Summers said they’ll need to go through his phone records and emails to help with the investigation. Tanya’s eyes began to well up again, Summers offered a tissue which she took and dabbed away the tears.
‘To be honest,’ replied Tanya, ‘I don’t like prisons. I don’t think people should be locked up like animals, it’s not right. There must be another way to teach people right from wrong.’
Summers squeezed Tanya’s hand lightly and looked deep into her eyes. Tanya was possibly the most warm-hearted person that Summers had ever met, someone so kind and gentle, yet clearly misguided in her views of law and order. She concluded the meeting and escorted Tanya towards the exit.
‘I’m sorry, is there a bathroom that I could use?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ replied Summers. ‘Follow me.’
Summers took Tanya’s handbag and placed it by her feet as she waited outside the bathroom door and answered her phone that rang in her pocket.
‘Hello,’ she said when answering the call.
‘Detective Summers, I’ve got some news regarding the evidence we collected from the crime scene of Mr Charles Peacock,’ said the voice from the other end of the phone without introducing himself, Summers concluded it was the head of forensics.
Tanya exited the bathroom, saw Summers on the phone and gently tapped her on the arm, signalling that she was going to leave.
‘One moment, please,’ she said to her colleague on the phone. ‘The exit is just through that door there. Thanks again for your time, Mrs Reynolds.’
She watched as Tanya awkwardly manoeuvred her and the baby in her tummy through the doors and out of the building.
‘So what have you got?’ asked Summers, her attention back to the phone in her hand.
‘Sadly, all the blood we’ve tested seems to be from the victim, Mr Peacock,’ he said.
Summers had the awful feeling in her stomach that this phone call was more of the same bad news that had plagued this case from day one.
‘But,’ continued the forensic scientist, ‘the hair, I knew finding the hair was a stroke of luck, it certainly didn’t look like it should have been there, and we could say a good hunch on my part if we wanted…’
‘Yes, brilliant work,’ cut in Summers, ‘but what are you saying? You have DNA from the hair?’
‘Yes, we do have DNA from the hair root, but no match on the database…’ he said.
No match wasn’t good news, but still, for future use at trial if they ever found their guy would be very helpful indeed.
‘Also,’ he continued, ‘the hair was long, dyed red and has an XX chromosome.’
‘A woman?’ she said, not really asking.
‘Yes, a woman.’ he replied. ‘The preliminary results are ready and will be sent to your office shortly.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, before hanging up the phone.
‘A woman?’ she repeated to herself.
Surely The Phantom wasn’t a woman! Could it be? Or if the hair did belong to the killer, who was female, could she be responsible just for the related killings of Charles Peacock and David Reynolds? This seemed more likely.
She began to head back to her office and nearly tripped on Tanya’s handbag at her feet.
‘Shit,’ she said, as she picked it up and ran toward the exit.
She opened the door to see Tanya at the bottom of the steps, talking to a man, his arms wrapped around her, comforting her. It was Ben Green.
41
Ben had bumped into Tanya as she was leaving the station and he was on his way back to his car, before picking up Natalie in town.
He hadn’t even known Tanya was pregnant, and when asking what she was doing at the police station, he was completely shocked to discover that David had been murdered.
What the hell is going on? He thought.
Tanya had broken down into tears again, and Ben gave her a much needed hug, doing his best to help an old friend through the emotional anguish she was going through. He wondered if she knew about the episode between David and Natalie, he knew that if she did, and if she mentioned it to the police, then it wouldn’t be long before they paid him another visit.
Or was this the reason he was let out last night? Did he get lucky, so to speak, when somebody murdered David, drawing the suspicion away from him?
His inner self smiled and laughed, ‘you got what you deserved, Dave.’
Ben noticed Summers at the top of the steps that lead to the reception area of the police station. He stood back from Tanya and watched, as the detective who last night all but accused him of murder, descended the steps towards them.
‘You forgot your bag, Mrs Reynolds,’ said Summers. ‘Good morning, Mr Green, how nice to see you again.’
Tanya took her bag and smiled at Summers, then turned to Ben.
‘They’ve been asking for your help too?’ she asked, innocently.
Ben glanced at Summers before answering.
‘Yeah, they had some questions about Charlie, someone killed him as well,’ he said.
Summers eyed Ben up and down, not sure exactly how this man was linked to her investigation, but sure that they’d meet again. She began to leave then stopped in her tracks. Sometimes you just needed to throw something out there, and so she asked them both a question.
‘Do either of you know a woman with long, red hair?’ she said.
Tanya and Ben looked at each other and shook their heads.
‘No,’ they said, in unison.
Summers gave a swift smile then headed back into the station and out of sight.
Ben offered Tanya a lift home, or if she needed some company, she could spend some time with him and Natalie. But she declined, she wanted to get some fresh air, take a short walk and spend some time alone with her baby.
Ben watched as she rubbed her tummy, turned and walked away. Tanya was a wonderful woman, not the brightest as everybody who knew her knew, but she was kind, loving, honest, everything that the world needed to be, in order to be a better place.
Then Ben looked at his hands, the hands of a killer, and the hands of a man who had become a monster. Then it hit him, ‘red hair?’ his inner voice screamed at himself, ‘The fucking witch!’
Ben was back in his car and had driven to the pre-arranged meeting point with Natalie. He could see her sitting across the road, drinking an orange juice and checking her watch. He could see the bags of shopping she had accumulated, and asked himself how he’d ended up with a superficial, lying slut such as the woman he was supposedly going to marry and raise a child with.
He realised that Natalie would have suited David better than he, and maybe even Tanya would have been the shining light to keep Ben out of the darkness he now found himself in. But that wasn’t how things had turned out, far from it.
Ben, at this point, had realised that he hadn’t killed Charlie. It was his mother. The one who for reasons beyond comprehension was convincing Ben that being a murderer was something to be proud of, that it was what he was born to do.
He thought about his father, too, now seeing clearly that he was an innocent man, guilty at most of not putting this mad woman into a special home when she started to lose her mind, guilty of sticking to his marriage vows.
And maybe his mother was right, maybe Ben was a killer, a monster, he certainly felt that way when he looked in the mirror and saw his reflection pulling faces that he had no control over, and when he heard voices talking, shouting, screaming, and even crying in his head. If this was true, and this was the way in which life would be from now on, things couldn’t go on.
If his mother was a killer, and if it wasn’t his father after all, then he still had the mad gene inside of him, this was what he was built from. He would have to end it, take his own life to protect those potentially innocent victims in the future.