‘Did he tell you that?’
‘No. Someone else did. Josh and I haven’t – hadn’t – been in contact for a long time.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘The last time I saw him? I went back to school for a day at the end of the school year. Maybe, June? I didn’t speak to him. I just sort of saw him from a distance and headed in the opposite direction.’
‘OK. What about the last time you were in touch with him, when was that?’ DC Ward asks.
‘Right up until I blocked him on my phone. He would send messages. So I blocked him. Like, last November?’
DC Ward jots something down on a notepad. ‘What sort of messages did he send you?’
‘Usually short ones. Sometimes it was just a link to a song. He would be nice or horrid, depending on his mood, I guess.’
‘Have you kept these messages?’
‘No. I deleted everything when I blocked him.’
‘And what about when you were going out, Iris? Was he nice or horrid when he was your boyfriend?’
‘Both,’ Iris says. Ash hears the quaver in his daughter’s voice and sees Carla put her hand on Iris’s knee. ‘He could be really lovely, but also very nasty.’
‘What did he do that was nasty?’ DC Ward asks.
‘He would ghost me when I didn’t say what he wanted to hear. He would be full of praise one minute and then put me down the next.’
‘He was manipulative and narcissistic,’ Carla chips in. Everyone looks at her. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘but he was.’
‘Did Joshua have lots of friends, Iris? When you knew him, I mean,’ Roly asks, ignoring Carla’s outburst.
‘He was popular at school, yeah.’
‘Did he get on with everyone or were there pupils he didn’t get on with?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t in his year.’
‘Why don’t you ask Sasha Spencer-Lyles?’ Carla asks. ‘She’s his girlfriend. I mean, she was his girlfriend at the time … um … when he died. She was in the same year as him when they were at school.’
‘Thank you, Carla,’ Roly says. ‘We’ve been talking to everyone in Joshua’s close circle.’
‘I don’t know about other pupils, but he didn’t get on with his dad,’ Iris offers, looking at Roly.
Ash notices Roly sit up straighter. ‘Go on,’ he says.
‘His dad was strict, stricter with Josh than with his two younger brothers. They would argue a lot, even in front of me. And Josh would sort of punish him by holing up at a friend’s house for a day or two without telling him where he was. He stayed over at our place once. I mean, not here – at Crooked Oak Cottage – because things got so bad with his dad.’
This was news to Ash. He hadn’t known Carla had let Joshua Knoll stay over. He arches his eyebrows at Carla, but she seems to be deliberately avoiding eye contact.
‘And what about his mum? Did he get on with her?’ DC Ward asks.
‘Yes. He was his mum’s favourite son, I think. She treated him like a prince and gave him everything he wanted. Money, a car. I think she sort of made up for the way his dad treated him.’
‘Didn’t his mother worry when he hid at friends’ houses?’ DC Ward asks. ‘Or did Joshua text his mum, but not his dad?’
‘Yvonne had the Find My app on her phone. She always knew where Josh was. She bought the phone for Josh and that was the deal. So she wouldn’t worry about him. He didn’t mind. She didn’t care where he was; she just liked to know he was OK, that’s all.’
‘OK, Iris, that’s very helpful. We’re almost done here,’ Ian says.
