Page 102 of The Unforgiven

“I can just tell.”

I shook my head and lay back down. I was okay about Cavan and Lucy. I didn’t care I was moving out of the flat, albeit nowhere of my own to go, although a phone call had sorted out where I’d be staying for the next few months. Lucy wasn’t a friend, and my relationship with her had felt forced and strained recently.

“I can show you where your standards should be in you want?” Vinny sat down next to me heavily, almost making me rocket off the cushions. “Want a biscuit?”

“No.”

“No to the biscuit, coz I’m sure you were saying no to me.”

“No to both.” I kicked him lightly in the side of his thigh. “It would be like sleeping with my brother.”

“I’m not your brother, so it wouldn’t.” He stuffed another biscuit in his mouth in a really non-attractive manner.

“Stop being a dick, Vin. I’ve had a long day.” I kicked him again, not actually hard enough to hurt.

“You think I’m joking, don’t you?” At least his mouth was free from biscuit.

“Yep. Like you have been for the last five years.” Vinny lived for making a pass at me every so often.

“Maybe one day you’ll get the hint. Anyway, do you want sugar in your tea?”

“Half a teaspoonful. Thank you.” I only put sugar in tea when I was like this, on a come down from a wild day. It was something that only Vinny and a couple of other knew.

Vinny had remembered. He always did.

I sat back up and looked over at him, stirring the tea, adding milk, taking out the tea bags, which he should’ve done before pouring the milk, which we’d argued about dozens of times.

Did he mean what he said?

I didn’t want to think about that right now. I just needed to sleep so I could get through tomorrow.

Chapter Forty-Four

“Can you tell us where you were, Justine? On these dates?” Wrigley pushed the piece of paper with the dates and times of the murders of the five Aberwyn girls closer to the woman who sat opposite him. I knew he was becoming frustrated, although that was only because I’d worked with him for so long and could read how tense his shoulders were, of how he clenched his hand.

There were eight of us watching the events unfold in the interview room, or rather, watching the events not unfold.

Justine Bellamy, also known as Kelly Anne Marsh, had been assessed by two Liaison and Diversion mental health practitioners, who’d concluded that she was fit to be interviewed. She wasn’t showing any signs of being floridly psychotic, so she wasn’t experiencing psychotic delusions. Her history of mental illness had been considered, but currently she was assessed to be coherent, rational – she knew where she was and what she’d been arrested for.

But she was currently refusing to speak.

“I understand you don’t want to talk to me, Justine. Or do you prefer I call you Kelly-Anne?” Wrigley sat back, pretending to be as relaxed as he was with his grandchildren.

“Justine.” It was the first word she’d spoken.

“Okay, so you can speak. You’re just choosing not to.”

She smiled at him, then checked her well-manicured nails. I’d noticed them when she’d walked into the interview room, short, tidy, painted yellow with what I thought were red polka dots on them, like specks of blood on a spring day. Justine was nothing like Kelly-Anne. Justine was well put together, even after a night in a police cell. Her face was clear of make-up, and I’d been told she’d requested some moisturiser which had been given, an odd thing to consider after you’d been arrested.

We had enough evidence to charge her. DNA from Evelyn Smith had been recovered from the garage, fast tracked overnight; the knife we’d found was consistent with the weapon in all five murders, as well as Charlie Mason’s death; the garage had offered up treasures from the Aberwyn girls – clothes, mobile phones, jewellery – all circumstantial but stacking up as evidence against Kelly-Anne Marsh, as she was still legally known.

Her brief knew this. Her advice would be to co-operate and admit to the murders, looking for a lenient sentence. A not guilty plea when there was so much in the way of evidence, with a motive that was sad but strong, would not go down well with judge or jury.

“Justine, what can you tell me about the women you killed? We know you did it – everything ties together and the more we investigate, the more we see how you did it. Why you did it. What can you tell me, Justine? What are your insights? I’m curious.” He was animated, playing the part of a captive audience.

“No comment.”

At least she was speaking now. She’d spent three years as a selective mute, her medical records showing that she’d gone months without talking. This had coincided with her eatingdisorder, leading up to her being sectioned, which was when she met Charlie.