up?’
He rubbed his eyes and exhaled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Why are you lying to us, Mr Slater?’
He shook his head and grinned. ‘No, no… I’m not falling for this. I. Want. A. Solicitor. Read my friggin’ lips. Get me a solicitor, now!’ He slammed his hand on the table, his eyes wide. She met his stare. He could be the one who was sending all the letters that were driving her mad. It was personal.
‘Why—’
‘No comment, no comment, no comment.’
‘Interview terminated at eleven twenty.’ Gina threw her pen to the table and left the room, Jacob following a few seconds later. ‘Organise a search warrant for his house. O’Connor or Wyre can lead that one. I need to take five.’ She could feel her face warming and her hand clenched the rubbish in her coat pocket, scrunching up the old receipts in her fist.
‘I’ll wait for you in the incident room and I’ll chase up Mr Slater’s solicitor. We need answers.’
‘I doubt we’ll get anything more than “no comment”. Not now. We’ve lost him.’
‘He hasn’t walked out though.’
As they parted, Gina hurried to the ladies and ran the tap. She lathered her hands up, washing away the stench of murder. She stood back, taking in her reflection in the smeared mirror. She turned to the side and checked out her profile. After all this was over, she was going to have a long bath and an early night. She pulled the rubbish from her pockets and dropped it next to the sink, sick of it being there all the time, filling up her pockets. As she went to throw it in the bin, something stopped her, just a word on a page. She grabbed the tiny piece of paper and nearly broke the door off its hinges as she moved like a hurricane towards the incident room. O’Connor ended his call. Wyre turned from her computer screen and Jacob stopped writing on the board.
‘I know who did it.’ She held the piece of paper up and laughed. ‘All this time, but why? Get your coats on. Isaac Slater can wait. I know Cherie Brown’s life is on the line. I don’t know why but that’s something we can work out later. The ghost symbol, that’s where she is.’
‘Gina? What’s happening?’ Briggs stood in the doorway.
‘I’m ready to make an arrest. Cherie Brown’s life is in danger and we don’t know how long she’s been missing, which means the clock has already started ticking and we don’t know how long we have left. We might already be too late.’ She had all the evidence they needed. She stared at the board and her attention was drawn to the copies of all the letters. The very clue to solving the case had been under her nose the whole time. ‘How long did we say that the average person had when they are buried alive in a coffin?’
Jacob scoured the boards for that bit of information. ‘Approximately five and a half hours, guv.’
She did up her coat. ‘No time to waste, then.’
Chapter Sixty-Six
The weird whirling trees had merged into night in the darkness of the coffin. The drug had brought Cherie’s children’s voices to her ear and their faces to her eye. Her head pounded and her dry throat craved water. The pitch-black darkness was suffocating her along with the lack of air.
‘I’m sorry,’ she cried as tears streamed down her face. ‘I came to talk to you, that’s all. I was a coward and I’m sorry. Every time I saw you I wanted to say something but you didn’t seem to notice me until that day when Alex turned up. Please give me a chance to be a better person.’ Her nose filled as she choked on her words. She pressed the last match between her fingertips. It was like back then. Her abductor had given her exactly what she had given them, nothing more; nothing less. If only the police had released more details, they could have all worked this out rather than turn on each other. Three matches – just saying those words gave her the chills.
She lit the last match and looked through the torn material at the top of the coffin. There were no cracks in the wood, not like the box that they’d thrown together all those years ago, in fact, the box had been a large garden tool storage chest that Marcus’s dad had made to store hoes and forks in. Their victim had been petite back