‘No.’ I spun over in bed to face her, tickled her waist. ‘I’m“Dangerous Dan”, remember?’
She giggled, touched the tip of my nose with a finger.
‘Seriously, I’m worried about you, Danny.’ My wife never calls me ‘Danny’ unless she’s genuinely concerned. ‘This case has really got under your skin, I can tell.’
I didn’t want Fiona to stress about me – she’s got enough to worry about – but she’s not wrong. Just when I start to believe one thing, a new piece of conflicting information comes along to smash it to pieces and flip it on its backside.
‘She’ll have you going round in circles, Dan. Tie you up in knots.’ I hear DI Amanda Pritchard’s slightly sanctimonious voice in my head, swiftly followed by Archer’s, ‘It happens to the best of us, Dan. Don’t beat yourself up over it.’
‘How could Erin’s hair be found at a crime scene and yet we now have a very possible positive ID for her on CCTV that places her in adifferent cityat the time? She couldn’t have been at a crime scene some hundreds of miles away. No one can be in two different places at once.’
‘Not even me,’ Fiona said dryly, closing her eyes.
‘Not unless they’re a ghost. The only other explanation can be the one Erin gave me – the hair was planted there.’
‘Maybe she reallyistwo people and it’s some kind of spooky supernatural thing. Wooooo!’ She was clearly teasing me now. ‘You don’t reallybelieveher story, do you?’
I stayed silent. The truth is, I’m unsure exactly what I believe anymore.
‘Seriously?’ She opened her dark, almond-shaped eyes then, and I was reminded just how beautiful they are as they shone back at me in the dark. I rolled over, exhaled loudly, let my arms flop beside me. ‘She probably planted it there herself, when she was being the Samantha Valentine part of her character, the part that seems to want to sabotage Erin, and hence, sabotage herself. And maybe it’s just someone who looks like her on the CCTV footage?’ My wife always managed to summarise things so succinctly. I suppose it’s the journalist in her.
‘Well,someoneis pulling my chain, I know that much. Tonight, Erin said that she’dkillSamantha Valentine if she ever saw her again face-to-face. And I believed her. I heard it in her voice, Fi, all that anger and resentment… all that loss and sadness. It’s difficult to fake that level of emotion convincingly. But if Erin has this dissociative-whatsit disorder, this split personality, then effectively, she’d be killing herself, wouldn’t she? In killing Samantha, she’d have to murderherself.’
‘And that’s what you’re worried about, is it, that she may try and kill herself?’
‘Yes, no. I don’t know, maybe. Only I get the impression that the Erin part of her character doesn’t want to die.’ I thought of the budding relationship between her and Malcolm then, the connection I’d sensed – another thing that’s difficult to fake.
As crazy as it sounds, if I can just save one of them – Erin or Samantha – then by default I save Erin from herself.
FORTY
‘This is going to cheer you up, boss.’ DS Mitchell’s eyes are wide and hopeful, more hopeful than I’m currently feeling anyway. Even a hot sausage sandwich and a cup of tea hasn’t done the usual job of lifting my mood. ‘Tell him what you’ve got, Adriana.’ Mitchell nods at her, encouragingly.
‘Well,’ – Adriana takes a breath as I bite into my sandwich – ‘I managed to trace the sender of that message, the one who left the comment underneath Tilly’s sketch of Samantha Valentine. Her name is Katy Russell and she lives in Subiaco, a suburb in Perth, Western Australia. We spoke on the phone – I have to say, she was a bit freaked out at first, being contacted by the British police out of the blue about a random comment she made on social media – but she soon came on board. She readily told me the story about her best friend at school, Samantha Valentine, and how she took her own life when she was eleven years old. She hanged herself from a tree at the bottom of the family garden, apparently.’ My eyes widen. ‘I know,’ Adriana says, ‘it sounded like a real tragedy. Anyway, she talked about this other girl too, a third girl who joined their class mid-term at prep school, an English girl, who went on to steal her best friend,Samantha, from her, so to speak… you know, like it is with kids that age, all the friendship dramas…’
I really hope this is going somewhere good, for Adriana’s sake as much as anyone’s. I take another bite of my sandwich.
‘And?’
‘Annnnd…’ – she elongates the word – ‘on the off chance I sent her Erin Santos’s photograph, and Katy Russell has positively identified Erin as being the English girl who joined their prep school mid-term and stole her best friend, Samantha Valentine.’
I stop mid-bite, try to let that just sink in for a moment.
‘What?So, this Katy Russell is saying thatErinwas living in Australia as a young girl, and that they both knew Samantha Valentine, a girl from their class who went on to kill herself?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Mitchell is nodding and smiling. ‘She says it’s thesameperson.’
‘And Katy Russell has positively identified Erin Santos as being this old classmate of hers,in Australia?’ I blink at Mitchell, shaking my head. ‘But we’ve checked Erin out – she’s never lived in Australia. She was born in Leeds and has lived there most of her life, when she wasn’t locked up in Larksmere anyway. This Katy woman must’ve got it wrong.’
Mitchell shrugs.
‘It’s what she says, boss. Obviously, Erin looks older in the photo, but Katy says sherecognisesher, gov. She sounded pretty certain that the photo Adriana sent her of Erin was someone she knew back then as Julie Edwards.’
‘Julie Edwards?’
So now Erin Santos isthreedifferent people? I’m struggling to cope with this idea already. Maybe Fionaisright and I should stand back and let the big boys take over.
‘So,’ – Adriana picks up where Mitchell has left off – ‘after doing the calculations from the dates Katy Russell provided,I found a Julie Edwards from the BMD records in Western Australia, born in the right areaandin the right year.’ Her blue eyes twinkle as she speaks. ‘I also found a phone number for an Edwards family listed in the local directory, along with an address. I rang it but no one picked up. It let me leave a voice message though. So I gave them the incident room number – asked them to give us a call.’
