Chapter Text
“You ready, Miller?”
Hardy’s voice as he asks her the question is calm and confident, because it’s a rhetorical one. He already knows the answer of course. Knows that they’ve both been ready for this for weeks, months even and that - like him - Ellie has probably already played this moment over a thousand times in her own head, as eager as he is to finally be where they are.
“Yep, ready. You?”
Hardy nods at her, his brows knitted, and when she continues to look back at him with a bemused frown, bends his head to kiss her.
Behind them she hears a sound, somewhere between a huff of disapproval and a snort of laughter, and turning her head sideways she gives the woman standing there a long hard stare.
“Something you wanted to say, Doctor Hillier?”
Looking thoroughly out of her comfort zone in the frankly intimidating surroundings of a government-run secure psychiatric hospital, Dr. Anita Hillier stares back at them both with a faintly sulky expression as she shifts uncomfortably in her high heels.
“I’d just like to get this over with detectives, if that’s quite alright with you?”
“S’alright with us.”
Hardy turns to look at her as well,
“Expect you’re wanting to get back to your nice comfy office, am I right?”
Hillier’s lip curls,
“Yes, I do. Just as I imagine the two of you want to get back to…whatever it is you’d rather be doing as well.”
Ellie smiles at her brightly,
“Oh no. We love this bit, don’t we Hardy?”
And as her partner nods grimly, she gives her an even brighter smile,
“This is always our favourite part.”
“Interview begun at 10:30am on Monday December 12 2016. Present are myself DI Alec Hardy, DS Ellie Miller, Dr. Anita Hillier and Mr. Damien Phillips, lawyer for the suspect, Ms Tanaka.”
Looking up from his notes, Hardy glances first at Ellie and then across at Dr. Hillier, before turning back to direct his gaze at the woman sat across from him.
“And just to be absolutely clear, I’d like it if you could just identify yourself formally for the benefit of the tape, Ms. Tanaka. With your full name, and date and place of birth.”
Sitting up slightly in her seat, the pale Japanese woman opposite them, places her hands together in her lap and leans in towards the microphone.
“Tanaka Aki, born on the 6th June 1980 in Aomori, Northern Japan.”
Having spoken, she leans back and - looking at them both - smiles pleasantly.
“Ms Tanaka, just to completely clear, you have now identified yourself as Ms Aki Tanaka, is that correct?”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“And can I ask whether, at any time recently or in the past, you have gone by any other name or alias?”
Aki’s smile widens fractionally, and tilting her head a little to one side, she looks at Ellie with amusement.
“Are you asking if I ever called myself Tao Tanaka instead of Aki Tanaka, detective?”
“Yes, that is what we’re asking.”
Ellie holds her gaze, without wavering,
“So did you?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you do that?”
“Whenever she wanted me to.”
“Whenever Tao wanted you to?”
“Yes, whenever she told me to. She'd said ‘you be Tao now’. And I would be. Until I was Aki again.”
Her smiles wavers a little, and there’s a touch of sadness to it,
“It was just a game at first. Between just us two. But then later on…it stopped being one. Later on I was hardly ever Aki. And sometimes I forgot how to be.”
On the right side of the room, Dr. Hillier shifts in her seat, and hearing the sudden sound Aki turns her head sharply and looks in her direction. Then, as if noticing her old therapist for the first time, she breaks in a wide warm smile of greeting.
“Dr. Hillier! You’re here!”
Returning her smile, Hillier nods, but when she doesn’t speak Aki turns back to face both the detectives again.
“Anita helped me so much. So much. When I first came here - not here - to The Font I mean, I was broken. Like a jigsaw all in pieces. Anita helped me find all my pieces, the pieces that weren’t Tao, just Aki, and put them back together,” she nods, assertively, “And I did it. It took a long time, but I did it. I finally put Aki back together again.”
Watching her intently now, Alec nods and then, reaching into the folder in front of him he draws out a photograph.
“For the benefit of the tape I am now showing Ms Tanaka a photograph of a recent excavation sight in the town of Fujikoto in Aomori, Japan.”
