Blood Line

Chapter Twenty

Anna cautioned Tina and informed her that they would be videoing and audio-taping the interview. Tina had remained impassive, staring at her folded hands resting on the table.

‘We have acquired some new evidence that concerns you, but I would like to give you the opportunity of repeating exactly what occurred on the day of March the fifteenth. This would be when, as you have stated, you were phoned by Alan Rawlins, as he was suffering from a migraine and you drove him from his workplace to your flat.’

Tina sighed.

Anna had the statement from Tina in front of her. She continued.

‘You have stated that you subsequently returned home at around six-thirty in the evening and discovered that Mr Rawlins was not, as you had expected, at home. Do you have anything you would like to add to this statement?’

‘No.’

‘You yourself did not report Alan missing, but stated that you felt he might have left you for another woman. We were subsequently approached by a Mr Edward Rawlins who was greatly concerned for his son’s safety. This was two weeks after the day Alan Rawlins had left work suffering from a migraine.’

Tina continued to look down, scraping at the cuticle of one of her manicured nails.

‘Yes,’ she agreed without looking up.

‘Due to the fact there had been no movement from your joint bank account with Mr Rawlins, no credit-card transactions, and that by now it was almost eight weeks since he had last been seen, it was thought that something untoward might have happened to him. You allowed myself and Officer Paul Simms to search your premises and during this search we discovered that a section of carpet had been cut from under your living-room sofa. You stated that Alan had cut that section of the carpet as some wine had been spilled and he was concerned that the landlord would ask for damages to be paid.’

Paul passed over the photograph of the lounge showing the cut-out area. Tina glanced at it and then Paul took out the next photograph.

‘During the search of your premises we subsequently discovered that a second area of carpet had been cut out. This was to the left side of the double bed in the main bedroom. That section would appear to have been replaced with the piece of carpet from under your sofa. Please look at the photograph, Tina.’

Tina stared at the photograph and pushed it back across the table.

‘Forensics found no wine stain on the carpet removed from beneath the sofa or the underlay. However, when the inserted piece of carpet was lifted from beside the bed they discovered a bleach-washed bloodstain. The blood had in fact seeped through the underlay into and under the floorboards. Due to the extent of the blood pooling it was doubtful that whoever had sustained an injury resulting in this amount of bloodloss would still be alive.’

Paul passed Tina the scene of crime photographs showing the bloodstained floorboards and the congealed blood underneath them. Again she stared at the photographs, but gave no reaction or reply.

Anna continued, her voice quiet and steady.

‘Subsequently, to determine if there were other bloodstained areas that had been cleaned, the forensic team used a solution of Luminol which reacts to cleaned, or non-visible blood, by glowing in the dark.’

Paul showed one photograph after another of the Luminol reaction glowing in the hallway and on the bathroom tiles and floor. Tina didn’t seem interested, but her brief scrutinised each photograph and then made notes.

‘We now know through DNA testing that all the blood pooling, spattering and blood swipes recovered or revealed with the aid of Luminol belonged to Alan Rawlins.’

This was the first time Tina looked towards Anna. It was hard to detect what she was thinking or feeling as she quickly lowered her eyes.

‘Do you have anything you want to say about this, Tina?’

‘No.’

Anna nodded to Paul and he produced the receipt for four large containers of bleach purchased by Tina the day after Alan Rawlins had returned home with a migraine.

‘It was determined that an extensive clean-up had been done in your flat. Bleach had been used to wipe around the walls and the bathroom. You have admitted purchasing containers of bleach and we have the receipt and CCTV footage dated the sixteenth of March confirming this. You have maintained that you bought it for use in your beauty salon, however we were unable to find three of the containers.’

Tina sighed, but still remained with her head down. ‘I used them in the salon.’

‘Did you also use this?’

Paul passed over a still from the CCTV. Tina frowned and picked up the photograph of her at the checkout till.

‘You can obviously see what it is, Tina; it’s you buying an axe.’

Paul passed across the second series of photographs – this time Tina at the returns desk with the axe.

‘March the nineteenth, two days after purchasing the axe you are on camera returning it to the store to claim a refund.’

