Instinct

NINE

A sour-faced, very exhausted Mark Carter sat defiantly in an interview room at Blackpool police station. His arms were folded and he glared up at the camera positioned high in one corner that recorded his movements. Having attended the station voluntarily he had not been arrested, but he knew it was probably only a matter of time.

Not that it worried him. He’d done nothing wrong, but there was always a problem demonstrating innocence to cops. They always worked on the assumption that you were guilty and worked backwards from there, making the jigsaw fit around that. At least that is what Mark Carter believed they did. Fit you up because it was easier than unearthing the truth.

He jerked his middle finger up at the camera lens and mouthed a word that didn’t need a lip reader to translate.

Henry’s morning had been hectic. Up at six thirty after a fitful night’s sleep exacerbated by severe indigestion: note — order chicken curry in future because that never made him feel bad. He had showered speedily and was walking into the station just after seven, trying to focus his mind on the day ahead.

He met Rik Dean in Rik’s office just off the main CID office, where they sat down over a strong filter coffee and bacon sandwiches to organize the hours that lay ahead. They worked on to-do lists, wanting to miss nothing, and get the inquiry into Natalie Philips’s murder kick-started. Henry was aware that some of the momentum had been lost already because he’d got involved in yesterday’s motorway mayhem. He wanted to pick up speed and get a well-briefed team out there knocking on doors, making people who knew Natalie feel very uncomfortable. He knew how crucial the first seventy-two hours of a murder investigation were — and that had now been whittled down to forty-eight hours.

By nine he had screamed and bawled at too many people. Not something the ‘old’ Henry had been prone to do, but since Kate died he’d discovered he was far less patient with people who dragged their feet. Anyway, it seemed to work that morning and something resembling a murder inquiry was coming together. Search and forensic teams were at the scene outside the crematorium, six pairs of detectives were responding to various ‘actions’ that had been generated and house-to-house enquiries were underway in the area around the crematorium.

There was a slight problem in that the location of the murder was actually just over the border in another division, but Henry wasn’t too concerned about it. Natalie was a Blackpool girl and it was more than likely her death was associated with people she knew in Blackpool, so Henry had decided to run the job from the resort.

He was desperate to find the last person to see Natalie alive and his early theory was that it was probably somebody in Blackpool. At the back of his mind, he hoped it wasn’t Mark Carter.

Henry sat back and stretched. Everything ached. Joints cracked and creaked. He felt his age and he scoffed contemptuously at whoever said the fifties were the new thirties.

Next task was to get the Murder Incident Room — MIR — up and running with the necessary staff in it and to get the murder book up to date.

The phone on Rik’s desk rang. The DI scooped it up. ‘Right, thanks, yeah… in an interview room… if he tries to leg it, arrest him… uh-huh… murder… be down, say five minutes. Cheers.’ Rik hung up and looked across the desk at Henry. ‘Well would you credit it?’

‘Mark Carter?’ Henry guessed as though he could read Rik’s mind. He hadn’t mentioned the phone call he’d got from Mark.

Rik nodded. ‘You a mind reader or something?’

The boy was almost eighteen now, old enough to be interviewed without any parent or other responsible adult being present. Not that he had a parent or anyone else that was interested in his welfare. No father, dead mother, jailed older brother, dead sister; Mark was pretty much alone in the world.

‘Good of you to come in willingly, Mark,’ Henry said.

‘There was a choice?’

‘Ultimately, no.’

Mark shrugged. ‘So here I am.’

‘We want to talk about you and Natalie, as you know.’

‘So you said yesterday.’

‘Why did you run?’

‘Because, Henry, you always bring me bad news. You always fuck with my mind and it’s always best to avoid you.’

‘Yet you rang me?’

Rik gave Henry a puzzled sideways glance.

‘Only because you’d have nicked me if I hadn’t — and because I have nothing to hide.’

‘You and Natalie went out together?’ Henry asked.