Pushing the picture across the desk, he sits back in his chair.
“Ms Tanaka, can you tell me what that’s a picture of?”
Perched on the front of her seat, the slight Japanese woman leans forward and lowers her head to look at the picture. Her eyes skip back and forth over the details for several moments, as if they can’t quite allow themselves to rest on any single one, and - as Ellie watches them - the hands holding onto the seat of her chair fractionally tighten their grip.
“Is that…her?” she says very softly, “Did they find her?”
“Yes,” gentling her voice, Ellie nods, “The police used sonar on the area surrounding your old home, they found her body buried about twenty metres from the foundations.”
Moving forward, she touches a fingertip to the image, to the place on the grainy picture where the small figure’s skull joins the neck at the front.
“The examination of your sister Tao’s body showed that her hyoid bone was broken - here. That sort of break is consistent with strangulation, Aki. But strangulation with real force. Something only a much stronger person could manage.”
Leaning back from the table, Ellie looks at the other woman steadily until - finally - she raises her head and meets her eyes.
“You said he killed her. Before, when we were at the station. You said ‘he’. Was it your father, Aki? Did he kill Tao?”
The smaller woman’s lip trembles, and then - as if she were a mechanical doll - tears spill out and down her cheeks simultaneously on both sides of her face.
“It was my turn,” she says, and her voice has a fine crack in it like old china, “It was my turn to go out to the woodshed, go out to him, but she told me not to. She said ‘you can be Tao’ and she went out instead. But he knew. He knew she wasn’t me. He always knew. So he…he…”
She shudders, and the tremor seems to shake her whole body at the joints.
“I took the small lantern and I went in my nightclothes to find her. And I saw her. I saw her on the dirt, and her neck…her neck,” and her small hands reach up to grab at her own throat, “And I knew he’d done it. I knew he’d finally taken the last thing that mattered to me. The only thing.”
“So you killed him.”
Alec's voice is calm and steady, a statement rather than a question, and brushing the back of her hand over her eyes Aki nods.
“Afterwards, when he came back from…digging…he got drunk. He told me to fetch him some saké, and I fetched it for him. And I kept fetching it. I fetched it till he was so drunk he passed out on the floor. And then I went outside, and I set fire to the house.”
“And when people came, afterwards? You just told them you were Tao?”
Aki shakes her head,
“I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t speak. She’d told me to be her, and so I was. I just did what she told me. No-one but us and daddy knew about the scars. Which side meant which. So I kept on being Tao,” she gives a tiny shrug, “It just seemed easier that way at first I suppose.”
“You said before Tao told you. But she couldn’t speak.”
“She spoke to me. She always spoke to me. Just like Kara speaks to me. In here,” she taps her head, “Everyone’s speaking if you know how to listen, detective.”
She slumps loosely down in her seat then, her long black hair falling forward over her face, and - looking suddenly concerned - Hillier starts to move towards her. When Hardy shoots a hard look at her though, she slowly sits back down again.
“Aki, I want to talk to you now about Chen Xie.”
Taking another picture out of the folder, Alec slides it over alongside the first and, after a long moment or two, Aki raises her head to look at it. As they both watch her, the expression on her face slowly alters from one of childlike despair to a venomous hatred, and - straightening up and pushing her hair back behind her ears - she glares down at the photograph in front of her.
“That little bitch,” she said quietly, “Got exactly what was coming to her.”
Behind her, the man who’s been appointed as Aki’s lawyer makes an abortive exclamation of surprise, before quickly stepping forward to speak in her ear. Swatting him away like a fly though, Aki bares her teeth and snaps at the air between them.
“No! Time for truth now. There’s been enough pretending!”
She curls her lip,
“George always liked it when we pretended. Pretend to be a good girl, good wife. Didn’t like it when we broke. Pretended he didn’t notice, didn’t see. Just like we pretended we didn’t see all of the men he brought home. Or heard all their noises…”
At that, Phillips clears his throat loudly,
“Detectives, may I please advise you that Mr. Waterford’s personal business is not part of this investigation, and that this recording…”
“Alright alright Phillips! Sit down will you!”
