‘You got a number?’ I throw back the last of my wine. Fi has hardly touched hers.
‘Sure do!’ She smiles broadly, retrieving a pen from her handbag. She writes it down on the edge of a beer mat on the sticky pub table and goes to hand it to me, pulling it back last minute. ‘You can have it on one condition,’ she says.
‘Name it.’
‘Just make sure you don’t lose mine, yeah?’ And then she leans forward and kisses me fully and deeply on the mouth.
Thirty-Four
Women – I don’t suppose I’ll ever fully understand them. With the exception of one maybe. The only one.
The words battle, losing and fighting spring to mind, Danny Boy! I hear my dad’s voice, full of resignation, in my head. I spent thirty-odd years trying to understand your mother and never quite got there. She remained forever an enigma. I smile and remind myself to contact the old boy. It’s my birthday in a couple of days’ time. Maybe I’ll take him out for a drink. I know that, like me, he gets lonely sometimes, not that either of us ever admits as much. All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
If I hadn’t felt confused about my feelings before my encounter with Fi then I sure as hell do now. The ego is a funny old thing. Mine took a bit of a knock today when she’d said in no uncertain terms that our night of passion wouldn’t be repeated. Maybe she doesn’t fancy me. Maybe she did fancy me and then we had sex and now she doesn’t, which is even worse. Was I a let-down in the sack? Why doesn’t she want a repeat performance? Perhaps I was pretending to myself that I didn’t really like her as much as I do. I realise now that I’ve been so consumed with my own thoughts and feelings that actually I hadn’t really considered hers much at all. What a prick. But then she kissed me full on the mouth, sensually, and told me not to lose her number. Not that I was planning to. And I know she isn’t planning to lose mine because I’m a valuable source. Although this time round the relationship – whatever it is – has proved to be mutually beneficial because I’m on my way to pay Leanna George a visit. I’ve asked Davis to meet me at her address. Woods – and Delaney for that matter – can poke it.
* * *
‘I was wondering when you lot were going to turn up,’ Leanna George greets Davis and I on her doorstep wearing the tiniest pair of shorts I’ve ever seen and a cropped T-shirt that has ‘Not Your Bae’ emblazoned across the front.
‘That obvious, eh?’ I ask.
She smiles, exposing a set of ice-white and no doubt expensive veneers. ‘You could say that. Come in.’
Leanna George is, I think, what most red-blooded males would call a complete belter. She’s petite, maybe 5ft 2in, with a killer set of curves and long, wavy blonde hair that falls to her tiny waist. A body built for sin springs to mind.
‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she says in a thick Geordie accent, ‘I’ve just come from the gym.’
Davis and I exchange a look. I’ve half a mind to ask her which one.
‘I’m Detective Riley and this is DS Davis.’
‘You’re here about the article, aren’t you? To talk about him?’
‘If by him you mean Robert Mills, then yes, Miss George, we are.’
‘Better sit down then, pet,’ she says. She’s the friendly sort. Doesn’t seem at all perturbed by our presence, which is quite refreshing. Her apartment is small, compact, but very trendy with white wooden floors and colourful soft furnishings. She has an Andy Warhol picture hanging above a small fireplace and antique mirrors displayed in a collective array on a feature wall, suggesting she’s creative.
‘I met Rob when I was shooting for a magazine,’ Leanna explains. ‘I’m a model and actress, well sometimes, you know.’
I wonder what kind of actress she means.
Davis starts taking notes.
‘It was when I came down to London from Newcastle, where I’m from, back in 2015 for a photo shoot. It was for a lad’s mag called Geez – you know it?’
‘Can’t say I do.’
She gives me the once-over with a half-smile. ‘No. Don’t suppose you would. Well it’s a “tits ’n’ arse” title. Glamour dressed up with a bit of low-grade journalism thrown in to make it more palatable.’
Full marks for honesty, I’ll give her that.
‘But a job’s a job, like, and the money was mint if I remember. Though I wish I’d never said yes to it now. No amount of money could compensate for what that motherfucker put me through.’
She smiles unapologetically. ‘So, am I a suspect?’
