Tania Carver - The Surrogate

Phil nodded, apparently giving the matter some thought. ‘Good.’ He put his hand behind his back, moved it up and down. There was a knocking on the mirror.

Brotherton jumped. Phil affected to.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘They must want me. I’ll be right back.’

He got up and left the room.

Marina was waiting for him when he entered the room.

‘Did you get all that?’ he said.

‘Yep. Eyes to the right, he’s remembering. Eyes to the left, he’s thinking.’

Phil gave a grim smile. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t have a squint or a nervous tic. Then we’re completely buggered.’

Marina returned the smile.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘We good to go?’

‘I think so.’

Neurolinguistic interviewing technique involved two different kinds of questions: remembering and cognitive. The innocuous questions, as well as lulling the subject into a false sense of security, established a yardstick to judge all subsequent answers by. A subject’s body language would be different for each kind of answer. When asked a remembering question, Brotherton looked down to the right. But when asked a thinking question, he looked away to the left. Phil and Marina now knew that if he was asked a remembering question and answered as he would for a thinking question, he was buying himself time, working on an answer. In short, probably lying.

‘Sorry about all that… stuff. In there,’ said Phil.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Marina, her head down in her notes. ‘You were working. No apologies necessary.’

‘Right,’ he said, and picked up a file folder from the desk. It had Brotherton’s name written on the front. ‘Off I go. Wish me luck.’

She smiled. ‘You don’t need it.’

He returned the smile. ‘Do it anyway.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thank you.’

He left her alone once more. She looked at the mirror. Waited for it to start again.

Clayton looked around the room. He was beginning to know how it felt to be on the other side of the table. Like he was the one trapped, about to give himself away, be caught out by his own lies. He looked at Sophie. She caught his eye, glanced away in disgust. He didn’t blame her.

He checked his watch, sighed. It seemed to be showing the same time as when he had last looked. Another sigh. Like waiting in a doctor’s surgery, he thought. For test results to come back and confirm the worst. Something bad. Something terminal.

Another sigh. He resisted the temptation to check his watch again.

‘Your boyfriend’s probably given it up by now.’

Sophie stared at him. ‘I doubt it.’ Her words seemed strong but he sensed nervousness behind them. ‘He’s not the type.’

Clayton shook his head. ‘They’re all the type.’ He drew his sleeve back, fought not to bring his eyes to his wrist. Let his sleeve fall back into place. ‘He’s no different.’

Sophie sat forward, about to argue, but decided against it. Slumped back into the seat. Defeated.

Clayton could empathise with her. He had never felt so-

His thought went uncompleted. The door to the interview room opened and Anni Hepburn entered. She was carrying a document wallet under her arm and had a look of triumph in her eyes. She gave a start when she saw him but controlled it well, crossing to the table, pulling up a chair placed against the wall and sitting down next to Clayton.

She gave him a brittle, yet unreadable smile and looked at Sophie. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said. ‘I’m DC Hepburn. I believe you already know my colleague DS Thompson.’

She looked towards Clayton as she spoke. There was no mistaking the message in her eyes. The doctor had arrived with the test results.

‘Right.’ Anni opened the folder, read down. Clayton knew there was often nothing in these files they brought out in front of suspects; they were just props. There was nothing someone who had a problem with authority found more terrifying, a training officer had once explained, than someone in authority holding a file on them.

Anni looked up, seemingly startled to find Clayton still there. ‘I thought you were off this case now?’

Clayton felt his cheeks warming up. ‘Yeah. I’ll just…’ He rose, scraped his chair back along the floor. Made his way reluctantly to the door and out. He glanced at Sophie before he left, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring straight ahead, her face unreadable.

Once outside the room, Clayton looked quickly round, then made his way as fast as he could to Ben Fenwick’s office. There was a CCTV relay in there and he could watch the interview on it. He ran up the stairs, stood outside, getting his breath back, knocked. No reply. He tried the handle. Open. He went inside, set the TV monitor up. Started watching.

‘Sophie Gale,’ Anni was saying as he turned it on.

‘Yes.’ Sophie’s voice was dry and cracked.

Anni looked up from the file, directly at her. ‘But that’s not your real name, is it?’

‘It’s…’ Sophie looked towards where Clayton had been sitting. She seemed to have guessed which way this was going to go and, now that he was no longer there, suddenly needed an ally.

‘It’s not your real name,’ said Anni; not a question, a statement.

Sophie nodded.

‘Gail Johnson. That’s the name under which you first came to our attention. When you were a prostitute.’

‘Yes.’

A tight smile from Anni. ‘Good.’ She looked down at the file again, pretended to be reading. ‘Charges were never brought against you, were they?’

Something hardened in Sophie. ‘You know they weren’t. And you know why.’

‘Yes. I know why. Just found out today.’ Anni’s gaze went to the screen.

Clayton jumped back. Was she looking at him? Did she know he was watching?

She continued. ‘You were an informant. You were protected. ’

Sophie nodded.

Anni’s voice changed. Became less accusatory. ‘Very good. Can’t have been easy to do that. Downright dangerous at times, I would have thought.’

Sophie shrugged. Clayton could tell she was thawing. He knew Anni was playing her.

‘Having to go with men you didn’t want to was bad enough. But then having to come and tell us about it… bad men, dangerous men… that’s real bravery. I mean it.’ And she sounded like she did. She smiled.

‘Thank you.’ Sophie returned the smile.

‘How long did you do that for?’

Sophie thought. ‘Oh… feels like for ever. But it also feels like it happened years ago. To someone else.’

‘So how long?’

‘About five years.’

Anni looked impressed. ‘Long time.’

‘Felt like it.’

Anni nodded, smiled. ‘But that’s all in the past now.’

‘Absolutely. New life, new everything.’ Sophie gave a tentative smile. Even on CCTV, Clayton could see that her guard was starting to drop. He knew exactly what Anni was doing. And what the end result would be. And he was powerless to stop her.

‘So.’ Anni looked back at the file. Pretended to be reading. ‘Wednesday the seventeenth. You were at home. With Ryan Brotherton.Your boyfriend. In the house you share together.’ She looked up. ‘That right?’

‘Yes.’

Back to the file. ‘And you were there all night. Watching DVDs. Eating takeaway food.’

Sophie nodded.

Anni looked directly at her, the earlier friendliness now completely absent. ‘No you weren’t.You’re lying.’

Sophie was taken aback by the words.

The test results were back, thought Clayton. And they were positive.

‘ But let’s put that to one side,’ said Anni. ‘We’ll get to that. Let’s talk about Ryan first. How did you meet him?’