Someone is Lying, page 17
‘For many things. I am sorry for you, this is not what you wanted the outcome to be.’
I close my eyes, his words washing over me. It would be easier without his sympathy, I think with a sinking dread, because his pity only proves he knows what is ahead of us.
Beside me Issie is rooted to the spot. ‘We have to go to the police station,’ I tell her when Melo finishes the call. ‘They want to talk to you.’
‘No! We’re going home.’ She looks panicked. ‘We can’t miss our flight.’
‘They found a body, Issie,’ I tell her and watch for her reaction, the way her face contorts in horror, the dread that drains the blood from her skin. She barely moves but at the same time it is as if she has been punched in the gut. I can see the life billow out of her.
Issie opens and closes her mouth, furrows her brow like she might be confused.
I realise tears are slipping down my cheeks. I have never felt so hollow. Each day I lose another piece of the girl I thought I knew. The one I poured my heart into bringing up. The moment I saw her in the hospital in Lisbon I was flooded with relief. But, even then, I sensed there was more to come.
All I cared about was what Dylan had done to her to stop her talking to me. I hadn’t considered the why.
‘It’s Beatriz Motto, the missing woman,’ I confirm, though she hasn’t asked me. ‘They want to talk to you and we have no choice but to go to the police station. We’ll have to find another flight. Later,’ I add, though I hope this is true. For all I know we won’t be going anywhere for a long time.
I am too out of my depth. I have no idea what, if anything, my daughter is involved in or what she might know. The only person I’ve trusted to help us is the one man who will stop at nothing to get to the truth. We are stuck in a foreign country, with no one on our side. I don’t know what I should be doing for the best, and there’s no one who can tell me.
It is 2.15 a.m. in Boston and yet the only person I can think of calling is Scott. When the shit really hits the fan this is the person who will sort it. I dial his number and he picks up on the third ring. ‘Jess?’
‘They want to question Issie about a woman who’s been found dead,’ I say as a uniformed officer walks into the foyer. I lower my voice. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘What?’ he splutters and I hear him moving, imagine him getting out of bed so he doesn’t disturb Rita beside him. ‘What the hell’s happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ My words feel strangled and tight in my throat. ‘But they’re here to collect us, so I have to go. Do you think we need a solicitor?’
‘Hell, yes, you need one,’ he says. ‘I’ll deal with it. Tell her not to say anything. Tell her to make no comment.’
‘What?’ I say, incredulous as the police officer indicates the door. Is this really what she should be doing? ‘I have to go. I’ll call you back later.’
The officer who meets us is in his early thirties. He is tall and thin with dark spiky hair and round black-rimmed glasses. He has a car waiting to take us on the short journey to the station where he drops us and tells us Inspector Melo will meet us shortly. When we are offered a drink we both ask for a glass of water. I hold Issie’s hand as we sit and wait, and this time she lets me. The officer doesn’t leave our side and I wonder if it’s because he thinks we might run or if he wants to listen to anything we might say. I say nothing until Melo appears. ‘Can I come in with Issie?’ I ask him.
‘You can have your mother as support?’ he says to her.
‘I don’t—’
‘I’m coming,’ I say, so firmly that no one argues. Besides, if she thinks I am going to sit outside in the reception area while they question her about a dead woman, she has another think coming. ‘It’s in your best interests,’ I tell her. ‘Legally.’
She stares at me like a frightened animal caught in the headlights. It tears me in two to see her so scared, my instinct kicking in to want to make it stop, and protect her from having to go through anything that terrifies her. I realise that I have always been like this, jumping when she needs me. Like the times she’s called me from school and begged me to take in a sports bag she’s forgotten, or put extra money on her card because she spent too much on lunch the day before.
Lois always told me I should say ‘no’ more. ‘They only start learning when you stop doing everything for them,’ she once said.
