whole place and had it redecorated. You’d taken it back to the bricks and lifted the floorboards to be absolutely sure you’d eradicated every trace of mould.’ I sounded sympathetic because I was, a little; they had fought hard for Harry’s health. ‘You couldn’t do anything about Paige’s flat though. You went in to her flat at least once, by your own account, to check whether she’d left a tap running – water leaks are the worst source of mould, so it must have been a real concern for you. You saw the black mould that was all over her kitchen wall, right above the bedroom you and Harry had shared. No wonder he got sick. I got hold of the landlord, by the way, and he confirmed he was prepared to allow you to go ahead with renovating the flat as long as you paid for it, but Paige refused. The mould didn’t bother her and when you begged her to reconsider she said no. She didn’t care. She wanted to be left alone to work and she didn’t want the disruption of the building work you wanted to do.’
Mila swallowed, and said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on mine.
‘I’ve heard a lot about Paige, and formed my own opinion of her. She was single-minded to a fault. She was the cat that walked by herself – and as a result she’d taught herself that she didn’t need anyone. When you spoke to her she was drunk enough to be chatty, but she only wanted to talk about her work, her exciting project that was occupying all of her time and energy. She flatly refused to pay any attention to you. And so you killed her.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Mila spat.
‘There was no sign of a struggle in the flat, which confused me. It wasn’t until I went there again on a sunny day and the front door was propped open that I noticed the paint on the walls in the stairwell. A quick job, poorly done according to an expert I consulted.’ The decorator was an expert, I thought. And he’d been right about the shoddiness of it. ‘The flat hadn’t been redecorated in years. Why would someone want to paint the stairs in a hurry?’
‘We found a few specks of blood spatter on the ceiling in the stairwell,’ Derwent said. ‘Tiny, but they were there, when we looked.’
‘You did a good job of cleaning it up but not good enough. We are sure Paige died there, on the stairs. Did you shove her, or stab her, or hit her over the head?’ I waited, but Mila said nothing.
‘You could say it was an accident,’ Derwent prompted. ‘Most people go for that option. But then you’d have to explain why you didn’t help her.’
‘People kill for lots of reasons.’ I looked at her with some sympathy. ‘Wanting to protect the person you love most is a big one. Harry must have been so touched that you were prepared to kill for him.’
Her face was unreadable, remote.
‘What we think you did after she died was to call your boyfriend,’ Derwent went on. ‘Between the two of you, you came up with a plan. Paige had told you enough about her story that you knew she was investigating the murder of a girl whose body was cut up. You decided to make use of that so we would assume it was connected with her work instead of paying attention to the downstairs neighbour who had keys to Paige’s home and a motive growing all over the walls of Paige’s flat. Your boyfriend is good at anatomy. He knows how bodies fit together. That means he knows how to take them apart. He also has a large collection of tools.’
‘There’s that picture of him in his studio. Loads of hand tools, ideal for cutting up the wood and bone he uses in his pieces.’ I smiled. ‘All you had to do was cut her up, leave the pieces somewhere we’d find them and wait for us to jump to the wrong conclusion. Unfortunately, Sam took Paige’s computer and everything that related to the story, so it took us a while to find out about the other dismembered girl. In the meantime, we were looking far too closely at the flat for your liking. But first time round we missed the blood in the stairwell. It was only when we went looking for it with luminol that we found traces of it.’
‘You only missed