A night in the cells hadn’t done Valero any good; he was sweating and having trouble composing himself. His lawyer Antonio sat beside him, as nervous as a rabbit caught in headlights. They weren’t the only ones. Rita’s night had been sleepless; embarrassed and ashamed of letting everything get too much. She attempted to keep her face looking hard, not anxious, glaring at Valero like shit on her shoe.

Sonia's clothing from the day she went missing had finally been found, ripped and covered in blood, in a plastic bag hidden in a cardboard box at a storage unit Valero rented. He had access to bullfighting equipment through work, and kept various darts and knives at his home. It was his job to jab the darts into the bulls' necks as they went into the ring. He had a criminal record, mostly for petty crime, but had spent time in jail for domestic violence.

But he couldn't be the main killer.

Various bars had provided receipts from the day Caroline McKenzie was murdered, showing he started drinking much earlier than when he claimed to stop looking for Pepelito. The hotel’s server was hacked shortly before the murder; Valero had no computer at home. His racist Facebook comments and frequent visits to far-right websites didn’t make him a killer.

And he’d never been to the UK.

'Let's ask again. What was your relationship with this woman?' Rita showed him the photo of Sonia; he physically recoiled, his lips tight. His skin had turned grey, he looked ill. His lawyer Antonio looked towards them, almost pleading for help, until Valero finally said, 'No comment' in a shaky whisper.

'You knew her, didn't you?' Rita said.

'I didn't do it,' he stuttered.

'Nobody's accusing you of that,' Rita said, leaning towards him.

'We know there's someone else. You couldn't have done all five,' Mansouri said, taking out the bloodstained bag with Sonia's cut off leggings, crop top and underwear.

'So go on. Why were these items in your storage unit?’

'I've never seen them before,' Valero said, gaping at the clothes with a terrified expression on his face, not looking at his questioner.

'But you knew Sonia, didn't you?' Mansouri said in an unemotional voice.

'I didn't-' Valero started, as Mansouri gave him a cold stare.

'Oh, we know you did,' Rita said. Valero looked between the two of them for several minutes, disorientated, before finally pointing his finger at her. 

'I know who you are – you’re that bitch who took the bull! You should be in jail for theft!’

‘Theft? This is a bit more than that,’ Rita snapped.

'You knew Sonia,' Mansouri said. Valero shook his head.

'Yes you did. You knew her, and you hated her. You hated her because she hated what you did, and she had the temerity to say so.' He gave a cold stare across the table. Valero opened his mouth in outrage, clenching his fists.

'You. If you don't like our traditions, get the fuck out of our country! Go back to – to – the Taliban! Don’t call me a murderer because I told that bitch where to go!’

'It was a bit more than telling her where to go, wasn't it, Valero?' Mansouri rolled his eyes, ignored his racist insults and drank a glass of water.

'Why do you care? She was just some hooker. Getting involved in things she knew nothing about.' Rita inhaled sharply. That statement said it all.

‘I think you used to see Sonia outside the entrance on a regular basis,  every week, every few weeks, whatever. She insulted you, she scared tourists off going in, with her gory placards. And in the evening she would start work, she'd walk up and down the streets, flaunting her body and waiting for customers, and it made you even more mad. She was a whore. You don't like whores, do you? Especially not a whore who got paid to sleep with weird, dirty old men, give them the full girlfriend experience, but would refuse to take your money, because she hated the very sight of you. She used to make you sick.' Valero stared at Rita dumbfounded.

'It wasn't just me. We all hated her,' he mumbled.

'You threatened her, you beat her up to get her to stop coming - in front of her daughter. But that didn't work, did it? So someone you knew, someone even more psychopathic than you, suggested a plan to shut her up once and for all. The police wouldn’t bother about a prostitute, you thought. But he didn't stop there, and he didn't start there either. Did he?'

'No. No. That's not how it happened, it wasn't like that,' he gasped, shaking his head.

'Tell me.'