‘A bit.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Nowt to tell. We went out for while, then we split.’

‘Mutual decision?’

‘Are they ever?’

‘I thought you were smitten with Katie Bretherton.’

Mark screwed up his face. ‘Not now. It’s all over.’

Henry studied Mark, seeing a much older, time-scarred lad than the one he’d first met. He was spotty now, had acne, was sprouting hair all over, looked unwashed and frankly a bit of a mess.

‘What do you do other than work at KFC?’

‘College.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Astrophysics,’ he laughed bitterly. Henry waited, then Mark relented. ‘A course in motor vehicle technology.’

‘Oh, good lad.’

‘Yeah, right. I’m going to be a grease monkey. Ho-di-hey!’ He set his face hard at Henry. ‘What about Natalie?’

‘You tell me.’

‘We went out, we split up.’

‘Did she dump you?’

Mark blinked and Henry thought, yes… another person either leaving or dumping him. Not one person has stayed with him, poor sod. Mark nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Duh — because I wanted a steady relationship and she didn’t. She was a bike and liked being ridden — or didn’t you know that?’

‘A bike as in…?’

‘Shagged left right and centre,’ he said crossly, his body language leaking a touch of rage.

‘So you screwed her too?’ Rik Dean piped up at this point, leaning forward on the table. Up to then he’d sat silent, just shot Henry the occasional quizzical look.

Mark’s mouth snapped shut. His head rotated slowly to Rik, his eyes dead.

‘We need to know,’ Henry said. And they did, because the results of the post-mortem had also shown that Natalie had had sexual intercourse sometime leading up to her death. Samples had been taken, and, together with other samples taken from her skin, underneath her fingernails, and from other orifices, were now with the Forensic Science lab for analysis. But that process would take some time. Even if Henry could sweet talk an official fast-track, it would be at least two weeks before any results came back, even with a tailwind. Henry thought for a moment, then made his decision. ‘This interview needs to be taped, Mark. We’ll need to take various samples from you and at this point the best thing for you would be to get the duty solicitor. Costs nothing.’

‘You’re locking me up?’

‘Tell me when you last saw Natalie.’

‘Yesterday, just before lunch.’

‘When did you last have sex with her?’

‘Yesterday, just before lunch.’

‘Shit,’ Henry sighed. ‘Did you kill her?’

Mark shook his head and Henry believed him, but this was only based on his previous knowledge and opinion of Mark, like a ‘halo effect’. But Henry did not want to miss the chance of nailing a killer just because he thought he was too nice to do it. He had to deal with Mark straight down the line and give him no favours. This was the best thing for Mark, too, although Henry doubted if he would see it that way.

‘Mark, you’re under arrest on suspicion of murdering Natalie Philips.’ Henry then cautioned him.

Mark’s blood drained from his face. He shook his head in disbelief, then said, ‘Now you know why I ran. I fuckin’ hate you, Henry. You’ve done nothing but screw me over since we met.’

Henry took a step back at that point. He did what he should have done in the first place and let Rik Dean appoint two detective constables to interview Mark. He briefed them on what he knew so far, then let them loose on Mark, who had become unresponsive — to him, anyway. He knew their shared history would be a bar to any meaningful interview, so Henry did what any good superintendent was skilled at doing: delegated the job.

This gave him time to ensure the investigation as a whole was moving forwards. If he’d been tied up in interview he could easily have lost the bigger picture and then would have been criticized from on high.

It was all looking good. There was a semi-suspect in the traps, other jacks were out following leads, the scientific people were on top of things, doors were being knocked on, the MIR was almost up and running. Henry was reasonably confident with progress. Now he just had to find out what Mark Carter had to say.

That was when his mobile phone rang. He answered it absently as he skimmed through the first few pages of the murder book.

For a moment, there was silence, then came the hesitant voice.

‘I… I was wondering about that coffee… really, I’m not being pushy… it’s just, I’m in town for the day.’ The voice rushed on a little now. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ Henry said, reshuffling everything in his mind, trying to work out if he had time.

