Her eyes flickered nervously. There was still something wrong with the picture. But I couldn’t work out what.
‘You can talk to us, Hannah …’ I said. Her eyes flicked to Del Rio who was leaning against the wall and saying nothing.
He’d told me earlier that it was my play. He’d follow my lead. I didn’t think we’d need the good cop, bad cop routine. We had her cold and she knew it. Just a matter of time.
‘Or we can take you down to Paddington Green and you can talk to the cops,’ I continued.
‘He deserved it!’ she spat out finally.
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Hannah shouted back at me, incredulous. ‘Why do you think, you dumb prick!’
Her West Coast accent had come back strongly now. ‘He refused to pay the ransom and my mother died. She died, Mister Carter! But not before I was made to watch her being raped. And then they shot her.’
She broke down in tears and I regretted the urge to slap her. I felt more like putting my arms around her. She was right in some ways. Maybe Harlan Shapiro did deserve a bit of payback. But not this.
‘My god-daughter nearly died,’ I said instead.
‘She wasn’t meant to get hurt. She wasn’t even meant to be there.’
‘Who were the others, Hannah? We know about Laura, but who were the others who were there?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not going to tell you. I don’t care what you do. He deserved this. So he’s had a fright? Look what I had to go through.’
‘If anything happens to him, Hannah, you will be in a whole world more trouble than you’re in already.’
‘Nothing is going to happen to him,’ she said. But her eyes were darting around again and she was rubbing her scraped arm, unaware that she was doing it.
Hannah didn’t believe herself, either.
And that worried the hell out of me.
Chapter 87
ADRIAN TUTTLE REWOUND the video clip again.
I got him to pause it and enhance the image. It was the first video they had sent and I had to admit that Hannah did a pretty good acting job. I got Adrian to split the screen and then played the second clip. I freeze-framed it. Zoomed in on her arm.
‘See that, Adrian?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. Like I said, he was good at spot-the-difference.
Wendy Lee was passing and leaned over. ‘Contusions on her arm in the second video. Not in the first.’
‘And what does that tell us?’
‘That she was faking being tied up the first time round and not the second.’
The memory of her rubbing her arm just a short while ago flicked into my mind. Her arm was definitely sore.
‘So what changed? What was it?’
‘Have you found the other girl yet?’
I shook my head. I had called Sam to meet me at the student accommodation block. Laura Skelton wasn’t there. Her wardrobe was empty, clothes hangers on the floor. Empty drawers left open. It looked as though she had packed a bag and left. Hurriedly. Sam was out trying to track her down. I didn’t hold out much hope.
I let the second tape play on.