She checks my expression. How is it possible for Erin Santos and Julie Edwards to be the same person? My heartbeat starts to pulse in my ears –how can that be?
‘We’ve also found Samantha Valentine’s family details. They still live in the area, by the looks of it. Shona and Ned Valentine, her parents. We’ve got a number, gov.’ She checks her watch. ‘It’s around 8 p.m. in Perth. Now might be a good time to call.’
‘OK, see if you can get them on the phone – and great work, both of you.’
My head is buzzing as I make my way into my office. Maybe Katy Russell is mistaken? Shehasto be. After all, it was thirty-odd years ago now and some people change much more than others over the years. We’ll need more than that to go on to justify us digging around Down Under. Maybe this Katy has some old school photographs she can give us that would help clarify Erin’s identity? That said, when my old mate from back in the day, Tony Wentworth, had strong-armed me into attending an old school reunion with him a couple of years back, aside from the bald heads, weight gain, wrinkles and even tooth loss in ol’ Jason Redfoot’s case (he was the school heartthrob, once upon a time), I recognised more or less everyone from class 5G of Newton Comp on sight. They all looked the same really, just older and more jaded.
I’m about to pick the phone up when Archer bursts into the room.
‘Someone found a wig.’
I’d like to think that today couldn’t get any more bizarre, but I’m mindful of tempting fate.
‘Founda what? Where?’
‘Stuffed in a ladies’ sanitary bin inside a toilet at the media communications centre – aredwig. A cleaner found it and handed it in. Anyway, you should’ve told me you were looking for a redhead.’ She flutters her eyes at me, mock-flirtatiously. I try not to look as horrified as it makes me feel, even in jest.
Superintendent Archer has red hair, though it’s not as vibrant as the woman’s from the press conference, hair that now transpires was most likely a wig.
‘Seems she just waltzed right into the building, past security, without anyone noticing her, whilealsosomehow managing to avoid the CCTV cameras.’
Archer seems to be enjoying watching me squirm.How the hell had that happened?
‘I’ve asked Lucy to get it sent off to the lab, see if they can get any DNA from it, find out who it belongs to.’ She shakes her head at me and tuts. ‘Your fans will be disappointed in you, Riley. You do realise that if we don’t find Erin Santos soon, you’ll becancelledon social media.The keyboard Karens and wannabe Miss Marples can turn on you in a flash, you know…’
My phone rings.
Saved by the bell.
‘I’ve got a Mrs Shona Valentine on the line, gov, Samantha Valentine’s mum in Australia. Hopefully she can shed some light on this, clear up any confusion about who her daughter was, and about this Julie Edwards girl.’ I hear the hopeful anticipation in Adriana’s voice.
‘Put her straight through.’
FORTY-ONE
ERIN
Dan Riley didn’t know it, but I was sitting outside his house – or apartment building, as it is – looking up at a lit window – his lit window – throughout the entire duration of our last phone conversation, which I’d ended abruptly right after I’d told him that I’d kill Samantha if I ever saw her again. He could tell it wasn’t a lie; I sensed it from him. And so if Dan can tell when I’m not lying, then by default he also knows when I’m telling the truth, right?
It was really much easier than I’d thought it would be to find Dan’s private home address, which is kind of worrying when you think about who he is and what he does for a living. Once I had the name of his son though, it was pretty much a straight line from there. In his newspaper interview, Dan mentions both his children’s ages, so it wasn’t difficult to do a search on babies registered in that month and year with his name. His address is right there on Jude Joseph Riley’s birth certificate, written in black, florid ink, along with his parents’ names and occupations, which were stated as journalist and police officer, respectively. Dan’s so humble, he didn’t even state his full rank on his own son’s birth certificate. I wish I liked him less than I do.
During my stay at Larksmere – which hilariously makes it sound like a grand country spa hotel when I say it like that – I’d honed my research skills down to an art form, eventually anyway, once they started to let me use the library and gave me limited internet access. With a bit of hard graft, I can discover where someone lives and who they live with, how many kids they have and where they work. I can find out where they went to school, or if they have a mortgage, or whether they shop at Waitrose or prefer to bulk-buy in Costco. I can even find out how much money they have in the bank or if they’ve ever ordered a sex toy online – it’s all there if you look hard enough, you’ve just got to be prepared to put the effort in. In a long list of ironies, I have more of a criminal mind now than I ever did before I set foot inside the prison system.
It’s still sinking in, the conversation I’ve just had with Dan, but it would seem that Samantha has, once again, set me up. That psycho bitch has deliberately planted my hair at Milo Harrison’s murder scene to make it look like I was there and that I was somehow involved. Only she didn’t bank on Tilly Ward finding my email address and sending me a message, did she?No. She. Did. Not.
Tilly Ward, God bless her, is my get-out-of-jail-free card,literally. I have been so hung up on finding Samantha, so distracted, that I almost missed the fact that she is the key to this. She can confirm that I amnotSamantha Valentine. One look at me and she can tell the police thatI’m notthe woman who befriended her and took up residence inside her head, subsequently coercing and controlling her into ending Milo Harrison’s life. Together, we canprovethat it’s all just an elaborate set-up, nothing but a con. This is just one more piece of evidence that supports the claims I have made all along,claims no one listened to.Samantha is the one who should be sitting where I’m sitting now, fresh out of the funny farm, aconvicted criminal on the run, with the police and the media on her tail. Yet again, she has managed to flip the script and place the spotlight firmly back on me. There’s a touch of Machiavellian genius to it, I’ll admit.
‘Can you forward me the email exchanges between you and Tilly Ward, Erin? It would be good to have them on file, for our reference, and it may help with your defence.’ Dan’s soft voice had a sage edge, as though he was trying to convince me that it would be in my best interest if I did.
‘Sorry, Dan – they’re private, just between us. And I won’t need any help with my defence. I don’t need one anymore. Anyway, I’m done defending myself. It’s all I’ve been doing since the day this shitshow started. I know that eventually it will all come out because the truth always does, Dan – years, sometimes decades, even centuries later. Only I’m not waiting around that long for justice.’
It turns my blood to ice when I think that Samantha has kept my hair for all these years. She retained a piece of me with her, part of my DNA, like a trophy. I shudder.
‘You have the most beautiful hair I think God ever gave a woman, do you know that, hun?’
Sam liked my hair. And I liked her liking it. I wanted her to like everything about me, as much as I liked everything about her. Sometimes she would brush it for me until it shone, just as I had told her my mum used to do when I was a child.
‘Keep still!’ she would chide me as she roughly raked a brush through it. My mum was always much gentler. ‘I need to get all the knots out.’
