No Good Reason (36 page)

“Yes. They had a flat battery on their rental car, and Billy went out to the cottage to replace it. Rachel couldn’t pinpoint anything unusual about his behaviour, but that day was most likely the catalyst.”

Sanne leaned forward, the fog in her head lifting as she began to draw elements of the case together. Her eyes widened as she considered the timeline. “Jesus, Rachel was probably in that workshop when we went to the garage that first time. Billy was so fucking eager to help. He even offered to recheck all their recent jobs for us.”

“Easy enough to do that when you know you’ve purged the one that’d incriminate you. He never billed the car rental agency, so the job wasn’t recorded at their end,” Eleanor said.

Sanne was on a roll. “What about the Land Rover, and Callum Clark? Was Clark involved in the abductions?”

Eleanor went to take another sip of coffee, and then seemed to have second thoughts and put the mug down. “Yes. Well, no, possibly not in that sense. Rachel identified Billy Cotter as the sole perpetrator. Ned Moseley was released on bail a couple of hours ago, and Clark is down in holding on suspicion of assisting an offender. We got access to Cotter’s bank records early this morning, and Scotty’s spent the day trawling through them. Four days ago, Cotter purchased an Audi A4. Digging a little deeper, Scotty also found a record of a Land Rover that Cotter bought in February through the same auction centre. No surprise that it matches the vehicle from Turner Street.”

“Billy probably bought the Landie as a fixer-upper,” Sanne said. “He’s always had old wrecks lying around the yard. Most likely he just used it because it was convenient. And Clark bragged about a new car to one of the junior doctors.”

Her enthusiastic deduction brought a smile to Eleanor’s face. “Clark is the current registered owner of a 2007 Audi A4. According to his preliminary interview, the car was totally worth slicing up his hand for, so that he could feed us information about Moseley’s lock-up. He and Cotter were casual drinking buddies, and he didn’t ask any questions as to Cotter’s motives, because apparently he’s a fucking lackwit.”

Sanne frowned. “But he didn’t tell the police, he told Emily—Ah.” She felt herself flush. “He took a roundabout route, didn’t he?”

“Exactly. Cotter persuaded him to go to Dr. Fielding. If he’d come directly to us, we might have started to ask why. Throwing in an extra loop made his story more plausible.”

“And I took the bait. Hook, line, and sinker. Bloody hell.” Sanne hid her face in her hands, mortified that her relationship with Meg had been exploited in such a way. She thought of Ned Moseley, frantic and bewildered during questioning, trying to uphold some misguided code and protect his friend, who in turn had lied and schemed to shift the blame onto him. Greed had motivated Callum Clark’s involvement, but Billy had taken advantage of Ned’s vulnerability in a particularly insidious way. Had Billy been standing in the workshop with Rachel when he’d answered Sanne’s phone call the previous night? The likelihood of that, and the gratitude she had felt when he’d agreed to help her, made her want to punch something hard and keep punching until it smashed.

“Sanne—”

Sanne shook her head to cut off whatever Eleanor might say. She didn’t need placating or consoling, she just needed this case to stop fucking around with her. She lowered her hands. “How much did Joan have to do with all this?”

“We’re not sure. Plenty, I would guess, but she was in surgery last night, and no one’s been able to speak to her yet.”

“What about Billy? Has he been interviewed?”

Eleanor made a steeple out of her fingers and leaned forward until her lips rested against them. She appeared to be stalling, which was so out of character that it raised the hairs on Sanne’s arms.

“Cotter is on his way over here,” she said, choosing her words with care. “Sanne, he’s refusing to speak to anyone but you.”

*

Sanne took the paper towel Meg proffered and used it to dry the water she had just splashed on her face. She tossed the towel into the bin, and then held on to the edges of the sink and scrutinised her reflection in the mirror. She looked older somehow, as if the last twelve days had aged her prematurely, adding haggard lines to her brow and draining the colour from her complexion, leaving it a dull grey. The door rattled. She tensed, but the lock held.

