‘OK,’ said Bolt, changing tack. ‘Take us through the events of tonight, starting with how you came to be running out of Mrs West’s front door.’
Tina told them everything, from the call to her mobile from Mrs West, which she knew they’d be able to confirm from her phone records, to the moment she’d driven away, giving as good a description as possible of the woman Ray had said was The Wraith. The only thing she missed out was any mention of Ray himself.
‘So even this killer believed that you knew where Mason was,’ said Mo, raising an eyebrow.
Tina shrugged. ‘It seems like everyone does.’
‘Why did you wear a bulletproof vest round to your neighbour’s?’
It was another thing she was going to have to blag. ‘Because it wasn’t like Mrs West to phone for help, and with everything else that’s been going on, I’ve just been getting suspicious.’
Mo sat back in his chair and laughed. ‘You don’t expect us to believe that, do you? I get nervous on the job sometimes but I don’t wear a bulletproof vest.’
‘As far as I know, no one’s ever tried to kill you,’ Tina countered. ‘I’ve had attempts on my life going back fifteen years. It makes you paranoid.’
Tina knew she’d got Mo with that one, but that was the thing with police interviews: if you wanted to look innocent on the tape, you had to play the game. Answer everything. Don’t hesitate. Parry and thrust. Never take the ‘no comment’ route, which just makes you look guilty. At the moment she was parrying well, knowing that events backed up her story.
But now Mike spoke again. ‘We have a witness who saw you pick up a man in your car who came running out of your house.’
Tina felt her insides tighten. She’d known there was a risk she’d been spotted but thought she’d got away with it. ‘Whoever it was must be mistaken,’ she said, adopting a puzzled expression for the camera. ‘I didn’t pick up anyone.’
‘You just ran out of Mrs West’s house and drove away?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
Tina rolled her eyes. ‘Because I was scared. Someone was trying to kill me.’
‘But you must have seen the police in the rear-view mirror. They saw you easily enough.’
‘I didn’t see them. I was trying to put as much distance as possible between me and Mrs West’s killer.’
‘If you didn’t see the police, why didn’t you dial 999?’
‘I did, once I’d calmed down from the shock of what had happened.’
Tina knew they knew she was lying. But she wasn’t playing to Mike and Mo right now. She was playing to a potential jury, and she’d long ago learned that if you wanted to be believed, it wasn’t necessarily what you said, it was the confidence with which you said it that counted.
For the next twenty minutes they tried to break down her story. They even pulled out a photo of her in a hijab and tried to pin the passport incident on her. But Tina was too much of an old hand to waver, and it was clear they both knew that.
‘I think you need to get out and look for the killer,’ said Arley eventually, ‘rather than go round in circles here. My client has answered every one of your questions in detail, as well giving you a description of the killer. You’ve examined her. You can see she’s received injuries and come very close to death. So I’m requesting that you de-arrest her so that we can go and get her some treatment.’
De-arresting someone exonerates them of all wrongdoing, and Tina knew that Mike and Mo wouldn’t go for that, and they didn’t. However, after a few more minutes of wrangling, they agreed to let her go for now.
‘You can’t go back home though,’ said Mike. ‘Your house is a crime scene.’
‘My client can stay with me for the time being,’ said Arley.
Tina smiled at her, feeling grateful. Her chest hurt where the two bullets had struck her, and two large bruises had already formed when the police doctor examined her, but thankfully he didn’t think she had broken anything.
As they were leaving HQ, Mike turned to Tina and asked for a quick word in private.
Both Arley and Mo looked surprised but stayed back as Mike led Tina outside onto the street.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded, grabbing her by the arm when they were out of earshot of everyone. ‘Protecting Mason like this? Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case against him, he’s a dangerous fugitive.’
Tina yanked her arm free and glared at him. ‘There are much bigger criminals than him out there, Mike. Right under your noses in fact. Try digging a bit deeper on Alastair Sheridan and see what you find.’
Mike tried to hide his surprise at the mention of Sheridan’s name but Tina saw it in his eyes.
‘Didn’t anyone tell you that Sheridan is one of the Bone Field killers?’
‘That’s bullshit, Tina.’
‘It’s not though, is it? Last year, Ray tracked down that lawyer, Hugh Manning. Remember him? The one who got murdered on, what was it, his fourth day in witness protection?’
‘The one who was going to testify against Cem Kalaman?’
‘It was Sheridan he was going to testify against. The man who’s possibly going to be the next Prime Minister.’
Mike shook his head. ‘Look, you can’t come up with conspiracy theories and expect them
