He had indicated he did not wish to have a solicitor present.
As they left the custody office, there was the sound of an incredible ruckus from outside in the yard. Three police officers were fighting a young girl who was going berserk, scratching, spitting, kicking, screaming.
Henry caught sight of the rumpus as it tumbled through the custody office door. He gave a short laugh before following Danny down to the interview room.
‘ What’s going on, Karl?’ Myrna demanded to know.
‘ I’ve done what I can — left a message for the guy I know in Lancashire to contact me. I can only wait for his call, Myrna.’
‘ Yeah, sure, you’re right. Ring me as soon as you hear something, okay?’
‘ I will, Myrna, promise.’
‘ Promise?’
‘ Promise.’
She hung up and looked across the room at Tracey, still sleeping and twitching. Myrna folded her arms on the desk, laid her head on them, closed her eyes.
‘ I want to get this straight from the word go: I did not kill her. No way are you going to pin that on me.’
‘ Why are you here, then?’ Danny’s tongue flicked her bottom lip as she regarded the man sat opposite her in the paper suit. She hoped she was keeping a sneer off her face; probably it was a forlorn hope. Danny detested everything about Joe Lilton from the colour of his eyes to the fact he breathed the same air as she did.
‘ Because of what you said the other day, and that I know you lot will get round to me sooner or later.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, you always pick on the father or stepfather, don’t you? First port of call, usually.’
‘ That’s because they’ve usually done it, Joe,’ Henry observed.
Lilton raised his face towards Henry in a challenging manner. ‘Not in this case.’ His voice was hoarse.
‘ What did I say the other day, Joe — to make you come in?’ Danny asked.
‘ It was when you were talking about how the investigation was going and you mentioned DNA.’
‘ Go on,’ Danny encouraged him.
‘ Is it right that if you get DNA samples you can match them up to offenders?’
‘ It’s very true.’
‘ How, like, accurate is it?’
‘ Foolproof,’ Henry said.
Joe’s head dropped. He studied his thumbs as they circled each other.
‘ For example, Joe,’ Henry began, ‘in the case of Claire, she had semen inside her that is estimated to be four days old. It’s a piece of piss to match that up with a suspect. It’s also piss-easy to prove that someone ISN’T involved.’
Joe’s cranium remained pointing towards the detectives.
‘ So, Joe,’ Danny sighed, ‘why have you come here?’
Joe looked at her. ‘You fucking know, don’t you? You fucking know you bitch, don’t you?’ He jabbed a finger at her. ‘You fucking know why I’m here.’
Danny remained impassive as the end of his finger hovered near the tip of her nose; she willed him to hit her. Instead he sat slowly back, dropped his head into his hands and sobbed.
‘ I didn’t kill her. You’ve got to believe me,’ he slavered through his fingers.
‘ What did you do?’
Joe looked up again. ‘Made love to her.’
Danny seethed. It was the second time a child-molester had referred to making love to his victims. ‘You made love to her?’ she demanded with a snarl.
‘ Yeah, she was willing.’
‘ She was eleven years old,’ Henry pointed out. He too was holding himself back from pitching over the table to strangle the bastard.
‘ You put your penis into her vagina and you ejaculated. Is that what you’re trying to say, Joe?’ Danny persisted.
‘ God, you make it sound so clinical,’ he snapped. ‘It was nothing like that.’
‘ What exactly was it like, Joe? Eh? Screwing your eleven-year-old stepdaughter? Go on, did the earth move? Was it all passion? Do you expect us to believe this shite?’ Danny’s voice was rising uncontrollably, particularly as she remembered Claire’s face when she drove her back home that day of the storm, back to a home where she was suffering abuse of the worst kind. That look on her face… ‘You screwed your daughter, for God’s sake! A forty-four-year-old man, screwing his eleven-year-old daughter. That is not making love, as you so eloquently put it. It’s a serious criminal and moral matter, not a moment of passion between consenting adults.’ Danny stood up, pushed herself away from the table and walked to the corner of the room.
‘ DS Furness has stood up and walked across the interview room, away from the suspect, Lilton,’ Henry said for the benefit of the tape.
‘ But I didn’t kill her. That’s the bottom line.’
Henry spoke into the microphone in a steady tone. ‘I suggest, Mr Lilton, you take on the services of a solicitor. I feel it is inappropriate for this interview to proceed without one being present.’ Henry concluded the interview as per the Codes of Practice, sealed one of the tapes and got Joe to sign across the seal.
Danny remained tucked away in one corner, arms folded, head down, silently scuffing a shoe across the carpet.
Without warning, Henry’s hand shot out and grabbed Joe Lilton’s throat. He heaved the man to his feet, sending the chair underneath him spinning across the room with a clatter. He shoved Lilton into the wall, on which his head smacked hollowly. Lilton had fear flittering in his eyes. Henry’s face was only inches away from Lilton’s.
‘ You are a fucking pervert,’ he growled at the man. ‘In the past you would’ve been bounced around the cells and sometimes, just sometimes, I hanker for the good old days, Joe, because more than anything, I want to beat you to an inch of your life — and then kick you some more — whether or not you killed Claire.’
He released Joe with an exaggerated flick of the fingers, like he was dropping something horrible. Then, grabbing Joe’s arm, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go and see the Custody Officer.’
‘ There was no need to do that, Henry.’ Danny’s voice was strained. She was sitting on the examination couch in the police surgeon’s room in the custody complex, her feet swinging. Lilton was in a cell, awaiting his brief.
‘ Yeah,’ he conceded, slightly embarrassed. ‘I suffer from the “red mist” syndrome occasionally. It gets me into trouble now and then.’
‘ He’s not worth it.’
‘ Hey, okay, nuff said.’ Henry held up his hands in surrender.
Danny looked down at the floor and suddenly it came out. ‘I saw her face, Claire’s face, the expression on it,’ she choked, ‘and it’s only now I realise what it meant, and I made her go back home and it was obvious to anyone with half a brain she had good reason not to want to go back.’ A torrent of tears welled up and flooded over the edge. Her face rose pleadingly to Henry. He crossed to her. She slid off the couch and her arms went round him. ‘Her dad was sexually assaulting her. No wonder she went off the rails… and I didn’t spot it. Someone with my experience — I must be thick as a brick. And she even came in twice to see me, but didn’t have the courage to stay and speak. And what did I do? Nothing. I deserve to lose my job for this.’
‘ No.’ Henry held Danny at arm’s length so he could see her. ‘You cannot blame yourself for this. Every cop in the world would go bananas if they blamed themselves for things going wrong in other people’s lives.’
She closed her eyes sadly and wiped away her tears with a flourish of both hands. ‘Yeah, right,’ she muttered. ‘What are we going to do about Joe Lilton?’
‘ Do you think he killed her?’
Danny shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘ Let’s interview him with a solicitor, then bail him to come back here in a week. We’ll probably have a better picture of things by then. What about Mrs Lilton? Should we arrest her too?’
‘ I don’t think she will be involved, but I suppose we need to speak to her at some stage.’
The door swished open. It was the Custody Sergeant.
‘ Henry, Danny, need to have a quick word.’