‘And Bryony’s folks?’
‘Both passed away now. I had no idea. Not that I should have known,’ she adds quickly, an unnecessary defence. ‘But you never stop feeling responsible, Cat. You never should, anyway.’
Responsible? Responsible implies some degree of control, an ability to turn the tide, to make things better. No chance here. All the victims are dead and three quarters of them are buried. What she means is ‘you never stop feeling guilty’ even if she can’t bring herself to admit it.
And maybe she should? About Holly, at least. In trying to prove she was superwoman, did she let Holly Kemp become more of a footnote than a true victim?
Did she let another killer walk free?
But Serena Bailey. Serena Bailey. Serena Bailey. The pulled thread that unravels everything. The earworm that won’t go away.
‘We met Serena Bailey today.’ I’m all breezy, knowing I need to tread carefully. Steele might have said ‘grill Dyer’ but there’s picking her brains and there’s picking her witness to shreds. ‘I’ve got to hand it to her, she’s got one hell of a memory. She gave more detail today than she did back then.’
‘She’s had six years to mull it over. I bet a day rarely goes by when she doesn’t replay what she saw.’
‘Quite the opposite, apparently. She claimed she was a whizz at blocking things out, before giving us the whole thing in high definition.’
And in any case, memory doesn’t work like that, I want to say. Details fade the second you turn your back. Inaccuracies grow. Your hard drive gets corrupted. It’s why Jacqui frames our childhood as something straight off an episode of The Waltons, while I seem to conjure up the bloodiest scenes from The Godfather. The truth is usually a grey blotch lying somewhere in between.
Parnell’s back with the drinks. ‘Say what you like about this dive, but for Zone 1, the prices are stupid-low.’ He hands Dyer back her change. ‘What’d I miss?’
‘Serena Bailey.’
‘Who else?’
I take a sip of 7 Up – no G&Ts for us; our day is far from over. ‘Do you know what else I found a bit odd?’
Parnell summarises for Dyer. ‘Apart from the fact she doesn’t doubt herself at all?’
‘That she hadn’t heard about Holly. The news was released at midday and it was gone 3 p.m. when we got there.’
Parnell shrugs. ‘She did say it’d been hectic. It’s not like teachers sit around scrolling through Twitter while the kids are doing their spelling tests.’
‘No, but it was a major event in her life,’ I insist. ‘You’d think someone she knew would have seen it and called, or at least texted, to say, Oh my God, that girl who went missing, the one you were the last to see alive, she’s been found.’
Dyer weighs it up, pushing a beer mat around the table. ‘If it was the evening news, I’d say sure, it’s a bit odd. But who watches the lunchtime news?’
I shrug ‘OK’ but it still grates. We live in an information age; facts, lies, ‘fake news’ spread across multiple platforms within minutes. Surely someone from her SPECIAL PEOPLE TREE – basically, anyone except Peanut, who I’m assuming has four legs – would have come across the story somehow.
‘What did you make of her?’ Parnell asks Dyer.
‘Bailey? Well, look, I was the SIO, I didn’t get too involved with witnesses.’ Same as Steele, more of a general than a foot soldier. ‘Although obviously I would have done if we’d been able to charge the bastard with Holly and she’d needed prepping for court. From what I remember from my team, though, she was near on the perfect eyewitness, and God knows, they’re in short supply. No record, not even a parking ticket. Intelligent. Respectable. Solid.’
File under ‘nice’. Juries love nice.
‘Seriously, is there ever a perfect eyewitness?’ Like a dog hovering over a plate of meat, I glance over to Parnell to check I’m not about to get my snout slapped. He dips his head: permission granted. ‘I mean, did you see that case in America? Not one, five eyewitnesses gave a description of a thin black guy between the ages of thirty and forty, firing at an amusement arcade. Turns out the shooter was a twenty-year-old white male. Not particularly thin, either. Eyewitness accounts given under stress are dodgy. No wonder the CPS wouldn’t prosecute.’
I’ve probably gone too far but Dyer’s fine. She looks almost impressed. ‘The key word there is “stress”, Cat. Serena Bailey wasn’t the witness to a crime, just the witness to two people talking. There was no trauma to devalue what she said.’
‘I’m not trying to devalue it, I’m just trying to digest it. I’m trying to get into a headspace where Bailey’s ID is two hundred per cent nailed on.’
‘Did anyone else put Holly on Valentine Street?’ asks Parnell.
‘We canvassed every house,’ says Dyer, shaking her head. ‘But then, nobody put any of the girls on the street. That 4–5 p.m. period is the dead-zone in middle-class suburbia. The school run’s done so all the parents are inside, wrestling with homework. The office workers aren’t home yet, and the old biddies are watching quiz shows. Masters got lucky in that sense. Maybe he planned it that way.’ She stops, although there’s a sense she hasn’t finished speaking. Quickly, she turns her head, eyes lasering the door for a few seconds. ‘You’re asking me what I think of Serena Bailey. You’d be better off asking me what I think, full-stop.’
We know. ‘Masters did it.’
‘Yeah.’ She takes a steadying sip of gin. ‘Or an accomplice.’
The word oozes onto the table, mercury spreading outwards.
Dyer to Jacob Pope yesterday: ‘Did Masters ever talk about friends? People he was close to?’
She’d been thinking this already.
Has she been thinking this for years?
‘The match made in hell, it isn’t as rare as you’d think,’ she says, qualifying the bombshell. ‘They reckon around a fifth of serial killers operate in teams.’
Some would argue Masters was a spree killer, not a serial. The latter having longer cooling-off periods between murders, the former all done and dusted within thirty days. It’s a contentious issue though, with no firm definition, and anyway, now’s not the time for being a smart-arse.
Parnell whistles. ‘Jesus, that’s one hell of a curveball you’ve just thrown.’
Dyer nods. ‘One that explains the different dump site, though, and the different method of killing.’
And still validates Serena Bailey’s ID. Job done.
Except that it’s a hypothesis, not even a solid theory. Four years of working for Steele has pummelled that difference into me.
‘Think about it.’ Dyer sits forward. ‘Holly went missing on Thursday 23rd February. We arrested Masters on Saturday 25th. We were never absolutely certain that the girls weren’t taken somewhere else, held for a day or two, tortured, then killed – because while we found blood in the house, it wasn’t awash with it. So what if Holly was being held somewhere, then Masters gets arrested, leaving his accomplice with the task of getting rid of her? If he wasn’t a sadist like Masters, maybe more of a voyeur – and there’s generally some psychological difference between most double acts – he might have found a bullet to the head easier to stomach.’