‘I know you said you were busy and you’d phone me this afternoon

… and I know all the other personal stuff must be hell…’

‘I’m really glad you called, Alison,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure if I would’ve had the nerve to call back to be honest… so, where are you right now?’ She said the name of a town centre street. Henry said, ‘You’ll find a Starbucks on that street, yeah?’

‘Yes, I can see it.’

‘Go in, grab a table and give me ten minutes to get there.’

His thumb was dithering so much he could hardly press it down on to the end-call button. He took a few breaths to ward off hyperventilation, then gave Rik Dean a quick call as he trotted through the police station. It went to voicemail and Henry left a message to say he’d be otherwise engaged for an hour.

For some miles, the car in which Karl Donaldson, Martin Beckham and Robert Fanshaw-Bayley were sitting — a powerful Jaguar being driven by a brilliant driver from the Road Policing Unit — had reached speeds of over one hundred and thirty miles per hour. That meant the journey from Blackpool to Liverpool John Lennon Airport took somewhere in the region of thirty-five minutes. The slowest part of the journey was actually the last five miles of dual carriageway on which ninety was about the safest maximum.

The driver pulled in directly at the front of the terminal building and was told to stay in the car and wait. The three passengers hurried into the airport where they were met by a DCI from Merseyside Police, who led them quickly through to the security and customs and immigration services offices behind the line of check-in desks. The DCI ushered them into an office with nothing on the door; inside was a sparsely furnished room — table, four plastic chairs — and a wall-mounted large screen TV and what looked like a DVD player.

‘Gents, if you’d like to take a seat,’ the DCI said. His name was McMullen and he was emitting nervousness.

Silently the three visitors did as bid.

Then Donaldson, who was bursting, said, ‘What’ve you got?’

‘Your man, I think.’

The three men were only at Liverpool Airport because of a tired, but sharp-witted and well-informed, Spanish cop who had been dragged against his will by a worried airline official out of his cosy office — just to have a look at a bloodstain on an airplane seat.

The cop actually hadn’t seemed sharp-witted at all when the official had knocked on his door at three that morning. Detective Luis Delgado was working the night shift, six p.m. to six a.m. After the last plane had landed at one a.m. without any problems and the passengers had filed wearily through the almost farcical customs check, observed by Delgado through a two-way mirror, he’d settled himself down for the night with the intention of getting in some serious sleep before the next flight landed at five thirty, just before he finished. He had a comfy chair, footstool and pillow, and if those bastards wanted him to work at Las Palmas Airport, then he would, but only on his terms. Because he didn’t want to be here.

His eyes had only half-opened when the sharp, urgent knock came on his office door. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, feet were up on the stool, and he was snug, certainly did not want to move.

‘ Si? ’ he grunted in an off-putting way. The door opened a fraction. ‘ Que? ’ Delgado said, his mouth turned down underneath his heavy moustache.

‘Detective Delgado,’ the man said. His name was Ceuta, and Delgado knew him as a representative of one of the budget airlines that provided a service to Gran Canaria. ‘Please, I apologize. I know you are busy, but could I ask you to come and have a look at something the cleaning crew have found on one of my planes?’

Delgado’s tongue smacked the top of his mouth. He shook his head at the thought of the loss of sleep. ‘ Vale,’ he said, meaning OK. He rolled himself reluctantly to his feet, expecting to be told they’d found a stash of drugs or money, which was fairly common.

But blood?

Delgado bent over and looked closely at the stain on seat 39E. He was as sure as he could be that it was blood — quite a lot of it. Working out the position of whoever had been on the seat it looked as though the injury, or source, was from either the back of the right arm or the right side of the chest.

‘Leave it,’ Delgado ordered.

‘But Senor, the cleaning staff need to do their work and this plane will be back in the air in four hours, on its return journey,’ Ceuta pointed out.

‘To where?’

‘Liverpool.’

