‘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.’
He took a drink of water to get rid of the dryness in his mouth.
‘The jacket the victim was wearing,’ Brady said shaking his head. ‘That’s what didn’t make sense, Jimmy. You see, I talked with Ellison again this morning and when Sophie met him she wasn’t wearing a jacket. Then when I checked the security tape, again no jacket. But when she was discovered murdered she was wearing a jacket,’ Brady slowly stated. ‘Evie’s jacket,’ he added.
He stood up wanting to stretch his leg. It had flared up again.
‘Evie was the one wearing the jacket. I double-checked the CCTV footage and she was definitely wearing a jacket similar to the one found on the victim. Sophie was only wearing a scarf the way girls do with just T-shirts, despite the weather. But the jacket was your idea, wasn’t it?’ Brady paused as he waited for Matthews to object.
Matthews didn’t. Instead he mutely stared at Brady.
‘That’s why you left the jacket open so it could explain the blood and tissue sprayed over the victim’s T- shirt.’
Matthews turned his head away, unable to look at Brady.
‘You knew that Evie would be charged with Sophie’s manslaughter, if not murder. So you decided to try and hide the evidence by leaving Evie’s jacket, which was covered in blood, on the victim. You told me that first morning that Sophie had borrowed Evie’s jacket. You said you recognised the jacket at the crime scene and your first reaction was to think that it was Evie lying there. I suppose it was the copper in you that made you decide to hide the evidence on the victim. You put the jacket on Sophie, didn’t you?’ Brady asked.
Matthews didn’t say anything.
‘That’s why your own shirt got covered in blood because you handled the body, didn’t you?’
Matthews continued to stare with mute desperation at Brady.
‘After the copper in you had seen to the body, you then drove Evie home. You told her not to breathe a word to anyone, not even Kate. You told her to get showered to get rid of any evidence and then you told her to wash her clothes. Didn’t you? But even you know that that wouldn’t be goodenough. You can’t get rid of blood stains that easily, Jimmy. We’ve just searched your house and found her clothes … Evie’s clothes, the ones she was wearing that night.’
Matthews looked at Brady, surprised.
Brady nodded.
‘I didn’t expect to find her clothes there either. I take it that you told her to get rid of them?’
Matthews didn’t answer. But Brady could see from his reaction that that was exactly what he had done. Brady expected no less; Matthews was a copper after all.
‘She’s just a kid, Jimmy. She was no doubt still in shock and just stuck them in the washing machine. And like I said, blood stains don’t wash out that easily. They’re being forensically examined to see if they match with Sophie’s DNA. But we both know the results will be positive, don’t we?’
Matthews raised his head and looked disconsolately at Brady.
‘Then you waited for the call to come in from the station that a girl’s body had been found.’
Matthews stared at Brady. His eyes were cold and empty.
‘Evie wasn’t really ill on Friday morning, was she? You told her to pretend that she felt ill because you didn’t want her to suddenly crack. You wanted her to wait it out at home until the news about Sophie’s death became public.’
‘Why, Jack?’ muttered Matthews. ‘Why couldn’t you have just left it? She’s just a kid …’
‘So was Sophie. That’s what you’re forgetting here. Sophie was just a kid too. A kid that everybody used. Including you, Jimmy.’
‘Let him go,’ Brady told Conrad.
Conrad did as he was told.
Matthews collapsed into his chair and sank his head into his large trembling hands.
‘You don’t understand what you’ve done,’ he rasped.
‘I’m not letting you go down for murder when you’re not responsible.’
‘Don’t you realise this is all my fault? Don’t you?’
Brady didn’t reply.
‘Maybe if I’d been around more, then this would never have happened …’
Brady looked away. He didn’t have the stomach to look Matthews in the eye because he knew that at some level he was right. If Matthews had only taken more of an interest at home, then maybe none of this would ever have happened.
‘When I’d dropped Sophie home after Madley’s nightclub Tania rang me. Evie must have overheard the conversation but it wasn’t until later that she made the assumption that I’d been talking to Sophie. Soon after my call Sophie rang Evie to fetch her house keys from my car saying that I’d taken her to a nightclub and had dropped her home afterwards. And you were right, Evie found Sophie’s keys on the floor next to the empty condom wrapper,’ Matthews disconsolately conceded. ‘I hadn’t even realised it had been there.’
He despairingly shook his head as he thought it over.
‘Evie presumed the worst. That’s the kind of shit dad I’ve been. My own daughter thinks I’m so immoral that I’d have sex with her fifteen-year-old friend.
‘But then, what else did she have to go on?’ Matthews rhetorically questioned.
Brady shrugged.
‘She’d started drinking … fifteen and drinking. I had no idea … What bloody kind of father does that make me?’
Brady could have added that drinking wasn’t all she was doing but knew that Matthews was suffering enough. And what did it matter now? he mused.
‘If only I hadn’t gone to The Blue Lagoon … if only…’ Matthews’ voice trailed off.
‘But I was so close to getting on the inside of Madley’s sex business in underage Eastern European girls. That’s why I went,’ Matthews explained as he despairingly looked at Brady.
‘You’ve lost me,’ he muttered.
But Matthews didn’t hear him. Or if he did, he acted as if he hadn’t.
‘Honestly Jack, it made me sick when I realised what he was doing … I… I couldn’t continue working for him. Not when I knew where the money was coming from … So I thought I could redeem myself somehow. Have Madley sent down and then he’d have no hold over me. You believe me, don’t you?’
