‘Of course I do. He’s got tremendous ability.’
‘That’s only part of the reason. The other part is that you see something of yourself in him. Something of the early Carol Jordan, the scrapper who hadn’t risen to her natural level yet. You do it with all of them.’ He pulled a face. ‘Well, maybe not Stacey. But you know Paula’s a great interviewer. You know it because the great interviewer in you recognises it in her. So let her do it, Carol.’
He saw the doubt on her face. ‘Sometimes I feel I do all the graft round here and get none of the fun,’ she complained.
He smiled. ‘I love a good bit of self-pity. That’s very generous of you. Besides, if it hadn’t been for the new girlfriend being in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge, this might have taken us a lot longer to put together. Paula’s earned her moment in the sun.’
Carol glared at him. ‘I hate it when you make me behave well.’
‘You’ll respect yourself in the morning, though.’ He drank some coffee and made a face. ‘Come on, let’s go and watch Paula do her thing.’
Paula kept Diane Patrick and her solicitor waiting for almost twenty minutes. She made the decision when she discovered the woman’s lawyer was Bronwen Scott, the doyenne of Bradfield’s criminal solicitors. Scott had earned her reputation by winning reprieves for the guilty as well as clearing the innocent so she was never going to be loved by the police. But she liked to rub their noses in her successes. Carol made no secret of her loathing for Scott, and her team cheerfully backed her to the hilt.
The disparity between the two women opposite Paula could hardly have been greater. Scott was immaculate in a suit whose cut and fabric screamed the opposite of state-funded legal aid. She’d always had a haughty expression, but these days her face hardly seemed to move at all. Paula suspected Botox or a face lift that had ended up a fraction too tight. Diane Patrick, by contrast, was dishevelled and ravaged by her earlier tears. Her hair was chaotic, her dark eyes puffy and bloodshot. She looked at Paula with piteous eyes, lower lip quivering. Paula remained unmoved by the pair of them.
She made sure Diane was cautioned on tape and then opened her folder. ‘You abducted and drugged a fourteen-year-old boy this evening, Diane. When we walked into the house where you live with your partner Warren Davy, we found you alone with Ewan McAlpine. He was unconscious. On the table in front of you were a transparent polythene sack, a roll of packing tape and a scalpel—’
‘Are we going to get to a question any time soon? We know all this. You have given us disclosure,’ Scott interrupted.
Paula refused to let herself be needled. ‘I’m just reminding your client of the seriousness of her position. As I was saying. The things on the table - they were identical to the paraphernalia of four murders committed against fourteen-year-olds in the past two weeks. It’s hard not to draw the inference that you were about to murder Ewan McAlpine.’
Diane Patrick’s eyes opened as wide as her swollen lids would allow. She looked horrified. ‘I wasn’t. No.’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘I never killed anybody. You’ve got to believe me. It was Warren. I was waiting for Warren. He made me do it.’ She let out a terrible racking sob. ‘I hate myself, I wish I was dead.’ She buried her face in her hands.
Paula waited. Eventually Diane raised her head, tears streaking her cheeks. ‘Is it your contention that Warren Davy murdered Jennifer Maidment, Daniel Morrison, Seth Viner and Niall Quantick? And that he planned to murder Ewan McAlpine.’
Diane gulped and hiccupped. Then she nodded. ‘Yes. He killed them all. He made me help. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do what he told me.’
‘And you believed him?’ Paula deliberately sounded incredulous.
Diane looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Of course I believed him. He already killed my baby. Why would I not believe him?’
‘He killed your baby? When did this happen?’
Diane shuddered. ‘Last year. She was just hours old.’ A long sigh seemed to liberate her into words. ‘He’d virtually kept me prisoner for the last few weeks of the pregnancy. I gave birth at home. He said there was no need for hospital, women had been doing it at home for generations. And he was right. It was OK. Jodie, I called her. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was all I’d ever wanted. And then he took her away and put his hand over her mouth and nose till she stopped breathing.’ Her words began to jerk like a DJ scratching a record. She wrapped her arms round herself. ‘He killed her. He killed her right in front of me.’ She began rocking back and forth, her fingers clawing at her upper arms.
Again, Paula just sat out the storm. She knew Scott wanted this to end but she wanted the reason to be Paula. And Paula was determined to give the lawyer no excuse. ‘Why would he do that?’ she said once Diane was composed again.
‘He did a bad thing. I don’t know what it was. He couldn’t tell me. It was something to do with a client’s data. He did something and somebody died.’ She seemed to be looking inward, as if reliving some scene in her memory. ‘And something inside him seemed to come loose.’ She met Paula’s steady gaze. ‘I know that sounds weird, but that’s what it was like. He kept talking about carrying evil inside him like a virus. And he said my Jodie couldn’t live to carry his virus to the next generation. He was crying when he did it.’ She put her hand to her mouth and began rocking again.
Paula had been prepared for Diane to blame it all on her partner, particularly since he’d slipped through the net and wasn’t there to present his version of events. She’d started from a position of scepticism, but as the interview proceeded her doubts were shrinking. There was something horribly convincing about Diane Patrick’s narrative. And she was certainly in a state. It was hard to imagine how she could be faking this come-apart. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘But here’s where you’re losing me. How did he go from killing his own child to murdering these teenagers?’
Diane Patrick’s face registered naked astonishment. It was so blatant that it cast doubt over the rest of what Paula had seen. ‘Because they were his children too. You didn’t know?’
‘How could we know?’ Paula said. ‘We knew they were connected by the same sperm donor, but we had no way of finding out it was Warren. Nobody gets access to that information. Not even police officers with a warrant.’
Diane stared at her, apparently lost for words.
Paula smiled. ‘Which kind of begs the question. How did Warren find out who they were?’
There was a long silence. Paula would have bet Diane was weighing up whether a lie was going to be caught out. At last, she spoke. Slowly, as if feeling her way. ‘He forced me into it. He threatened to kill me.’
‘I got that, yes. He killed your baby then he threatened you. It didn’t occur to you that you could escape?’
Diane gave a bitter little laugh. ‘It’s obvious you know nothing about the way the modern world works. When it comes to cyberspace, Warren is one of the masters of the universe. I could maybe run, but I could never hide. He’d have found a way to get me.’
‘You’re talking now,’ Paula pointed out.
‘Yes. But you’re going to catch him and keep him away from me,’ Diane said, completely calm for the first time in their interview.
‘So where is he? Where are we going to find him?’
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t spent the night at home since the first murder.’
‘You told my colleague he was in Malta.’
Diane looked at her lawyer. ‘I was afraid,’ she said.
‘You heard my client,’ Scott said. ‘She has been in fear of her life. Her actions have been the product of duress.’
‘Duress isn’t a defence to murder,’ Paula said.