Guilty Conscious

by Oliver Davies

  “It’s daylight,” Mills murmured. “Shall we head back to the university?”

  I nodded. The sooner we took a look around, the sooner we might fit a few pieces together.

  Five

  Thatcher

  The university was less daunting in the daylight. The old buildings cast fewer shadows, their corners and crevices no longer dark hiding places where anything could be lurking. Students roamed the campus, most of them murmuring amongst each other, looking over to Edward’s building with fearful expressions. I wouldn’t want to be the one handling that PR nightmare. Convincing the public, and the students and their families, that it was still a safe place wouldn’t be an easy feat.

  When we reached the courtyard, a few straggling onlookers milled about, standing in tight groups and whispering to each other with darting looks to the police tape and locked building. We made a stop at the security office on our way to retrieve the key where’d they’d been in the process of sorting out obtaining the footage from the cameras for us. I got the feeling that we’d be waiting on that longer than we ought to. Maybe I could convince Sharp to stick her head in, snap a few people into a faster gear for us. However, she had her own hands full right now.

  Key in hand, we entered the building, which was neither better nor worse in the daylight. I opened the door to Edward’s room and pulled my jumper up over my mouth and nose as the smell crawled out. Behind me, Mills coughed and held his sleeve up to his face.

  “Christ,” he muttered, blinking rapidly. “Can we make this quick?”

  I nodded and pushed the door fully open, stepping into the world’s worst time capsule.

  The blood had sunk into the carpet, a rich, dark, hard layer that looked like paint had been spilt. The aroma in the air was foul, and it was a bloody good thing that forensics would be back here later today to sort it all out. Slowly, I got more accustomed to the smell and let my jumper down, freeing my hands to pull a pair of gloves on and start looking around the room. Mills studied the bookshelf, and I turned my attention to the posters and pictures on the wall.

  “I think he studied classics,” Mills told me, tapping his finger on a few of the spines. That made sense, judging by some of the images on the wall of classical scholars, Greek statues and several gift shop postcards of paintings from galleries.

  “Your time to shine then, Mills,” I replied. “You’ve a better head for all of this than me.”

  He gave a short laugh, bending down to pick up something in the laundry hamper.

  “Towel is still a bit damp,” he remarked. “Maybe he had a shower when he got back, waiting for Freya.”

  “She did say she was late,” I said, walking over to him where he held the towel aloft. “But if he had time to shower and change, that makes our window a bit fuzzy.”

  “Depends on when he left his meeting with the professor,” Mills pointed out, dropping the towel.

  “And where on campus that meeting was,” I added. “If he was the other side of the place or only a few minutes away, that changes our timeline.”

  “We should talk to the professor soon in that case,” Mills said. I nodded in agreement and took another quick scan of the room.

  “Not a lot of personal things,” I said, looking over the plain bedding and the purely academic decorations. Apart from a few photographs, the room looked more like an office or a study than a place where a nineteen-year-old boy had lived.

  “Suppose with his parents and home so close, he didn’t really need to bring all that much,” Mills suggested.

  I bent down to the bed, looking underneath. A rucksack was under there, as well as a gym bag full of sporting clothes and a beaten-up leather suitcase. Interesting. I pulled them all out, passing the gym bag to Mills as I checked the suitcase. The rucksack was empty.

  “Rugby,” Mills remarked, shaking out a rugby top, the university’s team.

  “So, he would have been fast,” I said as I unclipped the suitcase. “Probably quite strong.”

  “The killer caught him off guard then? Or we’re looking for someone just as strong.”

  I hummed noncommittally and flipped the lid back, revealing an impressive selection of photography gear. A camera, several lenses, a tripod.

  “Is there any film?” Mills asked, peering over. I checked the camera and the little film clips.

  “No,” I muttered slowly. “Strange. Must have taken them to get developed.” I did find one blank roll of film, but that wasn’t any use to us at all. I shut the suitcase, pushed it back under the bed with the gym bag, and stood up.

  “Come on, Edward,” I said under my breath. “Give us something here to help you.” I picked up the bag that had been thrown on the bed and tipped it up, letting the contents fall on the bed. A few textbooks fell out, along with a notepad, several pens, a lighter and a slightly crumpled essay.

  “A Philosophical and Ethical Examination of Forgiveness,” I read aloud. “Blimey, that’s a read. Interested?” I asked, holding it out to Mills, who had a slight frown on his face.