‘Well, we’ve been informed that you were less than complimentary about the deceased. We will need to ask you what you were doing on the day Robert Mills was murdered, Leanna.’ Davis says this with just the right amount of authority and friendliness. That’s why she’s so good at her job.
‘Ask away, pet. I was working as an extra all day from 10 a.m. til gone midnight at Shepperton Studios. New Danny Boyle film. There’s probably at least 500 people who can corroborate it. I can give you me agent’s number. You can check with the production crew. I was there all day and all night.’
She picks her phone up from the low coffee table and scrolls through it, handing it to Davis. ‘There’s me agent’s number. She’ll give you the details to check.’
Davis jots the number down.
‘So, tell me, Leanna – what was your connection to Robert Mills?’
‘I was his on/off girlfriend for nearly four years. We were in a relationship, if you could call it that.’ The bitterness in her tone is evident.
Four years.
‘I see. How did the relationship begin?’
‘Well, like I said to the press, we met in 2015, on a photo shoot, and after that he pursued me relentlessly.’
‘He came on to you at a photo shoot?’
Leanna George laughs loudly. It’s a raucous laugh. Infectious. ‘You could say that! That man set his sights on me. He saw me, he wanted me, he was going to have me – end of story, like. I had a boyfriend at the time too – well, he was me fiancé actually, Rick. Not that this bothered him. In fact, I think it made me even more of a challenge actually.’ She drifts off for a second, as if reminiscing. ‘He was lovely was Rick, bit boring sometimes, like, but nice and… normal.’ Leanna sighs.
‘What happened, Leanna?’
Her demeanour changes a little then and her wide smile fades. She pulls her feet up underneath her and I try not to be distracted by her slim, tanned bare legs.
‘It started off like something out of a romance novel. Honestly, I’d never before in me life met a bloke so… well, amazing I suppose, or someone so into me, someone who “got” me like he did. Or so I thought. It was a match made in heaven… seemed too good to be true. And that’s because it was.’ She coils a strand of blonde hair around her finger, inspects the ends. ‘He was so… attentive. So funny, kind, sexy, caring, talented and good-looking. And oh my God, the sex was mind-blowing. I mean, literally. He was very eager to please, like. Spent hours, you know…’ She glances down at her lower body. I get the idea. ‘Anyways, he knew how to please a woman, put it that way. Now I realise it was because he’d had a hell of a lot of practice.’
She looks almost nostalgic for a moment. ‘He rang me at least five times a day; sometimes we’d be on the phone for hours on end. There were countless texts and pictures. We were in constant contact. I fell for him, for his game, big time; before I knew what was happening, he had me on the hook and he took over me life. I mean, I’ve been with a few blokes in me time but this was different. This was the real deal. He was everything I’d been waiting for, you know. He told me he loved me a couple of weeks into our “relationship”, which I know now was a huge red flag but it was just so… so intoxicating – he was so intoxicating.
‘I was on too much of a high to see what was really going on. He said that he’d never felt this way about anyone ever before, reckoned I’d been sent to him by the angels, that I was the woman he’d been waiting for his entire life.’ Leanna snorts deris
ively. ‘He wanted to marry me, build a life with me, have a future together. He wanted me to have his babies… I can show you all the messages if you like, all the texts and emails, although maybe not all of the pictures.’ She smiles coyly. ‘He would text me first thing in the morning, always, telling me I was beautiful, how much he missed me, how he couldn’t wait to see me… kisses and hearts and all of that. How he was the luckiest man on the planet, how he was so in love with me… it was’ – she pauses, as if searching for the correct word – ‘heady stuff. I mean, I’ve had attention from men all me life. But this was on another level. This was like coming home, you know, finding your soulmate.’
Ah, my Rach.
‘Within a month of meeting Rob,’ she resumes, a little wearier, as if talking about it takes it out of her, ‘he was begging me to leave Rick and come to London and live with him. Start a new life together. And so I did. I upped sticks and went, left me family, left Rick, left me friends and everything I knew, like a lamb to the slaughter.’ She looks down at her feet as though she’s ashamed. ‘Rick was devastated, poor bastard. I just… well, I just fell so hard for Robert’s bullshit that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees, you know? Greener grass and all of that I suppose. But it was more than that really. I truly loved him, deeply. Well, I thought I loved the fake person he’d created to suck me into his twisted web of deceit and lies. I’d never felt like that before, not with anyone. Do you understand that feeling, Detective, where you love someone so much you literally feel like you’re walking on air?’
