by Tara Lyons
‘I see you prefer to play games, Miss Walker. There’s really no need. We have a team of specialists at your previous address and we know about the body in the attic.’
‘I’m not disputing there’s a body in the attic, Detective. I put it there. I’m just telling you it’s not Donna.’
‘It sounds like you don’t really want to stop there. You seem to have all the information. Why don’t you enlighten us?’
She sat back in the chair and sighed. ‘The woman you found is Becky Taylor, my adoptive sister. She’s been in the attic for …’ Holly groaned, ‘… five years now.’
He tightened his jaw, adamant not to highlight his shock at the woman’s directness. ‘And you murdered Becky Taylor, why?’
Holly rolled her eyes to the ceiling, ignoring his question, when Dixon sat forward. ‘You were in a relationship with your adoptive sister, weren’t you?’
Hamilton suddenly remembered the information Claire had shared about the suspect’s sexual orientation and watched Holly with curiosity. She eyed Dixon and licked her lips.
‘I bet you’d love to hear all about that, wouldn’t you, Sergeant.’ Holly’s cackle filled the room.
‘Answer the damn question,’ Dixon replied.
Holly tutted. ‘Pretty face but that demanding mouth will get you nowhere quick.’
‘Well, let me apologise for my mouth. You’re right. I’d love to hear all about you and Becky. Why don’t you tell me?’
Holly’s menacing smirk returned to play, and Hamilton could think of nothing better than wiping it off the murderer’s face. He hated the long, drawn-out route they were taking with the woman, half wanting to leave the interview room and discover for himself if she were telling the truth. But he could see a twinkle in Holly’s eye when she looked at Dixon, so he decided to sit back and stay quiet for once.
‘I was fifteen when I first stepped foot into the Summers’ house,’ Holly explained, gazing intently at Dixon. ‘They were a nice enough couple, though I hated the idea of living out in the sticks. But then, they introduced me to Becky, and said we could share a bedroom, if I wanted, to help me settle in. She was eighteen … beautiful and kind, and actually interested in me. I didn’t know what I was feeling that first moment I saw her … I’d never felt it before. It was tingly and exciting, and I felt alive for the first time in my shitty, disgusting life.
‘Over the years, we grew closer than sisters. I’d do anything for her, and she for me. I soon realised it was love I had felt the moment I laid eyes on Becky Taylor. A blonde bombshell. An angel to protect me. And gosh, she taught me some things,’ Holly paused to laugh. Rubbing a hand up and down her arm, she stared intently at the table before continuing.
‘In an instant, it all changed. Becky didn’t want to spend time with me anymore, said I was too young and immature. It was all a lie, you see, because I followed her one evening and found her shagging some bastard in the backseat of his car. Suddenly, it was all, “I’m moving to Scotland.” and “I’m going to start a family with Patrick.” It was a fucking joke. She used me, until she found the next thing she was interested in playing with …’
Dixon cleared her throat, gaining Holly’s attention once again. ‘But why kill her and leave her in Monica Summers’ attic?’
‘Because she thought she could abandon me there,’ Holly spat. ‘I gave her a chance, more than one, to change her mind. To tell me she’d made a mistake, and she loved me and would stay with me. She showed her true colours, and I knew then it wasn’t love at all, just infatuation. The bitch deserved to die.’
‘Is that what happened with Donna Moran too?’ Hamilton joined in. ‘Did she betray you and abandon you too?’
She sucked in a lungful of air. ‘Ah, now that is love. Donna was never ready, but she was honest. We toyed with each other. I aroused more than just her interests, but I promised I’d wait. Some people need to get it out of their system, be with a few men to know it’s not really for them. That’s what Donna was doing but with my consent.’
‘So, where did it all go wrong?’
‘Warren Speed and his overactive cock, is where it all went wrong, Detective.’
‘And that made you mad?’
