How am I ever meant to put that into words? I don’t want to tell Kelman this, but I’ve barely had a moment to think about life without Lisa. My overriding feeling is of guilt. After all, I’m the reason she died. Kelman tells me I can’t blame myself, that Jess admitted to Lisa’s murder.
I thought I’d have a tougher time convincing the police of my innocence, but the recording on the dictaphone seemed to go a long way. Having Claude’s statement about Jess was vital. We didn’t mention the false passport stuff, or the burning down of her parents’ holiday home all those years ago. That’s stuff they’ll find out on their own. All I needed was someone else to testify that Jess existed, and that she was responsible for what happened.
Even before I’d got back to East Grinstead, the British and French police had liaised with each other, the French police taking DNA samples from Claude’s farmhouse and matching them to a stray hair found in the bathroom at the hotel in Herne Bay. As far as a court of law would go, that wouldn’t prove anything. Her hair had every right to be in the hotel in which she worked, particularly as I’d already admitted having an affair with her in that room. My main advantage was that the police seemed to believe me, and any evidence to the contrary would be purely circumstantial and wouldn’t stand up in court.
A younger officer enters the living room, dressed in a sharp suit.
‘Sir, the Austrian police have confirmed that they’ve found the Citro?n. It was left in a petrol station just outside Innsbruck a few days ago. Registered in France to a Monsieur Claude Robert. Apparently they passed it over to the French police to follow up, but it fell somewhere down their list of priorities.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Kelman replies, raising his eyebrows. ‘Have they done DNA swabs?’
‘Not yet, but we’ve got them on the case.’
Kelman nods, a confident look in his eye. ‘I presume we’ll find Jessica’s DNA in it, will we, Daniel?’
‘I should imagine so,’ I reply. ‘But all that’ll tell you is that she was in the car. It doesn’t prove that she killed Lisa, does it?’
‘No, but the circumstantial evidence would lead to that. Not enough to stand up in court, but the crucial thing is there’d be even less pointing in your direction.’
I’m comfortable that Kelman believes my side of the story. I could see from the look on his face when he listened to the dictaphone recording that he personally wouldn’t need much more.
The police had only got as far as France in terms of looking for me. That surprised me. I was sure they would’ve at least managed to track us to Claude’s farmhouse and that CCTV between Claude’s and the Swiss campsite would have picked us up at some point. The cameras lost us as we turned off the motorway a good few miles away from Claude’s place, and my car never reappeared again. The next day, we were on the road in Claude’s old Citro?n. In many ways, I wish I’d known this from the start and hadn’t had to risk my life in Bratislava.
I gasp, a sudden thought entering my mind.
‘What about Slovakia? What about Marek and Andrej?’ The twists and turns of the past few days have left enormous gaps in my reasoning.
‘The guys who owned the bar? The drug dealers?’
‘We don’t know they were drug dealers,’ I say, almost as if I’m trying to defend them.
Kelman shrugs. ‘What do you reckon? I don’t mean to sound rude, but if what you’ve told us is true, firstly it doesn’t concern us, and secondly I don’t see why they’d give a tuppenny toss. They’ve got bigger things to worry about than some foreign bloke ditching their moped halfway across town.’
‘But they know who I am. They know where I live,’ I say. ‘They’re dangerous people.’
Kelman forces a smile. ‘We’ve got officers stationed outside your house, Daniel. I’m not being funny, but we’re hardly going to just disappear and leave you on your own. There’s even a few of our own who still think you’re guilty, and that’s before you start dealing with those bastards from the press out there. Which reminds me, do you want me to get them to piss off?’
I shake my head. ‘Nah, I reckon I can deal with a few photographers after what I’ve been through recently.’
‘We can have you put up in a hotel if you like. We won’t be paying for it, but it’ll be a reduced rate.’
I laugh. It’s the natural, instinctive reaction. ‘No. I think I’ll be staying away from hotels for a while.’
67
The press had given up the ghost within forty-eight hours. There were newer, juicier stories for them to get their teeth stuck into. A new innocent victim for the baying pack to latch on to. After the police announced that they would not be pressing charges against me and that they had reason to believe the person responsible had died in a fire in France, the press seemed to ease off a bit.
The fact was that almost nothing remained of the inside of Claude’s barn. The French authorities were still combing it, trying to find evidence that Jess had indeed perished. It would take some time, they said, but they had no reason to believe anything else had happened. Claude’s testimony was that he’d managed to pull me out of the barn just as he saw me losing consciousness, and that he hadn’t seen Jess at all. She had been further into the barn than I was at that point, and judging by the look on her face and the things she was saying, she had no intention of living anyway.
The police told me they wouldn’t be able to give me any sort of ongoing protection. They’d offered to put me up in a hotel and suggested that I go and stay with family or friends, but none of those ideas seemed particularly attractive. I’ve got used to being on my own recently.
I’m going to take a few days to take stock and let life resume its normal rhythms before I decide what I want to do. I’m still flitting between returning to normality and embracing the chance to start again, build myself a new life in a new place. Perhaps not abroad, though. And preferably away from any hotels.
The doorbell rings, and I poke my head around the lounge door and squint as I look at the frosted glass panel in the upper half of the front door. I can see the reflective colours of the postman’s waterproof jacket, so I unlock the door. He’s standing there with a large cardboard box.
‘Delivery for Mr Cooper?’ he says, thrusting the box at me. ‘Sign here, please.’ He eyes me carefully, no doubt having heard my name and seen my photograph, as has most of Europe by now.