‘As I said — leave it until I say anything different. For the moment, this area is a crime scene,’ he declared. ‘You may clean the rest of the plane.’ Delgado was nothing if not a realist. ‘But leave these three seats.’ He leaned over and touched the stain with the tip of his little finger. It was still wet.

His next step was to return to the security offices and access the computer hard drives that stored the CCTV footage of passengers who had disembarked this flight as they went through passport control. He also had access to the passenger manifest. He had been well in the background as the passengers from the flight had filtered through and, as is usual, they had all entered the island quickly, without challenge, their passports only cursorily examined by gritty-eyed customs officials. No record was even taken; the passports were just fleetingly shown and individuals waved through. Delgado printed off the passenger list and then watched a recording of the passengers with a mug of strong coffee at his lips, his eyes narrowing as he tried to recall them. Truth was he hadn’t been taking too much notice. There were two hundred and sixty people going through and none of them had seemed suspicious, out of place or injured.

Maybe the blood meant nothing anyway, and for a moment he felt a little foolish declaring the seat a crime scene.

The passenger list was nothing special, and nothing struck him as odd. And there was no way of telling which passenger sat in which seat because seats on this flight were not allocated to individuals. Boarding was a free for all, where everyone scrambled for seats.

He sat back and pondered. Blood on a seat. So what?

Then his heavily lidded eyes glanced up at the TV monitor affixed high in one corner of the room, permanently tuned into a twenty-four-hour Spanish news channel. Headlines scrolled across the bottom of the screen as newscasters relayed stories above. The sound was muted… but Delgado jumped off his chair, crossed to the TV and stood right in front of it, willing the news loop to come round again. For once, news of a Real Madrid signing was of no interest to him.

It came and suddenly Delgado realized he might have something to throw into the pot in the hunt for a major terrorist. Even if he was wrong, he knew he had a duty to reveal what he had. First he would check all international police bulletins on the computer in his own office. Then, even if there was nothing on them, he would still make the phone call.

The image on the TV screen behind DCI McMullen was paused. He said, ‘This is security footage of the passengers going through Liverpool passport control. As you know in this day and age, with on-line booking and check-in, travellers carrying only hand luggage don’t have to queue at check-in desks any more, not on these budget airlines, anyway. They just take their self-printed boarding passes and passports to immigration, which get scanned into the system, and then they’re through into the departure lounge after security checks.’ He paused and surveyed the faces of the three men, got little response, so carried on. ‘Obviously I knew a bit about what happened at Blackpool, but there wasn’t a full APB out, so there was nothing about border controls at the time of this flight out.’ He sounded guilty, but didn’t have to. Proper circulations took time. ‘When the Spanish detective got through to me, that was only when I really had a proper delve into anything. The thing is, with on-line check-in, it means that passengers can leave it to the last minute to arrive, or turn up hours before. They’re not obliged to turn up just within the two or three hour pre-flight time any more. And, of course, there are lots of flights leaving, so people coming through passport control could be there for any one of a dozen flights.’

FB waved his hand. ‘We get the picture.’

‘OK,’ McMullen said ‘- anyway, what I’ve done is got the passenger list from the airline, then cross-checked with the boarding card and passport database and I now know the exact time every passenger on last night’s flight to Las Palmas went through security here in Liverpool. I’ve gone through CCTV footage and watched every person go through, all two hundred and fifty-eight of them, to be exact. Quite a task, I might add.’

Freakin’ hero, Donaldson thought.

‘So, I’ve got this… this guy, wearing a peaked cap which more or less hid his face from the cameras without it being too obvious he was hiding it, is the only Asian on the flight. All the rest are the great unwashed out for a lager-fuelled holiday. He seems to be travelling alone, one piece of hand luggage — and that’s it.’

