ He shakes his head, piercings rattling. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, sister.’ He turns to walk away.
‘How about this?’ I open my large tote bag, show him a glimpse of the contents, the bundles of banknotes stacked on top of each other. ‘Does it work likethis, perhaps?’
He peers inside, gives a little whistle.
‘Well,nowyou could besprechen Sie Deutsch.’
Before I left for London, I withdrew a substantial amount of money from my bank account. It’s money I’d inherited from Mum’s apartment upon her death, the apartment I grew up in and the place where she died. After it all happened, I went to live with Mum’s distant cousin, Jessie, and her family, some twentymiles or so away in Halifax, and it was Jessie who decided to sell it and then put the money into a trust for me. She also invested some of it on my behalf, wisely, as it turned out. When I turned twenty-one, I was able to purchase myself a cool apartment in town with some of the money – the only sensible thing I ever did – and spent a terrifying amount of the rest of it on partying and drugs, which of course made me feel guilty, and so the cycle would perpetuate. I just couldn’t escape the guilt I felt, the remorse and regret that permanently hung around my neck like a noose, and so I did whatever I could to try and bury it, rub it out with drugs and alcohol. I was a mess, mentally, and I needed help, but at least I had a home. In the end though, I even lost that. After Samantha, I losteverything.
Eventually, I was forced to sell my apartment to pay for my legal fees for my court case. Again, I had no choice, but it had crushed me further still. Somehow, yet again, I felt I had let my mum down, even from beyond her all-too-early grave. I’d managed to lose it all,even my mind.
Some cash still remained though, which is why I’m standing here with my tote bag filled with wads of the stuff. After all, it’s not like I can take it with me:not where I’m going anyway. As far as I’m concerned, it’ll be money well spent.
‘I don’t care what type of gun it is, just as long as it comes with bullets and it works. And I want some new ID, a passport and a driver’s licence, a National Insurance number.’
‘It’s allI want, I want, with you, isn’t it, sister?’ His gold teeth gleam in the light as he grins.
‘I’ll pay extra, obviously.’