I’d laughed and told her she was probably right but for her to wait and see what she was like when her kids were older. Only now I have no choice but to let Issie face whatever is coming.
We all take a seat at the table. Melo sits opposite us and is opening a pad on which one side of a page is filled with writing I cannot interpret.
‘Do you know the name Beatriz Motto?’ he asks Issie when she is settled.
I watch how her fingers wrap around the glass, curling and uncurling. ‘No. I told you already I don’t know the name.’
I think back to the way she had looked at me in the hotel lobby earlier. Her eyes filled with fear. I didn’t ask her if she knew anything about it. Why didn’t I, when I had that small window of opportunity? Instead I panicked and called Scott and then the police officer arrived. I wish now I’d asked her what she knew when I had that briefest of chances, because I have no idea what is coming.
‘Beatriz Motto’s body has been found in an area called Graça,’ Melo continues. ‘Is that somewhere you’ve been?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ she says and her body deflates. That one word has taken everything out of her. I see it despite the fact she is righting herself in the seat, straightening her back, pushing herself forward as if she has nothing to hide. But I am her mother, I don’t miss these things.
I wonder what Santos Melo sees when he looks at Issie. I wonder whether she is just a potential witness to him, or if there is anything in her that reminds him of his own daughter. I hope there is. Because, despite the reason we are here, I want him to go easy on her.
‘When was this, Issie?’ he questions.
‘The fourth,’ she says. She looks straight at him.
‘Can you tell me about the night?’
Issie draws in a breath. She holds it tight in her throat but nods, like she is playing for time. When she swallows the breath, I can almost see it squeezing down her throat in slow motion. I glance at Melo, who is writing something on his pad, and feel grateful he isn’t scrutinising her in this moment like I am.
I go to hold Issie’s hand again but she pulls away this time and clasps her hands together in her lap. They clench into a tight ball before she prises them apart and lays them flat on her legs.
‘I went there with my boyfriend, Dylan. He hired a car. It was the night before my birthday and he said he wanted to take me out, do something different.’ Issie frowns at the memory. Her voice is flat and toneless as she reels the acts off like they are on a bullet point list. ‘He said he had something planned for the next day.’
‘What was that?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘And so what did you do?’ Melo asks.
‘We drove to Graça. To see the lights of the city. It was supposed to be the best view.’
I look to Melo as if I am expecting him to nod along and agree with her.
‘Do you recall what time this was?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. It was getting dark. Maybe about nine o’clock.’ She pushes her back up again, rubbing her hands along her thighs before clenching them into fists.
‘And what did you do when you were there?’
‘We saw the lights,’ Issie shrugs. ‘It was supposed to be romantic,’ she adds in a way that suggests it wasn’t.
‘And how long were you there for?’
‘I’m not sure. It could have been half an hour. I don’t know exactly. I’m sorry.’
‘You stopped there for a while then? To look at the sights?’
Issie starts to nod, but then she adds, ‘We had an argument.’ Still she doesn’t look in my direction.
‘An argument? What was this about?’
‘Him.’ Issie pauses. ‘The way he always made me feel.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘I told him I wanted to leave and go back to the hotel, but he didn’t want to.’
‘Why did you want to leave?’
‘Because I knew I didn’t want to be with him any more. I wanted to go home.’
‘Did he know this?’
Issie shakes her head. ‘I was scared of how he might react.’
‘And how might he have reacted?’ Melo asks.
‘I was worried he might get angry. And I didn’t want that, not in a foreign country, not when I was so far away from home. I thought …’ She pauses. ‘I guess I thought he would find a way to stop me going.’
Melo nods as he listens intently. My stomach churns with the anticipation of what comes next. Issie’s cheeks are flashing in patches of red. She must feel my gaze burning into her. ‘I said I wanted to go back to the hostel, but Dylan started shouting that this was all supposed to be for me. He was furious. He didn’t want to go back. He said he had this surprise booked but I don’t know what it was.’
