Page 67 of Her Deadly Promise

Gina barged past the desk sergeant and hurried through to the incident room with Jacob on her tail. The tech team had opened the stick and she knew they’d forward the information on it to her immediately. ‘Can you turn that computer on?’ With all other detectives out and Briggs handling the press, it was just her and Jacob.

He pressed a button and they both stared at the computer as it whirred away. ‘It’s on, guv.’

She opened the file from tech. ‘Untitled files.’ She clicked onto the first one and gasped as she opened the four photos. ‘The date is the same as the birthday party for Billie’s son. The one held in Nadia’s garden. What monster could do this to her?’ Gina swallowed as her gaze flitted between them. Bruises to the woman’s chest and arms. Gina spotted the birthmark. It was Nadia in the other photo. She flicked to the next. A cut to her thigh and an awkwardly taken photo facing away from a mirror, where Nadia had managed to capture the scratch on her back.

‘Bloody hell.’

Gina opened the other files, all dated earlier and stopped on a video. She tensed up as she hit play. A teary Nadia began to speak. ‘If you find this, something terrible has happened to me. My husband has been hurting me for years and he plays these sick games…’ She bursts into tears, mascara running down her face. Gina looked away and took a deep breath, trying to ease the nausea running up her gullet. ‘I’ve learned to not keep things in one place. He always finds everything. This is for Billie. I’m sorry, Billie. When you left Kayden playing with your iPad, I emailed you a video message, saved it, then deleted the email. Check your documents. Please?’ The video ended.

Standing, Gina kicked a chair over. ‘The one thing we need right now, we haven’t got. Anderson had every reason to hurt Billie and take her tablet, but he didn’t take his wife.’ She clenched her fists as she closed her eyes, reliving Terry’s fists pummelling her, him forcing her to do repulsive things when he was drunk; the cuts, the broken ribs, the bruises and the pressure in her head felt as though it was about to explode. Itching coming from her core, needing to flex out and hit something, even hit herself.

‘Guv… take a seat.’

‘I don’t need a seat.’ Yes, Jacob knew about her past abuse and so did the whole station. It had come up in a previous case. He knew the pain and angst she was suffering from at this precise moment. She turned away and allowed the tension to ease. ‘I’m okay now. Just seeing these injuries.’

‘The guy’s an animal. We can arrest him with this new evidence. He won’t get away with it and as soon as Nadia comes around, we can also ask her about this memory stick.’

‘If she comes around. It’s touch and go. This memory stick might be all we have.’ She held her hands up in the air before bringing them to the top of her head and pacing. ‘We need Billie’s tablet. Right.’ She headed towards the interview rooms. ‘Anderson is waiting in interview room one and I’m the only one he will speak to. I hate him.’

They hurried along the corridor and stopped outside the room. ‘Let’s do this, guv. You can do it.’

‘Thank you. Jacob?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you ever buy Jennifer jewellery?’

‘Yes, earrings mostly. I bought her a necklace with a pendant on it but mostly earrings.’

‘Never a hair clip or slide? You know, something fancy, maybe silver and sparkly?’

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. ‘No, I’d have never thought of buying something like that.’

‘Hmm, a grip like that would be quite a unique gift then?’

‘Very unique. I think I know where this is going.’

She pushed the door open and calmly took a seat next to the wall. Jacob took the seat next to her. A smug expression filled the solicitor’s face. He thought Edward Anderson might be leaving the station. He thought wrong. Anderson had a lot of explaining to do.

Several minutes later, introductions over and tape rolling, Gina leaned in. ‘You said you had something to tell me. What is it?’

The solicitor smiled. ‘I’ve been informed that Mr Anderson’s wife was found this morning and that Mr Anderson’s wife was left there at the same time he was in your custody. My client needs to be released.’

A niggle at the back of her mind wouldn’t leave and before things got a little more heated when she pulled out the photos and video from Nadia’s locker, she had to ask, ‘We couldn’t find a fancy hair clip under your bed. You mentioned that you and your wife play these games, where you hide presents and notes.’

‘My client—’ Anderson held a hand up and hushed the man.

‘I left it there ages ago. Maybe she moved it?’

‘Can you describe it?’

‘Long, silver, thin with diamantés along it. It sparkles under the light. I don’t know much about hair clips. It was in a box, maybe purple, pink or blue. I can’t remember.’

‘It wasn’t there. We found no hair clip.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know where it is. Why would I lie about something like that?’

Gina wanted to throw all his lies back in his face, but she thought better of it. He was talking. The hair clip that Candice was wearing when she arrived looked to be the same as Anderson was describing and she said that her husband gave it to her. Maybe this once, Anderson wasn’t lying.

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