it’s like – if I don’t, they’ll do a piece anyway, and whoever writes it won’t be sympathetic like I will. I don’t think I have any choice. I’m so sorry.’
I groaned and sank my head into my hands. She was right, I did know what it was like. I could imagine exactly the pressure Eva would be under to deliver the story, picture the delight on the face of her news editor when he realized that his top crime reporter was best friends with a woman the police appeared to suspect was a serial killer. She was perfectly placed to deliver a fascinating story, but the problem was that this wasn’t just a story, not to me. This was my life, my own personal hell, and the prospect of an in-depth article written by my best mate, my confidante … it didn’t bear thinking about.
I looked up again, tears filling my eyes, my throat constricting.
‘I know. I know you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have to,’ I whispered. ‘But please … can you just put it off a little bit longer? I don’t know if I can handle it. My family, everyone …’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, and I realized she had tears in her eyes too. ‘I promise. I’ll try.’
***
After she left, I forced myself to shower and dress, strip her bed and dust the spare room, vacuum the house, put a load of washing in the machine, take Albert out for a quick scamper. By lunchtime I’d run out of things to do, so I turned the TV on, finding the comedy channel and watching reruns of Cheers, Seinfeld and The Office, pushing the thoughts of Danny and Quinn and the police and Eva’s article and all of it, every horrible, terrifying bit of it, out of my head every time it tried to wriggle its way in, refusing it entry. I was just waiting now, I realized. Waiting for what was going to happen next. Waiting for another text, waiting for the police to come and arrest me, waiting to see if I could summon up enough energy to go back to the station, to tell someone my theory about Quinn attacking or maybe even killing Danny, although what was the point? They wouldn’t believe me anyway. And so I carried on, waiting, waiting, waiting.
By four, to my surprise I suddenly realized I was starving, and I boiled some pasta and threw in a jar of readymade arrabbiata sauce I found in the cupboard. I’d just settled down on the sofa to eat it when my mobile beeped. My stomach lurched. Another text. I put my fork down slowly and reached for the phone.
Have you confessed yet? This is your last warning. I’m coming for you.
I read the words, and then looked to see who’d sent them, expecting as usual to see ‘number withheld’. And then I smiled.
‘YES! Got ya!’ I yelled triumphantly, thumping the cushion next to me. Albert, who’d been lying across my feet, jumped violently and gave a short, accusatory bark.
‘Sorry, Albert. But I was right. I was right!’
I was right. And this time, he’d made a mistake. This time, the text hadn’t come from an anonymous number. He’d used his own phone. The text was from Quinn O’Connor.
Chapter 32
‘Don’t you see? He’s trying to FRAME me! He sent me those other texts, as well as this one, from some sort of throwaway phone, burner phone, whatever you call it. Not his phone anyway. But then he sent another one, this one, and he screwed up. He used his own phone, look! You can tell the texts are from the same person just by looking at them. I think he hurt Danny, maybe even killed him, and don’t ask me why, because I haven’t figured that bit out yet, and anyway that’s your job, not mine. But he did it, and he’s trying to get me locked up for it! And threatening me too. You must see that surely, you …’
Devon held up a hand.
‘OK, OK. Slow down.’
Gemma O’Connor was standing in front of him, pink-cheeked and wild-eyed, practically jumping up and down on the spot in her efforts to persuade him that her missing husband’s cousin, Quinn O’Connor, was trying to frame her for murder. He’d been shocked when the call had come from downstairs to tell him she had come in yet again and was demanding to talk to him; after long discussions with Helena in the empty incident room the