Lynda La Plante: Blood Line

‘But you also had every opportunity to go to the police. You knew Alan had been murdered, you knew that drugs were involved.’

Tina made a gesture with her hands, touching her breasts as her voice quavered.

‘I am just a woman and was so frightened. I honestly don’t remember what I was even thinking.’

‘But you hadn’t been raped – that came later, on the seventeenth, didn’t it? I just find it hard to believe that you could remain in that flat over two nights and then go to work as if nothing was happening when the man you have said you cared for and intended marrying was lying beaten to death in your bathtub. As I recall there’s only one lavatory, so what did you do when you needed to use it?’

‘I pissed when I got to work, Miss Clever Fucker. I never looked into the bathroom, bar that one time I told you about.’

Jonathan Hyde tapped her arm, saying quietly that she should watch her language. It looked as if she wanted to spit in his face, but then she gave a coy, whimpering smile.

‘Sorry. I am so sorry. Please forgive me for swearing.’

‘If you were so distraught, why take the axe back to the store?’

‘I told you why – because it might have implicated me. I didn’t want to be asked about it, it was never used.’

‘So did Sammy or Silas accompany you that time?’

‘No, they’d both gone by then.’

Anna looked up as there was a knock on the interview-room door. Brian Stanley was outside, indicating that he wished to speak to Anna. She got up, and for the recording announced that she was leaving the interview room and that it was five-fifteen in the afternoon.

Paul asked Tina if she would like more water, but she refused.

Jonathan Hyde sighed irritably, looking towards the door. Tina had been held in custody since the previous day. He knew they would soon have to either press charges or go before a magistrate to extend the custody time. He leaned closer to Tina, asking if she was in need of anything and she looked at him stonily.

‘I need a bath and a massage – are you gonna give me one?’ Hyde moved away from her fast.

Anna came back in, sat down and the interview continued, with Paul stating for the tape the time that DCI Travis had returned.

‘Tina, you have said that you had never met Sammy Marsh before, is that correct?’ asked Anna.

‘Yes,’ she hissed.

‘The other man was Silas Douglas – is that correct?’

‘I didn’t know his full name.’

‘Really? Did he use another name when you knew him previously?’

Tina blinked rapidly and then swallowed.

‘You did know him, didn’t you?’

‘No, I did not. I’d never met him before.’

‘Do you know a Wanda Douglas, his wife?’

‘No.’

‘We have been able to talk to Mrs Douglas who is at present living in Florida, and she says that you did know her husband. In fact, you had a lengthy affair with him over nine years ago.’

Tina shrugged.

‘So you see, I am doubtful about everything you have admitted as being the truth. You did know Mr Douglas . . .’

‘He walked out on me. I never knew he was married. He lied to me.’

‘Tina, you have also lied and I am now giving you one last opportunity to tell the truth,’ Anna said.

‘All right, I knew him from a long time ago, but I hadn’t seen him for years, and when he turned up in my flat with that Sammy, I was shocked.’

Anna sighed and then it looked as if havoc was about to break out again. Tina began to push at the table, but this time Anna was faster. She stood up and warned the woman that she would be cuffed if she continued.

‘I don’t care what you do to me. I DON’T CARE.’

Thankfully she sat back in the chair and started to cry. ‘Oh Christ, it’s all such a mess. Everything is a mess.’

‘Tina, if you start to tell the truth we can help you, but if we uncover lie after lie it only makes us even more suspicious. Continually lying makes it harder for us to believe that you were held against your will and that you never intended things to have happened in the way that they did. Unless we know the truth about what did happen, it’s hard for us to understand your part in it all.’

Tina hung her head and then after a beat, continued, ‘It was like it was happening to me all over again. It got that bad I didn’t believe how I could be such a dumb bitch. One man after the other had taken money off me, made me promises, screwed me and dumped me, and with Alan I really believed it was different. It was different all right – he would go from me to his fucking little toy boys and pretend that it was my paranoia. If you knew how many times I tried to confront him, wanting to know why he wouldn’t let me go with him to Cornwall, he’d just give me all this bullshit about needing space and needing time on his own, but he wasn’t, he was screwing around and I was so determined to find out. I was living with him, for God’s sake! He told me to go and get a wedding dress. He said to start arranging for a fucking wedding – and all the time he was planning on ditching me like all the rest of them.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I knew that Sal was living down there or working the beaches with his boards so I called him up and asked him to check Alan out. I told him not to phone the flat but that I’d wait in a pub close to the salon for when he would call me, and I’d phone him from there. Those little cows at the salon are always poking their nose into my business. Anyway . . .’

She swallowed and then gave an open-handed gesture.

‘He rang me back, said he had found out and that I’d probably not want to know, but I insisted. He told me that Alan wasn’t even using his own name for one, but was a regular at all the gay clubs and was friendly with a real piece of work called Sammy who was running the drugs scene there. What I didn’t know was that Sal too was in it up to his armpits with Sammy. He supplied the drugs, but I didn’t know – I swear before God I didn’t know.’

Tina paused for breath. ‘At first I didn’t tell Alan what I’d found out, but I had to get my own back.’

She pursed her lips, chewing the lower one until she calmed herself down.

‘I wanted to put a knife through his heart. He lied. I could have got AIDS after he came back to me from fucking those waiters. He made me out to be a total idiot and then one night I couldn’t stand it any longer and I confronted him. I told him what I knew about him and he wouldn’t talk about it, he just ignored me until I started screaming at him, about how he’d wasted years of my life with his promises. I did fight with him, but he just gripped my wrists and told me to calm down and then afterwards he said he’d be moving out anyway. It was then he actually told me how long he’d been preparing to walk out on me, about the house he’d bought, the bank accounts – he told me all of it.’

‘So did he also tell you that he was now involved with drug-dealing?’

‘Yes. He said that was how he had made all this money, and then he said to me that he was doing some big deal and that he would give me a share of it. This time it was heroin: Sal was apparently bringing in a big shipment that would make everyone rich.’

The tears were gone. She sat almost composed as she said that she had found the suitcase with the money.

‘I knew he was going to dump me and so I said I had to go and do something at the salon and I took the suitcase. I stored it in the locker in my treatment area upstairs. I knew it’d be safe as none of the girls are allowed up there. I felt really good – you know, that I was getting my own back on him – because no way was I going to let him just walk out on me. And then I phoned Sal and told him that Alan was planning on leaving, and that he’d even rented his house out in Cornwall. Sal was really uptight because he said Alan wasn’t only walking out on me, but that Alan had got his hands on his last shipment so he was doing the dirty on him as well.’