Leanna looks up at me with these big sad blue eyes and I feel a pang of empathy for her. Even her beauty couldn’t save her by the sounds of things.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I really do, Leanna.’
She smiles then, wistfully. ‘It’s a beautiful feeling. A once, if you’re lucky, in this lifetime feeling. I wasn’t going to let it pass me by, so I grabbed the chance with both hands. I was so lovesick that I missed all the red flags, or maybe I just didn’t want to see them because the feeling, the high I was on, was just so intense. But in hindsight they were definitely there, from the very beginning in fact.’
‘Go on.’
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ she asks, taking a Marlboro from the packet on the coffee table. ‘It stresses me out talking about him, makes me want a glass of wine too. Don’t suppose you guys can join me in one, can you…?’
I shake my head, regrettably, because something tells me Leanna George is fundamentally a decent person. Beneath her obvious assets and her brash exterior, she appears to be intelligent and sensitive.
She disappears into the kitchen and returns with a glass of something fizzy. ‘I know it’s a little early in the day, like, but fuck it. People need to know what that man was really like.’
I nod, lean forward and light her cigarette for her. ‘What was he really like, Leanna?’
She blows smoke through her thick, pursed lips and looks at Davis, almost in solidarity. ‘He was a fake, a con man. A cardboard fucking cut-out of a person with no soul whatsoever. It was all lies, right off the bat, like. Not a word of truth came out of that bastard’s mouth from the second I met him. I meant nothing to him, let alone being his fucking soulmate. I was an object, not a person. Used, abused then discarded, over and over again. Sent by the angels me arse,’ she scoffs, sipping her wine. ‘More like straight from the bowels of hell.’
Leanna looks right at me. ‘Robert Mills was just a predator, a sexual predator, out for the kill. He got his kicks in the thrill of the chase, by getting women to fall in love with him, change their lives for him, like I did; he persuaded women to sacrifice everything in a bid to bolster his pathetic ego. That man treated me like an appliance and when I became defective, he simply threw me on the scrapheap and went to another one he’d been fine-tuning on the sly.’ She gulps back some wine, blows her smoke purposefully through her glossy lips.
‘He never told me he was married, of course. Or that he had a mistress, another one, or about the baby they had together, or his wife’s accident, or about the countless others. Didn’t have a clue, like. He told me, when we met, that he was “happily single”. Said he’d been divorced for over a year and that his wife was a psycho, that she stalked him and had tried to ruin his life. He said she had cheated on him and that she was the “lowest of the low”. Those were his words. I took him at face value. Why wouldn’t I? I had no reason not to believe him – he was so sincere, seemed so genuine. So I got this apartment. Cost me a fortune, like. The rent on this place could get me a four-bed detached house in Gateshead.’
‘When did the relationship end?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Never properly did really. Never properly got started either. I thought it was a relationship. But it was nothing like a real one, a proper two-way thing. It was push, pull, here today, gone tomorrow, back again, in, out… mind-fuckery off the Richter scale. Almost sent me to the nuthouse after a while, I tell you. But he never quite closed the door. Never gave me that closure, you know. Always left a carrot dangling. He was still sending me the odd text here and there two days before he was murdered, asking me if I was okay, saying he missed me. Complete and utter gash, all of it. He didn’t give a shit.’