There was a pause. Tina crossed her legs and glanced at her brief, but remained silent.

‘Would you please explain what this item was purchased for?’

‘No comment.’

Anna leaned back in her chair.

‘No comment? Then let me tell you what I think you used this axe for, Tina. To hack up Alan Rawlins. Having dragged his body into the bathroom you used this axe to slash him and dismember him to enable you to remove his body with ease.’

Hyde tapped the table with his pen.

‘My client does not wish to answer this allegation, and without proof that indeed this axe was used in the manner you have suggested, she wishes to remain silent in the event she might implicate herself.’

‘As your client has admitted that no one else was living at her flat on these dates, the implication is not just obvious, but shows she must have murdered Alan Rawlins,’ Anna insisted.

‘Then we reach an impasse because my client does not wish, as is her right, to answer questions relating to the purchase or return of the axe.’

‘If there is an innocent reason then I’d like to hear it.’

‘I have advised my client not to answer.’

‘Why don’t you advise your client to start telling me the truth? She has lied from day one. Alan Rawlins was murdered in the flat she shared with him.’

‘If you have evidence to show that this axe was used to kill or dismember Alan Rawlins, then kindly present it, but it seems clear to me it was returned unused to the store and my client was given a refund. Is that correct?’

Anna leaned close to Paul and whispered. He opened another file and passed her the photographs and reports.

‘I must inform you that we have identified and recovered the axe and it is presently with the Forensic Department who have discovered some blood on it. We are awaiting verification that it’s Alan Rawlins’s.’

Hyde reacted and gave a covert glance to Tina. She leaned close to him whispering, but he clearly didn’t like it.

‘The mattress removed from your bedroom, Tina, was bloodstained, and bleach had been used in an attempt to clean it off. Also discovered on the sheet on the bed when examined by Forensics was a semen stain and male head hair that does not match Alan Rawlins’s DNA profile.’

The photographs of the bedsheet before removal were shown and Hyde replaced them in front of Paul.

‘After you’d murdered him, Tina, who did you sleep with? Who was in the bed with you – lying on the mattress still stained with your boyfriend’s blood? Did it make you feel sexy, knowing what you’d done? No one even knew he was missing, did they? Did you enjoy it? What kind of sick perverted woman are you?’

‘My client has denied . . .’ began Hyde.

‘Your client is lying; you have the evidence in front of you. How can you explain this, Tina? What made you do it? Anger? Hatred? Did you find out that the man you intended to marry was a homosexual and was planning to leave you, not for another woman, but for a twenty-one-year-old guy? Was that what drove you to do this?’

There was a flicker of a reaction. Tina pursed her lips tightly and Anna stepped up the pressure. Paul passed her the photograph of the house in Cornwall.

‘Look at the property he’d bought for his lover. He was intending to walk out on you and live with this boy. He was working on that snazzy little Mercedes as his birthday gift for that young guy’s twenty-first. It must have made you feel old and worn and betrayed, considering all the money you’d managed to save was a paltry seventy thousand when Alan had thousands being hoarded in a bank in the Cayman Islands and had paid almost half a million for the lovely beachside house.’

At last Anna was getting through to Tina. She was wriggling in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

Anna kept up the pressure.

‘Find it all out, did you? Find his mobile phone and start to put two and two together? It must have made the bile rise up, made you bitter and angry enough to want to kill him. You trusted him, you loved him and you’d driven him home because the poor lamb had a migraine.’

‘I didn’t know any of this until you fucking told me,’ Tina snapped.

‘You didn’t know? You didn’t have any idea that when he went to Cornwall for his supposed surfing holidays, he was screwing young pretty boys? He made sure you didn’t know, didn’t he? Used his former schoolfriends’ names just in case the old bitch at home tried to catch him out.’

‘I trusted him.’ She was wringing her hands.

‘You told me he never liked confrontation, never argued with you – but you found out about his other life, didn’t you? You confronted him, you wanted to get to the truth and you wanted to know if he was about to leave you.’

‘You couldn’t have an argument with him – you don’t understand. He would just walk away. He would not argue with me and you don’t know what you are talking about.’

