This puts Andrew Everton in a bind. Can this man possibly know the truth? He weighs up the different lies he might tell. He’s so close. Don’t blow it now. Stick to your guns; he will respect that.
‘I didn’t kill them.’
Viktor pulls a pained face. ‘Andrew, that is hard for me to hear. Given the information I have.’
‘What information?’ says Andrew. This has to be a bluff. It’s just a test. Keep denying, keep denying, and you’ll be in Spain before you know it.
‘That you murdered Bethany Waites. You buried her body in the garden of a house in Sussex, and used it to blackmail your co-conspirators, Jack Mason and Heather Garbutt, into keeping quiet about your fraud. That you had Heather Garbutt murdered in Darwell Prison, and, further, that you murdered Jack Mason two evenings ago.’ The Jack Mason bit is guesswork, but Andrew Everton doesn’t need to know that.
Andrew Everton is stunned, paralysed. Where could he possibly have got the information about Bethany’s body and the blackmail? It was impossible. Jack Mason would never have named him, not in a million years. And Heather Garbutt was too scared of what he could do. So how did he
‘Just the truth, Andrew,’ says Viktor. ‘And then we are sure what we’re dealing with. Then we can move forward with trust.’
Andrew Everton has to make a big decision. Confess? How can he stick to his version of the story when this Yuri seems to know the whole truth? Trust Yuri, and trust the Viking? Say the words? It’s just three men in a room, miles from nowhere. He’s very aware that the next sentence out of his mouth could make him ten million pounds.
‘OK,’ says Andrew Everton. ‘And you guarantee this information never leaves this room?’
‘No one is watching,’ says Viktor. ‘And no one is listening.’
Andrew Everton clasps his hands together, as if in a prayer of forgiveness.
‘I murdered Bethany Waites.’
Connie Johnson is watching the action unfold on her flat-screen TV. The Wi-Fi is behaving itself for once, and she is watching a feed of the action on YouTube.
That was that, then, all wrapped up. Andrew Everton in the frame. The Chief Constable. She’d met him a couple of times, seemed nice enough. But a killer? Who’d have thought? And how handy for Connie.
One person he definitely hadn’t killed was Heather Garbutt.
Connie had found Heather’s body when she’d gone back to visit her for another chat. Knitting needles and all. There had been a suicide note by the body, a few last goodbyes, etc. Heather Garbutt was terrified of something, and, watching Andrew Everton on screen, Connie now at least knows what.
Connie had thought quickly. Ibrahim and his gang were on the trail of Bethany Waites’s killer, and, in her estimation, would probably find the killer. She was right about that, wasn’t she? Connie figured it wouldn’t do any harm to get involved. To help out. The court might look a bit more kindly on her if she’d helped track down a murderer.
So she’d torn up Heather’s note –
Now Connie knows that Andrew Everton killed Bethany Waites, she can put part two of the plan into action. She just has to invent a bit of evidence to show he killed Heather Garbutt too. The guy in the admin block, the one with the Volvo who had wiped the tapes of her going into Heather’s cell that night? She bets he might just remember Andrew Everton visiting the prison that evening. And Connie will, no doubt, remember something Heather had said to her. Something innocuous about the police. ‘This goes right to the top,’ some nonsense. She’ll have fun inventing the memory.
Everton will be convicted, and Connie will get a few years knocked off her sentence for cooperating with the authorities. Beautiful. And the sooner she’s out, the sooner she’ll deal with Ron Ritchie.
She had to hand it to Ibrahim, he really came good.
Though she remembers him telling her that she cared about Heather Garbutt. And the fact that she cared was proof she wasn’t a sociopath.
And, all the while, she had Heather Garbutt’s torn-up suicide note in her pocket.
Therapy really is a fascinating process. She can’t wait for more.
You can imagine the hullaballoo here when he said it.
‘Viktor strikes again,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The Bullet never misses.’
There are now more than three million people watching Fiona’s Instagram Live. They have all just heard the same thing, and they are not being shy in giving their opinion. They all want to see what happens next.
I’m typing as I watch. It’s all very relaxed now, the three of them just chatting about bank accounts. Viktor is pouring them each a scotch.
Ron has just been telling a story about a policeman in Yorkshire who hit him with a truncheon. I asked if a lot of people hit him in those days, and he agreed that they did.
