as I said, we have a few things in common, you and I.’
‘How dare you speak to them. When was this?’
‘When you first arrested me, of course. I wanted to find out everything I could about you.’
She pictured the cheerful, orderly little house in Lymington where she had lived for five years. She had indeed been lucky to be placed with Robin and Clem, the last in the very fortunate line of children to be fostered by them once their own brood of four had grown up and left home. The thought of such an intrusion on them, as well as on her private world, filled her with anger, as well as the idea that somebody had tricked them. They were too good, and kind, and trusting to be treated that way. Nothing, nobody, seemed to be beyond Duran’s reach. Who else had he spoken to? What else did he know?
She remembered a little of his background from the thick file that had been sent over from Organized Crime when he was arrested. Half Dutch, half Serbian, he had been born and brought up in the UK by his mother, who had been working in London as an au pair. Nobody knew what had happened to the father, but the mother had been killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was five, and Duran had been put into a series of foster homes. Somehow, he had later emerged with a top law degree, then qualified as an accountant, and had anglicized his surname from Duranovic to Duran. He had wanted to conform to some self-imposed ideal, even to the point of taking elocution lessons from a well-known stage voice-coach to remove any trace of his South London accent. In some ways, Eve understood. She had spent most of her life trying to blend in. When she moved down south to Lymington, she had worked very hard to eliminate any trace of her northern accent, a peculiar amalgam of the various places she had lived before. She couldn’t afford to stand out. After so many years, she had forgotten what her real voice had sounded like. But Duran’s need to transform himself was based on insecurity, as well as vanity. She refused to accept that there were meaningful parallels.
‘So you’ve been spying on me. You must be desperate.’
‘I like to know who I’m dealing with, that’s all. The devil’s always in the detail. I know what you did at uni, where you lived, what sort of student you were, what you liked to eat, the friends you made, the boys you shagged, and the same goes for your career with the Met and poor Detective Sergeant Jason Scott.’
‘That’s enough.’
He held up his hand. ‘I’m just telling you this because I want you to understand that finding out who set you up, and why, was a piece of piss. I want you to have faith in me.’
Anger and humiliation hit her in waves. If the glass hadn’t separated them, she would have hit him. Again she sensed his ego, what he said full of bravura and possibly exaggeration. She pushed the chair away and got to her feet.
‘Faith in you? How dare you pry into my life like this. You know nothing about me.’ She turned to go.
‘Not nearly as much as I’d like, it’s true. Your middle name’s Charlotte, isn’t it?’ he shouted after her. ‘Eve Charlotte West. Funny that a three-day-old baby by the same name died on 25th August 1984, in Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.’
The words struck her like a blow. Her stomach lurched, the heat rose to her cheeks and it was all she could do not to make a sound or movement that would give herself away. Thank God her back was to him. It was a moment she had been dreading for years, the sharp, vicious tug at the thread that held her whole life together. She had prepared for it over and over again until she was sure she was pitch perfect, but nothing could quiet the thumping of her heart. At least he couldn’t see or feel it.
She turned to look at him. ‘It’s a common enough name.’ She heard her voice clear and steady.
A flicker of doubt crossed his face. ‘Not that common,’ he said, narrowing his eyes, still studying her intently. ‘Anyway, you also share the same birth date. If I didn’t like you so much, I’d say you’d stolen her ID. The key question is why. Who are you, Eve? I mean, who are you really?’
The blood was deafening in her head, but she held his gaze. ‘What’s the point of all of this?’
He sucked in his breath and nodded. ‘You’re class, Eve. You’re wasted on the police.’ He pushed his chair back and slowly stood up, holding out his hand towards the glass, as though he were asking for hers. His eyes glittered. ‘I want you to know you can trust me, that’s all. If you do me this one favour, your little secret’s safe with me.’
SIX
Eve walked slowly out of the room and back through the series of corridors and security checks to the main entrance. She wondered if he had planted spies to observe her and she decided to take no chances. There must be no signs of her inner turmoil to be reported back. Her footsteps echoed distantly on the lino and she felt as though she were sleepwalking, as she went over and over in her mind what Duran had said. ‘If you do me this favour, your secret’s safe with me.’ How much did he know? Could he really have found out something material? The more she thought about it, the more it seemed unlikely. The fact that she shared somebody else’s name and birth date could be dismissed as a coincidence. But in trying to blackmail her showed he was desperate, for some reason. Maybe she could play it to her advantage. Again, she kept coming back to why he had decided to take up Sean Farrell’s cause. Had he really had some sort of Damascene conversion? She doubted it. ‘It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ Duran had once said to her, in one of his more forthcoming responses during his interrogation. At the time, she wondered if he had actually read Milton, or knew where the quote came from, or if it was something he had picked up second-hand, just liking the sound of it. But he was right about one thing. ‘What have you got to lose?’ he had asked. What choice did she have? There was a good chance he might know who had set her up, and why. Even if he didn’t, or if she did what he asked and he then reneged on the deal, she would be in no worse a position than she was now. If he honoured his side of the bargain and gave her the information she needed, it might change everything at the disciplinary hearing. Also, whoever had done it would be made to pay. On balance, it was a risk worth running. Apart from anything else, she needed to stop him delving any further into her past.
She collected her belongings from the visitor centre, went into the ladies, checked to make sure it was empty, then locked herself in a cubicle. She closed the lid of the toilet, sat down and took out her phone. Was there any way Duran could find out her true identity? She was wondering whom to contact, who could possibly know, when the phone vibrated in her hand. She checked the screen. No caller ID. When she answered, she heard Alan Peters’ flat, nasal tones at the other end.
‘Where are you, Miss West?’
‘Still at Bellevue,’ she said, although she imagined he knew this. Duran’s chauffeur, would have told him that she hadn’t yet come out. ‘Just getting my things from the visitor centre.’
‘I understand you’ve now seen Mr Duran. Would you like the papers sent over to you?’
She took a deep breath. She had no choice, she told herself again. ‘Yes.’
‘When will you be back home?’
She looked at her watch. They would soon be hitting the beginning of the rush-hour traffic. ‘Say a couple of hours.’
‘There’s somebody you should talk to. His name’s Dan Cooper. He’s a journalist and he knows a lot about the case. He works for a charity called 4Justice. It was set up by Cooper and his ex-partner, Kristen Harris. She’s another journalist. They investigate miscarriages of justice and they’ve had some notable success.’ He reeled off a few names, a couple of which were familiar. ‘It’s all linked to a TV programme of the same name on Channel 4. Luckily for Sean, they’ve taken up his case. I’ll fix up for you to see Cooper first thing in the morning.’
‘What if he finds out I work for the Met? This is a very sensitive time for me, with the disciplinary hearing coming up. I can’t afford for word to get out that I’m doing anything like this.’
‘If