narrowed, listening intently. Devon was gripped too, with a sort of horrified fascination.
What a story, he thought.
‘So, what about the emails Gemma said she had from you in those weeks you were in Bristol? And the photos she said she took of you? How did you get rid of those? Because I assume now it was you who got rid of those? She thought her phone was playing up,’ he said.
‘You know what I do for a living,’ said Danny. His face wore a guilty expression. ‘Pretty simple to make those vanish forever. And when I moved out, finally, I did it when Gemma was off on a press trip, so I could clean the whole place with bleach, make sure as much of my DNA and fingerprints as possible were out of there. Make it look like I’d barely been there at all. Then, in the early hours of the morning, Quinn came and picked me and the bike up in his van and drove me to London. Been here ever since.’
‘Wow.’ Mike exhaled heavily.
‘I know. I’m a feckin’ sneaky little shite, aren’t I?’ Danny looked contrite again. ‘I tell you what though, I didn’t know a serial killer was going to pop up though, did I? That was a shocker. And the fact that the victims kinda looked like me – really weird, that was. Weird, but a gift too, you know? If the guys who were after me thought I was the victim of a serial killer well, great. But then when I saw in the news that Gemma was being questioned not only about me but about those other killings too, well … that was awful. I was really, really sorry about that. Couldn’t make it up.’
‘You used the same dating app as at least two of the dead men, did you know that? Elite Hook Ups? EHU?’ said Devon.
Danny nodded, the guilty look back on his face.
‘Yes, I was on that … but those guys using it too? That’s another weird coincidence. Or maybe not, I mean it’s pretty popular these days, thousands of people use it. But still. I didn’t know about that, until Gemma mentioned it to Quinn the other day and he told me. Bizarre. Look, I’m not proud of that. About being married and signing up to a dating site, I mean. As I said before, I wasn’t always a good husband to Gemma. I’ve always struggled to be faithful, not just to her, to all the women I dated before her too. It had got better, recently – I was trying, I really was. I love Gemma, you know? I wanted a future with her, kids, all the normal stuff. But it was like … like an addiction.’
He ran a hand through his hair, and closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. Devon didn’t know what to say, and Mike was clearly of a similar mind, so they both sat in silence, waiting for Danny to continue.
‘I needed lots of female attention, always have done. Sounds pathetic, but that’s how it is,’ he said finally. ‘So every now and again I’d hook up with someone I met online, no strings. Just sex. Now and again it went a bit too far though. Once I shagged a bird at a party I was at with Gemma … just skipped off to a bedroom for ten minutes when she was chatting to someone else. Sick, eh? Gemma never knew, never even suspected, and it was such a thrill, doing it with so many people just feet away. And this other time, I tried to get off with her friend, Eva. Jesus, that was a mistake. She was having none of it though, and thank God. I wouldn’t have got away with that one, if Gemma had found out.’
Devon’s eyes had widened at the mention of Eva’s name, and he felt a small surge of satisfaction. So the lovely Eva rejected Danny’s advances? Good.
‘Can we just go back to the EHU app for a minute?’ Mike was saying. ‘You used a fake email address. Or an untraceable one, at least? Why?’
‘I just used some software to hide my IP address. For privacy, you know? In my situation …’
Devon’s brain was beginning to hurt.
‘OK. OK. There’s a lot to take in here,’ he said.
With Danny being alive, so much of what they’d assumed about the murders would now need to be looked at again, in a different light, but he knew he couldn’t think