believe him?’
‘He killed your baby? When did this happen?’
Diane shuddered. ‘Last year. She was just hours old.’ A long sigh seemed to liberate her into words. ‘He’d virtually kept me prisoner for the last few weeks of the pregnancy. I gave birth at home. He said there was no need for hospital, women had been doing it at home for generations. And he was right. It was OK. Jodie, I called her. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was all I’d ever wanted. And then he took her away and put his hand over her mouth and nose till she stopped breathing.’ Her words began to jerk like a DJ scratching a record. She wrapped her arms round herself. ‘He killed her. He killed her right in front of me.’ She began rocking back and forth, her fingers clawing at her upper arms.
Again, Paula just sat out the storm. She knew Scott wanted this to end but she wanted the reason to be Paula. And Paula was determined to give the lawyer no excuse. ‘Why would he do that?’ she said once Diane was composed again.
‘He did a bad thing. I don’t know what it was. He couldn’t tell me. It was something to do with a client’s data. He did something and somebody died.’ She seemed to be looking inward, as if reliving some scene in her memory. ‘And something inside him seemed to come loose.’ She met Paula’s steady gaze. ‘I know that sounds weird, but that’s what it was like. He kept talking about carrying evil inside him like a virus. And he said my Jodie couldn’t live to carry his virus to the next generation. He was crying when he did it.’ She put her hand to her mouth and began rocking again.
Paula had been prepared for Diane to blame it all on her partner, particularly since he’d slipped through the net and wasn’t there to present his version of events. She’d started from a position of scepticism, but as the interview proceeded her doubts were shrinking. There was something horribly convincing about Diane Patrick’s narrative. And she was certainly in a state. It was hard to imagine how she could be faking this come-apart. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘But here’s where you’re losing me. How did he go from killing his own child to murdering these teenagers?’
Diane Patrick’s face registered naked astonishment. It was so blatant that it cast doubt over the rest of what Paula had seen. ‘Because they were his children too. You didn’t know?’
‘How could we know?’ Paula said. ‘We knew they were connected by the same sperm donor, but we had no way of finding out it was Warren. Nobody gets access to that information. Not even police officers with a warrant.’
Diane stared at her, apparently lost for words.
Paula smiled. ‘Which kind of begs the question. How did Warren find out who they were?’
There was a long silence. Paula would have bet Diane was weighing up whether a lie was going to be caught out. At last, she spoke. Slowly, as if feeling her way. ‘He forced me into it. He threatened to kill me.’
‘I got that, yes. He killed your baby then he threatened you. It didn’t occur to you that you could escape?’
Diane gave a bitter little laugh. ‘It’s obvious you know nothing about the way the modern world works. When it comes to cyberspace, Warren is one of the masters of the universe. I could maybe run, but I could never hide. He’d have found a way to get me.’
‘You’re talking now,’ Paula pointed out.
‘Yes. But you’re going to catch him and keep him away from me,’ Diane said, completely calm for the first time in their interview.
‘So where is he? Where are we going to find him?’
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t spent the night at home since the first murder.’
‘You told my colleague he was in Malta.’
Diane looked at her lawyer. ‘I was afraid,’ she said.
‘You heard my client,’ Scott said. ‘She has been in fear of her life. Her actions have been the product of duress.’
‘Duress isn’t a defence to murder,’ Paula said.
‘And so far, nobody is suggesting my client has committed murder or attempted murder or treason, which are the only exceptions to the defence of duress,’ Scott retorted, the steel of her tones matching her expression.
‘I want to back up a little,’ Paula said, looking directly at Diane, who had been apparently ignoring their exchange. ‘How did Warren find out the names of the children he’d fathered?’
Diane couldn’t hold Paula’s stare. She picked at the edge of the table with her thumbnail and watched her hand intently. ‘The HFEA employ a data security firm to hold their back-ups. We’re a small community. Everybody knows everybody else. Warren found out who does the HFEA and basically bribed them. He said we’d do the back-up and hand it over to them and we’d pay them the same as the HFEA. So they’d get double their money for no work.’
‘And they didn’t wonder why you wanted to get your hands on the data? They weren’t worried about compromising their security?’
‘It’s not compromising your security when you’re dealing with one of your own.’
Paula thought that was bullshit and made a note to come back to it another time. ‘So Warren went into the HFEA and backed up their database?’
She chewed the skin round her thumbnail. ‘It was me. He thought they’d be less suspicious of a woman.’
‘So you helped yourself to the data that would identify who got Warren’s sperm?’
‘I didn’t have any choice,’ she said, stubborn now.
‘We all have a choice,’ Paula said. ‘You chose not to exercise yours and four children are dead.’
‘Five,’ Diane said. ‘You think I don’t know that?’ Scott leaned over and whispered something in Diane’s ear. She nodded.
‘Did you know what Warren intended when you stole that data?’ Paula asked.
