AM:I have no idea.
DM:You’ve never seen this object before?
AM:No, never.
DM:Lexie, we’ve analysed the second sign and compared it to a photograph of the first sign. They match exactly. It’s the same handwriting. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it, that two separate people with the same handwriting would have the idea to bury two objects in the school grounds within a few weeks of each other? So maybe you have a theory you might like to share with us about how this object ended up where it did?
AM:Honestly. I swear. It was definitely me who buried the ring. That was my handwriting; I made that sign. But the second one was nothing to do with me. I promise.
DM:Another thing that’s bothering me, Lexie. You claim to have seen the sign in the flower bed from your mother’s terrace. But there is no way that you would have been able to see the sign from, as you claimed at the time, the terrace of that apartment in the accommodation block. It’s set far too low down the building. So would you please tell us how you really saw the sign that night, if, as you’re telling us, you had nothing to do with placing it there.
AM:[sighs] I was in the garden.
DM:Near the flower bed?
AM:Yes. Near the flower bed.
DM:Planting the sign?
AM:No. Not planting the sign. I keep telling you. I did not put that sign there.
DM:So what were you doing in the garden?
AM:I was looking for someone.
DM:Who?
AM:Just one of the teachers. I saw her from the terrace and I came down to find her. And that’s when I saw the sign.
DM:So why did you say that you’d seen it from the terrace? Why didn’t you say you were in the garden at the time?
AM:I don’t know. I didn’t want to … I was protecting someone.
DM:Who?
AM:The teacher, she and I are … you know. We’ve been seeing each other. And she’s married. So it’s a bit … sensitive. I didn’t want to bring her into it. It just seemed easier to pretend I hadn’t been in the garden.
DM:Lexie. You should know that we found Zach Allister’s body in a tunnel beneath the Jacques house this morning. And this lever was designed to open the secret tunnel where his body was found.
AM:[audible intake of breath]
DM:Tallulah Murray’s mobile phone was also found in the tunnel.
AM:Oh my God.
DM:So, Lexie, really, if you know anything about this lever, if you have any idea how it ended up buried there, in the flower bed, so close to where you were meeting your friend or if you saw anyone else in the vicinity of the flower bed, now would be the time to tell us.
AM:[begins to cry] I don’t know. I swear. I didn’t put that sign there. I don’t know what that metal thing is and I don’t know how it ended up being buried there. I don’t know anything at all.
66
August 2018
One day, Tallulah wakes up from another deep sleep, a sleep so deep it feels like death, the sleep she now knows is brought on by something from the well-stocked shelves of Scarlett’s mother’s bathroom cabinet, and she finds herself once again in a dark, silent space, all alone, the rhythm and roll of deep, cold water oscillating through her bones.
Through a circular window she sees the viscous cement wall of seawater. She feels her wrists bound. Her feet bound. And now she knows. She knows for sure that she is not being kept safe. That she is not being protected. She knows that everything Scarlett has told her about her father trying to corrupt the police investigation is lies and that this nightmare is about to come to the worst possible end. She knows that the only reason she is stillalive is because Scarlett has made sure of it. But she also knows that Scarlett is losing control of her mother, losing control of the whole situation, and that now Tallulah is being taken to the furthest point from her own mother and her son and her home, to be dropped, despatched, disappeared.
67