Charles blushed. The colour spread across his soft shiny cheeks.
‘No, that is not what I said… I will not be called a liar! Did you hear what they called me?’ he said, looking to his solicitor again.
‘Mr Wakefield. Two women are dead, both of whom lived a few feet from your flat,’ said Erika. ‘Vicky Clarke was making a podcast about sexual assaults in the student halls where you worked as a caretaker. You would have had keys to every flat, and been able to access them at any time. Now, we need to start to make sense of this. Lily Parkes was not a student at GDA. We know that. You say you don’t know her, but someone thinks you know her well enough to try and guarantee your silence, or worse still, threaten you with death.’ Erika leant forward. ‘Let me help you. And to do that you can start by acknowledging what is happening here. Your behaviour, your denial, is setting off all kinds of alarm bells.’
Charles was now shaking with anger, and he looked like he was trying to get it under control.
‘Yes. I got the letter. Yes! But I just thought it had been delivered in error,’ he said carefully, still shaking.
‘Charles. It’s got your name on the envelope,’ said Erika, holding it up to his face. ‘It was hand-delivered to your address. Whoever did deliver this would have to know how to get into Honeycomb Court. The front door has a card key entry.’
Charles shook his head and his shaking became worse; all colour had now drained from his puffy face.
‘I just… I just… I just…’
‘You just what?’
‘I thought it was kids, mucking around.’
‘Stop lying!’ shouted Erika, slamming her hand on the table, feeling a rush of anger herself. ‘This is more than kids mucking around!’
‘I don’t know!’ he roared, crashing his fists down on the table. ‘I don’t fucking know, okay? If you tortured me, I still wouldn’t know!’
‘Who is Lily Parkes, Charles?’
‘Stop saying her name.’
‘What did you do to her?’
‘Nothing!’ he insisted.
‘What did she do to you, Charles? She did something, didn’t she?’
‘She lied. Tricked me.’
‘Tricked you into what?’ asked Erika, leaning in, and feeling she was so close. ‘What did she lie about?’
At this point, he really lost it and stood up, his face red, and screamed at Erika. He thumped his fists on the desk. ‘No! Why can’t you leave me alone! Leave me alone. Alone!’
He stepped back and staggered over his chair, and then he leant forward and threw up all over the floor. His solicitor leapt up off his chair and stepped back in disgust, sweeping his papers away off the table.
Erika and Peterson sat back in shock. Charles stood there, staring at the carpet, retched and then spat. Then he wiped his mouth, and all the anger seemed to drain away from him and he sank down on his haunches, shaking and wailing.
‘Oh dear… Dear me… I’ve made a mess. I’m very sorry about that,’ he said.
‘That’s enough, we need a doctor in here, now!’ said his solicitor.
60
‘Blimey, we haven’t had a puker in a while,’ said Moss when she and Peterson came out of the interview room. Charles Wakefield had been led back down to the custody suite by one of the uniformed officers, and when he’d left the interview room, he’d snapped from being wild and crazed with anger to mute and withdrawn.
‘Do you think we should get the doc down to have a look at him?’ asked Peterson in a low voice. ‘I think he could be on the edge, and maybe…’
‘Put him on suicide watch?’ finished Erika. Moss nodded in agreement with Peterson. ‘Okay. Yes.’
Erika was deeply frustrated. She had come so close to getting it out of Charles, who Lily Parkes was, and what she’d done to him. They walked back to the incident room in silence, and her foot was now throbbing.
‘Do we have anything on the DNA sample taken from Charles Wakefield?’ she asked, for what seemed like the tenth time that day.
Crane looked up, and over at John. ‘We’ve just heard that it was sent to London, from Hove,’ he said.
‘What? They didn’t process it in their lab?’ she asked, dismayed.
‘I think there was a mix-up and they thought it should be sent to London for the Met lab to process it,’ said John.
Erika felt a flash of anger. She took two more of her painkillers with some cold coffee. ‘And how long is that going to take?’