The Perfect Couple

by Jackie Kabler

  ‘But you’re not actually going to do it?’ My voice had suddenly returned, and loudly. ‘Eva, please! You can’t!’

  She sighed.

  ‘I’ve been trying to put it off for a week, but now they’re insisting. I don’t want to do it, Gemma. But you know what it’s like – if I don’t, they’ll do a piece anyway, and whoever writes it won’t be sympathetic like I will. I don’t think I have any choice. I’m so sorry.’

  I groaned and sank my head into my hands. She was right, I did know what it was like. I could imagine exactly the pressure Eva would be under to deliver the story, picture the delight on the face of her news editor when he realized that his top crime reporter was best friends with a woman the police appeared to suspect was a serial killer. She was perfectly placed to deliver a fascinating story, but the problem was that this wasn’t just a story, not to me. This was my life, my own personal hell, and the prospect of an in-depth article written by my best mate, my confidante … it didn’t bear thinking about.

  I looked up again, tears filling my eyes, my throat constricting.

  ‘I know. I know you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have to,’ I whispered. ‘But please … can you just put it off a little bit longer? I don’t know if I can handle it. My family, everyone …’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said, and I realized she had tears in her eyes too. ‘I promise. I’ll try.’

  ***

  After she left, I forced myself to shower and dress, strip her bed and dust the spare room, vacuum the house, put a load of washing in the machine, take Albert out for a quick scamper. By lunchtime I’d run out of things to do, so I turned the TV on, finding the comedy channel and watching reruns of Cheers, Seinfeld and The Office, pushing the thoughts of Danny and Quinn and the police and Eva’s article and all of it, every horrible, terrifying bit of it, out of my head every time it tried to wriggle its way in, refusing it entry. I was just waiting now, I realized. Waiting for what was going to happen next. Waiting for another text, waiting for the police to come and arrest me, waiting to see if I could summon up enough energy to go back to the station, to tell someone my theory about Quinn attacking or maybe even killing Danny, although what was the point? They wouldn’t believe me anyway. And so I carried on, waiting, waiting, waiting.

  By four, to my surprise I suddenly realized I was starving, and I boiled some pasta and threw in a jar of readymade arrabbiata sauce I found in the cupboard. I’d just settled down on the sofa to eat it when my mobile beeped. My stomach lurched. Another text. I put my fork down slowly and reached for the phone.

  Have you confessed yet? This is your last warning. I’m coming for you.

  I read the words, and then looked to see who’d sent them, expecting as usual to see ‘number withheld’. And then I smiled.

  ‘YES! Got ya!’ I yelled triumphantly, thumping the cushion next to me. Albert, who’d been lying across my feet, jumped violently and gave a short, accusatory bark.

  ‘Sorry, Albert. But I was right. I was right!’

  I was right. And this time, he’d made a mistake. This time, the text hadn’t come from an anonymous number. He’d used his own phone. The text was from Quinn O’Connor.

  Chapter 32

  ‘Don’t you see? He’s trying to FRAME me! He sent me those other texts, as well as this one, from some sort of throwaway phone, burner phone, whatever you call it. Not his phone anyway. But then he sent another one, this one, and he screwed up. He used his own phone, look! You can tell the texts are from the same person just by looking at them. I think he hurt Danny, maybe even killed him, and don’t ask me why, because I haven’t figured that bit out yet, and anyway that’s your job, not mine. But he did it, and he’s trying to get me locked up for it! And threatening me too. You must see that surely, you …’

  Devon held up a hand.

  ‘OK, OK. Slow down.’

  Gemma O’Connor was standing in front of him, pink-cheeked and wild-eyed, practically jumping up and down on the spot in her efforts to persuade him that her missing husband’s cousin, Quinn O’Connor, was trying to frame her for murder. He’d been shocked when the call had come from downstairs to tell him she had come in yet again and was demanding to talk to him; after long discussions with Helena in the empty incident room the previous day, he knew she was almost ready to take a chance and charge Gemma O’Connor, and would be just as surprised as he was to see the woman already in the station when she got in, which should be very shortly. He decided to humour Gemma.

