Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Elliott stares at her, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The forensic report on Hannah’s shirt showed a high saturation of hydrochloric acid,’ replies Jennie. ‘We used that in the darkroom; it was your favourite intensifier. So I had the delivery logs checked. They showed a bottle of hydrochloric acid was part of the supplies you took delivery of on the day Hannah went missing, but also that you ordered another bottle just two days later. Why would you need to replace the bottle so quickly?’

Elliott takes a couple of steps back from her. His pupils dart from side to side. His hands are clasped together. Simon is looking at him, furious. Lottie, wide-eyed and still tearful, seems to be in a state of shock.

‘It took months for us to use a bottle of hydrochloric acid,’ Jennie insists. She looks pointedly at Elliott’s hands. ‘Why do you have acid burns on your palms?’

‘It happened the day after Hannah went missing. I was distracted, clumsy,’ says Elliott, falteringly. ‘The new bottle had a faulty seal. I didn’t check it and paid the price; it spilt over the floor and as I tried to prevent more damage, it splashed over my hands.’

‘Bullshit.’ Jennie stares at Elliott. His anguished expression makes her want to stop this, but she can’t. She’s onto the truth. She knows it. ‘You were always so careful. I remember how insistent you were about correct procedure and safety protocols. You never handled the darkroom equipment without protective gloves.’

Elliott looks away. Lottie avoids eye contact with him, as if distancing herself. Simon gives a small shake of his head.

Jennie looks from one old schoolfriend to another. Her voice is firm. ‘Tell me the truth about what happened that night.’

They all stay silent.

‘Did you argue about Hannah spreading rumours about you?’ says Jennie, stepping closer to Elliott. A muscle pulses in his jaw. She needs to push him harder. ‘Did you throw acid at her in revenge?’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ blurts out Elliott, his expression horrified. ‘I’d never have hurt Hannah. It was Lottie.’

Jennie looks at Lottie. ‘What did you do?’

‘You can’t say that, Elliott,’ protests Lottie. ‘I didn’t do anything. I loved Hannah.’

Jennie turns to Simon, who’s seething with ill-concealed rage. ‘If it wasn’t Elliott and it wasn’t Lottie, was it you, Simon? Did Hannah’s affair with Duncan Edwards make you lose it? Or did she finally dump you like she’d been threatening for months? Did you kill her in a jealous rage? Or—’

‘I never bloody touched her,’ shouts Simon, his face turning a darker shade of puce. ‘Don’t look at me, Elliott’s right, it was all Lottie’s fault.’

Lottie gasps. ‘No, you promised …’ Her voice breaks. Tears stream down her face.

‘Tell me the truth. Please,’ says Jennie, her voice soft and encouraging.

Lottie shakes her head. ‘Simon’s lying. It’s like we said before, it was a tragic accident.’

‘I loved Hannah too,’ says Jennie. ‘I just need to know.’

‘We told you already.’ Lottie’s gaze flicks to Elliott and Simon as if looking for confirmation. ‘If anyone’s responsible, it was Rob.’

Jennie keeps her eyes on Lottie. ‘I don’t believe you.’

Lottie’s eyes widen. ‘But you have to believe me. We’re friends, Jennie. Haven’t we always been friends? I’d never lie to you.’

‘But you’ve already lied,’ says Jennie, calmly. ‘Your alibi was a lie and saying the darkroom crew didn’t meet without me was a lie. It’s obvious your story about Hannah, the drugs and the scarf is a lie. You need to tell me the truth. After all these years don’t you want to tell the truth? Keeping it a secret didn’t do Rob any good, did it?’

Lottie shakes her head. ‘No, no, you’re wrong. It’s not—’

‘For God’s sake, Lottie, just admit what you did,’ screams Simon, his voice raw with emotion. ‘Hasn’t this gone on long enough?’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Lottie yells at Simon, the tears starting to fall again. She turns, pointing at Jennie. ‘It was yours.’

What the hell …?

