Jake and Chloe stood in the corridor between the two cells in which Keeley Coleman and Tyler Morris were being held. Tyler had spent the previous night in hospital; the wounds Faadi had inflicted had required staples and monitoring for infection, but Tyler had been lucky to avoid any serious or long-term harm. Keeley had been detained after being charged, but Tyler was yet to be formally interviewed.

‘Let’s put them both in there,’ Chloe said, referring to the interview room.

‘Together?’

Chloe nodded. They had guessed at the dynamic of the relationship between the two, but seeing the teenagers together might confirm their suspicions.

Ten minutes later, Chloe and Jake sat in the adjoining room and watched Tyler and Keeley via the two-way glass. Both detectives were still stunned by the brutality that two children had been capable of, and the events of the previous evening had left the entire station contaminated with an anger Chloe couldn’t imagine would disperse any time soon. Threats of violence had been made by a couple of officers who’d had to be removed from having any contact with either child. In any other circumstance their reactions would have been criticised, but Chloe understood all too well how they were feeling. It was impossible to regard these two as children.

They knew the stories of children who had maimed and killed – heard news reports and read case studies regarding crimes committed by the most unlikely of young offenders – but those horror stories always took place elsewhere, far enough from home that they were never sufficiently close to feel truly real. Here and now, they were real enough to have reduced Chloe to tears. She had kept them hidden, shedding them alone at home with no one to witness them, but there had been plenty of them: for the victims and their families, for the killers’ families; for Alex.

Chloe’s thoughts hadn’t strayed too far from Alex all day. The sound of her screams as the flames had swept the upper half of her body had been bloodcurdling, and Chloe knew she would hear them and relive those moments in her nightmares for months to come.

She studied Keeley Coleman as the girl paced the small interview room. She wanted to do pretty much what Dan had threatened. The apple never falls far from the tree, she thought. Alex had been right: Keeley Coleman really was her father’s daughter. She had shown no remorse for the things she had done, nor any hint of a reaction to the suggestion that they had evidence against her that connected her to the murders.

‘What do we do?’ Tyler asked her. He had sat on one of the chairs at the desk, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Every so often he would lift his head to seek his girlfriend’s eyes, desperately searching her face for answers. He looked vulnerable, despite everything he was guilty of. It was a misleading disguise; one Chloe wasn’t going to fall for.

‘No comment.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what you say,’ she told him. ‘To everything. No comment.’

‘Keeley, they know we were there. They’ve got my prints, they’ve looked on your mam’s laptop and they know you bought the outfit. You said they wouldn’t be able to trace us.’

Keeley turned sharply, leaned over Tyler and pressed her face against his. ‘They’re watching us now, you know that, don’t you? Why do you always have to be such a fucking idiot?’

Tyler stood. ‘You left your boot print on that old lady and I’m the fucking idiot?’ he spat.

Keeley didn’t answer him. Instead, she crossed the small room and stood to face the mirrored wall. She stepped towards it and pressed her face against the glass, a slow, chilling smile spreading across her pale face. She might have been able to wear innocence like a second skin, but she was equally able to shed it when it suited her. ‘No comment,’ she mouthed slowly.

In the next room, Jake turned to Chloe. ‘She’s pure evil.’

Chloe forced her anger down, swallowing it like a bite of rotten apple. ‘Forget her for a minute. Let’s get Tyler on his own.’

---

‘Interview with Tyler Morris commencing at 15.17,’ Chloe said. ‘Present in the room are DC Chloe Lane and DC Jake Sullivan. The accompanying adult is duty solicitor Amy Barton.’

Julie Morris had refused to so much as be in the same room as Tyler since his arrest. She had crumpled into Chloe’s arms at the news that her grandson had been involved in the series of attacks that had plagued the town, and she was still stating she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Tyler hadn’t been told of his father’s murder until that morning. Unless he was an exceptionally talented actor, his reaction suggested he had known nothing about it. The fact that he hadn’t mentioned it to Keeley when given the chance also suggested he had no idea that she might be involved. Like everyone else, he had most likely assumed that the Hassan brothers had finished what they’d started.