He pressed a switch on the TV remote and the screen came to life, showing a baseball-cap-wearing man approaching the desk at which boarding cards were scanned. He had a small bag over his left shoulder and his travel documents in his left hand. His right arm was held tightly up to his ribcage and hardly moved. He passed his self-generated boarding card over, that being a barcode printed on a piece of A4 paper, which was scanned by the official and handed back to the man, who then walked on, the whole interchange lasting about twenty seconds at most.

The efficiency of modern travel, Donaldson thought. Ripe for terrorists, despite all the crap about heightened security.

The screen then chopped to the next shot: the man passing through security. Placing his bag on the conveyor belt that ran through the X-ray machine, then walking through the body scanner without setting it off. He collected his bag then walked out of shot into the departure area. All the time, his right arm was held against his body, but not in a way that would have brought any attention to him. It was only watching it now that it looked odd, and each man watching the screen knew the reason why.

McMullen flicked off the screen.

Donaldson’s mouth was dry, every pulse beating.

‘He boarded the Las Palmas flight fifteen minutes later, then made it through their customs at the other end unchallenged — then gone!’

Donaldson said, ‘Passport?’

McMullen picked up a piece of paper. ‘Seems to be a genuine British passport in the name of Ali Karim. I have the details here. I’m getting it checked now. Question is — is that your man?’

‘It is. That’s Jamil Akram,’ Donaldson said.

‘Can you be sure?’ Beckham said. ‘Those images are not completely clear.’

‘It is,’ Donaldson said dully. ‘We need to check the booking,’ he said, thinking out loud, ‘see where it originated from, how long it had been made for, whose computer it was made from. And the passport.’

‘We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the cop in Las Palmas. He did well,’ McMullen said. ‘Followed his instinct.’

‘Did his job, you mean?’ Donaldson said.

‘Whatever,’ McMullen said, seeing he wasn’t going to get much praise or anything from these three. Fact was, a top-class terrorist had escaped right under their noses by simply walking into an airport and jumping on to a flight. No one was feeling good about that.

‘He must have started to bleed again on the plane,’ FB said. ‘He must be in real pain.’

‘And now he’s made it to the Canary Islands — but he won’t be there for long,’ Donaldson said. ‘I’ll lay odds he’s already gone.’ His lips pursed and he felt a dark shadow in his brain as his mind juggled all the angles. Some had already been mentioned, such as the origin of the passport and backtracking the on-line booking. Everything would have been in place for Akram to get out of the UK quickly, the only complication was that he — hopefully — still had a bullet in him. It was therefore vital to discover who helped Akram in the hours between him escaping from the car park, getting Rashid Rahman to take over the car, and walking into Liverpool Airport. It was a window of over eight hours.

‘Guys,’ McMullen said. ‘The plane he was on is due to land back here any time now. The seat he sat in and the two next to it have been kept free… would you be interested in having a look?’

‘Can we also get CSI to have a look?’ Donaldson asked. ‘Get a sample from the blood, check for prints… if anything it could help us get Akram’s DNA — which would be good.’

‘Grande latte, wet, extra hot, skinny, decaff,’ Henry said to the barista at Starbucks, ‘and a normal, small latte, too, and a couple of those iced buns,’ he added. He was in the short queue in the coffee shop, his eyes constantly checking out the woman he’d arranged to meet.

He paid for and collected the drinks and the buns on a tray and ferried them across to Alison at the small circular table she had managed to snaffle by the window. He slid the mugs and food off the tray, then propped it up next to the window.

‘Sorry about the food,’ he said. ‘Major peckish.’

‘Me too. Shopping’s hell. I heard your order, by the way,’ she grinned. ‘You obviously spend too much time in coffee houses.’

‘It’s become a habit I don’t seem capable of breaking. Costing me a small fortune.’ He took a sip of his extra hot coffee, which wasn’t that hot, but tasted good. He had always subsisted on the kick of coffee, it had sustained him through many a long inquiry, but now he was a little bit addicted to it and lurking around cafes, alone. It felt a bit shameful, like frequenting brothels, but less fun.