‘I didn’t kill Hannah,’ says Jennie, feeling as if a knife is twisting in her heart. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘You might not have done it, but you caused it,’ Lottie says between sobs. Her mascara-smudged eyes are teary and bloodshot. ‘We’d planned to have a party, but when Hannah arrived, she was carrying a rucksack. She said she wasn’t staying and was only there to say goodbye.’ Lottie glares at Jennie, her hatred clear in her eyes. ‘She said she was leaving White Cross and starting a new life in London with you.’

She was coming. She didn’t abandon me.

Tears prick Jennie’s eyes but she blinks them away. She has to get the truth. ‘Why didn’t you let her go?’

Lottie sighs. ‘I was afraid. I begged her not to go. Honestly, I literally got on my knees and begged. But she didn’t care. She said she was sick of me clinging to her and she wasn’t going to let me hold her back – she was going to be a supermodel.’ Lottie’s voice breaks into a sob. ‘She told me to buy some other friends because paying someone was the only way I’d get them to hang out with me.’

‘What happened next?’ asks Jennie, fighting the urge to shake Lottie or worse. The woman has lied for thirty years about Hannah’s death. They all have.

‘It was my worst nightmare,’ says Lottie, her voice getting louder and higher-pitched. ‘I was already drunk, and her words tipped me over the edge. I said maybe I could be a model too and we could go on jobs together, but she told me I wasn’t model material. I felt utterly crushed. I mean, how could she say something so cruel? She only seemed to care about modelling and you .’ Lottie takes a breath. ‘She wouldn’t shut up about how her face was her ticket out of White Cross and I … I just couldn’t take it any more. I was desperate for her to stay. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just grabbed the nearest thing to me and I threw it right in her face.’

‘The hydrochloric acid?’ says Jennie, her voice a whisper.

Lottie nods. The tears cascade down her face. ‘I was so angry at her. I thought maybe if her face was messed up then it’d ruin her chances of being a model. Then she’d have to stay here, with me. I never meant for it to do that to her.’

Horrified, Jennie reluctantly imagines the scene. Hannah screaming blue murder from the agonising burns, the others in shock at what Lottie had just done. Then all of them panicking that someone would hear – afraid to be exposed for their drug-taking, their drinking and now this horrific violence.

That wouldn’t have killed her, though, and the acid certainly couldn’t have broken her hyoid bone. As she looks from Lottie to Simon and then Elliott, she realises what happened next.

Elliott must have stepped in and strangled Hannah – that’s why only he has acid burns on his palms. But Jennie doesn’t believe it was an altruistic act. She holds his gaze. ‘It was you?’

Elliott doesn’t deny it. He stays silent as he wrestles with his conscience, with the knowledge that his life is about to implode.

Then the tension goes out of his shoulders, as if he’s finally freed from carrying the burden of what he did thirty years ago. His expression is earnest. His tone sincere. ‘She was screeching in pain; I’ve never heard anyone scream like that before. It was awful; I can still hear it in my nightmares. The logical, most humane thing to do was to stop her pain. No one should ever have to endure that.’

Devastated, Jennie fights to keep her emotions in check. Elliott – her friend, a man she’d always thought of as kind and honest, someone she felt love for – had calmly snapped Hannah’s neck because it was the ‘logical’ thing to do. ‘Why didn’t you call an ambulance? Why didn’t you get her help?’

Elliott closes his eyes a moment as if reliving the horror of the past. ‘Hannah wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop screaming. Her face was a mess, she didn’t look like herself any more. She was in agony, and it was sickening to watch. We were all afraid the janitor would hear and come to investigate.’ His tone hardens. ‘I did what had to be done.’

What had to be done?

Jennie swallows down her rising nausea. Murder is never an act of kindness. Elliott was meant to be Hannah’s friend. He should have called an ambulance, they all should. But instead they only thought of themselves, fearing the repercussions of their lawbreaking just as they were about to take flight as young adults. Awfully, selfishly, they snuffed out Hannah’s life and buried her. It wasn’t ‘what had to be done’. It was a heartless, grim act of betrayal.