“You can still change your mind,” Meg said, as the footsteps outside faded to nothing. “I’m sure Eleanor would understand.” She smiled when Sanne arched an eyebrow. “What? Were you expecting me to drag you home by your ear?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“San, in the last few days you’ve thrown yourself over the edge of a rock face, chased down a dark alley after a man twice your size, and beaten up an old lady.” She shrugged at Sanne’s horrified laugh. “Hey, she tried to knock your head off. Bottom line is, you’re a big girl who can make her own decisions, and you’re more than capable of taking on a piece of shit like Billy Cotter.”

“I’m not that big.” Unable to maintain eye contact, Sanne watched the dripping tap instead. “Billy didn’t give a reason for demanding to speak to me. What if he’s just coming here to play games? I don’t want to sit in front of him while he tells me everything he did. Not today. I can’t deal with that today.”

“So why did you say yes?”

It was a fair question, and one Sanne had been trying to answer for the last hour. “Because I might be able to get a confession, which could save Josie and Rachel from having to testify. He may even tell us what part Joan played, if he thinks there’s a chance it would reduce his sentence.”

Those were the official reasons, the ones Eleanor had taken to the CPS, who were so sure that witness testimony alone would secure a conviction that they were willing to allow an under-qualified detective to interview their main suspect. Sanne pushed away from the sink and placed her chilled palms against her cheeks, easing the heat from them. Her other reason wasn’t officially sanctioned.

“Meg, I think I want to look him in the eye and prove that I’m not scared of him.”

“How scared are you?”

Sanne leaned her head onto Meg’s shoulder, hiding her face and muffling her answer. “I’m fucking terrified.”

*

Sitting at the table in the interview room, Sanne thought she had prepared herself for Billy’s entrance. She imagined him striding through the door, his eyes ablaze with the victory he had won in getting her to agree to this. In all of the scenarios she had envisioned, though, she had forgotten that he’d broken his leg.

A bang on the door only partially opened it, and a flurry of curses preceded a second attempt. Sanne exchanged a puzzled look with Eleanor before a uniformed officer stepped into the room and held the door open fully, allowing his colleague to wheel Billy through. The officer struggled to manoeuvre the wheelchair in the confined space, giving Sanne ample opportunity to study Billy as he was positioned in front of her.

He seemed smaller than she remembered, sallow and unkempt, with a dusting of five o’clock shadow and an ill-fitting prison uniform. The left side of his face was grotesquely swollen and discoloured where Rachel had carved into him. Every time he moved, the cuffs around his wrists clattered against the table, as if he hadn’t come to terms with their presence.

Sanne waited until the officers left the room and Billy’s lawyer was seated. Then she set the recorder running. The standard opening—stating the time, date, and the names of those present—was reassuring in its familiarity, affording her an immediate sense of control over the proceedings. She didn’t react when Billy grinned at her, and his smile quickly faltered. He put a hand to his face as if the effort had pained him, and then looked past her to glare at Eleanor.

“What’s she doing here?”

His lack of respect made Sanne bristle. “She’s my boss. You can speak to me, that’s fine, but DI Stanhope remains in the room.”

“Not part of the deal, Sanne.” The singsong lilt he wrapped around her name sent acid swirling into her stomach.

“Deal’s off, then.” She checked her watch. “Interview terminated at—”

“Hey now, come on, play nice.” He had the audacity to look offended. “I wanted to apologise for last night.”

She couldn’t help but do a double take. “You what?”

Billy shook off the warning hand of his lawyer. “Oh, like keeping quiet will make a fucking difference,” he snapped at him. He turned back to Sanne. “I never meant for you to get hurt. We’re mates, aren’t we?”

“You drove your van at me! You almost killed me and my partner.”

He opened his hands wide, straining the cuffs to their limit. The overhead strip light glinted off the metal. “Your mate poked his nose where it didn’t belong. You were collateral damage.”

“Is that what Josie Albright was?” Sanne asked, sensing a way to get the interview on track. “Was she just collateral damage to you? It was Rachel you wanted really, but you took them both so you could use one to control the other, didn’t you?”

A smile spread slowly across Billy’s face, and for the first time Sanne glimpsed the man she had spent almost two weeks hunting down. He used his index finger to wipe a slick trail of saliva from his bottom lip.

“It worked well, for a while.” He spoke in a hushed voice, as if divulging a secret. “After a little persuasion, Rachel did everything I asked, and the other one didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on. I blame Mal, y’know. Fucker cuts his stuff with a right load of shit. Probably sold me a weak batch. I get back there, and that bitch has scarpered.”

