‘Different accents.’
‘Why?’
She pauses.
‘Just for fun, yah?’ Her attempt at London, however, definitely needs work. I suspect she’s stopped taking her medication. I really need to think hard on how best to play this.
‘Your DNA was found, Erin. It was found at Milo Harrison’s address, at the scene where he was murdered. Forensics found hairs on his body, on his chest, mixed in with his blood – your hairs, Erin.’
She doesn’t respond.
‘Did you know that Milo Harrison went to university in Leeds back in the early 2000s?’
‘Really?’ Her voice registers surprise. ‘No. I didn’t know that.’
‘Apparently, he lived less than half a mile from your old address during that time. Did the two of you ever meet, Erin, back then?’
She sighs. ‘Leeds is a big city, maybe not as big as London, but I wouldn’t want to do a head count, would you?’
‘So it’s just a coincidence then?’
She takes a breath.
‘As it would seem, yes. People come from all over the world to go to university there, over 40,000 people at any given time – only I wasn’t ever one of them. I flunked my GCSEs and I’ve never even been on the campus grounds. Besides, I spent most of that time of my life off my face on drugs and alcohol or house-ridden with agoraphobia and depression.’
‘But you did have relationships with men back then? Boyfriends, partners? Friends with benefits?’
‘I may have been a substance abuser, Dan, but I think I’d remember if I’d hadanykind of relationship with your dead man. Look,’ she says, the frustration rising in her voice, ‘I don’t know him!What is it with you lot? Why are you so determined to try and make me fit the role of perpetrator? It’s history repeating itself again and again… when will itend, Dan? When will you believe me?’
She’s clearly agitated.
‘My job is to protect the public,’ I continue, ‘and to help bring people to justice, and to ensure they are neither a danger to themselves nor to others – which one are you, Erin, or are you both?’
More silence. I’ve overstepped the mark.
‘Erin? Please don’t hang up.’ I clench my fists and teeth simultaneously, raise my eyes to the ceiling and silently beg her not to cut the call. ‘We can talk, just between us. My job is to help you, and protect you too, Erin. I just want to?—’
‘Were the hairs short?’
I stop talking. Why would she ask that?
‘The hairs found at the crime scene, on the body, were they more like clippings, perhaps?’
Forensicshadsaid that the hairs were shorter than you’d expect to see if they had been pulled out from the head, or naturally shed. These were more like ‘snippets’, the lady fromthe lab had said. How would Erin Santos know that? Is it because she put them there? Why would she place her own hair at a murder scene?’ I’m not sure why I’m expecting things to make sense anymore. Nothing in this case has made sense from the beginning.
‘Yes, they were short hairs, Erin. Your short hairs.’
‘I believe you, Dan.’ Her voice sounds level and calm. ‘Only I didn’t put them there. Samantha did.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Is she really still running with this? I have to remind myself that Erin’s unwell, and that, according to Dr Wainwright, her psychopathy is such that she really does believe that she and Samantha are genuinely two separate people. I’ll run with it too, if it keeps her talking on the line.
‘Don’t you see, Dan, she’s setting me up! She’s doing it all over again! Oh my God…’ Her breathing suddenly increases, as though it’s just dawned on her. ‘My hair! She cut my hair once, do you remember, Dan, I told you about it!’
Is she trying to gaslight me, manipulate me into believing that somehow Samantha Valentine conveniently has kept strands of her hair all this time?
And yet, now I think of it, I do vaguely recall her mentioning it.
