Guilty Conscious by Oliver Davies (best ereader for students .txt) 📗

Mark Helman cleared his throat. “I killed him.”

“We need to know a few more details than that, Mr Helman,” I told him, folding one leg over the other. “Such as when, where and why, would be a good place to start.”

The man rubbed at his arms like he was cold, his gaze fixated on the metal table between us. “He hurt my daughter,” he said.

“Stella,” Thatcher said. “Can you elaborate?”

“He hurt her,” he repeated. “And she died because of it. Killed herself. Because of him.”

“That’s why you killed him?” I asked. He nodded.

Thatcher drew in a long breath through his nose and leant forward, propping his elbows on the table.

“How, Mr Helman? How did you kill Edward Vinson?”

He paused for a moment. “Hit him. In the head.”

“With what?”

“Does it matter?” he asked in a suddenly loud voice. “Does it? I killed him, alright? He hurt my girls, so I killed the greasy little git. I admit it, I confess, do your job!”

“We need to understand how, Mr Helman. How did you get into his university room?”

Mark sniffed, rubbing at his nose with his sleeve. “Key. Bills left her key.”

“She had a key?”

“They were an item,” he muttered unhappily. “Course she ‘ad a key.”

“Where is that key now, Mr Helman?” I asked him in as polite a tone as I could muster.

“Tossed it away,” he answered surely, looking up to meet our faces, lifting his chin.

“And the weapon?” Thatcher inquired. “Where is it now?”

Mark chewed the inside of his bottom lip, something I’d seen Billie do before now. “You have it,” he said quietly.

Thatcher drew in a tight breath. A lucky guess? Or did he really know?

“You gave your fingerprints on the way in?” Thatcher asked Helman, who nodded. “Then we can tick that box soon enough, can’t we? How did you get out of the room without being seen?” We’d had the analysis back about the blood in the basement. It was Edward’s. Our killer left through there, likely went in through there too.

“Does it matter?” Helman asked again, looking impatient.

“Yes,” Thatcher answered bluntly. “It does matter. To us, and to Edward’s parents.”

Mark Helman blinked and looked away, shifting in his seat. “Through the door.”

“The door? We didn’t see you on the security cameras coming through the door,” Thatcher told him.

“Back door,” Helman said quickly, waving a dismissive hand. “I went in through the back, hit him in the head, and went through the back.”

“And the key you have, you say it’s for the back door?”

Mark nodded once, face grim as he crossed his arms around himself. Thatcher turned to look at me, and I offered him a one-shouldered shrug, no more certain of what to make of this than he was.

“Can you tell me what the weapon you used is, Mr Helman?” I asked him carefully.

He picked at some fluff on his sleeve, sniffed loudly, and shook his head.

“No?” Thatcher asked him loudly. “Why not?”

Mark lifted his head. “No comment,” he said smugly. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“You came in here to confess to a murder, Mr Helman,” Thatcher reminded him stoically, “which means you have to offer up enough details that we know you’re telling the truth.”

“So long as someone owns up to it, does it matter who?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “It does. And if you can’t answer our questions, Mr Helman, we’ll let you go and bring Billie back to see what light she can shed.”

“Billie didn’t hurt ‘im,” he snapped quickly. “Didn’t hurt a soul, not our Billie. All bark and no bite always has been.”

“When it came to her little sister,” Thatcher said evenly, “that might not have always been the case. They moved out, didn’t they? Billie got a job and took Stella to live somewhere else. She acted more like a parent than a sister.”

He flinched slightly, shifting his weight about on his seat again. “Always been a clever girl,” he grumbled.

Thatcher looked pityingly at the man, then paused the recording, rose from his chair and jerked his chin at me. I got up, and we left Mark Helman alone for a bit, heading into the room next door where Sharp had already returned, looking at the man with a grimace on her face.

“So, that’s him? No wonder Billie left,” she muttered, turning to face us. “His knowledge of the details is shabby.”

“At best. Sheer dumb luck,” Thatcher answered, sitting on the table in the corner, rubbing at his face. “He barely knows a thing, won’t give any details, which means we don’t have anything to go on, really. Not unless forensics turns up something from the weapon.”

“No knowledge of the studio?” She asked. “Or the trophy?”

“A bit hard to ask him about it, ma’am,” I said, “without giving him the answers in the questions.”

She hummed, tapping her chin with her pen. “Confessing to save his daughter’s skin then?”

“I’d say so,” Thatcher answered in a certain voice. “Which means either he’s suddenly very loyal to her and wants to look after her or…”

“Or he knows she did it,” Sharp finished bleakly. Thatcher winced slightly, looking through the glass to Mark Helman, who sat the way his daughter had, curled up in himself, hands in fists.

“How did he learn that she was here?” Sharp asked. “Did she call him?”

“Not that we’re aware of. Smith brought her in from the flat, and she left her phone there. She didn’t make a call from the station. Someone else must have tipped him off.”

“Who?”

“Could have been Agnes,” I said. “The woman who owns the café? If she saw Billie being driven away in a police car, she might have stepped in, given him a call.”

“Does it matter that much?” Thatcher asked. “He found out she was here and is taking, or he’s trying, to take the blame.”

Sharp’s eyes narrowed, and she looked through the glass again, looking him over like a bird of prey. “He doesn’t know much, and for someone who wants to confess to a crime,