Holly swayed her head from side to side and turned down her lips. ‘He wasn’t the only one. Donna was playing away with an older, married man at Brunel, but I allowed her to indulge herself. After all, those are the years we’re expected to find ourselves. But with Warren … I began to worry she was falling for him. That night in Ambleside, when she agreed to stay at the boat house, the anger inside of me … Well, let’s just say, I’ve never been so consumed. She was being stupid, showing off in front of that bell end. I told you the truth before. I wasn’t interested in the dare and left. But guilt took over. How could I leave the woman I love out there alone? That’s when I saw the two of them together, Warren and Felicity, fucking each other in the middle of the forest like their lives depended on it. I thought, if Donna saw them together, she’d understand what I’d been trying to tell her about him. But the boat house was already empty when I got there.’
‘And you blamed Warren and Felicity for Donna running away?’
‘She did not run away,’ Holly yelled. ‘Donna would not have left me without a word. We lied; she didn’t leave a note explaining anything. Yes, her bags had gone the next morning, but she hadn’t explained why. Warren forced us to tell that story to the police two years ago, because he said we’d look guilty otherwise. I’ve spent all this time looking for Donna, investigating the happy couple and following their every move. When they announced their engagement six months ago, I finally snapped. Together, they got rid of Donna so they could be with each other.’
Hamilton frowned. ‘Did you find any evidence that Warren and Felicity killed your friend? Because this really could be a runaway case. Perhaps she had also seen the pair together in the forest before you went to find her; it was too much to handle, and she decided to leave.’
‘No! Not at all. I will never believe that. I knew Donna better than she knew herself. Don’t you two have any friends, or lovers?’ Holly said and looked between Hamilton and Dixon. ‘There are people in this world we understand, without the need for words and explanations. And Donna is that person to me. She would not have ignored me, and her own mother, for all this time. I know she’s dead.’
‘And you admit to murdering Warren Speed and Felicity Ireland in order to try and find out what happened to Donna Moran,’ Dixon stated.
Holly crossed her arms over her large breasts. ‘Yes, I did. They wouldn’t tell me where they hid her body, but they deserved to feel pain. To cry and beg. To litter the dirty rivers, just the way they left Donna to. The pair deserved to fucking die.’
Dixon officially arrested Holly for the murders, while Hamilton’s left leg jerked underneath the table, forward thinking about the next warrant his team would need, and the courage he’d need to search for.
‘Interview terminated,’ he declared, and sprinted from the room.
31
The team, accompanied by uniformed officers and forensic scientists, marched into William Thorn’s home little over an hour after Hamilton left the interview room. While his old friend and Dorinda were detained in the kitchen with the FLO, everyone else bustled through every room, pulling out drawers and cupboards, searching the attic and basement and collecting DNA. He wasn’t sure what they’d find, but Hamilton was adamant this family house homed the secret to Donna Moran’s disappearance.
‘What are you doing?’ Dorinda moaned. ‘The girl just ran away. Why in God’s name would you find anything here?
Hamilton glanced in Billy’s direction and spied the look of pure desperation in his eyes. With the slightest movement of his head, Billy shook it from side to side and clenched his jaw.
‘That’s why you really came to see me, wasn’t it?’ Hamilton said, ignoring Dorinda’s question. ‘You wanted to know if I had anything on you after we’d re-opened Donna’s investi
gation. That’s why you were creeping around, slinking in the shadows around my home.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dorinda questioned again, vying for attention.
His attention remained on Billy. ‘You thought you could play the old friendship card and pull the wool over my eyes, didn’t you, mate?’
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Billy whispered.
‘Really? But, you were having an affair with Donna Moran, weren’t you? You’re the older man at Brunel she had a fling with. Why you acted shifty when I asked how well you knew her, and the real reason she visited your office.’
Billy closed his eyes and fell back onto a dining chair. Dorinda gasped and looked down at her pale partner, shaking her head.
‘We’ve contacted the university and have asked them to collect CCTV footage from the day Donna went missing, after she’d left Ambleside,’ Hamilton lied, but he knew his only chance of a confession was to back his old friend into a corner.