Langton leaned towards the monitor screen, muttering to himself.

‘Do it, girl, push her – she’s cracking.’

Anna did not feel as confident as Langton that Tina was opening up. She continued to goad the woman in an attempt to get her angry enough to either admit what she’d done or make a slip-up that showed her guilt; at the same time she was trying to fathom out what was constantly niggling at her. What was the missing jigsaw piece? She intuitively knew there was something else, but just couldn’t place it. So she pressed on in the same manner, never taking her eyes from Tina’s face.

‘I know enough about Alan, Tina. He was never going to marry you, and when you found out just how much he had betrayed you, you were not going to let anyone else have him. He was weak, he was ill in bed, it was the ideal moment to kill him.’

Tina shook her head and laughed.

‘You think you knew him? Well, let me tell you he was never what you are trying to make out. Yes, he hated confrontations, yes, he didn’t like to argue – but you also never wanted to goad him into a face-off because . . . because . . .’

‘Because what, Tina?’

She clicked her fingers.

‘He could snap just like that. You never knew which way he would go, if he didn’t like something. Everything had to be just perfect – and if it wasn’t, he could get very nasty. And let me tell you, once was enough for me – just once – and I never ever got into an argument with him over anything again.’

‘Was that when you killed him?’

‘NO! You are not listening. I just said I did not argue with him. We did not argue because I knew it would be a waste of time.’

‘Because he would leave you?’

‘No, because he would win.’

‘What about his friends? Did they also never argue with him?’

‘What friends? I never met any of them bar a couple and they weren’t my type. I was working hard to get my salon on its feet and by the time I got home I wasn’t in the mood for entertaining anyone, never mind his friends.’

Langton swore. Anna was losing her pressure and Tina was now sitting up straight as if she was in control.

‘Did you meet Sammy Marsh?’ Anna asked, more than aware that she had let the interview go off-kilter, and she more or less threw the name in to give herself some time to try and get back on track. It was apparent she had taken Tina off-guard. Her reaction was interesting. She shook slightly and pressed back in her chair. Paul scrabbled through the file and passed over a mugshot taken of Sammy.

‘Sammy Marsh, Tina – this man. Please look at the photograph.’

Tina swallowed, shaking her head.

‘You have never met this man?’

‘No. I don’t know him.’

‘You sure?’

Tina turned to Hyde and said she needed to use the toilet. Unable to prevent this, Paul informed the uniformed WPC waiting outside that she had to escort their suspect to the ladies.

Anna got up and followed. ‘I want a female officer inside the ladies with her.’

Tina turned on her. ‘For fuck sake, I need to have a wee! I’ve been here since early morning, all right?’

Anna ignored her as she hurried along the corridor.

‘You need one as well, do you?’ Tina shouted after her.

Langton walked out from the monitor room, catching Anna as she passed.

‘You let her off the hook, Anna.’ He was about to continue, but she ignored him, heading for the stairs to the incident room. A female officer passed her to do as requested and stay with Tina whilst she relieved herself. Anna told her over her shoulder to keep her eye on Tina Brooks. If necessary, ask for the lavatory door to be kept open.

Brian turned in surprise at seeing Anna.

‘Get onto the station in Cornwall,’ she rapped out. ‘Ask them to get their lab to forward Sammy Marsh’s DNA profile to Liz Hawley ASAP. I want it compared with the semen found at Tina Brooks’s flat.’

‘But he’s dead!’

‘He was alive until four weeks ago, so just get onto it. As soon as you get a result, interrupt the interview. Also, ask Liz if she has a result on the axe and get that to me as well.’

Anna turned on her heels and was hurrying down the stairs into the corridor when she caught the female officer returning.

‘She all right?’

‘Didn’t like the door being kept open. She sort of looked like she was going to be sick, leaning over the basin, but then she straightened out. She’s back in the interview room.’

‘Thank you,’ Anna said, hoping she didn’t have to confront Langton. However, he was not in the monitor room but up in the canteen getting himself a coffee. By the time he took up his position Anna was already questioning Tina so he propped up his leg again. He had to take painkillers with his coffee as the trip to the canteen and back had made his knee throb.