Waving hand at him impatiently, Hardy motions for him to return to his seat, and reluctantly the lawyer does so.
“No-one here gives a damn what your boss gets up to in the privacy of his own bedroom, or whether he wants to continue to keep it a secret or not. We’re only interested in one thing here.”
And, tapping the photograph, Alec brings Aki’s attention back to the smiling face of Chen Xie.
“Why did you kill Chen, Aki? And why did you make it look like it was Tao?”
There’s a beat then, when Aki stares back at them both with wide eyes and for a moment she looks as if she might scream. The hands by her side come up and make claws, scratching at the air in front of her, and then with a light quick movement she rocks back on her chair until she’s balanced on the back feet.
“Because there had to be a body, detective!”
And she shakes her head at them slowly as if they’re both very stupid,
“If there was no body, she couldn’t be dead could she? There has to be a body, something for people to see and touch and cry over, or they’re never really dead are they? I mean - you’re alone, you know you’re alone, you feel it deep down inside - but they’re not dead. They can’t be. So you can’t put them away. Never. You just can’t.”
Rocking forward again, so both of her feet are flat on the floor, she turns her head sideways to look straight at Hillier,
“She told me that. Dr. Hillier. She told me that I needed to bury her. For me, and for everyone. That I needed it to know, to feel, to finally truly accept Tao was really gone. So I could be free to be myself, to be Aki.”
“I - no! No, I didn’t say th…I didn’t mean…”
Her face a mottled shade of red and purple, Anita Hillier is clutching the clipboard that she’s carrying to her chest, and staring at both the detectives opposite her in alarm.
“Aki’s treatment was only ever about integration, not destruction! I never suggested that her alternates - any of her alternates - should be destroyed, only that she learn to accept all of her parts, and prioritise them, in order to control the impulses and thoughts that…”
She shakes her head in horror,
“The idea that I would suggest that someone suffering from DiD…murder someone as a means of therapy, that’s just….it’s insanity!”
“Is it??” Aki says thoughtfully to herself, and rocking back and forth in her seat, she taps a finger on the photograph of Chen Xie’s face.
“It seemed to make perfect sense at the time. Tao thought so too. She said George would accept it, that it was perfect. And fire too. She liked that idea. She came up with that a while back, when she realised what kind of person Chen was. A fire, and then teeth she said. That was all they’d needed to prove it was daddy. So Tao took her to the dentist, and I worked out all the rest.”
There’s a long pause, during which Ellie can clearly see the lawyer Phillips’ internal struggle on his face, as it becomes obvious to him that the client he’s been asked to represent is now totally beyond help. Taking out his phone, he seems to be composing a hasty message to someone and, sensing their time is soon going to be up, Ellie decides to go for broke.
“Was Chen Xie trying to blackmail you, Aki?”
“Oh no. No. You must understand, it wasn’t just the blackmail, detective.”
Putting her head on one side, the pretty Japanese woman looks at her seriously, earnestly.
“She wanted to destroy us. Everything we’d made. Our music, our beautiful story, all the lovely things we’d ever written, all of it would have been buried under all that blackness and filth so no-one could ever listen to it again. No-one would ever hear what we’d created without remembering what it had come from.”
“And Tao? You’re saying your dead sister, she told you to do all this?”
A smile tugs at the corners of Aki’s mouth, and lacing her hands in her lap, she leans back to sit upright in her seat again.
“All Tao ever wanted was for me to be happy. Even when we were children. It was why she started making sure our father touched her instead of me. Why she always tried to protect me, even though I was the big one. I don’t think she ever meant to stay with me as long as she did. Secretly, I think the sweet thing was always a little bit worried that if she left me, I’d just be too lonely to go on without her.”
She lowers her head, and when she leans in again to speak directly to Ellie, her voice is a soft conspiratorial whisper,
“You know, I sometimes thought maybe she didn’t quite believe that she was dead, that she was the one who needed convincing too. Which is understandable when you think about it. Because no-one else ever believed it either.”
