Davis.
She surveys the scene through wide eyes, her hand over her mouth.
‘Boss! What the hell’s happened?’ She looks down at Julie Edwards, bleeding out on the floor. ‘Oh my God, Archer’s going to flip out.’
Within seconds, the room is filling up with emergency services, uniformed police and paramedics.
‘Is she alive?’ Davis asks.
‘Just about,’ I say, as the paramedics get to work on her. ‘How did you know I was here?’
She pulls her chin into her neck, gives me one of her looks. As if I had to ask.
‘Mitchell and Adriana told me about the photo, about Ken Edwards and…’
‘Have they got her?’ I say. ‘She’s in the bathroom – and she’s armed, Davis.’
‘Got who, boss?’ She shakes her head, confused.
My stomach lurches.Erin.
‘Oh no…’ I run to the bathroom, but the door’s open and it’s empty.
I sprint to the front door. There’s at least a handful of police officers standing outside now, and some inquisitive onlookers have started to gather. I look left and right. It’s only been a few seconds, less than a minute – she can’t have gone far. I call out to a couple of the young officers.
‘Suspect on foot,’ I say as they jump to attention. ‘Check the stairs.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I lean over the balcony, look down and around. Nothing.
I catch sight of the neighbour then, the woman from Number 68. She’s still in her dressing gown, with a towel wrapped round her head, and she’s talking, animated, to one of the female officers, an expression of shocked bewilderment on her face.
She shrieks in alarm as I seize her by the arm.
‘The woman!’ I say. ‘The one with the blonde hair and red lipstick. She had to have gone past you, while you were knocking on the door, did you see her? Where did she go?’
She looks at me in horror, backs away from me as I gently try to shake it out of her.
‘Woman?What woman?’
FIFTY-TWO
DAN
Three weeks later
We sit in the waiting room at the hospital, Fiona and I.
I’m not a fan of waiting rooms. They’re transient places. Nothing ever happens in them except for… waiting. It’s our Jude’s first of what I know will be many assessments today, for what we hope will eventually become surgery to fit him with a cochlear implant. And then maybe he will be able to hear when his mother gets cross with him, like she is with me right now.
‘Why do youalwaystake such stupid risks, Dan? If you knew Tilly Ward was Samantha Valentine—’ We were still talking about the case.Everyoneis still talking about the case. It’s dominated the news, just as I’d expected it to. Erin Santos is more famous than the Kardashians right now. If she’d played it differently, perhaps she could’ve made herself a very rich woman. Only I don’t think it was that kind of compensation she was after.
I’m sure Erin will be pleased to know that thanks to her image captured on CCTV in a charity shop in King’s Cross, where she had undergone a makeover, it has largely replaced the one from six years ago. She’dreallyhated that photo.
I suppose I could sympathise. I’m still living down my own photo from that article, almost a month on.
‘You mean Julie Edwards,’ I correct her.
