and I tried, tried so hard to argue, tried to remind them again of the CCTV footage at the gym, the footage I was convinced showed Danny, tried to tell them over and over again that he’d been alive and well and living with me in Bristol until two and a half weeks ago. They listened, and then swiftly dismissed all my arguments, their eyes cold.
If he was using the gym, if he was travelling around Bristol every day, why wasn’t he using his bank account?
Why didn’t he contact anyone, not even his own mother? Why do you have no photos of him, no emails from him, after the thirtieth of January? Why are you lying to us, Gemma? What did you do to Danny?
And then they asked, again, about the other men, the two killed in London, the two in Bristol. And about somebody else, somebody I’d never heard of, a man called Declan who’d apparently been attacked in London on the afternoon I’d been there to meet Quinn. I stared at them in disbelief at that, my mind racing.
‘Well … maybe it was him. Quinn. I told you I think it might have been him who’s behind Danny’s disappearance. Maybe it wasn’t just Danny he hurt, maybe Quinn’s your man for all of these murders; I don’t know, I’m not a bloody detective. Maybe it was him who attacked this guy, if it was near where we met … because it wasn’t me, it wasn’t, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t hurt anyone, this is ridiculous, you’ve got it all wrong …’
I’d finally broken down then, huge sobs wracking my body, and they’d said we could take a break. I’d still, up until that point, declined the services of a solicitor; I was innocent, so why would I need legal representation? But as I’d been led back to my cell once again, it suddenly hit me. This had gone too far. It was real now. I’d been arrested, and the police thought I was lying, lying about everything, and that meant I was in big trouble, huge trouble, and I had absolutely no idea how to deal with it. And so I’d told them I’d changed my mind, and asked if I could call my father. Dad had been aghast, almost speechless with shock and fury, when I’d phoned to tell him what had happened, but I’d somehow got it through to him that I needed a solicitor, someone good, and he’d promised to sort it, his voice cracking with emotion as he said goodbye.
So I was waiting, waiting in my cold cell, and a day and a night seemed to somehow have passed, and I sat there, shivering, with nothing to look at but the four dirty walls and the toilet in one corner, a smell of bleach and urine in the air. They’d brought me some food earlier – a polystyrene cup of weak tea and a cardboard carton with some sort of microwaved stew – but my stomach had turned at the sight of it and I’d pushed it aside, watching a layer of grease slowly forming on top of the meat as it cooled. I sat there, huddled in my rough blanket, my whole body shaking, and a weird sensation began to creep over me, as if the coldness of my body had finally reached my brain, slowly shutting it down, rendering it incapable of thought, incapable of anything except trying to survive one more minute of this hell, and then another, and another.
And then, something so bizarre and remarkable happened that when it did, all I could do was sit there, motionless, staring at the man who’d just opened my cell door. It was the custody sergeant, and he was smiling.
‘Hey Gemma. You’re free to go. They’ve found your husband. Alive,’ he said.
Chapter 35
Devon wrapped his hands around the warm mug of tea that had just been placed on the table in front of him and stared at Danny O’Connor. After weeks of looking at the man’s picture pinned to the board back in the incident room it was just so – so peculiar – seeing him bustling around the grubby kitchen of the small flat they were now sitting in, making hot drinks, offering ginger nut biscuits from a half-empty packet. Seeing him alive, instead of finding him dead.
This is surreal, Devon thought. And Helena is going to do her frigging nut. The amount of time we’ve wasted, searching for him, questioning his wife