I say a silent prayer as she slides the double doors open.
‘Dan?’ Her eyes are wide open in shock. ‘Detective Riley? What are you doingout here?’ Tilly’s right though, she really needs to work on her London accent.
I know exactly how I’m going to play this out – but it’s not going to be easy, and it will need an unspoken understanding between myself and Erin to pull it off, a silent understanding that I can only hope we have if I’ve a snowball’s chance in hell of getting everyone out of this situation alive and unharmed.
‘Journalists,’ I say, wiping my wet hands down my coat as I step inside. ‘I saw one of them on the balcony up here just now, sniffing around, bloody parasites.’
‘Oh!’ She sticks her head out of the double doors, looks left and right.
‘I think they may have gone now – when they saw me,’ I add.
I look at Erin, try to communicate my thoughts to her through my eyes. She holds my gaze for a few seconds. Is the small smile she gives me one of understanding? I can’t be entirely sure. I’m pretty convinced the gun is in her left pocket though, and I need to make sure it stays there.
‘Good job you were here to stop them, Detective Riley. Those rodents get everywhere.’
‘Indeed.’
The biggest problem I now face is how do I alert the team of my situation and call for back-up? My phone is currently in bits on the concrete floor of the balcony. If this all goes south, then Archer’s going to have my head on the chopping block. If I’m not in the morgue already by then.
Tilly suddenly leaps up from her seat as I enter the room.
‘She’s got a gun, Dan!’ She signs the words to me silently, and again I wonder just how she has become so proficient in sign linguistics, being as though she isn’t deaf, or even hard of hearing, as it turns out. Had she studied it and become more or less proficient in one weekend, like she did the piano?Such wasted talents.
‘It’s OK, Tilly,’ I say aloud. ‘I know she has.’
Erin turns then, and pulls the weapon from her pocket, but she doesn’t point it at me.
‘She thinksI’mSamantha Valentine.’ I hear faux incredulity in Tilly’s voice. To the untrained ear, admittedly, it would sound convincing. ‘She thinks that I’ve set her up. That I’m the woman who tricked her into killing that man all those years ago… sheblames me for what happened to her. She’s completely mad, Dan.’ She grips hold of my arm, tries to use me as a human shield as she shuffles behind me.
‘I know she is, Tilly. Just stay calm, OK. My colleagues are on the way.’
I widen my eyes at Erin, like you do when you’re trying to tell someone not to say something out loud without actually saying it out loud yourself. I can only hope she’s caught on. And that she’s on my side.
‘Just tell me your name,’ Erin says. ‘That’s all I really want, to hear you say your real name.’
‘But youknowmy real name, Samantha,’ Tilly says. ‘You know who I am. We were friends, remember? Please, Sam, don’t do this. Dan here can help you, we can both help you, can’t we, Dan?’
‘I hope you’re not still buying into this bullshit, Dan.’ Erin turns her head to me. ‘She’s been playing you too of course. The whole hard-of-hearing act…’ She walks towards us then, and Tilly grips my arm so tightly I can feel her fingernails digging into my skin through my thick coat.
‘Take it off,’ she says, ‘the bogus hearing aid,take it off!’ Tilly does as she says without moving her eyes away from the gun. Erin whips it from her grasp, holds it up in her right hand. ‘Look!’ she says. ‘It doesn’t even work! It’s just a piece of old plastic, a decoy, she probably bought it off eBay.’ She throws it to the floor, stamps on it. I hear the crushing sound as it breaks beneath her foot.
‘It’s a fake, just like everything else about her.’ Erin trains her eyes over to me again. ‘None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for the police’s ineptitude all those years ago. If they’d only listened to me then, if they’d just believed me, then maybe Milo Harrison would be alive now, and I would be at home, with my husband and kids, living the life I should’ve had if I’dnever met this sick, twisted psychopath here.’ She waggles the gun at her. ‘Do you know, Dan, she told me that it was because Milo Harrison ghosted her that she signed that poor man’s death warrant. She had a fling with him, and he didn’t want to know her afterwards… but that ego of hers, that gigantic, narcissistic ego, simply couldn’t allow him to get away with such a heinous crime… and so she decided no less than death would be his punishment. It was the same story with Bojan Radulovic. She was fixated upon him too, weren’t you?’ She thrusts the gun forwards in Tilly’s direction. ‘You couldn’t accept his rejection, so you stalked him, harassed him, you became obsessed with him and wanted him to pay with his life. Only you thought it would be much more ‘fun’ – that was the word she used, Dan,’ – Erin glances quickly at me – ‘‘fun’ to have me kill him for her. To play a sick, elaborate game of control built on wicked lies.’
‘Put the gun down, Erin,’ I say gently. ‘This isn’t the way to have your voice heard. This will only ensure that things are even worse for you.’
‘Even worse?’ She laughs then, hard. ‘How could thingsbeany worse, Dan? Anyway,’ – she catches her breath – ‘soon it won’t matter.’
‘What do you mean by that, Erin?’
‘There’s two bullets in this gun. Youknowwhat I mean, Dan.’
I think I do. Erin’s plan is to kill Samantha Valentine, and then to kill herself. Only, I can’t let her do either of those things. I want her to get the justice she finally deserves. I want her to see Tilly Ward get what’s rightfully coming to her. A sentence behind bars, or most likely, behind the walls of Larksmere Hospital.
‘If you shoot her, Erin, then you’ll go back to prison, to that hospital. And Iknowyou don’t want that. I don’t want that for you either, Erin. Killing her makes you exactly what she wants you to be, a murderer, just like her.’
‘But I alreadyama murderer,’ she says, ‘becauseofher.’The sound of the gun as she cocks it causes me to take a step forwards. ‘You were never a cold-blooded murderer. I know what she did, Erin.’
I squeeze Tilly’s arm behind me, surreptitiously, try to reassure her, convince her that I’m simply going along with it for Erin’s sake,for safety’s sake.
