DC Ward looks up and asks the next two or three questions. Ian is happy to hand her the reins. He’s struggling to concentrate on this interview.
Iris is naturally fair-haired, like Ash. Lately, she has been dyeing her hair more or less black. Ever since she went to her grandmother’s house in the Lake District a few months ago to get away from it all for a while. She came back looking like someone else entirely, which, Ian supposes, was the point of her transformation.
‘And how well did you get on with Joshua?’ DC Ward’s question trespasses on Ian’s thoughts.
A stifled sob escapes from Sasha’s mouth and a rogue tear rolls down her cheek. She swipes at it angrily.
‘Have a sip of water, Sasha.’ DC Ward pours from the jug. ‘Take your time. We understand how difficult this is for you, but it’s important for us to get to know the real Joshua. And we think you knew him well, so we really need to hear everything you can tell us.’
Ian catches the look Sasha throws her mother. Mrs Spencer-Lyles nods and Sasha turns back to DC Ward.
‘He could be mean,’ Sasha says, quietly. ‘I was hoping to get away from him when I went to university, but he was … what’s the word? … persistent.’ She takes another sip of water.
‘Joshua was controlling,’ Mr Spencer-Lyles interjects. ‘He would provoke arguments and then sulk until Sasha apologized. He isolated her from her friends and even from her mother and me. He wanted to micromanage every single detail of Sasha’s life.’
Sounds like Joshua treated Sasha in much the same way as he treated Iris. Everything Ian learns about Joshua Knoll makes him think the kid was a nasty piece of work. Carla’s label of a manipulative narcissist was dead on. No wonder Sasha’s parents didn’t want her to talk to the police. She has as much motive as Iris.
‘I see,’ DC Ward says to Mr Spencer-Lyles, and to Sasha, ‘Did he make you do things you didn’t want to do?’
‘I didn’t send him any nudes, if that’s what you mean,’ Sasha says. ‘He wanted me to and when I refused, it made him really mad. He said I would do it if I loved him. He called me frigid.’
‘He asked you to send him pictures of you naked?’
‘Yeah. But I didn’t do it. I mean, I saw what happened to Iris.’
‘You think that was Josh’s doing?’
‘I dunno. But I expect that’s where they came from. Iris must have sent the video to Josh. It probably was him, but I believed him when he said it wasn’t. At the time.’
Ian clears his throat. This isn’t about Iris’s video. They’re in danger of veering off track. ‘Did anything else make him mad with you?’ he asks.
‘Yeah. Well, someone else. Mr Tomlinson. My physics teacher.’
Tomlinson. That rings a bell. Ian’s fairly sure he’s Millie’s physics teacher, too.
‘Why did Mr Tomlinson make Joshua mad?’ DC Ward has taken over again, which suits Ian. His mind is still elsewhere. On the forensic report.
‘Josh was insanely jealous of him,’ Sasha says, rolling her eyes.
‘Mr Tomlinson was a new, young teacher at South Lydacombe School. I think he was on his induction programme,’ Mrs Spencer-Lyles says. ‘He developed a bit of a crush on Sasha.’
‘You think? A crush?’ Clearly, her husband doesn’t quite agree. ‘The man was obsessed. He was stalking her, for God’s sake, following her around and whatnot.’
‘Stalking her?’ That snaps Ian’s focus back to the task at hand. He sits up straighter in his seat.
‘Yes. He followed her on social media and sent her private messages,’ Mr Spencer-Lyles says. ‘He offered her a lift a few times after school.’
Ian doesn’t like the sound of this. He’d like to get Jo’s opinion of her colleague, although it would be unprofessional of him to ask her. That wouldn’t have stopped him in the past, but he can’t risk it getting back to Carla and Ash.
‘These are serious allegations, Mr Spencer-Lyles,’ DC Ward says. ‘Did you report this to the police?’
‘Well, no. It was near the end of the school year when we found out and we had other things to deal with at the time.’
‘We thought it would just go away when Sasha went to university,’ Mrs Spencer-Lyles adds. ‘But Sasha kept screenshots of the messages, didn’t you, Sasha?’
‘You might want to consider making a …’
Ian’s thoughts meander back to the hair. It’s Iris’s. It has to be. But she said she’d had nothing to do with him for months. Is there any way her hair could have been on Joshua’s hoodie from when they were dating? If he hadn’t worn it since back then, maybe? But no, Iris was still blonde back then. Plus the fact that some DNA markers were extracted suggests the hair wasn’t degraded by age and was shed relatively recently.