‘He would not take you back?’ Melo asks.
‘No,’ she says. I hear her voice cracking but she clears her throat. Her eyes are glimmering, moist, but she continues to look straight at Melo. ‘He said, “I’ve planned all this so we’re going to do it. You don’t get to have it your way all the time, Issie.”’ A lone tear escapes down her cheek and I can do nothing but watch it as it drips off her chin. I don’t think she even felt it.
‘So what happened next?’
Issie blinks slowly, taking another deep breath. ‘He told me we were going somewhere special, but wouldn’t tell me where. I didn’t like the way he was behaving.’
‘How is this?’ Melo asks.
‘Angry. Erratic.’ Issie shrugs as she rolls her shoulders and arches her back. ‘I didn’t have any idea how to get back to the hostel. I didn’t have any way to. But then he got in the car and …’
‘And?’ Melo prompts when she doesn’t finish.
‘I didn’t get in,’ she says eventually. ‘And so he drove off.’
‘And what time is this?’
‘I’m not sure. I thought it might have been about half an hour later, but maybe it was more.’
Melo nods as he dips his head and writes something on his pad. I have the feeling he knows exactly what time they left. ‘Go on,’ he says.
‘He left me there and I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I stayed there and waited for around ten minutes. Suddenly he was back and he—’ She stops again, her gaze now staring ahead of her, focusing on the memory rather than him. ‘I knew something had happened,’ she tells us. ‘I just knew. He told me to get in the car and he was really panicked. He said he had hit someone.’ The tears are now streaming down Issie’s face.
‘You’re doing well, Issie,’ Melo says.
I cannot speak. I can barely breathe. It’s as if my body has stopped. Like I have floated out of it and am watching us all from afar.
‘Can you go on?’ he asks. ‘What happened next?’
‘I got in the car like he said and he drove round the corner. I saw her then,’ she says, and I watch the way her body folds. Her eyes look so pained as they continue to stare past Melo, it’s apparent how much the memory is haunting her. ‘She was in the road. He said she just stepped out.’
She looks over at Melo now, her eyes wide as saucers. I find myself clutching onto every little thing she says, every tiny gesture she makes.
‘I knew straight away that it wasn’t right, because of the way she was lying and … Oh God …’ she breaks down.
‘Is this who you saw?’ he asks her as he pushes a picture across the table. My eyes dip down to look at it, a photo of a beautiful young girl with dark brown hair. I throw a hand to my mouth and turn my head away. I cannot bear to look at her.
‘Yes,’ Issie is sobbing. ‘He said it was an accident,’ she repeats.
‘What happened next?’ Melo goes on. ‘You say you could tell she was dead. Did you check this?’
‘Dylan did. He told me she was.’
I listen in horror. From the moment Melo called me this morning I hadn’t wanted to believe this. But they had killed a woman. He had killed her. But they had left her. They left her body. And then they ran away.
‘You did not see this for yourself?’ he is asking.
Issie shakes her head.
‘What happened after this?’
‘We both panicked.’ Issie’s body convulses with sobs. ‘We didn’t know what to do. He said he could go to prison.’
‘Did you call for an ambulance?’
‘No,’ she answers in a whisper.
‘Or call for any help?’ Though we both know the answer. Of course they did not, or Beatriz Motto would not have still been missing a week later.
She shakes her head again. My whole body aches with how tense I am, my chest feels like it is on fire. This is not the girl I have brought up. This is not what I taught her she should do. I’ve always instilled a sense of right and wrong and yet this …
‘Why?’ I say. I cannot help myself. Why did you leave her there? But I don’t ask the rest of the question.
‘He said no one knew we were there,’ she goes on, holding a hand up to her throat. ‘He said we needed to get away. No one had to know.’
But you would know, Issie.
‘And this is what you did?’ Melo asks.
Slowly she nods.
‘So you went along with what he told you to do?’ the inspector says.