‘Why did you stay, in London I mean? Didn’t you think about going back to Newcastle once you found out about the wife, the affairs—’
Leanna stubs her cigarette out in an ashtray that has ‘Las Vegas’ written on the side in pink letters. ‘Well, that’s just it, Detective. I only found out about the others when he died, when I read about it in the press. I mean, I had me suspicions – I knew there was something seriously off, but I had no idea he was leading a triple life, at least… Besides, there’s more work down here, you know. Rob used that sweetener to lure me down here in the beginning. Said he’d get me on to all these big shoots and that, but it never happened. I had to do it all on me own. He was here a lot of the time though; at one point he was using this place as a shag palace. I had no reason to be mistrustful of him at first. Trust me when I say this man was extremely good at what he did. He was a pathological liar and a master manipulator. I took him on his word because who lies about that stuff? Who lies about loving someone, stands back and watches them uproot themselves, leave a relationship, change their whole life for them? Who has a wife and a mistress and another mistress and no doubt many more? Who could be so immoral?’
Robert Mills by the sounds of things.
‘Did Robert abuse you, Leanna?’ Davis asks gently.
‘Psychologically, yes. It happened slowly. In fact, looking back, it was so subtle I didn’t realise I was in hell until the flames were already licking me feet, if you know what I mean. His rages came from nowhere. I was shocked the first few times. Devastated and shocked. One minute he was everything I’d ever dreamt of, like, and then the next… he became this vicious monster who I could never please. He was a real Jekyll and Hyde.’
‘Was he violent, ever?’ Davis looks up from her notepad.
Leanna shakes her head. ‘Never physically, although the threat of it was there when he got into one of his rages over nothing. He was super paranoid. Paranoid I was cheating on him. He had serious, and I mean serious, insecurity and trust issues. Didn’t matter how much I tried to convince him otherwise, or told him I loved him and how good-looking he was and how lucky I felt to have met him. It was like trying to fill a bucket with holes in it. I realise now, all the accusations, they were because he was the one doing the cheating and lying.’
‘They call it projection.’ I nod, adding, ‘The psychologists.’
‘Well, whatever they fucking call it, like, it’s batshit-crazy stuff. I was blindsided by it. Confused, you know. How he could go from being this beautiful man into a raging maniac in such a short space of time?’
‘Because he was only ever a monster to begin with,’ Davis chips in.
‘Exactly,’ Leanna shoots back. ‘It was like he’d brainwashed me somehow. Turned me into this slave who did everything I
could to please him, anything not to upset him. Keep Mr Hyde at bay. I’m no pushover, Detective,’ she says and I believe her. ‘I might look like a dumb blonde with big tits but I’ve got a first in English Literature and I’m a member of Mensa. I knew exactly who I was before I met him and where I was going… by the time he’d finished with me I didn’t recognise meself.’
‘But you didn’t leave?’ Davis says this carefully, non-accusatory.
Leanna sighs deeply again.
‘That’s the thing. Eventually, after a while, before I really knew it, he had control of me. He could be a complete angel, like he was at the beginning. That was what kept me there. That magical feeling he’d given me at the start, in that golden honeymoon period that he manufactured to lure his victims in. I was forever working to recapture it, never really knowing just what the fuck I’d done wrong. But just as everything would settle down and I’d start to feel comfortable again, the devil would reappear. That man accused me of all sorts, things I’ve never been accused of before. Things I know I’m not. He told me I had jealousy issues, that I was paranoid, that I had a short temper, that people found me overbearing, that I had mental-health issues… He could create an argument out of fresh air, like… a shower curtain – once he got upset because a few of the hooks came off and…’ Leanna closes her eyes tightly.
Reliving these memories is clearly painful for her.
‘Everything he’d said he loved about me in the beginning was suddenly everything he despised. And I mean despised. I slept with men for money. I danced on tables because I was a whore. I still wanted Rick even though I had left him to be with Robert, and he was long gone. He would question me mercilessly: where was I going, who was I seeing, did I want to fuck other men, did I work out down the gym to attract them, did I dress to get attention from blokes? It was exhausting, always defending meself for no reason, justifying meself; it kept me forever on the back foot, second-guessing meself, working hard to regain his affection, his attention. He’d keep me up all night sometimes, wouldn’t let me sleep. If he knew I had an important shoot the next day, he would deliberately start a fight and sabotage it. Yet he was convinced, convinced I was the one trying to ruin his career. He tortured me emotionally until I didn’t know which way was up. I lost meself completely. The same circular argument that could never be resolved, over and over again…’
The Couple on Cedar Close Page 18
