‘To keep you safe,’ says Scarlett’s mother appearing in the doorway. She’s clutching a black mug, dressed in a jade-green cotton dress, which ties at the waist. Her hair is pulled back hard from her face.
‘Safe from what?’
Scarlett’s mother sighs. ‘We need to get you away from here. The police have gone for now. But they’ll be back. They think you and Zach have both disappeared, together, and that’s how it needs to stay.’
‘But …’ Tallulah feels a kind of thrum pass through her head and her vision go grey around the edges. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I have to go home. I have to see my baby.’
‘Tallulah,’ says Scarlett, ‘if you go home now, you will never see your baby again. Do you understand? If you go home now, the police will ask you a million questions about Zach and you will somehow have to explain what happened to him. And what would you say?’
‘I’d say that he … I’d say …’ She stops, tries to pull the threads of her thoughts together and feels them unravel again almost immediately. ‘I’d say he left.’
‘Yes. And that would be an obvious lie. Do you want to lie to the police?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t care. I just want to go home.’
‘No,’ says Scarlett’s mum. ‘I’m afraid that’s not an option. A terrible thing happened here on Friday night. A really terrible thing. And I know you only acted out of passion, out of fear. I understand that mother’s instinct. But the fact of the matter is that Zach is dead. And you killed him.’
‘No. No, I didn’t. I—’ Tallulah’s mind fusses for a while over the detail of that moment as it has done non-stop for the past however many days it’s been. And each time she sees it differently. But every time she sees it, she feels it, in her bile, in her gut, in her very essence, the knowledge that it wasn’t her, that she didn’t do it.
But how can she prove that to anybody?
‘I didn’t kill him,’ she says. ‘I didn’t do it.’
‘Well, the whole thing was rather confused. Nobody was sober. Nobody was in a clear state of mind. But your fingerprints are on the sculpture. And clearly you were the only one with the motive to have wanted him dead. So, I think, or at least let’s assume, that you are the prime suspect and that the safest place for you to be right now is far, far away from here.’
‘But for how long?’ Tallulah asks.
‘Well, until the police have come up with another theory about Zach’s disappearance, I suppose.’
‘But what if they never do?’
‘They will. Of course they will. We just need to get you away from here. Just for a while. So, the car is ready, Rex is waiting at the airfield for us with Martin’s plane and we are all off to Guernsey. But, Tallulah, we need you to be ever so careful. OK? You are flying as Rex’s girlfriend, Seraphina. You look enough alike. Just play the role, play the part. We’ll have you back here before you know it.’
63
September 2018
POLICE TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH LIAM JOHN BAILEY
8 September 2018
Manton Police Station
In attendance:
DI Dominic McCoy
DCI Aisha Butt
DI McCoy:Thank you, Liam, for agreeing to talk to us again. I realise you probably think there can’t be anything left to talkabout. But there’s been a considerable development today. Very considerable. And we think it would be good just to go over a few details again.
Liam Bailey:OK.
DM:So, your relationship with Scarlett, that was over by the time of the pool party on 16 June 2017.
LB:Yes, we were just friends.
DM:But you have lived at the Jacques residence on occasion over the past few years?