Anna had jotted down notes to Paul, who glanced at them. She had underlined Sammy Marsh, asking if they had asked Tina about him in previous interviews. Paul began to thumb through his notebook.

‘We have information that Alan Rawlins used recreational drugs. What can you tell me about that?’

‘He never did that in front of me, and I’ve never done anything more than a spliff years ago. I don’t do anything now, but I know he did sometimes.’

‘What do you know he used?’

Jonathan Hyde was nonplussed at the new direction Anna was taking, but Tina’s break had successfully calmed her down and she was more at ease answering the questions.

‘What about heroin?’

‘No, he’d never do that. Besides, I always knew when he’d done cocaine because it made him very hyper and he could get aggressive.’

‘About what?’

‘About me disapproving. Look, I’m gonna be honest with you. I know I have not been telling you some things, but it’s only because it might have got me in trouble. I know I made Alan out to be the perfect guy, but he wasn’t easy to live with.’

‘So you argued?’

‘No. I’ve told you he wouldn’t – he’d always walk away and that used to drive me nuts.’

‘Crazy enough to want to kill him?’

Tina raised her arms. ‘I didn’t, and you are trying to trip me up.’

‘Trip you up? Tina, I am through with your lies. You have said that you, and you alone, were in the flat – so if you didn’t kill Alan, someone else must have been there who did,’ Anna persisted.

‘I went out to work, you know. I was out of the flat every day when he was first missing; someone else might have come in.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There was no forced entry, so who else would have a key to your flat?’

‘Well, you keep on telling me he had this boyfriend – maybe it was him.’

‘And you keep on telling me that you were unaware of Alan having homosexual relationships, unaware that he was planning to leave you, and yet now you say that there could have been someone else who was able to enter your flat, kill Alan, dismember the body and clean up to the extent of changing the bedlinen . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes? So who was the other person who subsequently had sex with you, or are you saying there were two other people in your flat?’

Tina became very agitated, slapping the table with the flat on her hand.

‘I am telling you that when I came home, Alan was not there.’

‘So why buy the bleach, the axe?’

‘I’ve told you. I used the bleach to clean up my salon.’

‘What about the axe?’

‘I am not gonna talk about that.’

‘Fine, then you will be held overnight in the cells until I have confirmation as to whether or not—’

‘You can’t do this.’ Tina turned to Hyde. ‘Tell me they can’t do that to me. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Anna started to pack up her files and suddenly Tina erupted, gripping the edge of the table and trying to overturn it. The water bottles fell over and Hyde pushed his chair back to try and avoid the spillage as Paul grabbed the photographs.

‘Sit down, Miss Brooks. SIT DOWN!’ Anna shouted.

‘It’s Miss Brooks now, is it? I am telling you that whatever fucking evidence you’ve got doesn’t prove I killed Alan because I didn’t. I DIDN’T!’

‘Sit down. Mr Hyde, please control your client.’

Hyde went to grip Tina’s arm but she shoved him away. He rocked backwards and then she was on her feet, running for the door. Paul was out of his seat, and as Tina grasped the door handle he prevented her from leaving. She turned and threw a punch at him. The door opened and the uniformed officer stationed outside the room stepped in as Tina struggled, frantically kicking and punching out. She was totally out of control, and as she was dragged back to the table, she tried to kick again. Eventually, with Paul holding one arm and the officer holding the other, she caved in, her body sagging as she started sobbing.

‘I think we should take a fifteen-minute break,’ Hyde said, standing up.

As Tina slumped into her chair, weeping, Anna found some tissues to mop up the spilled water and threw the plastic bottles into the rubbish bin, then set her files back down again. But Tina got some kind of second wind as she reached over to grab the files, sending everything flying off the table again.

‘Cuff her,’ Anna said, and the uniformed officer drew one arm up behind her back until Tina was screaming. The policewoman pushed her face forwards onto the table. It was an ugly scene, and Tina was still fighting as her other arm was drawn back, but with Paul’s help they cuffed her with her hands behind her back. Her eye make-up was running and her face was red and blotchy, but even cuffed she was kicking, swearing and trying to bite Paul.

