"Did you see him go out this morning?" Gould asked.
She shook her head, timid fingers touching her face as she did it. "But I wasn't at the desk the whole time, and I wasn't looking for him."
Donny raised his hand to knock again, but the door was quickly yanked inward before his knuckles made contact.
"What?" The guest demanded irritably. His hair was a mess and the skin around his eyes was red and swollen. The clerk fled down the hallway, back to her station, leaving the detectives to their witness.
After being introduced, Cripps allowed the detectives into his small dark hotel room. Despite the brightness of the morning the room was dark, the heavy curtains still drawn. Combined with the slightly threadbare carpet and dated decor, it contrived to make the room feel dingy and claustrophobic. Cripps flopped down on the end of the bed. He didn't offer Donny or Gould a seat. There was nowhere except the bed to sit down anyway, so they opted to remain standing.
"So what brings you to Birmingham?" Donny asked.
The man glared at him. "You dragged me out of bed to ask what I came to Brum for?"
Donny glanced down at his watch. "It's a quarter to nine."
The man shrugged. "So? Is there a law against sleeping in now?"
"Late night?"
"Is that any of your business?"
"We need to ask you where you were the night before last." Donny told him.
They both watched his features freeze before he collected himself enough to feign nonchalance. "Out." He said. "I went out for dinner and had a few drinks after I checked in here."
"Where did you go?"
He shrugged. "I don't remember. Places. I'm not from around here, I couldn't tell you any details." He blurted the words out, and they tumbled over each other in his rush to get his lies over and done with.
"So what did you come down from Middlesbrough for?" Donny asked again.
He shrugged. "Just wanted a weekend away."
"I'm surprised you didn't go to Scarborough. It would've been a lot closer."
He glared back. "I don't like the crowds," he answered finally.
"So you didn't come here to meet a woman named Angie Barr?"
At the sound of the name Cripps flinched like Donny had slapped him.
"Would you like to reconsider some of your earlier answers?"
He shook his head. "Look. I did want to see Angie, OK. But I haven't been able to get a hold of her."
"Were you trying to get in touch with her the night before last?"
He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, already standing on end. "I went to her place, but there was someone there. Some guy. I wanted to catch her alone so I waited. But I didn't get a chance."
"What was the address?" Donny asked.
He gave a street name and a building. It was Riddle's address, though Cripps seemed to think it was "Angie's".
"What time were you there?" Donny asked.
"I got there around six. I waited until eleven, hoping he'd leave but, he was still there with her."
"Eleven?" Donny asked. "Are you sure?"
He looked at Donny like he was an idiot. "I know how to tell time just fine thanks. I waited until eleven. The guy was still there."
"And the woman too?"
"Yeah. Obviously."
"And then... you came back here?"
Cripps looked embarrassed and stared at the floor. "No, well. I know I should have, but..."
"But what?"
"I decided to go up and confront her. She wasn't supposed to be seeing anyone else." He stared at his bare feet on the carpet, humiliated and ashamed.
"What happened?"
"I... I don't know," He said. There was something in the strange tone of his voice that made Donny believe him. He seemed genuinely confused.
"Just tell us what you can."
"Well, I went up and knocked on the door. The guy answered. He was rude, demanded I leave. I said I wouldn't go without speaking to Angie. He laughed at me. In my face. I was angry. I shoved past him into the flat. And there she was. Only..." his face took on a pained expression. "It was her, but she didn't seem to know me. And he kept calling her Charlotte. I... I don't know. It was weird. She was angry at him for some reason. She was furious. She kept saying he'd promised. He'd promised he'd stop, or something like that. I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn't even look at me." His voice grew quiet and he took a moment to clear his throat, pulling himself together. "Then I left. I still wanted to talk to her, but..." he shook his head, unable to explain how foreign and unapproachable the woman he thought cared for him had been in that moment.
"And all of this took place at around eleven?" Donny asked again.