‘He said it was my fault,’ she tells him. ‘He said he was so angry that he wasn’t concentrating.’
‘Oh my God, Issie!’ I cry as Melo holds up a hand to stop me. But how could she really think this? I want to ask her if she is so stupid to believe any part of it is her fault but then she must have done. Because if she didn’t, she would have got help. She would have done something else instead of leaving the poor woman on the side of the road.
Melo is asking what they did next, and Issie is telling him how Dylan moved the body to the side of the road, where he hid her in the undergrowth and then drove off, for miles out of the city. They left the car in Portalegre, and then hid in Serra de São Mamede.
She tells the inspector how he took her phone so she couldn’t tell anyone what they had done, how he said they needed to pretend they were out of range and couldn’t make contact. ‘I was too scared to do anything else,’ she says. ‘And I thought he knew what he was doing, and then no one seemed to be looking for her, and we couldn’t hide out forever so …’
‘So you come back to Lisbon?’ Melo asks.
Issie nods. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Tears spring from her eyes, coming out of her nose. The last time I saw Issie like this was five years ago at my father’s funeral. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she cries.
Jess
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I don’t know how my legs carry me out of the police station but somehow they do. I am holding us both as I take Issie outside. ‘Can you walk back to the hotel?’ I ask her as I check my phone and see I have three missed calls from Scott.
‘We don’t have a room any more.’
‘I can sort that, but – let’s get back there.’ I am too numb to think straight. Questions race through my mind, but there are too many of them to focus properly on one.
I feel sick at the thought of my daughter leaving a woman for dead. What if she hadn’t been? What if she could have been saved? Did Issie really believe it was her fault? Did she think she drove Dylan to kill someone?
I don’t know how Issie could have done what she did, but somehow what concerns me more is that she’s kept it from me since she’s been back. I have been with my daughter for forty-eight hours and all she has done is tell me a story that didn’t hold together because she’d omitted one vital part.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask her now.
‘I—’ She breaks off, not knowing how to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she says eventually. ‘I think because I hoped I wouldn’t have to.’
‘Issie,’ I hiss, looking up at the sky. ‘That’ – I wave a hand – ‘that’s not enough.’
‘I know and I’m sorry,’ she cries. ‘But it’s the truth. If I could change what happened that night, I would in a heartbeat. I know it was wrong, but I was so scared. And so when I got back to Lisbon and there wasn’t any news about her, I thought – I thought if I didn’t say anything, it would go away.’
‘This isn’t going to go away,’ I mutter.
‘I know that, Mum, and I’m so sorry. You have to believe that.’ She grabs my arm and stops me, making me swing around to face her. ‘Mum.’ She is shaking me. ‘I’m scared.’
It is the first time in the last two days that I see a flash of innocence in her again, of the Issie I have always known and believed in. But at the same time something in me has hardened. ‘Did you leave him?’ I ask.
‘What?’
‘Dylan. You told Melo that you came back to Lisbon because you couldn’t hide forever, and no one seemed to be looking for Beatriz. So did you leave Dylan, or did you both decide it was time to come back?’ I ask bitterly.
‘It was my decision,’ she says.
‘But you didn’t leave him like you told me you did? Was that a lie, Issie?’
‘No, Mum, it isn’t a lie. How could I have just walked away from him? He told me we were in this together and— Mum?’ She is stuttering over her words. ‘Please, I need your help. What’s going to happen to me?’
‘I don’t know, Iz.’
‘Will I go to prison?’
‘No. I don’t believe you will go to prison,’ I say, though I don’t know if this is true. I am clueless as to how any of this works. All I know is, even though Issie is a witness, Melo has allowed us to fly home. If he wants to ask her more questions he will fly her back out to Portugal. But, for now, his focus is Dylan.
‘Does Dylan think you are still together?’ I ask her.
‘No,’ she says adamantly, but I am crushingly conscious that I do not believe her.
