A Victim's Diary

26

Mariana didn't exactly seem impressed to be sitting in the interrogation room a second time. But there was absolutely no helping it. She had been lying to Alistair, blatantly so, and he had to clear up a few things with her, before he could let her off the hook. He didn't really believe that she was responsible for the murder, he hadn't believed that for even a second. But he had no other good leads at the moment and he wanted to know the truth of what had happened. Maybe he was a little obsessed with cracking this woman, but Alistair just hated it when people lied to him. So he had asked her to show up at the station again the very next day. Suffice to say, it wasn't easy to convince her.

And now she was waiting for him, walking up and down impatiently, wearing a flowing summery dress, as if they had just interrupted her while having a nice summer picnic in a meadow of wild flowers or at a forest lake. Alistair had to hand it to her – she knew how to frame herself in a certain role.

But no matter how innocent she was making herself look, Alistair knew what kind of a person she was. He knew about her threatening Ruby, about the way she viewed her husband's affairs. Mariana Wilkes was a lot of things, but she wasn't a nice person by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, she could act nice and she could pretend to be whatever she wanted to be and she was good at it. But it was all an act.

Only this time Alistair had managed to catch her out on it. He had managed to catch her in a lie, red-handed. He wondered whether she knew what this was about or whether she was clueless. Either way, he was going to make her wait for a while just to wear her down a little, before he was going to talk to her. She was still good at manipulating others, which made her quite dangerous. There were many people that would fall for that sort of manipulation, especially because she was such a pretty woman.

It barely showed that she was in her 40s – she looked like she was in her late 20s or early 30s at most, no doubt with the help of cosmetic surgery and all kinds of treatments. She could easily afford it after all. Maybe that was why she thought she was so above everyone else. She could afford whatever she wanted. No matter how much her husband's affairs struggled, no matter how much they got dolled up, they'd never be more beautiful than her, they'd never have the same kind of privilege.

Either way, she was still an awful person and Alistair wasn't surprised that Jonathan was going out of his way to have affairs. It was quite obvious that Mariana had married Jonathan for his money at the time and for no other reason. Maybe she had been impressed with the kind of power he had or that a man that much older had wanted her, but that wasn't the case for very long. This marriage was a business decision and nothing else. Alistair was sure that she kept him reigned in by having some sort of dirt on him.

Maybe that was how she was planning to destroy his affairs, as well, if they ever showed up at her place. She'd go and find out their deepest darkest secrets and she'd destroy them systematically. Maybe she had done it in the past. Or maybe she did end up actually murdering them and had just never been caught, but that still seemed unlikely. A woman like her was much better suited to psychological warfare.

Alistair could feel her glaring daggers at the back of his head when he entered the room, greeting her cheerfully. It wasn't even an act, he was genuinely excited for this. It was rare to catch someone in such a blatant lie and he was absolutely delighting in it. Maybe he had a bit of a sadistic streak because of that, but he enjoyed catching out liars and watching them squirm to try and get out of their situation.

"How are we today, Mariana?" he asked her, pouring himself a coffee. Mariana didn't seem very amused.

"Well, I don't know how you are..." she muttered. Every hint of charm and pleasantness was gone completely. Seeing this difference was almost too good to be true. Alistair was more than delighted with it.