‘From two years ago, surely they wouldn’t still –’
‘Oh, there’s every possibility they’ll still have the footage, Dorinda, especially on a campus as vast as Brunel.’ He refocused on Billy. ‘You told me you didn’t see Donna after she’d returned from the Lakes, but you were lying.’
Billy finally looked at Hamilton, but remained silent.
‘Dorinda hadn’t long since given birth to your daughter. Perhaps you wanted to end the affair, and Donna didn’t like the idea. Didn’t want to let you go.’
‘No, it’s not –’
‘So, your original story is unwavering? You see, I think you did see her before she vanished. And I have my suspicions that she isn’t a runaway case at all. Donna Moran, recently graduated, extremely popular and social media mad, suddenly goes off the grid for two years. For what reason? It just doesn’t make sense to me.’ Hamilton paused, walked around the table and folded his arms. ‘Now, I didn’t realise this, but since 2014, the use of contactless card payments and terminals has grown in its millions. Did you know that, Billy? My bank card doesn’t have that function, although it expires this year, so I’m sure I’ll be dragged up to date then.’
‘What does this have to do with anything?’ Dorinda frowned.
‘I’m glad you asked.’ Hamilton struck a finger in the air. ‘You see, my team are great at hunting things down, and they know their stuff. It took some doing, given we’re trying to trace records from two years ago, but Donna Moran’s bank finally had something for my Sergeant. After she left Ambleside, her contactless card was used on the London Underground. She touched out at Uxbridge Train Station, and that’s the last time the card was ever used. Billy, are you certain she didn’t visit you on campus that evening?’
Billy muttered inaudibly, but the following silence spoke volumes to Hamilton.
‘You made her go away for good, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Donna threatened to expose your sordid affair.’
‘No.’
‘Tell your family. Ruin your life.’
‘No, it wasn’t like that!’ Billy’s voice rose, and he rubbed his temples.
Hamilton stepped forward, the words spilling from his mouth as fast as his heart beat inside his chest. ‘You were about to lose everything you’d worked so hard for, your family, your job, your reputation as a counsellor.’
‘No!’
‘What did you do, Billy? Strangle her?’
‘I would never.’
‘But you would shag her, wouldn’t you?’
‘That was two years ago,’ Dorinda screamed, and jumped in front of Billy. ‘That bitch tried to rip our family apart, but I wouldn’t let her win.’ As the final word escaped her lips, Dorinda fell to her knees, panting and crying, and she gripped onto Billy’s leg. ‘I did it for you. I did it for us, and Amelia. Our family. But I promise it was an accident. It was never meant to go that far. You understand, don’t you?’
Billy jumped from his seat and yanked Dorinda’s hands from him. Eyes wide, he paced around the small kitchen table and shook his head, like a nodding-dog toy sat on the backseat of a car. He looked from Dorinda to Hamilton and back to his partner.
‘No. I can’t believe this … what have you done?’
The woman sniffed, wiping her sleeve over the mesh of tears. ‘I saw Donna, that night, leaving your office. You were meant to be meeting me in an hour, and I came early to surprise you. I knew you’d slept with the slut while I was pregnant, but I forgave you. I could understand; I never wanted sex. Christ sake, I didn’t even want to be touched. I hated being pregnant. You were just satisfying your needs, and it wouldn’t last.’
Billy knelt on the floor next to Dorinda and cupped her face in his hands. ‘You knew?’
‘Of course I did!’ she shrieked. ‘All those late nights you were working, what a ridiculous lie. It’s the oldest one in the book. I followed you some nights. I saw everything. After Amelia was born, I had such an awful time.’
‘I remember.’
‘Whatever I tried, there was just no connection between my daughter and me. She cried all the time, demanded my attention. But you, you were so loving and generous and helpful. I just knew you’d finished playing away, I knew you loved me. So, that night, when I saw her …’
Astonished, Hamilton stepped forward. ‘Why did Donna visit your office that night, Billy?’