  ‘Look, let me take the phone and check the number of the sender of the message against the number we have for Quinn, OK? Take a seat for a moment. I’ll send someone in with a coffee, and I’ll be back down in a few minutes.’

  She glanced at the chair he was gesturing at, looking uncertain, then nodded.

  ‘All right. Thank you,’ she said.

  ***

  He left her and headed back up to the incident room, where he found Helena slipping her coat off and hanging it on the overloaded rack on the back wall.

  ‘Morning. Little lie-in today, boss?’

  She turned and scowled at him.

  ‘Oh, shut up. It’s only eight thirty and I have a feeling this might be a long day. Any news?’

  ‘A bit, yes.’

  He updated her on the latest visit by Gemma O’Connor, and her eyes widened.

  ‘And she’s still here?’

  ‘Yep. Drinking coffee in interview room number three. How do you want to play this?’

  She rubbed her eyes. She looked tired, Devon thought.

  ‘Well, what do you make of these messages? If they are from Quinn O’Connor, does that change anything? I’m almost too tired to think straight.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Well, if they are from him, he clearly shouldn’t be sending threatening messages like that whatever the circumstances, and we’ll have to have a word with him. I’ve checked his record, by the way. A handful of minor misdemeanours in his youth in Ireland, nothing for years though and nothing in this country. But the content of those messages is interesting, isn’t it? It sounds like he’s backing up what he told us when he came in – that he believes she’s responsible for Danny’s disappearance, death, whatever, and wants her to confess to it. In the meantime, she’s now trying to claim he might have done something to Danny and is trying to frame her. But that doesn’t ring true to me; would he really have come here of his own accord to speak to us if he was the killer?’

  Helena shook her head.

  ‘Unlikely. If I’d killed someone, the last thing I’d do is go to the police and put myself on their radar. So what do we think? That she’s running scared now and is trying to shift the blame onto him to save her own skin?’

  He thought for a moment, then sighed.

  ‘Maybe. I just don’t know. As I keep saying, boss, I just can’t call this one. But even I can’t deny there’s a ton of evidence pointing squarely in her direction.’

  ‘SHIT! Boss, Devon, come here, quick! You need to see this!’

  They both jumped. Across the room, DC Frankie Stevens was waving frantically at them, and pointing at his computer screen. They exchanged puzzled glances and went over to see what he wanted.

  ‘What’s up, Frankie?’ asked Helena, and he gestured wildly at the screen with one hand, pushing his little glasses further up his nose with the other.

  ‘This,’ he said, his voice high with excitement. ‘It’s just come in from our contact at the Met. It’s a serious assault – an attempted murder, they believe, in London early last Thursday evening. A man called Declan Bailey was attacked in a side street off Vauxhall Bridge Road, but somebody came along and interrupted the attacker, who fled. It all happened too fast for the witness to get a look at the attacker – he says he was too concerned about the man bleeding on the ground in front of him, but wait for it … two things. First, the EHU app was found on his phone, which may or may not be important, but worth noting. And … and this is the most exciting bit … the assailan
t dropped the weapon he or she was using. It was a small, heavy hammer apparently. So …’

  ‘Hang on, hang on. OK, last Thursday. Isn’t that when …?’

  The dozen or so people in the room were all moving closer now, listening to the excited conversation. Frankie nodded, his eyes bright.

  ‘It’s the day Gemma O’Connor went to London, to visit Quinn O’Connor in a pub in Victoria.’

  ‘And you said a side street off Vauxhall Bridge Road?’ Helena was leaning closer, peering at the screen.

  ‘I know that area. That’s literally yards from Victoria station,’ said Devon. His heart rate had suddenly increased. ‘Bloody hell, boss. She was there.’

  There was a mass intake of breath from the assembled detectives.

  ‘Wow!’ somebody said.

  Helena straightened up again slowly, eyes still fixed on the message on the screen.

  ‘Why are they only telling us about this now? It’s Monday, for shit’s sake.’

