Bulbs, shovels—Fleet was losing the gist. He stole a glance at Nicky, whose expression told him to stick with it.
“I’m not following you, Detective Constable.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. All I’m trying to say is, it’s not the posts themselves we should be interested in. It’s any suspicious activity around the posts. Such as a deleted account, for instance.”
“The broken bulb,” said Fleet, catching up.
Dalton’s face lit up, almost as though he were plugged into a power source himself. “Precisely.” He turned back to his computer screen. “And of all the Instagram accounts most heavily involved in spreading rumors about Sadie, this is the only one that was deleted after Sadie went missing. Although what the user probably didn’t realize is that when it comes to social media, nothing is ever gone forever, not if you know where to look. Or maybe she did realize, but there wouldn’t have been anything she could do about it.”
“She?” said Fleet.
“Don’t get too excited,” Nicky chipped in. “The user data associated with the account was all fake, as far as we can tell. But Garrie here uncovered the name of the account itself.”
She nodded at Dalton, who flicked to another window on his screen and highlighted a line of text amid the code. “The account’s an old one,” he said. “It’s been active on and off for a couple of years.”
“SweeneyTodd2002,” Fleet read aloud. It took him a second or two to make the connection. “Sweeney. As in, Lara Sweeney?”
“It has to be a possibility,” Nicky replied. “The nature of the previous posts would seem to fit. Sarky comments and stupid jokes, mainly. All very teenage-girl. Garrie here is going to dig a little deeper to see if there are any other ways to identify the user. But the rumors about Sadie definitely originated from this account. It’s much easier to untangle a ball of string if you have an end to start from.”
“Or a ball of Christmas lights,” said Fleet, letting his hand fall on the young detective constable’s shoulder. “Let me know when you have anything more.”
“There is one other thing, actually,” said DC Dalton. “The stories about Sadie’s parents. You wanted to know about those, too, right?”
“Tell me,” said Fleet.
“Well, it’s pretty much the same story,” said Dalton. “Another deleted account, another anonymous user—although my hunch is it’s the same person. Same pattern of messages, same syntax, that sort of thing. This time they were posting under Princess_69.”
Fleet rubbed a hand across his cheek. A phrase he’d repeated the night before came back to him. Something the couples counselor had said to him and Holly. It sounds like there’s more than one thing going on . . .
“I’m assuming you’re on that, too?” Fleet said to Dalton. “Trying to trace who owned the account?”
“Absolutely,” Dalton replied. “In fact, I’m hoping having two leads to follow might make things easier. At the very least it doubles our chances.”
Fleet nodded. A bit of good news, finally. “We should talk to Lara,” he said to Nicky. “Find out what she has to say for herself.”
“Sure thing,” Nicky answered. “I’ll set it up.”
Fleet clapped Dalton on the shoulder. “Good work, Detective Constable. Outstanding, in fact. Keep it up.”
“Sarge?”
Both Fleet and Nicky turned. One of the uniforms had appeared behind them. “Sorry to interrupt, guv,” he said to Fleet. “But, Sarge”—he turned to Nicky—“you said you wanted me to let you know when he arrived. The Payne kid.”
“He’s here?” Nicky asked him.
The officer nodded. “I’ve stuck him in interview two.”
Nicky turned to Fleet, who took a breath.
“Shall we?” he said.
MASON
HERE WE GO again. You really don’t give up, do you? Why don’t you just arrest me and have done with it? I mean, if you’re really that sure I did what you’re accusing me of.
There’s only one reason you’re focusing on me. You know it, I know it. So let’s talk about that, shall we? Let’s talk about what you found in Sadie’s bedroom.
You’ve said over and over that it gives me motive. But that’s bullshit. I loved Sadie. She loved me. I would never have hurt her. Never.
And anyway, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You find something and you call it evidence, but really you don’t know the first thing about it. You might as well have found a . . . a packet of condoms in her room. A morning-after pill. Just because you found a pregnancy test doesn’t mean I killed her.
What, you think I murdered my unborn baby, too? Besides, how do you know the pregnancy test was even hers? If Sadie had been pregnant she would have told me. We would have figured out what to do together.
I bet you think you can blame me for what happened in the woods as well, don’t you? Just because I was the one to bring the knife. And, as it happens, that’s the only reason I bothered coming in today. I almost didn’t. I almost just said to myself, They never listened to me about Sadie, so why’s it going to be any different this time? Which is what I figured yesterday. What I still believe, even now. But what I decided was, at least if I get my side of things on record, you won’t be able to claim that I changed my story later.
So here I am. Reporting for duty.
Seriously, go ahead: ask me whatever you want to know.
Ha. I thought that might throw you. You don’t even know where to start.
The scream?
Right. Huh. To be honest, it was more of a shriek. I mean, at first I figured it was my alarm clock. But when I raised my head and remembered where I was, I saw Abi standing in the middle of the clearing, tipping out the