Valero took a deep breath. 'When I hit that bitch, I was trying to scare her, I was teaching her a lesson, that was it.'

'What sort of lesson could throwing her against a wall teach her?' she asked.

'I was trying to get it in her head, you can't mess with tradition. If you don't like it, get out.' Valero’s lawyer had barely spoken, and looked as though he wanted to leave and go far away.

'You can't mess with tradition, but you can hide evidence in an unsolved murder for 11 years?' Rita sneered.

'A guy gave it to me to get rid of for 10000 euros! He - he said it was some jewellery he'd stolen, I kept it in case it was valuable!' Valero shouted, his face bright red.

'Really?' Mansouri said, raising an eyebrow. Valero glanced at the ceiling, around the room and toward the door, his hands shaking. Maybe he wasn't lying; people did far more stupid things than this every day, Rita thought.

'I didn't know what to do. Someone would find it, if I threw it somewhere. You can't burn clothes, people will ask why, if I threw it in a river then someone would see me, they always do in the movies. So I just hid it, where only I could go. Until you lot found it.' The last sentence was spoken resentfully.

'Changing your story doesn’t make it any more believable, Valero. I don't just think you disposed of evidence. He paid you a lot of money. You helped clean up the scene, and the body, didn't you?' He didn't deny it. Rita could almost taste it, she knew he was going to crack.

'Is that right, Valero?' Mansouri said. The suspect sat, his face impassive. Eventually he nodded imperceptibly.

'He killed her in the ring, didn’t he? That's what the sand's for, to soak up the blood. If there was any left, nobody would think it was human. They wouldn’t bother testing it.' Rita leaned forward, looked him in the face.

'Did you watch his ‘performance’, or just hand over the keys so he could bring her in?'

'Just the keys, they wanted me to watch but I got out of there until he was done,' Valero whispered. Rita's stomach tightened.

'Did you supply him the weapons he uses to torture his victims?' Valero did not reply to her question, staring at something far in the distance as his world collapsed. The enclosure keeper who had beaten and tortured the bulls was now a caged animal himself. He’d spend at least the next 25 years locked up with paedophiles and terrorists.

They both knew it.

'Only for her.' It came out in a strangled whisper.

'What's his name, Valero?' The man shook his head.

'Tell us now, and you might have a chance of parole before the 25 years is up.' Mansouri was being the good cop. Rita doubted it.

'I don't know,' he said, evasive and frightened. His eyes darted around the room for help, like the bull he had been tormenting when Rita first saw him. Even if she couldn’t bring back the woman who’d lost her life for caring about them, they'd at least shut the arena, rescuing the grey bull and four others who’d been locked in tiny ringside cells.

'You don't know? Or you don't want to tell us?'

Valero looked petrified, staring ahead as if at some unknown presence. Finally, his lawyer spoke for the first time since the interrogation started. 'My client doesn't have to answer this question.'

'I never learned his name, it was never, actually, him I saw. Only the guys working for him,' he insisted.

'What guys?' she said quietly.

'They're all rich. Upper class British guys. They come here on holiday to watch bullfighting.' Valero breathed out harshly.

Rita thought of Flavia's VIPs, who 'knew more than they were letting on.'

'Give us some names.'

He shook his head. Rita wanted to punch him into the wall. 'I don't remember. Maybe one of them was called George.'

****

Tegan sat on her bed in her cell. At first the shock of being inside had devastated her. But she'd settled into a routine, the other lifers said the first 5 years were the hardest and it was true. She had the support of her loving daughter Georgia, although she could only see her once every two weeks for a one-hour visit. She had learned to draw while in prison, and had some of her exhibits displayed on its walls. She worked a few hours a week in the shop selling cigarettes and phone cards. Her good behaviour meant she could now get longer, more frequent phone calls, which made her happy.

Her last appeal, three years ago, had failed. Despite her daughter’s endless campaign for her innocence, she'd long since accepted it wasn't happening. When the news about Caroline broke, the charity who had taken up Tegan's case sent letters to the Court of Appeal and the police force who had investigated originally. But nobody expected anything from it. She was in her 50s, what would she do if she got out anyway? Being inside had almost got comfortable. She knew what she had to do and where she had to be each day. She never had to worry about a roof over her head.