  ‘A couple of the key people who knew about our cases here and the possible links to the London murders were away at a conference at the end of last week,’ Frankie said. He sounded a little breathless. ‘So nobody made the connection, until this morning, when our contacts came back and saw the crime report. Oh, and looked at his picture. They haven’t sent that over yet, but apparently he’s another lookalike … it all fits, boss. It all bloody fits.’

  ‘SHIT.’ Helena spun round and grinned at Devon, then turned back to Frankie.

  ‘So – he’s alive? This Declan guy? And the attacker dropped the weapon? Holy cow.’

  Frankie nodded vigorously, his glasses bobbing on his nose.

  ‘He’s got a bad head injury, but he’s alive, although he doesn’t remember much. But the weapon’s being rushed through forensics. I’ll stay across it and get the results to you as soon as they come in, boss.’

  ‘Shit, guys. I think we’ve got her,’ said Helena slowly.

  There was a moment of silence, then somebody started to clap, followed by another and another. Helena and Devon grinned at each other, then she held up her hand.

  ‘OK, so yes, it’s looking good. But we still have a long way to go on this. If we can get DNA from that hammer though …’

  ‘And Gemma O’Connor? She’s downstairs right now, remember?’ said Devon.

  She smiled again.

  ‘Well, let’s go and see her, shall we? And then let’s arrest her. On suspicion of murder and attempted murder.’

  Chapter 33

  ‘Think this is it. Yep, number sixteen. Address is Flat 16B.’

  DC Mike Slater, who’d just manoeuvred the car neatly into a space directly opposite number 16 Elmwood Road, pointed at the house. It was a shabby semi, the small front garden overgrown, a bicycle missing its front tyre leaning against the ramshackle wooden fence that separated the house from its neighbour.

  ‘Right. Let me just finish these last few mouthfuls and we’ll see if he’s in.’

  Devon raised his takeaway cup and Mike gave him the thumbs up sign. They were in Feltham in west London, after a day spent with their contacts at the Metropolitan Police, visiting the scene of the latest – thankfully, foiled – attack and then heading to St Thomas’ Hospital to see and attempt to interview the victim, Declan Bailey. Unfortunately, the man had been asleep, still under mild sedation, and his doctor had been insistent that he not be disturbed.

  ‘We’re confident he’ll recover, but he’s still very ill, and as far as I know remembers nothing whatsoever about the attack,’ Dr Mulligan had said. She was a tall, formidable-looking woman with a shock of bleached blonde hair piled on top of her head.

  ‘You can interview him when he’s better. You are not waking him up now.’

  Suitably intimidated, Devon and Mike had obeyed doctor’s orders, but they’d managed to get a look at the sleeping patient and, even though his face had been bruised and swollen and most of his hair covered by the bandages protecting his head wounds, the similarities between him and the other four victims – five if you counted Danny O’Connor – were obvious.

  ‘He’s got the same sort of hair, dark eyebrows, same general look,’ Mike had whispered, before they’d been briskly ushered out of the room by Dr Mulligan. ‘What the hell is it, Devon? I mean, if it is Gemma O’Connor behind all this, why is she attacking men who look like her husband? Does she hate him that much? What on earth can he have done to her to drive her to this?’

  They were still waiting, though, for the forensics report on the weapon Declan had been attacked with; with profuse apologies, and mutterings about budget cuts and staff shortages, they’d been told that there was some sort of backlog and that it might be another twenty-four or even forty-eight hours before they might have a result. In the meantime, and with Gemma O’Connor in custody since the previous morning, and still denying everything when questioned, Devon and Mike had been dispatched to try to carry on gathering as much evidence as they could. They’d stopped off in Feltham on their way back to Bristol in an effort to find Quinn O’Connor, who hadn’t been answering his phone.

  ‘Give him a warning about sending threatening text messages,’ Helena had said, while simultaneously scanning the front pages of Tuesday’s papers, all with excited headlines about Gemma’s arrest.

  IS THIS THE FACE OF A FEMALE SERIAL KILLER?

  WIFE ARRESTED – IS SHE THE BRISTOL MURDERER?

