remembers the voices screaming in her ears. Kill him, this is your chance.
‘I assumed so,’ she says. ‘He was very strong.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘It was dark.’
‘How tall?’
‘He attacked me from behind. I didn’t really see him.’
‘Black, white, Asian?’
‘It was too dark.’
‘Was he masked?’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘Did he speak to you? Did you hear his voice?’
Impossible to tell. She had heard so many voices.
‘No. I didn’t hear his voice.’
‘The medical staff tell me you declined an intimate examination.’
‘I wasn’t raped.’ There had been nothing sexual about the attack. It had been about maiming, killing, obliterating.
‘There’s a cut on your neck, some bruising on your head and around your neck,’ DI Jones says. ‘You had concussion. What do you think the motive was?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you have any enemies, Miss Lloyd?’
Does she? She feels as though she does, and yet none she can name. ‘No,’ she says.
‘Was anyone behaving oddly when you were out last night?’
‘I didn’t go out last night. I was home all evening.’ No sooner are the words out of her mouth than Felicity’s heart starts to hammer in her chest. She tries to turn back the pages in her mind and sees them all blank. She has no memory of going out last night. And yet she has no idea what she did instead.
In the meantime, Delilah’s eyes have become mean slits in her puffy face. ‘You had dinner with my son at Galleria,’ she says. ‘You were both caught on camera on Jesus Lane. I collected him from your house myself.’
Felicity has no memory of meeting Joe. She is going to be sick. She looks around but she cannot get out of bed without unhooking herself from machines and drips.
DI Jones does not seem to notice her panic. ‘My son tells me you have an estranged husband. He thinks you’re afraid of him.’
Felicity gulps in air and says, ‘Is he supposed to tell you that?’
The policewoman knows a threat when she hears one. She gets up from her chair. ‘He also tells me you’re leaving town,’ she says, as she switches off the recording equipment. ‘Have a good trip.’
58
Joe
Joe walks into the café expecting to meet his supervisor and sees his mother at a table by the window, tucking into smashed avocado on sourdough toast. She folds up her newspaper and lifts her bag from the other chair. For a moment, he is tempted to walk out.
‘Seriously?’ he says. ‘This is verging on stalking.’
‘Get over yourself,’ Delilah snaps. ‘I’ll be gone in five minutes. I wanted to catch you before work. I won’t get a moment to fart once I get in.’
‘And people wonder why I’m a bit rough around the edges.’
Joe orders an Americano from the counter and sits down. ‘What’s up?’ he says, although he knows this can only be about Felicity. He has spent twenty-four hours telling himself that he cannot visit her in hospital, that he can’t even phone to check on her progress.
‘Felicity Lloyd has discharged herself from hospital,’ she begins.
Joe isn’t surprised. ‘Never a good idea,’ he says.
‘She wasn’t that badly hurt.’ Delilah slices into a tiny vine tomato. ‘She’s also contacted the station saying she doesn’t want any further action taken in regard to her break-in. She thinks now that she was probably confused. She got up in the night, disorientated because all the lights were out and because she’d had a bit to drink the evening before – I guess you’d know something about that – she fell down the stairs. She says she’s sure now that she wasn’t attacked and apologises for wasting our time.’
‘Are you serious?’
Delilah drops her fork with a clang on the counter. ‘Do I look like I’m playing for laughs?’
‘Does it ring true to you?’
She resumes eating. ‘It rings like complete bollocks. Even without two sets of fingerprints on the knife we found, and two distinct types of human blood. We’ve also found both sets of fingerprints in other places. One set occurs throughout the house, so probably Felicity’s. The other in just a few places on the ground floor and around the basement window, so probably the intruder.’
‘You say probably. You haven’t checked?’
‘If she’s refusing to co-operate, this is going nowhere. I can’t waste money getting forensics involved.’
Joe’s coffee arrives. It’s too hot to drink, but he warms his hands around the over-sized cup. His mother pushes her plate to one side.
‘Joe, we see it all the time,’ she says. ‘Women will not testify against abusive husbands and partners. I feel for the