Tegan just wished she was allowed to see her kids more often, that was what really hurt. Her daughter was always telling her she had to fight harder.

These days she didn’t have it in her. It wasn’t going to happen.

She heard keys jangling, a pair of hard prison officer’s boots tramping the floor. The screw gave the door a sharp knock. What could this be about? Her cellmate was working in the canteen; she was the one that usually kicked off over something.

'Ferry.' Ah, she liked this one, Ashley his name was. He was Black with short cropped hair and a short beard, about the same age as her daughter. Some of the screws were dickheads, but he was all right, she had to get on with one or two given she was never getting out. He sometimes gave her cigarettes and talked to her about his kids. He seemed like a nice guy doing a shitty job.

'Yeah?'

'Get your stuff. You're free to go, conviction's overturned. Your daughter's picking you up, we've just told her.'

'What do you mean?' Tegan said, disorientated and uncomprehending.

'You heard what I said. We should have been told three days ago but as usual we were the last to know, they didn't bother telling us until today. The Court of Appeal has ordered your immediate release pending a retrial.' Tegan's mouth was wide with shock. What was she going to come back to? This place was her home, it had got so familiar.

She'd almost come to like it.

She opened her mouth and couldn't speak, overwhelmed with emotions. Ashley unlocked the door as she scraped together her bag of toiletries, photos and other bits and pieces. 'I can't believe this is happening.'

'Nor can I, but that's what the judge said. Here's his letter.'

Dazed, she only looked at it briefly. She took her bag and walked with him towards the prison exit.

'Is it true? You're getting out, Tegs?' one of the other women shouted. After what she was convicted of, this was deemed very unlikely.

'So it seems, yeah,' the screw said, and she followed him towards the prison reception. There, they gave her some paperwork to sign, and she filled it out, feeling like a zombie. The thought of the outside world she'd never expected to see again both terrified and excited her.

The gates were open, apart from the exercise yard she hadn't seen the open sky in 8 years. Unlike her cell, the outside was raining and cold.

As Tegan walked out of the huge iron gates and Georgia got out of her car, journalists surrounded her, taking pictures and shouting for her attention. 'Have you got anything to say? How do you feel?'

'Who's the real killer? Any ideas?'

'I don't know,' Tegan said as she stumbled towards her daughter. What about money, she thought stupidly? What was she going to do about getting a job?

Once the two were on the road, Georgia's car phone rang. It was strange for it to be so easy; phone calls were such a precious commodity in prison.

'Hello? Is that Georgia? It's Heather. Is your mum there, how's she doing.'

'It's the police, Mum. Yeah, she's good, just shellshocked,' Georgia told the officer.

'Sorry to ask, when she's this minute got out, but I'd like to see her today.'

*

‘I know this is difficult, so take your time. Did Graham ever mention having any enemies?’ Heather asked Tegan as they sat in Georgia’s small living room. The grandchildren she’d never met were in bed upstairs but Lego still remained on the floor. She shook her head. But recollections she’d tried to numb over the years flooded her; memories she knew played their part in ruining two marriages, and her eventual conviction. She gripped her daughter’s hand tightly, swallowing hard.

The police hadn’t believed her then. But now, everything had changed.

‘Enemies? If they – no. It was me they were really after.’ The words were out before she’d decided whether to say them.

‘Who’s they?’ Heather inquired gently.

‘Posh boys at Balliol. But why, after all that time? I don’t even know what their names were. I blocked it out.’ Fear and shame crawled over her. With all that time to think inside, she’d rarely thought about this.

‘Mum, what?’ Georgia’s fingers dug into her arm.

‘What is this?’

Steeling herself, Tegan drew a breath, and began to tell her story.

AN: I really wanted to get here before my holiday started and I apologise if I've not edited this as well as the others. :)