His old friend shook his head briefly, as if to recall the memory through the murky revelation he’d just witnessed. ‘She was distraught after seeing Warren and Felicity together. She’d headed back to London on the first train she could and was a complete mess.’ He paused, removed his hold on Dorinda and stood up. ‘It was over between us already. It was over the moment my daughter was born. I’m sorry, but you didn’t see what you think you saw that night. Donna purely needed a shoulder to cry on.’
As Billy backed away from his partner, Hamilton took his place and towered over the crying wreck of a woman.
‘I never wanted Felicity to be friends with that girl,’ she sobbed. ‘I warned her Donna was bad news. I could see it in her evil eyes.’
Hamilton sat on the chair nearest to Dorinda. ‘Tell me what happened after Donna left Billy’s office.’
She took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the man she loved. ‘I followed her around the back of campus, near the car park, where they were doing some building work. It was late, too dark for anyone to be working at that time of night. I just wanted to have a chat, woman to woman, and tell her to back off. But she was hysterical. Yelling that I didn’t deserve a good man like Billy, and how much of a useless mother I was, that I’d be better off in a home, like my own mum.’
Dorinda’s wails echoed through the kitchen like a haunting banshee, mumbling as she covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders shook violently, and Billy reached out, his own hand rested on her thigh.
‘What happened to Donna after that?’
‘I lost it,’ she confessed, wiping her face once again. ‘I punched her in the face. Just once, I promise. But the force of it knocked her back so hard her head slammed against the kerb. Jesus Christ, if you’d seen the amount of blood … it poured along the road and right down the drain beside her.’
Billy frowned. ‘Wait, you called me that night, and we had an argument about you not wanting to go out after all.’
‘I panicked. No one would believe it was an accident, once the rumours of your affair bloody got out. For the first time since giving birth, in that moment, I just wanted to hold my baby girl and protect her. I knew if anyone found out, I’d probably never see Amelia, or you, ever again.’
‘Amelia was staying with your best friend, and you told me not to come home that night. What did you do with Donna’s body?’
While listening to the confession, Hamilton stood up and walked over to the window. Admiring the beauty of their garden, he noticed the patch of grass at the far end where no flowers grew. He called out for Laura Joseph and asked her to examin
e the back of the house.
‘Maintaining and decorating gardens is what you do for a profession, isn’t it, Dorinda?’ The woman looked to the floor and nodded. ‘The break in flower patterns isn’t intentional out there, is it? It’s where you buried Donna Moran’s body.’
The sobs returned while Billy jumped to his feet and raced to the back door. The forensic team had already begun setting up perimeters in preparation of digging the earth.
‘No! This can’t be true, Dorinda. Our child is asleep upstairs in her cot. Tell me that girl’s body has not been buried in our back garden for the last two years.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she snivelled. ‘I didn’t know where else to put her … where she wouldn’t be found. I never meant for any of this to happen. But I couldn’t lose my family.’
‘You should have said it was an accident. I would have stood by you. But now, you’ve lost us all,’ Billy spat, and left the room as Amelia’s waking cries resonated through the house.
Hamilton requested Dixon and Rocky accompany Dorinda to the station, but asked them to leave her in the cell for the time being; he wanted to be the one to file the official charges against her. Waiting in the kitchen with Clarke, to ensure Donna Moran actually was found in the burial place confessed to, guilt jabbed him in the stomach. The mistake he’d made, accusing Billy of murder, could be unforgiveable, but there was no time to dwell. After all, he’d only been following the clues, he attempted to comfort himself.
It wasn’t long before the actions of Laura and the other forensics conveyed a clear message: they’d unearthed the missing girl.
32
‘I can’t believe the missus confessed,’ Rocky exclaimed. ‘After discovering Holly hadn’t killed Donna, I thought for sure it was one of the other friends.’
Hamilton gathered the team together in the incident room for a debrief, after an official interview with Dorinda Ireland. Before they all wrote up their reports for the investigation, he needed to ensure they had all the loose ends tied up. He asked Fraser, who had remained at the station while they made the arrest, to update the team about the girl in the attic at Monica Summers’ home.
