‘It should be me, I’m the SIO. It gives status to the interview. Which unsettles people whether they’re innocent or guilty as hell.’ Carol opened her office door and shouted, ‘Someone, anyone . . . We need coffee in here.’
Tony started pacing. ‘It’s precisely because you’re the SIO that you should back off. Diane Patrick has clearly played a role in these crimes. She may have been coerced. But she may have been an active participant. If she was, then she’s going to be pissed off at not being taken seriously enough to be interviewed by the boss. And pissed off is good. You know that. We like them pissed off. It makes them more likely to lose at least some of the plot.’
‘Believe me, I can find other ways to piss her off,’ Carol said.
‘And if she’s been coerced, she’ll be much more likely to respond to someone she doesn’t see as a threat. In other words, a junior officer. It’s a win-win, letting Paula take first crack at her. I’m not saying you won’t get your turn. But let Paula go first.’
‘Will you sit down? You’re making me crazy, storming up and down in this tiny space,’ Carol fumed.
He dropped into the nearest chair. ‘It helps me think.’
A knock on the door. ‘Coffee,’ Kevin said.
Carol opened the door, took the two mugs from him and used her hip to close it behind her. ‘I’ll put the earpiece in. You can keep me on track.’
‘You know there’s nobody better at this than Paula.’ He knew he was playing with fire, but it had to be said.
‘Are you saying she’s a better interviewer than me?’ She thrust the coffee at him. He thought she was inches away from having thrown it. He’d seldom seen her this wound up over an arrest. He assumed it was because Warren Davy was still out there in the wind.
‘This isn’t a pissing contest, and you know it,’ he said. ‘You’ve got no grounds for doubting your professional capability. Your leadership of this team made this result possible. It works because you let them do what they’re good at, even when it’s part of your skill set.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, brows drawn down in a mulish stare.
‘Take Sam,’ he said. ‘You know he’s a maverick. You know he doesn’t like to share because he thinks he can do whatever it is better than anyone else. He’ll stab people in the back if he thinks it will further his career, but only when it doesn’t jeopardise the investigation. A lot of SIOs would have canned Sam because he’s not a team player. But you keep him close. You let him play to his strengths.’ He paused, an ‘am I right?’ expression on his face.
‘Of course I do. He’s got tremendous ability.’
‘That’s only part of the reason. The other part is that you see something of yourself in him. Something of the early Carol Jordan, the scrapper who hadn’t risen to her natural level yet. You do it with all of them.’ He pulled a face. ‘Well, maybe not Stacey. But you know Paula’s a great interviewer. You know it because the great interviewer in you recognises it in her. So let her do it, Carol.’
He saw the doubt on her face. ‘Sometimes I feel I do all the graft round here and get none of the fun,’ she complained.
He smiled. ‘I love a good bit of self-pity. That’s very generous of you. Besides, if it hadn’t been for the new girlfriend being in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge, this might have taken us a lot longer to put together. Paula’s earned her moment in the sun.’
Carol glared at him. ‘I hate it when you make me behave well.’
‘You’ll respect yourself in the morning, though.’ He drank some coffee and made a face. ‘Come on, let’s go and watch Paula do her thing.’
Paula kept Diane Patrick and her solicitor waiting for almost twenty minutes. She made the decision when she discovered the woman’s lawyer was Bronwen Scott, the doyenne of Bradfield’s criminal solicitors. Scott had earned her reputation by winning reprieves for the guilty as well as clearing the innocent so she was never going to be loved by the police. But she liked to rub their noses in her successes. Carol made no secret of her loathing for Scott, and her team cheerfully backed her to the hilt.
The disparity between the two women opposite Paula could hardly have been greater. Scott was immaculate in a suit whose cut and fabric screamed the opposite of state-funded legal aid. She’d always had a haughty expression, but these days her face hardly seemed to move at all. Paula suspected Botox or a face lift that had ended up a fraction too tight. Diane Patrick, by contrast, was dishevelled and ravaged by her earlier tears. Her hair was chaotic, her dark eyes puffy and bloodshot. She looked at Paula with piteous eyes, lower lip quivering. Paula remained unmoved by the pair of them.
She made sure Diane was cautioned on tape and then opened her folder. ‘You abducted and drugged a fourteen-year-old boy this evening, Diane. When we walked into the house where you live with your partner Warren Davy, we found you alone with Ewan McAlpine. He was unconscious. On the table in front of you were a transparent polythene sack, a roll of packing tape and a scalpel—’
‘Are we going to get to a question any time soon? We know all this. You have given us disclosure,’ Scott interrupted.
Paula refused to let herself be needled. ‘I’m just reminding your client of the seriousness of her position. As I was saying. The things on the table - they were identical to the paraphernalia of four murders committed against fourteen-year-olds in the past two weeks. It’s hard not to draw the inference that you were about to murder Ewan McAlpine.’
Diane Patrick’s eyes opened as wide as her swollen lids would allow. She looked horrified. ‘I wasn’t. No.’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘I never killed anybody. You’ve got to believe me. It was Warren. I was waiting for Warren. He made me do it.’ She let out a terrible racking sob. ‘I hate myself, I wish I was dead.’ She buried her face in her hands.
Paula waited. Eventually Diane raised her head, tears streaking her cheeks. ‘Is it your contention that Warren Davy murdered Jennifer Maidment, Daniel Morrison, Seth Viner and Niall Quantick? And that he planned to murder Ewan McAlpine.’
Diane gulped and hiccupped. Then she nodded. ‘Yes. He killed them all. He made me help. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do what he told me.’
‘And you believed him?’ Paula deliberately sounded incredulous.
Diane looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Of course I believed him. He already killed my baby. Why would I not