“Mal—that would be Malcolm Atley,” Sanne said.

Billy tried to appear nonchalant at the mention of Atley’s name, but an involuntary twitch at the corner of his jaw gave him away. “You’ve been doing your homework. Is that how you knew it was me? Because I’ve been wondering. I thought Ned might finally have cracked, but I don’t think he did, did he?”

“No, you had Ned right where you wanted him. He never gave you up.”

Billy beamed, obviously proud. “I was so close,
so
close to pulling this off. I just held on to her for too long. Couldn’t let her go, you see? My mum nagged me, even offered to do it herself, but I begged,
begged
for another week, and look where it got me.” He rattled the handcuffs.

Sanne could practically feel Eleanor’s eyes burning into her back, urging her not to fuck this up. Billy, still full of bravado, didn’t seem to recognise the significance of what he had said.

“What did your mum offer to do, Billy? Did she have a plan to get rid of Rachel?” She kept her voice level and conversational, as if the questions weren’t a big deal.

Billy nodded, unthinking. “Yeah, we were going to weigh her down at one of Ned’s lakes, once the fuss died down a bit. My mum knew you’d been searching out there.”

Eleanor let out a breath as Billy’s lawyer shook his head in dismay. Sanne ignored them both. “Your mum knew about the pornography as well, didn’t she?”

Billy’s face reddened slightly, giving the impression he was more ashamed of that than of anything else he had done. “She told me to hide it. She said my dad would leather me if he found it.”

“So you asked Ned to keep hold of it, and voilà, he’s your perfect fall guy.”

Billy smirked. “Had you all chasing your fucking tails for a while, didn’t I? You and your mate standing there in my garage, asking your questions. You know what I’d been doing half an hour earlier?”

Sanne didn’t want to know. She couldn’t even bear for him to keep looking at her, so she shut him down. “When did your mum kill your dad, Billy?”

He gaped at her and then closed his mouth so viciously that his teeth slammed together. A faint pink spot on one of his dressings began to spread and darken. “I’m not talking about that,” he muttered.

She didn’t care that he was bleeding. She wanted to push him until he snapped. She wanted this to be over. “Did he find Rachel? Was he going to come and tell us?”

“I fucking mean it, Sanne. I’m not—”

She slammed her palms on the table, cutting him off. “How long did he live for after she hit him? Days? Was he conscious, Billy? Did he understand what was happening to him?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Billy tried to stand, but his fractured leg collapsed beneath him. “Shut the fuck up, you bitch. I mean it.”

Sanne didn’t even blink. “Would you like to take a break?”

“No.” He was sweating, the sharp smell filling the room.

“Okay.” She couldn’t remember the bullet points Eleanor had suggested, and the notes in front of her seemed nonsensical. She stopped trying to decipher her handwriting. There was only one more thing she needed to know. “Why Josie and Rachel? Why did you choose them?”

He closed his eyes, twining his fingers around the length of chain between his wrists and stroking it gently. “I asked Rachel out for a drink,” he said, still working the metal. “The day I went to the cottage to fix their car. The other one laughed at me. I didn’t get it at first, didn’t realise what the joke was.” He dropped the chain and looked directly at Sanne. “I knew where Ned kept the keys to the cottage. I found a route they’d planned, and I followed them up onto Corvenden. They couldn’t have made it easier for me. It was the perfect place to teach them a lesson.”

He lunged suddenly, his hands sliding across the table to brush against Sanne’s. Her chair scraped the floor as she shoved herself beyond his reach.

“I wanted you to know.” He was panting, his nostrils flaring. “That’s why I came here, Sanne. I wanted you to know how fucking lucky you are.”

Eleanor stepped forward and slammed her hand onto the recorder to stop it. She shouted for the officers, who came and hauled Billy back into his wheelchair, but he never took his eyes off Sanne. Blood soaked into his bandages as he laughed at her.

“Get him out of my sight,” Eleanor told the officers. She waited until his lawyer followed him out. When the door had closed, she turned back to Sanne. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Sanne couldn’t move from the chair; her legs were shaking.

“Do you know what he meant by that?”

Sanne nodded silently.

Eleanor ejected the disc from the machine. “Off the record, Sanne.”