‘Tell us about Keeley,’ Chloe said. ‘How long have you two been going out with each other?’ When Tyler said nothing, Chloe leaned forward. ‘Whatever she said to you, Tyler, this “no comment” business isn’t going to work. You know we’ve got enough evidence against you both. If you want to help yourself, you’d better start talking.’

Tyler glanced at the duty solicitor as though looking for a lead. Alex had been right: Keeley was the driving force behind everything. The boy was a follower, but that didn’t make him any less evil. Only evil could have stood by and watched as he did, and nothing less than evil could have actively participated.

‘Are you in love with her, Tyler?’

Chloe spread a couple of sheets of paper out on the desk in front of her: transcripts of WhatsApp conversations between the two teenagers. Beneath them sat transcripts of the messages that had been sent to Faadi Hassan and Rebecca Mason; a conversation the two had innocently believed to have taken place only between the two of them. Tyler had been clever enough to send them from a pay-as-you-go mobile phone rather than from his own, and Keeley had been devious enough to let him keep it in his possession rather than hide it in her own home.

‘It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?’ Chloe said. ‘Love. It makes you do things you never thought you would.’

‘That’s a very leading question, DC Lane,’ the duty solicitor intercepted.

‘She’s not that nice to you, is she?’ Chloe said, running a finger along the transcript and ignoring the woman. ‘“Fucking useless … not man enough … good for nothing …” Do you think you might like her a little bit more than she likes you?’

‘She loves me,’ he said, his voice a cold monotone. ‘She’s the only one who does.’

Chloe put out a hand to Jake, who passed her a series of photographs. In turn, she laid them out on the desk in front of Tyler, allowing sufficient time for him to absorb the details. The first was a photograph of Gary Peters’ burned and battered corpse; the second a photograph of Corey Davies. The third was a close-up photograph of the boot mark printed on Doris Adams’s body.

‘For the purposes of the recording, I am showing Mr Morris images of Gary Peters, Corey Davies and Doris Adams. We know you made the 999 call on the night of the fire at the hospital, Tyler. We’ve got the skeleton outfit you wore when you attacked Corey, and we’ve got your prints from Doris Adams’ house. The game’s up. So start talking.’

Tyler sat back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘No comment.’

‘I thought you might say that,’ Chloe said. She reached into the file on her lap and took out another couple of photographs. ‘For the purposes of the recording, I am now showing Mr Morris stills of the CCTV footage taken from the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant, captured on 2 November 2017. Do you recognise the two people in the images, Tyler?’

Tyler glanced at the photographs, perusing them with his unusually bright green eyes. There was a flicker of a reaction, but still he said nothing.

‘The stills I’m showing Mr Morris show Keeley Coleman and Gavin Jones. Now,’ Chloe continued, pressing a fingertip to one of the images. ‘If you were to watch the recording in full, Tyler, you would view quite a heated exchange between your girlfriend and your dad. Any idea what they were arguing about?’

‘No.’

‘When did you tell him, Tyler? When did you tell your dad what you and Keeley had done? I’m guessing it was after Doris Adams was beaten to death, am I right?’

The boy said nothing, but the expressionless glaze that had covered his face was fading now, replaced by a dawning realisation.

‘He couldn’t report her without involving you, could he?’ She tapped the image again. ‘They were both at the hospital to see Sian, and it looks as though your dad couldn’t hold back. Once Keeley was aware that Gavin knew what the two of you had done, she had to find a way to keep him quiet, didn’t she?’

Tyler sat frozen in his seat, his eyes fixed to the image on the desk in front of him. The truth was beginning to take shape in front of him, and it was clearly a truth he hadn’t anticipated or prepared for.

‘She left plenty of evidence at your dad’s house to see her put away for a very long time.’ Chloe reached into the file and produced something else: email confirmation of a one-way flight to Spain, booked in Keeley’s name. She described the item for the recording before placing the printout in front of Tyler. ‘You thought you were going with her, didn’t you, Tyler? But it looks as though Keeley had other ideas.’

She sat back and watched as the boy’s resolve began to crumble.

‘Now,’ she said, sliding the email back into the file. ‘Talk.’