‘I want a break for my client,’ Hyde repeated and Tina turned on him.

‘Shut the fuck up. I done what you told me.’

‘Miss Brooks, please calm down,’ he said.

She snarled like an animal, her face twisting.

‘Miss Brooks, MISS BROOKS, what the fuck do you know? I want to go home, I want to go home.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ the lawyer told her.

She swivelled around and kicked out with her high heel, catching Hyde in the knee. He grimaced.

‘Take her shoes off her, please,’ Anna said.

‘You’re not taking my fucking shoes off me. Leave me alone.’

However, both her shoes were swiftly removed and she sat panting and gasping for breath.

‘All right,’ she growled.

Anna was still straightening out her files.

‘I give up. I fucking give up.’

Anna stared as Tina closed her eyes, sighing but no longer fighting.

‘If you’re waiting for a result on the axe, it’s a waste of time. They never used it, it wasn’t sharp enough.’ She looked up and glared at Anna.

‘Do you wish to continue this interview?’ Anna asked.

‘Too bloody right I do. I’ve had enough.’

Hyde was rubbing at his knee, and shrugged as if to say to Anna it was not going to be a problem for him.

‘I can’t have the cuffs removed, Tina, but you can have them on in front of you so it’s more comfortable. However, you have to behave.’

‘Great.’

Paul removed the cuffs from behind her and she held out her hands so he could place them back onto her wrists. Anna signalled that the uniformed officer could leave the room, but to remain outside the door.

Tina asked if there was any more water left and Paul passed her one of the half-filled plastic bottles. She took two gulps and then held it out for him to take from her. She looked at her handcuffed wrists and gave a strange half-smile.

‘Broken a couple of fingernails.’ There was a pause as she remained silent, staring at her hands.

‘If you are ready to proceed then, Tina?’ Anna prompted.

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘Previously you used the word “they” when referring to the axe?’

‘Correct. He wanted it to split open the board.’

Tina glanced at Anna and then at Paul. She gave that strange smile again.

‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? The surfboard – Alan’s surfboard – that’s how he was moving the drugs around, shipping them in and shipping them out.’

‘Are you saying that Alan hid drugs in his surfboard?’

Tina gave a long resigned sigh. She then explained that along with Silas Douglas and Sammy Marsh, Alan had used the boards to hide drugs on trips back from Florida. Pure cocaine was made into a hard paste and then packed into the centre. They would then soak it, dry it out and mix it for distribution all over Cornwall.

‘But then Silas met some heavy-duty drug dealers in Miami and the next shipment was heroin.’

‘You are referring to Silas Douglas as being party to this?’

‘Party to it? He was running the show. First along with Sammy, but then Alan got himself involved and started sharing the finances. He was making money hand over fist, but Sammy tried to screw Sal. He got his hands on one of the boards, took out the heroin and started dealing, but he didn’t know what he was doing; the stuff was lethal. Alan got scared shitless. Kids had been overdosing on the stuff and so he wanted out. He was also scared of Sal, so he brought one of the boards back with him and hid it in our garage. He also had two hundred thousand in cash – Sammy’s money. He said that he would pack up and leave England. He was certain that they’d never come after him because he’d always used other names.’

Anna held up her hand. ‘Tina, I need to understand what exact part you played in this drug-dealing.’

Tina’s voice was quiet and drained as she explained that her relationship with Alan was, for the past year, more or less non-existent. She had found out about his homosexual partners and had first wanted to simply kick him out, but he had persuaded her that he would split his profits so that she would be financially secure. There was one condition, which was that she keep up the front of their so-called intended marriage. She knew about the property, she knew about his other bank balances, but because she also knew how he was making the money, she was certain that he couldn’t back out because if he did, she would tip off the police.

‘He got scared. He knew he didn’t have all that much time, and he was planning to leave England and go into hiding. He’d got Sammy’s cash and he’d also got a surfboard full of heroin.’

‘Did he intend dealing it?’

‘I dunno. He was so crazy around this time. To be honest I don’t think he really knew what he was going to do with it – he just didn’t want any more kids dying. He was snorting up coke so that made him even crazier.’