She bites her tongue, too afraid her anger would be obvious in her voice, in her words, and would stop his confession. Nodding, Jennie waits for Elliott to continue.

‘It was Simon who buried her.’ Elliott looks over at Simon. ‘He got down into the trench the construction workers had laid the pipes in and dug a section of it deeper. He put Hannah’s body in the hole he’d made, then covered her up. With the pipe on top, no one was any the wiser.’

‘If Rob hadn’t insisted we have another big-bang party that night, things wouldn’t have kicked off,’ says Simon, bitterly. ‘ He was to blame. Rob caused Hannah’s death.’

‘No,’ says Lottie, shaking her head. She glares at Jennie again. ‘It was your fault. If you hadn’t filled Hannah’s head with dreams of running off to London, none of it would’ve happened. We wouldn’t have argued, and Hannah would still be alive.’

Jennie stares at her, unable to comprehend how Lottie can be so utterly delusional as to blame her for Hannah’s death. She loved Hannah like a sister. They had a future all planned out: how they’d escape White Cross and their shitty family lives. But Lottie’s actions destroyed that. Elliott killed that life dead the moment he choked the breath from Hannah.

‘Like hell it is.’ Fighting back emotion, Jennie tries to keep her voice calm. ‘You’re all responsible for what happened. You have to take responsibility.’

‘But it was an accident,’ says Lottie, tearfully. ‘I never meant to hurt her. You have to believe me.’

‘I had no choice,’ says Elliott, wringing his hands. ‘She was in agony. I had to act.’

‘We were just kids, and we panicked,’ says Simon. ‘We were high and drunk. Everyone does stupid shit when they’re young.’

‘Most kids don’t commit murder,’ says Jennie, disgusted that the last remaining members of the darkroom crew won’t own what they did, even now.

‘You’re right,’ says Elliott, raising his hands. ‘What we did was wicked, unforgivable. There’s not a day that’s gone by when I haven’t thought about it.’ He looks at Lottie and Simon. ‘… When we haven’t thought about it. We’ve kept the awful secret all these years and it’s destroyed us all, one way or another. Rob took his own life because the guilt slowly ate him up. Simon turned to drugs and crime to try and escape. It took me years to commit to a relationship, and I’ve never been able to be honest with my husband about my past. And Lottie’s been in therapy and on medication for her nerves since university. Surely we’ve paid enough of a price?’

‘I’ve got three kids who depend on me,’ says Lottie, her tone pleading. ‘Elliott’s about to have his first. If you take us in, they’ll be robbed of a parent.’

‘I’ve finally got my shit together,’ says Simon. ‘My charity does great things for people who need help to turn their lives around. If I go back to prison, it’ll all be screwed and far more lives will be ruined.’

Elliott moves towards her. He looks so sincere. ‘You’re one of us, Jennie. You know us. Our friendship binds us together and we’ve always had each other’s backs. What good will it serve to put us in prison? We’re not murderers. I know you know that. Rob left a note, didn’t he? He was willing to make that sacrifice.’

Jennie says nothing. She’s waited thirty years to learn the truth about what happened to Hannah, yet her so-called friends knew all along. They only told her when they had to, happy to keep her in the dark for all these years.

What do I do?

The blow that they are responsible feels like a roundhouse kick to the heart, and the fact Lottie blames her for causing the rift that led to Hannah’s death makes her feel physically sick. She used to care for each of them, especially Elliott. But how can Rob taking all the blame ever be justice ?

She looks from Lottie to Simon and finally at Elliott. They killed Hannah and they left her rotting in a shallow grave. There’s nothing that can justify that.

‘Charlotte Varney, Simon Ackhurst and Elliott Naylor, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Hannah Jennings.’ Jennie’s voice is firm, and her words clear. ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

There’s a creak as the basement door opens and Zuri, Naomi and Steve enter the darkroom. Elliott, Simon and Lottie don’t resist arrest. They look shell-shocked as the team cuff their hands behind their backs.

Jennie watches as it’s done and then, when she’s certain they’re secured, she turns away. She can’t let her colleagues see her cry .