‘I don’t deserve this!’ Drew Hopwood looked around the small interview room as if hoping to spot someone in a corner who might defend him. ‘I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me – paid for my own travel to and from your police station so that I could give a DNA sample, answered all your questions politely, and this is how you treat me? Carry on like this and I’m going to be speaking to your boss, I’m sorry to say.’

Gibbs grinned at him. ‘I recommend you do that. I think you’d enjoy it.’

‘Do you address all recently bereaved people in such a heartless way?’

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.’

‘I have some experience of bullies,’ said Hopwood. ‘They try to intimidate until they see it won’t work, then they slink off underneath the nearest stone. You can’t scare me, DC Gibbs. We’re in Britain, one of the most civilised countries in the world, in the twenty-first century. I’ve murdered no one, therefore I have nothing to worry about. I won’t be going to prison. Kim, as my next of kin, won’t be getting her hands on Gran’s money by framing me for five murders so that I can’t legally inherit – much as you and she and all your cronies would no doubt love for that to happen!’

Not another one. You could divide people into two groups, Gibbs had always thought: those who had a realistic idea of how little they mattered to you, and those, like Drew Hopwood, who imagined a detective he’d known less than an hour gave a single shit about any aspect of his life. The suggestion that Gibbs and his colleagues were conspiring with Kim Tribbeck to cheat Hopwood out of his precious three hundred grand, that any of them would love for that to happen, was laughable. You’re just a name in a file, mate, until I can find more evidence.

‘Have a think, look at any records you’ve got, and see if you can do better for those four dates,’ Gibbs told Hopwood. He rose to his feet to signal that the interview was over. ‘Imagine you’ve got three hundred grand riding on it – that might help you to focus.’

Chapter 12

12

from Origami by Kim Tribbeck

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

‘Battery acid?’

Remember how you felt when a detective told you someone had murdered your grandmother by injecting battery acid into her? That there was no doubt from the post mortem, and also a syringe had been found, but there were no fingerprints on it?

Of course you don’t. It doesn’t happen to most people, only a select few.

‘As I understand it, it’s not quite the same chemical—’ Waterhouse breaks off. Decides to change course. ‘Essentially, yes. In layperson’s terms: battery acid.’

When I don’t respond, he asks me what I’m thinking.