Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(83)

“So Max is the one you love. Where does that leave Bev in all this?”

“I love Bev, but . . .”

“But what?” asked Kate.

“I don’t have to justify and explain myself to you!” cried Bill.

“You’re going to have to justify yourself to the police,” said Tristan. “You’ve been meticulous in crafting these two identities, and presumably other identities when you picked up your victims, but you made one big mistake. Nick Lacey parked his BMW on Bev’s road the night that Joanna went missing. But Bill told the police he’d parked Bev’s car on the same street that same night. Nick had a top-of-the-range BMW. Bev had an old Renault, but for some reason, this ‘thief’ chose to steal Bev’s car.”

Bill laughed at this. “That means nothing. Cars get nicked for all sorts of reasons. Low-level drug dealers nick cars, and they don’t want nothing flashy.”

Kate nodded. “Yes, true. We went back over your statement for the day Joanna went missing. You were out with Bev at Killerton House and then got a phone call just before four p.m. calling you to work at a construction project at Teybridge House. You drove to Teybridge House with Bev, and she walked home and left her car with you. Two construction site workers, Raj Bilal and Malik Hopkirk, gave you an alibi saying you arrived at four forty-five p.m. and stayed for around four hours.”

“Yes,” said Bill.

“We’ve spent the past couple of days tracking them down,” said Kate. “Malik Hopkirk died of lung cancer six years ago, but Raj Bilal is alive. We explained our theory to him, and the jail time for lying to the police, and now he’s not so sure that you did stay at the Teybridge House construction site for four hours. He says you paid him to lie.”

“Where’s the proof?” said Bill. “It’s circumstantial.”

“If Bill wasn’t at Teybridge House between four forty-five and eight forty p.m. on the evening of September seventh, what did he do for almost four hours?”

Bill stared at them, both hands on the gun. His stare reminded Kate of a dog—a scared dog deciding if it was going to attack or run away. Her hand was sweaty on the can of Mace inside her bag.

“Joanna was trying to get dirt on Noah Huntley, wasn’t she? Trying to dig up any dirt she could about Noah hiring rent boys and cheating on his wife,” said Kate. “She heard through one of these young guys that Noah Huntley liked to visit Max Jesper’s commune on Walpole Street. What she didn’t know is that you, Nick Lacey, also liked to visit the commune. Did Max always know you as Nick?”

“Shut up! I told you, he has nothing to do . . .” Bill stopped himself and carried on staring at them. Kate saw Tristan inching closer to Bill, his eyes on the gun.

“The phone call you got at four p.m.—it wasn’t from work, was it? It was from Joanna. We think that’s when she made the discovery that you and Nick were the same person. And Nick had killed those young men.”

Bill gripped the gun, taking deep breaths. “You can’t prove any of this. There’s no body. No car,” he said, almost chanting it like a mantra. “Bev’s car got nicked from outside her flat. You can’t prove otherwise.”

“Then how did Nick’s BMW end up outside Bev’s flat that night?”

“I’d parked on the road already,” said Bill with a triumphant smile.

“Why? On the morning of Saturday, September seventh, Bev picked you up from your flat on the other side of Exeter.”

“Okay, I’d parked it there the day before. There was no CCTV on that road,” he said.

“You got the call from Joanna. She’d worked out you were Bill and Nick . . .”

“You’re fishing. You can’t prove it!” he shouted.

“This photo proves it, Bill,” said Kate, holding up the photo taken in the commune. “We got this photo from Jorge Tomassini. Joanna had interviewed him about David Lamb, and he’d shown her some photos of the commune. And she’d taken the negatives without asking him. On the day Joanna went missing, one of her colleagues at the newspaper, Rita Hocking, said Joanna picked up some photos that she’d had developed that day, from negatives she’d stolen from Jorge Tomassini. This photo was amongst the photos that were developed. Jorge said that you had a thing about having your photo taken. This was the only photo in the pack where someone caught you by surprise and managed to get a photo of your face.”

“It was Joanna who phoned you that afternoon, wasn’t it?” said Tristan. “We know from Raj Bilal that the Teybridge House construction site was closed that day. Joanna saw this photo, worked it out, and phoned you. You asked to meet her, to try and explain yourself before she called the police. After you parted ways with Bev at Teybridge House, you drove to Exeter to meet Joanna at the Deansgate multistory car park. You knew it would be deserted. That’s where you grabbed Joanna and killed her, and you used Bev’s car to dump her body.”

Bill laughed and lifted the gun again.

“I say bollocks. And that’s what a jury will say too.”

“You were close to Joanna, weren’t you?” said Kate.

Bill’s face softened a little.

“Of course . . . I wouldn’t have hurt one hair on her head!” he said, raising his voice. He slammed the gun down on the table.