He glared up at Donny. "Are you deaf or something? Yes, eleven." He shook his head. Donny could just about picture the scene in his head. The girlfriend, who thought Joe had put his past behind him, coming face to face with a victim of a scam that she had been part of, wittingly or not. Donny noted everything down, the strange puzzle falling into place in his mind.
#
Charging down the hallway back the way they'd come, Donny asked the question that was foremost on his mind. "If Charlotte left Riddle's house at eight like she claimed, how could he have seen her there at eleven?"
"So she lied. People tend to do that in murder investigations, Callow."
"Right. Well, I'd like to know why."
"There's something else as well." Gould went on. "Nobody owned up to talking to her at Riddle's flat. Remember she said that was how she knew already? Could be they just didn't want to get in trouble. Or it could be she made that up too. Let's find out shall we?"
When Charlotte answered the door she looked more together than the last time they'd seen her, though she was clearly still distraught. They would need to tread lightly with this.
She seated them at the same small table where they had spoken last time. This time she offered them something to drink, and managed to look them in the eye most of the time. Donny snuck a casual glance at her feet. Large for a woman's, they could easily have made the print they saw at Riddle's home.
"We just need to check some details regarding the statement that you gave us last time we spoke," Donny told her, trying to affect a tone somewhere between gentle and no nonsense.
"You said that you found out about Mr. Riddle's death when you went to his home the next morning and spoke with an officer there."
"That's right."
"None of the officers who were at the scene can remember speaking with you."
Charlotte avoided his eye and shrugged, as though the detail was inconsequential. "They must have forgotten."
"Right. OK. You also told us that you went home from Mr. Riddle's place at 8.30pm, is that correct?"
"Yeah. I wasn't feeling well," She repeated.
"We have a witness who says they saw you at his house at eleven."
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and her mouth grew taught before she brought herself under control. She cleared her throat delicately, prolonging the moment she would have to speak. Her eyes scoured the table top as though she might find a suitable response hidden somewhere in the wood grain.
Donny decided to cut her off before she could conjure up more lies. "Look," he said softly, "We know you were there. We know you had an argument. We know that a very short time later, he was dead." He paused, hoping to catch her eye, to see if she was receptive, but she stubbornly stared at the table, refusing to look up.
"Just tell us what happened Charlotte. It'll make all of this so much easier on you."
She still stared at the table, seeing the first of the tears budding in her eyes hit the table top. There were so many more waiting to tumble out. But she took a deep, trembling breath.
"He said he'd stopped. With the scams," She said, finally looking at Donny and Gould. "Then that guy showed up. He kept calling me "Angie". Thought I'd been writing to him. I knew right away Joe must have done something." She shook her head, eyes screwed shut against th
e pain. "I wanted to believe him so badly when he told me he'd gotten onto the straight and narrow. Then I found out he lied to me. He didn't just lie to me, and scam people. He dragged me into it too. I was so angry."
Donny was about to prompt her, but Gould stopped him with a look. They waited quietly for her to continue. "I went into the study. I was going to delete everything. I was going to find out who those men were and tell them the truth. But Joe wouldn't have it. He grabbed me. He was shaking me so hard. I was terrified. There was a lamp on the desk..." her explanation dissolved into floods of tears. She wouldn't tell them anything more here. They let her gather her things and walked her, still crying silently, out to their car. She could fill in the remaining details when she made a formal confession at the station.
#
Donny loaded the last of his books into the plastic crate that he and Alice had used to ferry his things to her apartment. He looked around the small flat where he had lived for the past several years. It was strange to think that he wouldn't be living here anymore. He had finally conceded that it made more sense to move into Alice's place. It was larger, it had the balcony, as small as it might be, and it was better set up for Benji, who Donny had grown to love almost as much as Alice did. The giant slobbering mastiff looked on from the doorway where he and Alice waited while Donny locked the door behind him and left his flat for good. Alice held the door while he ferried one last box of stuff into sitting room, where piles of things sat waiting to find new places to fit in. He set the box down and straightened up as Alice put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. "Are you sure you're OK with this?" she asked as he wrapped his arms around her. "I know I pushed for this but I want you to be happy too."