  “Do you think he was in favour of forgiveness or not?” he asked, taking it and folding it in half.

  “Who knows? Wonder if he’d change his mind about it now, regardless,” I added.

  Mills put the essay in his pocket. “Professor Altman’s name was in the corner,” he said. “I’m guessing it was the focus of their meeting last night?”

  “Looked a bit of a state,” I muttered, looking over all of Edward’s other work, carefully filed and looked after. “A bad review, perhaps?”

  “Never good for the ego,” Mills replied as he walked over to the window.

  “Do you get the impression that Edward Vinson cared about his ego?” I asked. Mills didn’t reply, just nodded to the window.

  “We’ve got some visitors,” he said.

  I walked over and stood beside him, glancing out to the small group of teenagers that loitered close to the tape. They were looking up at the building expectantly, shuffling their feet. I noticed one of them, the boy at the front of the group, wore the same rugby jersey that Edward had in his bag.

  “Let’s go and say hello then,” I said, tossing him the key. “You can lock up.”

  I strode from the room, happily sucking down the clean, not putrid air as Mills locked up Edward’s room and then the building. I stayed with him, looking over at the teens that perked up when we exited, the young man shuffling closer.

  “Can we help you?” I called as we strolled over, my hands tucked casually into my pockets.

  “You’re the police?” he asked in a haughty voice. “The detectives?”

  “Detective Inspector Thatcher,” I indicated myself, “and Detective Sergeant Mills. And you are?”

  “Charlie. Charlie Young. I’m Edward’s friend,” he told us, lifting his chin. “We all are.”

  A girl from the back stepped around Charlie, her eyes slightly pink, cheeks swollen. “We just went to see Freya,” she told us.

  I softened slightly. “How was she?”

  “Pale, quiet.” The girl shook her head. “She was in bed, just staring at the wall.”

  “It will take some time. You said you all knew Edward?” She nodded, and I ducked under the police tape and indicated the benches across the way. “Mind if we talk then? We’d like to know as much about him as we can.”

  They all looked to Charlie, who seemed to deliberate, but the girl walked swiftly over the benches, plopping herself down, and the others trailed after her. There were four of them altogether.

  Charlie, with a head of coiffed strawberry blond hair, fancy clothes and a watch rather like Edwards. The girl, her thick black hair tied into a plait, huddled in a large jumper several times too big that I guessed belonged to the other boy who sank down beside her and took her hand. Another girl, looking more uncomfortable than the others, sat beside Charlie, picking her knees up and hugging them.

  “So,” I began, “names? We know Charlie, of course.”

  “Vanessa,” the
first girl told us. She held up the hand of the boy she sat beside. “This is Claude. His English isn’t great.” She turned and spoke to him in French, and he nodded at her before looking at us.

  “I try to ‘elp,” he said.

  “And that’s Fiona,” Vanessa said, pointing at the other girl who pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled at us.

  “Nice to meet you all. You call me Thatcher and him Mills. How long had you known Edward for?”

  “We,” Vanessa indicated herself, Claude, and Fiona, “met him in our first year.”

  “I’ve known him since we were thirteen,” Charlie told us. “We went to the same school.”

  I focused my attention more on him now. “We’re very sorry for your loss. You must have been close friends.”

  Charlie nodded, looking down at his shoes. “I have three sisters,” he told us, “so me and Ed always got on. Family holidays and everything.”

  I gave him a sympathetic smile. “And Freya? You met her first year too?”

  They all nodded. “Not at first. She and Ed started hanging out second term, so we met her then,” Vanessa said.

  I nodded and leant back, giving them a break from my dull voice and letting Mills, closer to their age anyway, ask them a few questions.

  “Did you see Edward yesterday?” he asked, looking at them all in turn.

  Charlie nodded, and the others let him take the lead. “We have most of our lectures together, so most of the day. The last time I saw him was about five, I think. We were studying in the library, and he had to get ready for his meeting with Altman.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “He seemed alright,” Charlies shrugged. “A bit nervous about his essay, annoyed with his dad, but that’s usual. He was looking forward to the weekend. We were texting about it last night. Before…” He trailed off.

  “And how had he seemed the past few weeks? Was there anything bothering him? Or anyone bothering him?”

  The four students exchanged a look, so quickly and nervously that it made Mills and I sit up straight, exchanging our own little look. They seemed to be having a silent debate, then Charlie sighed and faced me.

