‘He did,’ Mia said. ‘Before I got there. He said he’d been up and checked, but he was positive she was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.’
‘So what was your role?’
‘Cleaner-upper, basically. Someone had to take charge. They were all in shock. After Randall and Sarah had gone, I got Laurence to sit down with a glass of whisky and went up to the bathroom.’ Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. She put her hand to her chest.
‘All right?’ Banks said. Mia nodded. ‘Take a few deep breaths. Can you go on, or do you want me to fetch the doctor?’
Mia took some deep breaths then nodded again. ‘No. I’m OK. It was just so awful.’
‘Can you tell us what you found in the bathroom?’
‘Adrienne was lying in a bath full of water. It was lukewarm by then. There was a bottle smashed on the floor and a smell of whisky. God, I hate the smell of whisky.’
Banks remembered Keane and the Laphroaig. ‘I can understand that,’ he said.
‘It was clear even to me that Adrienne was dead. Her skin was almost white, her eyes were open. I took a shaving mirror from the washstand and held it to her lips. Nothing. There was a little trickle of vomit from the corner of her mouth, down to her chest.’
‘What did you do next?’
‘I went back down to Laurence and asked him what he wanted to do. He said we had to move her, get her out of his house. He seemed fairly calm about it, but I could tell there was going to be no arguing with him.’
‘So you went along?’
Mia nodded. ‘I got a large bin bag from him and cleaned up the bathroom, all the glass, and washed off the whisky. Then I drained the tub and Laurence helped me get Adrienne out onto a plastic sheet. After that, I washed out the tub and picked up her clothes and stuff where she’d left it on the chair. I dried her off as best I could. We dressed her downstairs. It wasn’t easy, but she hadn’t... you know, her body wasn’t stiff or anything, so we got it done. Put her clothes and her bracelet back on.’
‘It was missing a charm,’ said Banks.
‘Oh. I didn’t notice that. It must have come off when she took it off to get in the bath.’
‘Go on.’
‘I put all her other stuff in the bin bag. And the burners. It was a bit of a nasty night out, fog mostly, but it wasn’t impossible. Laurence said we should bury her somewhere, but I said we should just take her into the country and put her somewhere she’d be found before too long. That it would be cruel to bury her and have no one know where she was or what had happened to her. He was worried there’d be evidence linking him to her death, but I persuaded him that the bath would have washed everything away, and it would look like a suicide anyway, which he said he thought it was, and in the end he agreed we’d leave her somewhere more open.’
Banks nodded. ‘It did look like a suicide, except we figured out pretty quickly that she didn’t die in the car. No sign of the whisky, for a start and, of course, we wondered how she had got there.’
‘I admit we weren’t exactly thinking too clearly. I just wanted her to be found. I mean, I knew you wouldn’t just assume it was her car, that you’d check and find the owner, but I thought you might accept that she’d just taken an overdose and wandered into the wilderness to die.’
‘People don’t really do that in real life, Mia.’
‘Maybe I’ve got too much imagination. Anyway, we were just driving around, and I saw that car on Belderfell with the POLICE AWARE sign. I’d seen them before and I knew it could be a few days before anyone got around to it. I’d like to say I was struck with the irony of it, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t in a mood for irony at all. We got her into the driver’s seat of the car — we were both wearing gloves — then we set off back.’
‘What about Hadfield?’
Mia rubbed her eyes. ‘Laurence was in a really bad state when it was done. I think it just hit him all at once, you know, how real it was. Before that I think he’d been living off nervous energy, but when it was done and the body was gone, he started to get restless. He said he wanted to be sick, and we were near Tetchley Moor, so I pulled into the car park there and he got out. Then he said he needed some air, to think things over, and he headed out onto the moor.’
‘Were you worried that he might decide he needed to get rid of you?
Mia glanced sharply at Banks. ‘No. Never. We were accomplices by then, in whatever we’d done. I couldn’t incriminate him without incriminating myself. We’d agreed to hush everything up. I had the bin bag full of Adrienne’s stuff — her handbag, the burner phone, Hadfield’s too, the towel we’d used to dry her off, the smashed whisky bottle — everything that could be incriminating.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I took out the sim cards so I could destroy them, then I put a couple of heavy rocks in the bin bag and dumped it in that reservoir near Laurence’s house. Then I picked up the other burners over the next few days. I’d bought them all at once, you see, and I was paranoid that you might be able to trace them. I know I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I went around everyone and got them new ones, from different shops, a place in Huddersfield, another in Bradford, and so on. Maybe I’ve got too much imagination, but I’ve seen TV programmes where the police work magic with mobile phones, so I wanted to leave no traces of the original batch.’
‘What about Randall’s and Sarah Chen’s phones?’
‘I assume Randall must have got rid of them himself. He may be a bastard, but he’s not stupid. I didn’t see or hear from either him or Sarah again after they left that night. Not until... you know.’
‘We got as far as Argos,’ said Banks, ‘so your imagination probably served you well. What happened to Hadfield?’
‘I waited and waited and I thought I heard something, a cry or something, from the moor, so I got out and went up after him. It was hard to see up there in the mist, and I was worried I’d trip over some roots and twist my ankle or something. But before I’d got far, I saw him. Laurence. He was lying at the bottom of a gully, about twenty feet down. It was a pretty clear view, and I had my phone light with me. I could tell right away that he was dead. His neck was at an odd angle, there was a lot of blood on the ground, and he wasn’t moving. I called his name but got no answer. I couldn’t figure out a way to get down there.’
‘You didn’t think to call an ambulance?’
‘That would have meant questions. Just what we were trying to avoid. It was too late, anyway.’
‘What questions were you trying to avoid? Remember, there was only you left now. You and Randall.’
‘I didn’t know about Sarah. Not then. How could I? I got no answer when I tried to call them to tell them to destroy their phones. I just assume Randall did it, anyway.’
‘When did you find out about Sarah?’
‘Not until the body was found and it was in the papers.’
‘Randall didn’t tell you?’
‘No. Why would he?’
‘He didn’t ask for your help?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘Weren’t you worried about Sarah, though, before her body was found?’
‘Maybe a bit, when I couldn’t get through to her, but I assumed she’d just got rid of her burner phone, as I wanted. It made sense for us to keep apart for a while, till things blew over.’
Banks sighed. ‘Oh, dear. You ought to know that things like that never blow over.’
‘Well, what would you have done?’
‘So you left Laurence Hadfield for dead in the gully. Then what?’
‘He was dead.’ Mia seemed to sulk for moment, then she said. ‘I went back to his house to make sure everything was in order. Wiped any surfaces I thought I’d touched. Checked the bathroom again, checked for anything of Adrienne’s that might still be there, clothes in the wardrobe and so on. Found nothing, so I left. I just dumped the bin bag in the water and went home. I was bloody exhausted by then.’