孤独
As they leave the building the sun is just struggling to come out of the heavy grey snow clouds overhead, and watching Hillier and Phillips hurry away across the car-park to their respective cars, Ellie smiles sardonically at their retreating backs.
“Think they’d have stuck around for a pint or something,” she shrugs and tucks her handbag up underneath one arm, “I wouldn’t even have minded buying after all that.”
Raising an eyebrow at her in surprise, Hardy presses a hand to the small of her back as he turns her away towards their own waiting car.
“If I’d known that Miller, I’d have suggested dinner.”
“Well, we can still go for dinner.”
Looking up at him, she grins in sudden excitement,
“Ooh, actually lets Hardy! I’ve heard there’s a fantastic steak place near here. I just fancy a steak. A big juicy rare one, maybe with a baked potato and sour cream and - ooooh nice fresh green beans!!”
Opening her door for her, Alec steps back to allow her to climb in, frowning in amusement as he does so.
“Since when do you like green beans?”
“What?”
“Since when do you like green beans?”
He walks around to climb in his own side and buckles his seatbelt,
“When I made them with dinner last month, you said you think they taste like anti-freeze.”
“Did I? Hm. Not sure why I fancy them now then all of sudden.”
Frowning, Ellie stabs the play button on the stereo and smiles beatifically as the strains of the lovely piano piece she’s grown to love spill out of the speakers into the car. ‘Loneliness (in F flat minor)’ isn’t exactly the most cheerful of compositions, but she finds she appreciates it more and more every time she listens to it.
“Oh we’re listening to this again, are we? Jesus,” rolling his eyes, Alec pulls the car away from the kerb, “You’re definitely buying dinner then. Green beans and all.”
Ellie laughs, and as she cranks up the volume on the stereo, relaxes back in her seat with a thoughtful look.
“You know, it’s weird. The only other time I started fancying green beans out of the blue, was wh…”
There’s a decidedly long pause, and when Alec looks sideways at her, he sees that his partner’s face has suddenly drained of colour.
“Was when…?”
“What?!”
She startles slightly in her seat, and he can’t help but smile.
“You said ‘was when’, but you didn’t finish?”
“Oh nothing, sorry!”
Shaking her head, Ellie leans over and cracks open her window, sucking in lungfuls of fresh air from outside,
“Probably just got a vitamin deficiency or something.”
Hardy makes a low disapproving sound in the back of his throat,
“Maybe go and see the doctor when we get home. Get that checked out.”
“Maybe.”
The music swells to a crescendo and staring out through the side window, Ellie feels her eyes fill with sudden tears. She’s not sure whether it’s the beautiful music though, or the thing she’s only just figured out, but either way she knows by now the difference between sad tears and happy ones.
“I love you, you know,” she says, without pausing to even think about it a moment longer. Without second guessing herself any more, or wondering what it means to say it out loud to someone else again at long last, or exactly what it is she might be giving away.
When Hardy doesn’t reply though, she turns around in her seat and glares at him with open fury.
“Bloody hell, aren’t you even going to say anything?!”
“Like what?”
Her partner’s lips twitch upwards in a smile and, taking his eyes off the road for a moment, he looks at her with warm steady brown eyes.
“I dunno? Maybe thank you? ‘I love you too, Ellie!?’”
“You know I love you, Miller.”
“Oh my god!”
“What?”
“‘I love you Miller?’ What’s next? Make love to me, DS Miller? Kiss me, DS Miller? Ride me harder, DS Miller??”
“Ellie!”
“Oh no, it’s too late now! Miller it is. We can go back to that again. That’s just fine by me.”
“C’mon Ellie…”
“Oh just shut up and drive you twat, I’m bloody starving.”
And folding her arms and trying not to laugh, she turns away from him to look out of window again, watches all the green outside rushing by them, and tries very hard to remember a time that she’s ever felt quite as ridiculously happy.