Page 132 of Dissection of a Murder
“But…it’s a man’s life!”
“It’s his or mine,” I interrupt, standing in front of him in nothing but a pair of knickers and an oversized T-shirt. I’m shaking so much, my legs are knocking together.
“There must be another way. We could both leave. Claim to have nothing to do with it.”
“There’s far too much evidence linking us here. Besides, it’s your flat. Our best way out is for one of us to be arrested and then get the best defense team there is. Juries are unpredictable. There’s always a chance of a win. No matter how cut and dried it might first appear. We need a jury to find one of us not guilty. That’s our only option.”
The words leave my mouth, but they don’t feel real.How is this real?
“You could do it,” he suggests, after a few seconds.
“What?” I ask, as though I’m not already ten steps ahead of him.
“I’ll let them arrest me for it. You can defend me. No one can understand this case better than you.”
Still, I hesitate. “I can’t let you do that for me.” And I mean it. I know it’s our best chance but the thought of losing him is too much to bear. Then again, I can’t destroy everything I have, everything I’ve built.
I would rather die.
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m not guaranteed to win,” I remind him. “I’ve never led a murder trial before. I might not even be allowed. You’d have to insist I be your barrister.”
“I will. I’ll make them let you do it. I believe in you, Leila. You’llwin because it’s me. And because you were here. I didn’t kill him and that’s the truth.”
Can I pull it off?
The person I am now can’t. But I know someone who can.
Delilah.
I need to bring her back. The most dangerous, destructive, toxic, ruthless parts of me. The person I’d finally managed to escape. She’s my only hope of getting out of this mess.
From now on, no more of this emotionally driven, weak Leila crap. She’s the reason I’ve ended up here to begin with. My dad was right. The rules protected me all those years, and they’ll protect me again. Until after Jack is acquitted, I need to be that girl again.
Well, I saygirl. I don’t think that part of me is even human anymore.
It’s just temporary. As long as I don’t allow her to consume me, I’ll be fine.
“The first thing we need to do is get rid ofthat,” I tell him, pointing at Jack’s phone.
We sit down and I go throughexactlyhow I’ll run the trial with him. There is no room for error—every step must be meticulously planned. Jack fills me in on what happened between Lewis and Quinn, why Anton was at Jack’s apartment in the first place. I can’t believe he didn’t tell me before now. Yet more information to process on top of everything else.
Breathe.
I tell Jack that the second I receive the brief, I need to prepare it as if I knownothingabout the case. I’ll need hard evidence to present to a jury and will need to go through the motions of collecting it, so as not to arouse suspicion.
Suspicion, however, will be raised around why Anton was here to begin with. Suddenly, I know exactly what to do. The phone will bevital evidence because it has the video of Quinn killing Lewis on it. But we can’t let the device itself be found, since the recording of everything that just happened now is on it as well. Even if deleted, it could be retrieved by a digital expert.How do I fix this?
I stand up, start pacing. Quinn killed someone. He can be our linchpin here. I’ll take the phone to just outside Anton’s house as soon as I leave and switch it on when I’m there. I know where he lives—I remember going there years ago for some awful garden party when I first started dating Julian. Cell site analysis will pick it up, and I’ll plant in the jurors’ heads that Quinn stole it to get rid of it.
I’ll then store it safely at Audrey’s house, the place that has become my alibi for the affair for the past seven months. It’s been a godsend, being able to nip off to my mother-in-law’s house on a Friday night, go in for five minutes, and then leave. The best part about it is she doesn’t even remember if you’ve been or gone.
We need to plant more female DNA around the flat to muddy the prosecution evidence.I run downstairs to Innocence, picking up a few used glasses on the way. Thank god they don’t have CCTV here. Nipping into the girls’ loos, I compliment some random girls on their hair, running my hands through their locks to collect some strands, before running back upstairs and placing them around Jack’s flat. I swipe a lighter that has fallen on the floor to take up, too.
If we raise self-defense at trial, there has to appear to have been a struggle, so I tell Jack to pick up Anton’s left hand and bang his knuckles on the floor. I hit Jack in the face a few times as well, to corroborate evidence of a confrontation. I do it quickly and devoid of emotion.
Delilah is in charge now.