‘Take me back to the morning of the phone call to you when he said he had a migraine,’ Anna prompted.

‘Well, he rings me up and says that Sammy had somehow got onto him, that he was gonna have to do a runner. He was shaking, and when we got home he said that he would pack up his stuff and be gone. I had to take the suitcase with the money to a locker at the salon and I left him at the flat and went to work in the salon.’

Tina continued to explain that she had put two fake clients into the appointment books. Often her clients would enter the salon via the car park and back door entrance, going up the rear stairs to where she did her treatments. The girls knew she worked up there and that her clients liked privacy so she was never disturbed. She was therefore able put the money into a locker and leave the salon without any of the girls seeing her. She subsequently returned to her flat around midday, not as she had previously admitted, at six-thirty.

Tina started to cry, pressing her hands to her eyes. She said that as soon as she had returned she knew something terrible had happened because Silas Douglas was there and so was Sammy.

‘They grabbed hold of me, really terrified me, and they wanted to know where the board was and where the money was, but all I kept asking was where Alan was. I kept on saying that I didn’t know what they were talking about and Sammy slapped me around. He really hurt me.’

Tina was shaking as she described them pushing her into the bathroom where Alan was in the bath, tied up, gagged and covered in blood with the bedsheet under him.

‘Was he alive?’

‘No, he was dead. He had this terrible gash over his face and head and they must have been beating him because there was blood everywhere.’

She went on to describe how she couldn’t stop crying, repeating over and over that she didn’t know what they were talking about, but did eventually tell them that the board was in the garage. They still didn’t leave and instead they began to clean up the mess, making her help them wipe down the walls in the bedroom. Sammy had cut out a section of living-room carpet to cover the bloodstain in the bedroom.

‘They said if I talked to anyone or told anyone, I would end up the same way as Alan. They got rid of the bloodstained sheet and pillowcases, and I made up the bed again so it looked as if nothing had happened. They were there all night, questioning me and mopping up, and the following morning they said I had to go and buy more bleach, which I did.’

‘Where was the body?’

‘I don’t know. I never saw what they did with him.’

‘Did you tell them about the money in the locker at your salon?’

‘No. They said I had to go to work as normal, that they would finish cleaning the flat. They were still there cleaning up when I got home, and then they told me to go and buy an axe in the morning so they could split open the surfboard which was still in the garage. They were worried about anyone seeing them take it out, so wanted to wait until it was dark.’

‘And they remained inside your flat all this time?’ Anna asked, incredulous.

Tina nodded. ‘I thought they were gonna kill me. I was terrified that someone would think I’d done it, so that was why I took the axe back.’

‘And you just continued to go to work at the salon during all this?’

‘Yes. It was unreal because the flat looked back to normal. It was all clean and neat, and it was as if it had never happened.’

She sniffed and Anna passed her a tissue.

‘Oh God, then Sammy left and it all kicked off.’

‘What happened?’

‘Silas. I came home from work and Sammy wasn’t there but Silas was still inside the flat and I thought he was going to kill me. He said the surfboard had been split open and it was empty.’

‘So Sammy took the surfboard from your garage?’

‘Yes, like I said. What I told this bastard Silas was that maybe Alan had picked up the wrong one. They were all decorated with customised stuff. Then he asked about the money again.’

She started to cry once more, sniffing and wiping her cheeks with the sodden tissue.

‘He said that he would teach me a lesson and that if I was lying he would keep on coming back. He dragged me into the bedroom. I wouldn’t even go in there because of what had happened and he raped me – the bastard raped me.’

‘Did you tell him about the money?’

She gritted her teeth and shook her head.

Anna took a few moments to digest everything they had just been told, but Tina continued.

‘Alan’s father kept on calling and asking about him and where he was, and in the end I said to him that I didn’t know and that I thought he’d left me. That’s when he contacted Missing Persons and then you came round. That’s the God’s honest truth about what happened.’

‘All right, Tina. You’ve really explained a lot, but one thing I can’t quite understand is the fact that two men stayed in your flat and, as you said, removed a body and a surfboard from your garage, and yet nobody saw or heard anything.’

