Danielle Ramsay - Broken Silence

‘You’re being too hard on yourself,’ Jenkins reasoned.

‘Am I?’ he questioned.

Jenkins nodded.

‘I know it wasn’t Jimmy,’ Brady eventually said.

She looked at him questioningly.

‘And … I reckon I know who did it … but …’ Brady’s voice trailed off.

He shook his head, not wanting to believe it.

‘I hope to God that I’m wrong. Because if I’m not … Fuck!’ Brady hoarsely said as he stared at Jenkins. He kept going over in his head what she had said about the significance of the attack on the deceased victim’s face. And he didn’t like the answer that kept coming to mind.

Chapter Sixty

‘I know,’ Brady conceded reluctantly.

Matthews ignored him.

‘I know who you’re protecting.’

‘Keep your fucking mouth shut,’ hissed Matthews.

‘I can’t let you go down for something you didn’t do.’

‘Shut the fuck up! You don’t know what you’re saying. I did it! Me! Nobody else! You get that? I murdered her!’

‘You drove her back home, but what you didn’t realise was that Ellison had already rung Sophie at 12.02 am, arranging to meet her on the abandoned farm behind her house.’

‘Don’t do this, Jack. For fuck’s sake, don’t do this to me!’ pleaded Matthews.

Brady did his best to ignore him but it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Every word coming out of his mouth tasted bitter.

‘She had sex with him, followed by an argument. We have a witness who overheard that part. When Ellison had gone, she realised she couldn’t find her keys. So she rang Evie, believing she’d left them there.’

‘No!’

‘We’ve got a record of the call, Jimmy,’ Brady said quietly.

‘Evie brought the keys. She knew what Simmons was likeand didn’t want her best friend hurt. So she sneaked out of the house and ran down to the farmland. She knew exactly where to find Sophie,’ Brady carefully explained.

‘Jack … no don’t … don’t …’

Brady ignored him. He had to, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to finish.

‘You see, Jimmy, the witness said that she overheard two girls arguing. I didn’t think much of it at the time but now I realise that it was Evie and Sophie. She even heard the victim shout out your name. I had presumed that was because Sophie had been ringing you in a desperate attempt to stop Ellison from hurting her. But I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Instead, Sophie was drunkenly taunting Evie with the fact that she had been at Madley’s nightclub with you and that you had driven her home. She might have been Evie’s best friend but it didn’t mean that they weren’t jealous of one another. Maybe that was the trigger, because Evie believed she was telling the truth,’ Brady said, shaking his head. ‘They’d both had too much to drink, too much to see sense.’

‘I mean it, Jack. I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t stop!’ Matthews sobbed.

Brady paused for a moment, caught off guard by Matthews. He breathed in and forced himself to continue, ignoring the tears of desperation in Matthews’ eyes.

‘You were back before Evie left to find Sophie. Your car was parked in the driveway. Evie couldn’t find the keys in her bedroom so she did what Sophie had suggested when she called. She searched your car. Evie found them, but she also found the condom wrapper and put two and two together.’

Matthews suddenly lunged for Brady.

Conrad scrambled to his feet just in time to pull Matthews back.

‘Come on, Jimmy. Calm down!’ Conrad advised through gritted teeth as he did his best to restrain him.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Matthews grunted.

‘The condom wrapper has Evie’s prints all over it. As has Sophie’s phone. Initially it would be easy to rationalise her fingerprints on the victim’s phone, as she was her best friend. You see, that’s what we did when we found Evie’s DNA at the crime scene and on the victim’s body. We eliminated her because she was the victim’s best friend and they shared clothes as teenage girls do. But that wasn’t what happened, was it?’

Matthews struggled in vain to get to him.

‘Evie knew you were seeing someone, Jimmy. She didn’t know it was this Tania woman, she presumed it was Sophie. And why wouldn’t she after the evidence she found in your car? And Sophie was more than happy to mislead her, to pretend she was having an affair with you. She was viciously drunk and Ellison walking off had left her furious. So she took her vindictiveness out on Evie. And what better way of hurting Evie than by destroying the image she had of her father? The man Evie idealised? Sophie wanted what Evie had – a “normal” family life and if she couldn’t get it, she would make Evie equally miserable.’

‘No … you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Matthews said shaking his head in desperation.

‘You weren’t there, Jimmy, not until it was too late,’ replied Brady.

Matthews turned his sickened face away.

Brady inwardly winced as he realised that his hunch had been right. Matthews had just shown as much. Up until that moment he had been hoping against the odds that Matthews would somehow prove to him that Evie had nothing to do with Sophie’s murder.

Brady swallowed hard before continuing.

‘The witness heard Evie and Sophie’s argument over Ellison. We just assumed it was Ellison, not Evie. You see Ellison and Sophie argued about him ending their relationship. He left and Sophie then rang Evie. We know that Evie left her home to meet Sophie.’

Matthews questioningly looked at Brady.

‘We have CCTV footage at that time of a girl who we presume to be Evie walking past Wellfield towards West Monkseaton. We know Sophie rang Evie at 12.51 am. It would have then taken Evie less than thirty minutes to walk from Earsdon to Potter’s Farm. Which means she would have met Sophie at roughly 1.20 am, and then … well, we know the rest, don’t we?’

Matthews dropped his head in defeat.

‘When Evie couldn’t bear to hear Sophie’s taunts any longer, she attacked her, grabbing Sophie’s scarf and knotting it around her neck in a desperate, drunken attempt to silence her. Which she succeeded in doing.’

Brady ran a shaky hand over his chin as he thought about walking out of the interview room. He had had enough. But he knew he had no choice, he had to see it through to the end. He shifted his gaze, unable to watch Matthews’ anguish.

‘Strangling her wasn’t enough for Evie. She wanted to destroy the very face that had laughed and taunted her with sexually explicit details of what she claimed she had done with Ellison. Evie was so riddled with jealousy that Sophie was having a relationship with the same teacher she had a huge crush on. And then there was you. Sophie presumably bragged about being in a nightclub with you and you dropping her home. The idea that not only was Sophie sleeping with her teacher, she was now seducing her dad would have been enough to send her over the edge. So she picked up the object closest to her, a heavy jagged stone, and exacted her blind rage on Sophie’s lifeless face. She hated Sophie’s face because it was her prettiness that had attracted Ellison and even you. Not Evie’s face, but hers. Everyone noticed how pretty Sophie was, didn’t they? Who could help but notice? No wonder Evie hated Sophie. And it comes as no surprise that she destroyed the very thing she hated so much.’

Brady breathed out slowly, steeling himself.

‘When she finally came to her senses, she panicked,’ Brady whispered hoarsely.

He felt the words choking him but knew he had to finish.

‘So, she rang you, Jimmy. Not because you were a copper. No, because you were her father and she believed you would know what to do. She didn’t have her phone on her. In the rush she’d left it at home, so without thinking she used Sophie’s phone. That’s why Sophie’s phone showed a call to your mobile just after 1.31 am.’