‘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.’
Tina’s part in the whole hideous scenario began to take shape as she continued to talk. It sickened Anna. Alan had rung her to collect him from work because he’d had a threatening call from Sammy and he was scared. What he didn’t know was that Tina, through Silas, had been the one stirring it up. She knew they would both be there at the flat because she’d left the fire exit open and the front door on the latch for them to gain entry easily and unseen. Silas and Sammy wanted their drugs and the money; they didn’t believe Alan when he said it had gone. Whilst Tina went to work at her salon, as she had admitted, and returned from there at the time she had always maintained, Alan was still alive, but he had been tied across the width of the bed, gagged and beaten. His head was over the edge of the bed and Sammy had put a pillow case over it to stop the blood splashing about when he hit him with the club hammer. Silas would then remove it to un-gag him and ask again and again where the drugs and money were and the blood from his head injuries flowed onto the carpet. Alan kept saying that he didn’t know where the money was and he hadn’t taken the drugs, so Sal would replace the gag and pillow case and Sammy then beat him again. Eventually Alan passed out and they left him there while they discussed what to do next. The pool of blood on the carpet got bigger and bigger.
‘That crazy guy Sammy was using crack – he was totally out of it, irrational and gibbering – and Silas tried to calm him down. They had drunk the place dry – vodka, gin, anything they could find – then they’d taken it in turns to beat up Alan.’
She bent her head, and sniffed loudly. Anna passed her a tissue and she blew her nose.
‘I didn’t lie about the carpet, they did cut the piece out ’cos the carpet in the bedroom was so heavily bloodstained.’
‘And you did absolutely nothing to help him?’
‘How could I? Sammy forced me to watch Alan being beaten and said I would be next if I grassed on him or didn’t do exactly what I was told.’
Tina continued, saying that she was genuinely scared. When she went to work the following day Alan was unconscious, and had still not told them where he had stashed the drugs. It was during the first night that Sammy went crazy and used the club hammer to beat Alan around the head.
‘Sal knew that Sammy was too drugged-up to know what he was doing and he insisted he leave, saying he would do the clearing-up. That’s when I went out to get the bleach because there was so much blood that needed to be cleaned up.’
Tina described how between them she and Sal had carried Alan’s body into the bathroom using the duvet cover, and hoisted him into the bath whilst they cleaned up the bedroom. Tina had taken off the bloodstained sheet