Alison sipped hers, her eyes shining across the rim of her mug. ‘Well, here we are.’

‘Mm.’ Henry wiped his lips. ‘Yep — here we are.’

He had literally no idea what to say to this lady.

‘You never called or came to see me,’ she said. It wasn’t spoken in a belligerent way, just factual.

‘I thought it better not to. For personal and professional reasons.’

Her brow furrowed.

‘The personal reasons may have skewed professional judgement, so I thought it better to delegate and let others reach conclusions, maybe with a few nudges from me.’

So he knows, she thought wildly.

Henry drank more coffee. It wasn’t hot at all any more.

‘I’m so sorry about your wife,’ Alison said.

Henry opened his mouth to say something but no words came out. Instead, he heated up from the neck and felt slightly nauseous. In the end, he half-shrugged and drank more coffee, the flow of which took away the sickly sensation. She reached across and laid her cool fingertips on the back of his hand, genuine tenderness in her eyes.

Henry knew that Alison had lost her husband a few years earlier in Afghanistan where they had both been serving in the armed forces, she as a medic. On leaving the forces she had bought the Tawny Owl pub in Kendleton, where she lived with her husband’s daughter from a previous marriage, and they ran the place between them.

Hesitantly his hand covered hers. He puffed out a long sigh that ended with a chuckle. ‘What a pair,’ he said. ‘Us, I mean… not …’

‘Henry,’ she said solemnly, ‘talk to me. Say what you need to say about you and Kate. Unload — because I get the feeling that so far it’s all still bottled up inside.’ She paused, her eyes searching for acknowledgement of this truth — which she got when his eyes refused to meet hers. ‘I won’t judge you,’ she promised. ‘I’ll listen, nod, ask questions and then, when you’ve finished, maybe we can possibly think about us. What do you say?’

He squinted, then said weakly, ‘I’m not sure where to begin.’

‘We’ll find a place,’ she said, but was cut short by Henry’s mobile, the ringtone of which he’d changed for another Rolling Stones’ intro: Miss You. He almost rolled his eyes at the corny pathos.

‘Sorry,’ he said and answered it, stating his name. He listened and grunted, then said, ‘Fifteen minutes,’ and hung up. ‘Really sorry, Alison, got to go. I’m investigating a murder. Got a suspect in custody.’

‘OK,’ she said sadly. They looked at each other for a few lingering seconds before she found the courage to say, ‘I’m booked into the Hilton for the night…’

Donaldson leaned over and looked at the bloodstain on the aircraft seat, then turned to the air stewardess who had been on the flight out and who recalled the quiet passenger wedged into the seat. She seemed to quake slightly as Donaldson’s eyes took her in and she gasped as she responded to his question.

‘Yes, I remember him. This was my section of the plane.’ Donaldson watched her mouth and eyes as she spoke and also saw redness creeping up her neck. ‘He… he… er… actually didn’t move once. He didn’t buy anything, no, he did, sorry, a bottle of water. Otherwise just pulled his cap down and slept… now I see why.’

‘You’ve been a great help. Thank y’all, ma’am.’ He purposely switched on the Yankee twang and the OTT politeness. He had only just learned, maybe in the last eighteen months or so, the effect he had on women, many of whom virtually swooned in his presence. ‘Can you tell me anything more about him?’

‘No, not really. It was a fairly late flight and quite a few passengers just tucked in and slept.’

‘OK, that’s great.’ He treated her to his best lopsided grin, which made her pupils expand with a blood rush and sent a tremor all the way through her. She turned and walked unsteadily down the centre of the plane, wafting herself with her hands.

Shuffled behind Donaldson, FB and Beckham were both looking at the blood. Donaldson’s winning smile morphed into a bitter line as he looked at them. ‘What is it now?’ he pondered. ‘Well over twenty-four hours gone? He walked straight on to a plane at an airport not fifty miles from where he’d been operating, unchallenged, wounded, using a false passport f’Christ’s sake. Disembarks four hours later and two thousand miles south, and he’s vanished. Fuck!’ He looked squarely at Beckham. ‘This operation could have gone so much better.’

‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ Beckham retorted, ‘this was one of half a dozen anti-terror operations that happened in the UK yesterday, one of over three hundred each year… you can’t expect-’

Donaldson cut him off. ‘But this was the real deal. We ended up with two real live suicide bombers. One dead, one in custody. Real deal.’

FB stepped in. ‘We still have things. The flat, for one, which might reveal something, and a body to sweat. There’s every hope he’ll talk.’

‘Oh, he’ll talk,’ Donaldson said. ‘I’ll make certain of that.’

What Donaldson didn’t see was the expression on Beckham’s face as he turned away from the American, an expression that said, ‘Oh no you won’t.’

‘What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait? I said I’d be back, or didn’t you pick up your messages?’ Henry demanded of Rik Dean, who looked hurt by Henry’s sharpness.

‘Uh, sorry, boss… it’s Mark Carter.’

‘And?’

‘He won’t speak to Martin or Ray… say’s he’ll only speak to you.’

‘Look, I didn’t kill her,’ Mark said, voice stressed.

‘Right,’ said Henry, unimpressed.

‘But, like I said, we did, y’know, screw… you’re going to find my stuff inside her, can’t deny that.’

‘Can’t deny how bad it will look for you, either.’

They were in an interview room within the boundaries of the custody suite. Mark had been processed and had opted for the services of a duty solicitor, who sat alongside him, facing Henry and Rik across the table. The tape and video recorders were running.

‘Why do you want to talk to me?’ Henry asked.

Mark shrugged helplessly. ‘Cos I know you, I suppose. Not that I like you; I don’t.’

‘Fine. Get talking. The tape’s running.’

Mark glanced at the solicitor, one of Blackpool nick’s regulars. He nodded encouragement to his client. Mark took a breath. ‘I suppose I’ve been stalking her, really,’ he revealed. Henry groaned inwardly. ‘She dumped me and I couldn’t hack it. Like I said, it was just someone else fucking me off. And I kept, y’know, following her and harassing her and generally pissing her off. But I didn’t threaten her or hurt her or anything like that. Just kept annoying her, I suppose.’

‘You stalked her,’ Henry stated flatly. Mark’s body language was desperate, like he was trapped in a well. ‘Did you rape her? Is this what it’s all about?’

‘No — NO! Did I hell. Henry, you know me. I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I was just so…’ He threw his hands up, lost for words. ‘Angry

… pathetic… all alone. Y’know, we’d had a good time, had lots of sex. She was on the pill — but her mum didn’t know. Then she dumped me. I could kinda see it coming, bit by bit. She liked lads, lots of ’em.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Putting it around. Lewis Kitchen was shagging her too.’

‘Just hold on a second. How come you had sex with her a couple of days ago if she’d dumped you?’

‘She caved in to my… persistence.’

‘Stalking, you mean?’ Rik interjected.

‘OK, yeah,’ Mark admitted. ‘I knew her mum was out because I’d seen her go. I was, like, watching the house. Then Natalie snuck back, I think, and spotted me lurking. We talked through the window and she let me in. Felt sorry for me, I suppose. She said she was getting ready to go out but I begged her to let me in so we could talk. One thing led to another, next thing we’re banging each other’s heads off. One for old times’ sake. We did it in the front room. Then she kicked me out, said it was over and she had people to see.’

‘Did she say who?’ Henry asked.

‘No.’

‘Lewis?’

‘Nah, he was well dumped, too.’

‘Who, then?’

Mark shrugged

‘And that was the last time you saw Natalie Philips? After you’d screwed her on her mum’s front carpet.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was she alive?’

‘Yes, she fuckin’ was.’

‘You sure about that?’ Rik swung in. ‘You killed her, didn’t you? You killed her at her mum’s house, I’ll bet.’

‘Fuck you. I’m saying nothing else.’