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

I lifted my hands, stopping where we ended up a few metres from her.

“Hello, Freya,” I called gently.

“Hello, Inspector,” she called back. She stayed put, clutching whatever was in her hand, the other stretched out to the stone wall behind her for support.

“We’d like you to come into the station, Freya,” I told her. “Can you come away from the river?”

She shook her head. “You found Billie?” She asked.

“We did. She told us what happened.”

Freya laughed slightly. “She barely knows what happened,” she said in a scratchy voice.

“We’re aware of that,” I said, taking a slow step forward, aware of the weight of the handcuffs on my belt. “Perhaps you can explain what happened properly for us? You seem to understand all of this better than anyone. I think, in fact, you’re the only one who has any clue what’s going on.”

“Even you?” She asked.

“Even me. Even us,” I added, moving a hand towards Mills. She looked at him, and he gave her a polite smile.

“Hi, Freya.”

“Hi, Sergeant. I can’t come with you,” she called.

“Why not?” Mills asked, coming to stand beside me, looking very relaxed with his hands loosely tucked in his jacket pockets.

“Because I can’t. You’ll arrest me.”

I tilted my head to one side. “What are we arresting you for, Freya? Attacking Billie?”

“Her. And Edward.”

I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “It wasn’t nice, none of it. Was it?” I asked sympathetically. “What he did to Stella and Billie, and you.”

“He lied to me,” she snapped. “Lied right to my face.”

“We know,” Mills told her reassuringly. “We also know what happened to you,” he added. “Five years ago.”

Freya’s eyes shuttered, and she looked away, down towards the dark water, tangled with weeds that could easily wrap around a person’s leg.

“Hasn’t bothered me for a while,” she said quietly. “I was healing, apparently. They even took me off my meds last year. That was good.”

“Around the time you met the others?” Mills asked her. “When you met Edward, Fiona, Vanessa?”

“And Billie,” Freya nodded. “I was never sure if I liked her or not,” she admitted, turning back to look at us. “She was straightforward, which I liked. Never took anyone for a fool, always said her mind. I liked that.”

“What didn’t you like about her?” I asked, keeping the conversation going, hoping she’d relax, come away from the precarious place she’d chosen to stand.

“I didn’t like the way she treated Edward,” she answered. “But he seemed to. He was sad when she dumped him. And cross.”

“How cross?” I took a little half step closer. “Cross enough to want to hurt her back?”

Freya shrugged. “I thought he’d move on,” she said, tucking her damp hair behind her ear. “And then Charlie had his party, and she was there. She bought Stella with her. Stella was so pretty,” Freya sighed. “A nicer than Billie. Dainty,” she said, waving her hand through the air. “Like a little fairy. Edward was looking at her, but Billie never left her side and anyway, Stella would have had nothing to do with her sister’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Must have wounded his ego a bit,” Mills said, and Freya nodded.

“Everything hurt his ego. Everyone was always so careful with him. You wanted him to like you,” she told us, meeting our gazes in turn. “So much, I wanted him to like me. And I thought he did, but he didn’t.”

“Did he know?” Mills asked her, his voice soft. “About what happened to you? Did he know?”

Freya gave one stilted nod. “I told him once. He was nice about it, supportive.”

“You must have been very close friends then,” I pointed out. “He knew about that, and you knew about the studio.”

Freya grinned then. “He took me after she dumped him. Thought it would piss her off to know that he’d let someone else into their precious little space.”

“You trusted him,” I said. “Of course, you believed him.”

Freya sighed. “I remember that night. I remember watching Billie lead Stella from the room and knowing that look on her face. Something had happened to her,” she said resolutely, “I just couldn’t believe it was Edward. I went to see him,” she told us. “After the report was made. He was sitting on the end of a bed, and he grabbed my hands really, really tight, looked me dead in the eyes and told me he was innocent.”

Freya shrugged, looking down at whatever was in her hand. “I believed him. Helped him. Through the allegations, through the rumours, through the sadness it all gave him. I let him lean on my shoulder and hold my hands. I treated him like the victim,” she said, looking sick at the thought. “And he was just like the man who raped me. Only I was his friend. Only I loved him.” She was growing angrier, and I took another careful step.

“I think it might rain again,” I told her. “Why don’t we talk some more somewhere dry?”

Freya ignored me or didn’t hear me and looked down at her hand. A photograph, I realised, the corner all bent and crooked.

“Whenever Billie was mean to him, I was mean to her. I thought we should say something after she punched him, but Edward said no. Said it was a waste of time, that it was just Billie being Billie.” Freya loud out a single cold laugh. “I wiped the blood off his face with my cardigan sleeve! Then Stella died,” she muttered. “He seemed withdrawn around then, but he just said his dad was annoying him.”

“What happened on Tuesday, Freya?” I asked her, seeing that she was in a sharing mood and not wanting to end that too soon.

She sighed deeply and held up the photograph. “I’d left my jumper in the studio, so I went back to get it. And I got nosy.” She shook her head. “Started looking through things. He never let me in there without him, I’d never had the place to myself to look around before. I found the photos. Of