The Woman Who Lied(52)

‘Okay. But is there any way someone told you about the praying-mantis murders?’ She pauses. ‘Louise, perhaps?’

Emilia has to place her hands on her legs to stop them jiggling. ‘Louise never talked about the cases she worked on and she was in the Met Police so she wouldn’t have been working on the praying-mantis case, would she?’

DI Murray shakes her head. ‘No, she wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have heard about it.’

Fuck. How can this be happening? Emilia digs her nails into the fleece of her dressing-gown. She needs to keep it together. She swallows, not knowing how to answer. She can’t tell her the truth. ‘I’m … not sure. I’ll need to think. This has all been such a shock,’ she mumbles.

‘Okay. But if you think of anything, please can you call me.’ DI Murray slips her notebook into the inner pocket of her blazer. She hands Emilia a card with her name and number on it. Emilia’s legs feel weak as she stands up. She can’t wait for DI Murray to get out of the house.

Emilia’s mind is reeling as she closes the door on the detective. If only she’d answered Louise’s call. And now she’s totally on her own, picking her way through the darkness, and she doesn’t know what to do. How to act.

She screams out into the silent hallway, kicking at the wooden panel of the front-room door, hurting her foot. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She needs to calm down, get a grip.

‘Oh, Louise.’ She sighs. What the hell was she up to? Was that what the voicemail message was about? Why she’d said she was sorry? Because she’d known, all along, that the praying-mantis murderer was real?

As she’s throwing on clothes, she receives a call from DC Haddock. She’s not surprised. He tried to interview her properly last night but her mind was all over the place after finding Louise’s body. It still is.

‘I don’t need to spell out how serious things have become,’ he says, his voice sombre. She sits on the edge of the bed, half dressed. ‘Can you come down to the station? Or I could visit you if you prefer?’

She says she’ll come to him. She needs to get out of the house.

When she arrives they sit in a hot room, sweat pouring off Haddock, and he says again how sorry he is about Louise. He looks through the book Jasmine had given her, with the butterflies down the front, where Emilia has written down everything that has happened to her over the last few months. She knows she’s already told him some of this, last night, but she needs to make him understand. Louise has been killed and it’s because of her book. That etching on her ankle … It makes her feel sick to know that someone close to her could have done it. ‘My book and Louise’s death. It’s all linked. It has to be. I just … I just don’t understand how.’

‘And the doll found in Kristin Perry’s things?’ DC Haddock asks, looking at the list she’d made of all the people who had read her unpublished manuscript. ‘Do you think she could be behind this?’

‘If you’d asked me a few months ago if any of the people on this list might be capable of all the things that have happened to me lately, I’d have found it hard to believe,’ she replies. She sips her water, which tastes of iron. ‘But now I just don’t know. I can’t explain how Kristin came to have that troll doll in her possession but I can’t imagine she’s a killer. Why would she want to kill Louise?’

He looks up from the list. ‘Whoever has been stalking you might not be the same person who killed Louise. We have to keep an open mind. Leave this with me.’ His face becomes even more solemn. ‘And I don’t want to scare you, Emilia, but please be extra vigilant.’

He doesn’t need to say it. She’s fully aware of just how much danger she and her family are in.

As she leaves the interview room she thinks again about Louise’s death and the plot of Her Last Chapter, the two things swirling around in her mind. How can there actually be a real serial killer called the praying-mantis murderer? Louise must have known. She feels like she’s being pulled deeper into a spider’s web, unable to claw her way out. She thinks of Elliot’s reaction, her editor’s. Her agent’s. What would they think? She’s lied. To all of them.

And now the truth is coming back to bite her. Kill her.





36





As Emilia rushes back to her car she spots herself in a shop window and recoils at how awful she looks, her unkempt hair scraped into a messy bun. She needs to go home, have a shower and get a grip. But all she can think about is Louise’s dead body, her bloodied head, the inking on her ankle, the praying-mantis murderer being real, and her part in it all. Louise’s last voicemail and what it could mean. The visit from DI Murray. The similarity to a real-life case. She can’t breathe. She … can’t … She stops and holds on to the wall of a nearby shop for support.

‘Emilia?’

She looks up at the sound of the familiar voice. It’s Kristin, looking all summery in a long, floaty dress and gladiator sandals. Has she been following her? ‘Are you okay?’

Emilia takes another deep breath, trying to fight off her nausea. ‘I’m fine. I …’ She stands up straighter, still holding the wall for support. She wonders if the police have called Kristin yet to ask about the troll doll. She suspects not. ‘Have you heard about Louise?’