AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘No one. I think the hospital tried to call Hannah’s dad, but he was out at work and they discharged her before he’d got home. Hannah made me promise not to tell anyone, and I didn’t.’ Rob looks from Jennie to Martin. ‘I never wanted to hurt her; it was just a bit of fun.’ He looks back at Jennie. ‘You can’t believe I’d ever hurt Hannah?’
Jennie doesn’t answer. She would never have put Rob down as a potential murder suspect, but he’s changed a lot from the lanky, hippie teenager that she knew thirty years ago. He might look more polished, and it’s clear that he’s working hard to try to maintain the calm, professional persona he’s cultivated, but the sweet soulfulness that she always associated with him has gone.
‘Hannah’s medical notes said she had marks on her neck when she was brought into the A&E,’ says Martin. ‘What can you tell us about them?’
Rob stiffens. His eyes dart side-to-side. ‘I don’t know. It was a long time ago.’
‘So you keep saying,’ says Jennie.
‘I … I tried loads of stuff to bring her round before I took her to hospital. At one point I thought she’d choked so I was whacking her on the back and making sure there wasn’t an obstruction.’ He avoids Jennie’s gaze and looks across the interview room towards the closed door. ‘Maybe I bruised her then, but I really don’t know.’
He’s lying, it’s obvious. Jennie’s tone is hard, no nonsense. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Rob meets her gaze now. A muscle above his eye is twitching. ‘Yes, totally sure.’
It’s a lie. She can tell from the way he looks as if he wants to bolt from the room. But Jennie can also see that there’s no way he’s going to tell them the truth about those marks, not right now anyway.
‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in Hannah overdosing. She made a full recovery and, like I said, we never did heroin again,’ says Rob. ‘The person you should be talking to is Duncan Edwards, that creepy art teacher. Have you interviewed him?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t disclose details on an active investigation,’ says Jennie, irritated that Rob thinks he can direct the conversation away from himself. ‘But why do you think we should speak to Mr Edwards?’
‘I didn’t see anything specific, but there were all these rumours about Hannah and him.’ Rob leans closer to Jennie across the table. ‘I know you were in a different group to us for art, but I was with Hannah and she was always first into his art class and last out.’
‘Maybe she just liked art,’ says Jennie, hoping Martin doesn’t pick up on the familiarity of Rob’s reference to her and the rest of the group.
‘Maybe, but Duncan Edwards always seemed to be standing just a bit too close to her, or have his hand on her arm, or touching her somewhere.’ Rob frowns. ‘I never saw anything specific to say there was something going on between them; it was just a feeling.’
‘Useful to know,’ says Jennie, glancing at Martin, who is making a note of what Rob has just said. ‘You mentioned that Simon Ackhurst, Hannah’s boyfriend, could be controlling?’
Rob looks surprised to be asked the question, clearly having forgotten what he’d said about Simon earlier. ‘Yeah, I mean, basically he was punching well above his weight with Hannah and he knew it. He wasn’t dodgy or anything, but he was the captain of the football team and he had a reputation to protect, if you know what I mean? To be honest, I felt sorry for him, especially as he wasn’t even getting laid.’
Jennie tries not to show her surprise; she’d always assumed Hannah was having sex with Simon. Hannah had told her she’d lost her virginity at fifteen and went on the pill just after that. The way Simon had always talked, it was as if they were at it every night. ‘He hadn’t slept with Hannah?’
‘I know, weird right?’ says Rob. ‘They’d been together for ten months as well, but no, for all Simon’s endless talk about sex, they weren’t doing it. If Hannah was shagging someone, it definitely wasn’t Simon. That’s probably why whenever another guy started showing Hannah attention, he’d get a bit paranoid.’
‘Did he get paranoid about anyone in particular?’ asks Jennie.
‘None of the kids, but he hated the rumours about Hannah and Mr Edwards. The rumour mill had been getting louder in the weeks leading up to her disappearance and I know she and Simon argued about it.’
Jennie remembers Hannah had been annoyed with Simon in the last week or so before she disappeared. She’d complained to Jennie about him being clingy and how he’d floated the idea of them getting engaged more than once and then got into a huff when Hannah had told him there was no way she was going to get married. ‘Was he ever violent with her?’
Rob looks shocked. ‘Simon? God, no. He was all mouth.’
Jennie isn’t so sure. Simon was a champion athlete. He was broad and powerful, and although Hannah might have been tall, she was delicate. Simon could easily have overpowered her. Did Simon confront her about the rumours, did the fight turn physical? Or did Edwards kill her?
‘What were you doing the night Hannah disappeared?’ asks Martin.
Rob nods, apparently happy to be off the topic of his friends fighting. ‘I went to the cinema alone that night; I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral. I gave the police the ticket stub when they interviewed me back then. It should be in your file.’
Jennie frowns. It’s not in the file, and there’s no cinema ticket stub in the evidence catalogue either. With each discovery of sloppy investigation during the initial misper case she feels a rising anger at how they failed Hannah – losing evidence is unforgivable. But then she watches Rob; he’s looking nervous again, fiddling with his cufflinks. ‘Was that the first time you’d seen the film?’
‘I … No, I’d seen it once already but, you know, it was such a riot when we all went that I wanted to see it again.’ Rob smiles but, like earlier, the smile feels false.
Jennie makes a note on her pad to ask Naomi to double-check Rob’s alibi. She knows he’d seen the film before – they’d all gone to see it a couple of weeks earlier, and Rob had been very vocal about how rubbish he thought it was.
As Martin closes the interview, Jennie feels her phone vibrate. Pulling it out, she reads the message from Zuri:
We’ve found Duncan Edwards.
