Behind Blue Eyes by CS Duffy

Author:CS Duffy [Duffy, CS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

24

‘It’s not a confession.’

Maddie’s girlfriend Lena had dark brown hair cut in a blunt bob, and a serious gaze that made her a tiny bit intimidating even as she sat crosslegged at the kitchen table in her pyjamas and a hoodie. We were sitting opposite each other as Maddie made coffee. I’d apologised all over the place for the late hour when I all but tumbled in their front door a few minutes earlier but they swore they had still been up.

‘But he says he went to talk to her that weekend.’

‘No, he says he wanted to talk to her. You say it was that weekend.’

‘He took a boat. He must have been going to an island.’

‘Stockholm is made up of many islands.’

‘But —’

Maddie brought coffees and a plate of homemade biscuits to the table.

‘He needs to be interrogated properly. He is drunk and your recording would not be admissible in any investigation without context or a witness. You are not incorrect that the police will be interested to talk to him based on this, but no more than that. It could be something, or it could be a wasted, broken hearted guy talking shit.’

‘But it could be something,’ I muttered stubbornly.

Lena smiled briefly. ‘It could be something. One thing that surprises me is that he does not refer to the police having spoken to him already — he didn’t say that when you approached him at the gym either, did he?’

I shook my head.

‘I wonder if he has been missed by the investigation. How did you identify him?’

‘Facebook. He posted on her wall Fy fan, Sanna the other day, and it struck me as an intense thing to say to another guy’s girlfriend. Then when Linda Andersson said Sanna might have been leaving Johan for someone else, I put two and two together.’

‘Nice work.’

‘Especially if it turns out he was there this weekend.’

Lena nodded slowly. ‘Or it could be that an ex who would not give up added to the stress Mia was talking about. It could have pushed her over the edge.’

‘I’ve been thinking about these rumours about Johan,’ I said. ‘The fact that a newspaper picked it up in the first place and the whole world instantly declared him guilty — doesn’t it feel a bit, I don’t know, deliberate? Especially given that the police haven’t even confirmed foul play. Like, whatever happened, Johan is already guilty. End of story.

‘And more than that,’ I persisted, seeing doubt leap into Lena’s eyes, ‘if the story was about him having a hot temper that possibly got out of control, I could buy that people had heard things based in reality but twisted by gossip. But the way Linda described him, he sounded cold, cruel even. It’s so far off the mark that I can’t believe it’s based on anything real.’

‘Then what could it be?’ asked Maddie.

‘Well what if it’s not just gossip, but rumours that have been deliberately planted?’ I said. ‘What if it suits someone to have people

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