  ‘But also get a statement about last Thursday when he met up with Gemma,’ she said, and pushed the pile of papers aside.

  ‘We need details – exact timings, precise locations. We didn’t get those when he came in to talk to us because it wasn’t relevant then. It is now. There were no cameras in the side street Declan Bailey was attacked in but lots in the general area. Someone at the Met’s looking at CCTV footage from that afternoon to see if he can spot her, but it’s a massive job. We can help him a lot if we can give him more details about time and place.’

  When numerous attempts to call Quinn to arrange another interview had failed, Devon and Mike decided to try his home address in Feltham, just west of Twickenham.

  ‘Pretty much on our way home, anyway,’ Mike had commented, as they’d battled through the evening traffic, heading west.

  Finally parked outside the house, Devon swallowed the last of his tea.

  ‘Lights are on. Might be in luck,’ he said, as they got out of the car. They crossed the road and opened the rusty metal gate, which creaked loudly. At the front door, Devon studied the two unnamed bell pushes for a moment, then randomly pressed the top one. Silence. They waited a full minute. This close to the house they could smell a faint odour of greasy food and stale cigarette smoke. Devon pressed the bell again. This time there was a bang from somewhere inside the building and then the thud of feet on the stairs.

  ‘Jesus, Quinn. Did you forget your keys again?’ said a male voice. The accent was Irish, and the speaker sounded irate.

  Seconds later the door was wrenched open.

  ‘Hello, we’re looking for—’

  Then Devon looked properly at the man who was standing in the doorway, and his mouth dropped open.

  ‘What the …?’

  Beside him, he heard Mike gasp.

  ‘Ahh, SHIT,’ said the man.

  Devon stared at him, looked at Mike, who had suddenly turned pale, and then returned his gaze to the man. The man he had instantly recognized. The man who everyone thought was highly likely to be dead, but who was actually clearly very much alive. The man who’d opened the door was, without any shadow of doubt, Danny O’Connor.

  Chapter 34

  I sat on the edge of the thin, plastic mattress, shivering. I’d spent the past hour pacing up and down the tiny space trying to keep warm, but now I felt sick, exhausted, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I was terrified, I realized, as I pulled the tatty blanket the custody sergeant had given me tighter around my shoulders. I was terrified because it had finally happened, and I could see no way out of it. I’d been
arrested and was sitting in a police cell. Me, Gemma O’Connor, journalist, magazine columnist, of previous excellent character – not even a parking ticket, for God’s sake – had been arrested, on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. It would have been absolutely hilarious if it hadn’t been so utterly horrifying. I’d lost track of how many questions I’d been asked, how many times I’d been walked to and from the small, overheated interview room, since that surreal moment when they’d suddenly appeared in the room I’d been waiting in and read me my rights, and I’d stood there, open-mouthed with shock, unable to believe what was happening. I hadn’t uttered a word as they emptied my pockets, took my bag and shoes from me, took my photograph from different angles, took my fingerprints. Processed me, they told me it was called. I’d been half expecting it, the arrest, for days, but when it finally happened it was overwhelming, unreal, and I seemed to have been struck dumb, unable to form words, mutely obedient. And then, after I’d been in my tiny cell for an hour, or maybe it was two, or ten, who knows, sitting there numb and shaking, they’d finally taken me to an interview room, and it had begun.

  It had been the same old stuff all over again – the blood in the bedroom, the fact that nobody except me seemed to have seen Danny since the end of January, and so on and so on and so on. My voice returned, thin and reedy, and I tried, tried so hard to argue, tried to remind them again of the CCTV footage at the gym, the footage I was convinced showed Danny, tried to tell them over and over again that he’d been alive and well and living with me in Bristol until two and a half weeks ago. They listened, and then swiftly dismissed all my arguments, their eyes cold.

  If he was using the gym, if he was travelling around Bristol every day, why wasn’t he using his bank account?

  Why didn’t he contact anyone, not even his own mother? Why do you have no photos of him, no emails from him, after the thirtieth of January? Why are you lying to us, Gemma? What did you do to Danny?