‘You come in there at night and there’s no one around. Most of the tenants go to bed at nine, they don’t ever go out even. There’s also a fire exit that leads into the back area and you could come and go that way. As I’m on the ground floor nobody would see you.’

‘But they must have had vehicles to move the body and drove in and out with a surfboard.’

Tina shrugged and said that however they came and went, she never saw what they drove or how they got the body out.

‘Did they dismember Alan’s body?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’ Her voice was shrill.

‘Have you taken the money out of this locker you say you used?’

‘No, I just left it locked up at the salon. It’s my money. Alan give it to me – it’s mine.’

Anna decided that they would continue to question Tina the following morning and that she would remain in custody overnight in the holding cell.

‘But I told you everything. I’VE TOLD YOU.’

‘We need to check out your statement, Tina. Mr Hyde, do you have anything to say, as it’s obvious your client has withheld vital evidence.’

‘Because I was scared they’d kill me. I was raped, for God’s sake! You can’t keep me here.’

Hyde stood up and said quietly that it was within the law to hold her. Tina looked as if she was going to create havoc again, but instead she crumpled and sobbed, repeating over and over that it wasn’t fair as she’d done nothing.

By the time Tina was taken back to the cell, Anna had already organised an arrest team for Silas Douglas. Langton had been waiting for her in her office.

‘Owe you an apology?’ he said quietly.

But she didn’t feel elated, only exhausted from the lengthy interrogation.

‘Maybe I owe you one. Bloody Silas Douglas was here and questioned at his car wash – he’s got long red hair tied in a ponytail; we all screwed up. I didn’t even notice what colour because he had this skull scarf around his head. Now to make matters worse, I think we might have lost Mr Douglas.’

‘What about Sammy Marsh?’

‘I would say that Mr Douglas had a hand in his murder, but that will be over to DCI Williams. Let’s just hope we can pick him up.’ Anna sighed.

‘Did you believe everything she said?’

‘Funnily enough I do, but it’s hard to conceive that they were able to murder and probably torture Alan Rawlins in her flat and no one heard or saw anything, let alone how the hell they got his body out without anyone seeing them do it. He was a big guy.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Langton pointed out.

‘I guess they have, but if you don’t mind I’ve got a lot of sorting out and double-checking to do before we have another interview with Tina Brooks tomorrow.’

He stood up and ruffled his hair, then lightly touched her cheek.

‘Good work, Travis. Your instincts always were that this case was connected to drugs and you’ve proved me wrong.’

‘Not altogether. You always maintained it was connected to Tina, but if I hadn’t gone on the trail to Cornwall we wouldn’t have been privy to so much information. I did make a big error with Silas Douglas.’

‘You may be able to verify the rape if you pick him up.’

‘If – and I would say he was also responsible for ripping the Mercedes apart, looking for the drugs.’

Langton looked puzzled.

‘It was a car Alan Rawlins was working on for his boyfriend’s twenty-first birthday,’ Anna explained.

‘Ah yeah.’ He nodded.

She was eager for him to leave, but he still hovered with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets.

‘Anything else?’ she asked.

‘Nope, but I’d throw the book at her and see if even more pressure gains further results. Right now she’s saying she lied because she was frightened, but she’s some bloody liar, and claiming that she had nothing to do with this drug-dealing doesn’t quite ring true.’

‘You suggesting we discuss this with the Drug Squad here?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything, but I still think there’s more to get out of Tina Brooks. She did a good job of lying to me about how she had always made a bad choice of previous boyfriends and was near to tears about Alan Rawlins disappearing.’

Langton paused before eventually walking out, leaving Anna to wonder if he was simply annoyed at being proven so wrong.

Silas Douglas’s car wash was closed. They had a search warrant, but found nothing connected to their murder enquiry. His desk had been cleared of papers, and left charred inside an oil drum were fragments of magazines and what may have been receipts. They knew he owned the small block of flats adjacent to the building, one of which was his London base. They used the search warrant to force entry, but like his car wash the flat was devoid of anything of interest. It appeared to be very basic: a bedroom with en-suite bathroom, living room and kitchen-diner. They did, however, take numerous fingerprints, even though most of the flat had been very well cleaned.