Donny kissed her forehead. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said. In the end, he'd wanted to live with Alice more than he'd wanted to keep his place. And looking around, he had to admit that she'd been right about this being the better place for them. Objectively. But it had been hard to be objective about the home where he'd lived for so long. He shook the feeling off. Lately, home felt like wherever Alice was.
"Did you solve your case?" she asked, letting go of him and moving to get both of them a drink after their hard work.
"Yeah." He explained about Charlotte and what they had found.
"That's awful," Alice said. "What's going to happen to her now?"
Donny shrugged. "She'll be charged and tried, of course. She's a pretty sympathetic defendant though. So who knows." He sipped the beer that Alice handed him, eying the couch and regretting piling books on top of it. He perched on the arm of it instead. Forgetting his size, as he often did, Benji flopped heavily onto his feet.
"There's just one more thing I have to do," Donny said with resolve.
Alice looked surprised. "What's that?"
"You know I told you about that victim, who just didn't want to believe it?"
Alice shook her head. "Donny-"
"He needs to understand what really happened."
"You can't make him accept the truth Donny. He has to make sense of this for himself. It's probably best if you just leave him be."
Donny looked thoughtfully at Alice. "I have to return a photo to him anyway. I promised I would."
"So take the photo back to him and then leave. You don't need to get into this."
She could tell by the furrow between Donny's eyebrows that he wasn't going to listen. She sighed inwardly. "You're so stubborn sometimes."
Donny smiled wryly. "I think you mean determined."
"I'm telling you, you're asking for trouble."
Donny shrugged. It was what he felt he needed to do, and he would do it, whatever Alice said.
#
When Jamie Marquis opened the door he looked brighter and more cheerful than the last time that Donny had seen him. Probably because he hadn't woken him up this time. Still, the cheery smile made Donny feel like a wanker, knowing what he was about to break to him. "I brought your photo back." Donny began with the safest topic, the official reason that he was here. He handed him the framed photo, feeling the weight of the file in his other hand. The real, unofficial reason that he was here. "There's something else that I think you should see. Do you have a minute?"
He sat next to Marquis on the sagging couch infront of the coffee table and began to lay out the emails and other evidence from Riddle's computer. He shouldn't be showing this to anyone outside of the police force, he knew. But he couldn't stand the thought of this man, living this lie. He felt he had to do something. Marquis barely glanced at the papers before shoving them away with one pudgy hand, unread. "I don't need to see this," he said, his voice low and coarse. "You can't show this to me. It's gotta be classified, or something."
"But... this is the truth. This is what really happened," Donny protested, dumb stuck. He looked over at Marquis, surprised to see that his face was pinched as though holding back tears.
"You can't show this to me."
"I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you see the truth of what really happened."
Marquis slammed the framed photo down on the table with the force of his raw hurt and anger, cracking the glass across Rachel's pretty face. "This was the truth. This was what was real. To me." His tearing eyes searched the photo infront of him, as though trying vainly to resurrect the dying fantasy. Finally his eyes flicked up to meet Donny's. "You had no right to take that from me."
"But-"
"You had no right." He shook his head, anger contorting his features and making him huff heavily. "You need to leave now."
Donny sat staring at Marquis, stunned.
"Get out. NOW."
Donny gathered his paperwork into the file and rose stiffly. He walked woodenly over to the door, watched by Marquis, who didn't bother to see him out. Out in the hall he leaned back against the door, catching his breath and trying to make sense of what had just happened. The lie had been more precious than the truth. Marquis missed Rachel more than he wanted to know the truth. And Donny had stripped that from him. He felt as though, in some strange way, he too had become guilty in this cruelty. Alice was right, he thought to himself. But it was too late now. He left the sad and lonely man to himself, now devoid of even his imagined companionship. Donny wondered about the events of the past few days. If Marquis had never spoken with Riddle, would he be more, or less lonely than he was now? If Donny had just handed him the photo and left, would it be the same? It hardly mattered now. Like the crack in the frame's glass, what Donny had forced Marquis to know could not be undone.
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