Anna contacted DCI Williams to give him an update, at the same time asking if the Newquay police had anything further on the murder of Sammy Marsh. They had not, but Williams said they would put out a warrant in Cornwall for Silas Douglas, especially as Anna felt he would have been the prime suspect in Sammy’s murder. They knew he had an apartment in Newquay, plus a workshop where he customised the surfboards, so both places would be searched for evidence. They also had the licence-plates of a motor bike owned by him and a Ford van, which he used to transport the surfboards. However, there had been no recent sighting of him.

Late that afternoon, Liz Hawley gave Anna the result from the axe-shaft. They were unable to get a DNA profile from the minute dot of blood. She said it might have occurred if someone with blood on their hands had held the axe, but no fingerprints were found on it, nor did it appear to have been used. She also by now had the DNA result from Sammy Marsh, and it did not match the semen sample they had from Tina Brooks’s bedlinen.

If Tina was to be believed, she had been raped by Silas Douglas, and so Anna knew it would probably be his DNA. She felt very dissatisfied. Although they now had the jigsaw pieced together via Tina’s statements, without Silas Douglas in custody it could not be 100 per cent verified. Nor did they have a corpse or any evidence of how the dead man’s body had been removed from the flat or where it was dumped.

The key to the locker in Tina’s salon had been taken from her and they found the suitcase containing the two hundred thousand pounds. The money was in used banknotes tied with elastic bands in bundles of tens and twenties and fifty-pound notes. So she had told the truth about that, and would be entitled to reclaim it unless they could prove it was the proceeds of drug transactions.

It had been a long day and Anna did not get back to her flat until after eleven that evening. Sleep was out of the question as she lay mulling over all that she had gained from Tina’s interrogation. What she still could not come to terms with was the fact that Alan Rawlins had been so brutally murdered, his body removed and the flat cleaned up to disguise and hide what had occurred. Weaving through the mound of lies that Tina had told from day one meant a lot of sifting through notes and statements.

Tina Brooks had continued to live in the flat, knowing how Alan had died. She had gone about her daily business at the salon acting as if she was the estranged girlfriend and pretending that he had simply gone missing. She had denied having any knowledge of his sexual activities, instead weaving a picture of a gentle, quiet man who hated confrontations, who never argued and whom she planned to marry. She claimed to have seen Alan’s bloody body in her bathroom, yet carried on going to work and even went shopping for the two purported killers who were still inside her flat. Could a woman be so traumatised and forced into doing terrible things, and then be raped and warned to keep silent or she would end up the same way as Alan Rawlins – yet never disclose the money she had hidden in her salon?

It was after two as Anna leaned back on her pillows, trying to ascertain if there was, as Langton had suggested, even more to get out of Tina. She had lied about ever knowing Sammy Marsh, lied about virtually everything – and even with her admission about what had happened inside her flat, she still claimed that she was not in any way responsible for the murder and had only acted out of fear.

Anna sighed, pushing away the mound of papers and notebooks she had littering her bed. But she still couldn’t sleep, recalling how few personal effects were on display in Tina’s flat when they searched it. The lone photographs, the ordering of the new carpet. She wondered, if Alan Rawlins’s father had not contacted her via Langton, would Tina have simply moved on? That was another thing that Anna would have to face – informing Edward Rawlins of the outcome. This brought her back to wondering how his son’s body had been removed from the flat. Did they wrap him in the sheet? The forensic team had found no bloodstains outside the flat or the surrounding area.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would take another look around Tina’s flat and surrounds before picking up the interrogation . . .

When the alarm woke her, it felt as if she had only just fallen asleep. Disorientated, she threw the duvet aside, spilling all her notes and papers onto the floor. The first page of typed notes showed the lists of the phone numbers recovered from Alan Rawlins’s mobile, with calls made to Florida, Antigua, Los Angeles – but they’d had no success in finding out the identity of the recipient. What’s more, the calls had been made after 16 March – when Alan Rawlins was already dead.