  “There’s this girl, used to be in our year. She hated him,” he told us. “Like really, really hated him.”

  “She used to call him all sorts of names,” Vanessa went on. “Throw things sometimes, leave him horrible letters, threats, nasty.”

  “Did he ever report her? Inform anyone?”

  “No.” Charlie shook his head. “He thought she was harmless.” He said it in such a way that it made me think he didn’t think she was.

  “Any reason as to why?” Mills asked.

  “Just didn’t like him, I think.” Charlie shrugged and looked down at his shoes again, fiddling with the ring on his finger.

  “Do you know her name?” I asked, watching him twitch curiously.

  “Billie,” he replied instantly. “Billie Helman.”

  I nodded to Mills, who quickly jotted the name down.

  “Do you think she ever would have done anything to hurt him?” I asked. “Was she ever violent?”

  “We haven’t seen her in a while,” Fiona told us in a quiet, deep voice. “It was worse, really, the quiet.”

  The calm before the storm, I wondered.

  “Can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to hurt him?” I asked.

  They all shook their heads. “Everyone liked Charlie,” Vanessa said. “He was nice to everyone.”

  I noted that Fiona ducked her head down, wrapping herself even more tightly into a ball. Mills clocked it too, looking at me with a slight raise of the eyebrow that the students wouldn’t be able to detect.

  “He was a good friend,” Claude informed us. “A nice boy.”

  “Well,” I said, standing up from the bench, “thank you for helping us. We might be in touch with you again, but until then,” I pulled out a card and handed one to each of them, “if you can think of anything else that might help us,” I looked specifically at Fiona as I spoke, “or if you have any questions, feel free to call.”

  “Thank you,” Vanessa said, slipping the card into her bag.

  “How’d it happen?” Charlies asked, staring down at the card. The others fell quiet, looking at him with worried, horrified expressions. “Would it have hurt him?”

  I winced internally and debated how to answer that question. I didn’t want to lie to the boy, but I also wanted to spare him from the rather gruesome truth of it all.

  “It would have been over quickly,” Mills said. Not untrue.

  Charlies nodded, put the card in his pocket then looked up at us, managing to plaster a charming smile on his face that I guessed was there most of the time. He stood up, the others following.

  “Better find the bastard that killed our friend then, Inspector,” he said, holding out his hand. I was a little surprised by the gesture, but I hid it, shaking his hand. Mills shook it next, then Charlie herded his friends away from us, out of the courtyard through the gates. Fiona lagged behind them, looking down at the card, then quickly over her shoulder back at us.

  “Do you think she’ll be in touch?” Mills asked, watching them vanish around the corner.

  “I think it might be worth talking to her without the others there,” I replied. They were a tight group, but it was clear to see who was in charge. I wondered if that had been Edward before. Either way, it was clear that if we wanted to know what Fiona really thought about Edward, positive or negative, we’d need to talk to her alone.

  Mills’s phone chimed in his pocket, and he pulled it out.

  “Wasco’s into the phone,” he told me. “Want to head back and check it out?”

  “Might as well. Do a little digging into this Billie Helman as well, see if there are any red flags there that might be worth our time.”

  “Why do you think she hated him?” Mills wondered as we walked back to the security office to drop off the key. “Love affair gone wrong?”

  “Potentially. People rarely hate with reason, though. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, so I’m guessing Edward did something to piss her off.”

  All we had to do was figure out what that something was.

  Six

  Thatcher

  Back in the station, we beelined for Wasco’s office, entering the warm, humming room of computers and wires. Wasco was leaning back on his chair, feet propped on the desk, waiting for a screen beside him to load. He glanced over as we came in and gave us a grim smile.

  “Saw Lena earlier,” he told us, swinging his legs down. “She said it was a bit of a gristly affair.”

  “She’s not lying,” I answered, walking over to his desk. “You’re in the phone?”

  “Piece of cake,” he told me, handing the phone over. “New code is 1-1-1-1. The laptop might take me a bit more time, and Chief’s got me working on this cyber situation.”

  “Take your time,” I assured him. “Teens tend to keep most of their stuff on their phones, anyway.”

  “Very true,” Wasco agreed. “Good luck with it all, not that you’ll need, eh, Thatcher?” He winked at me comically, and I laughed, steering Mills from the room.

  We headed upstairs, settling down in our office. Mills ambled off to find something to eat while I opened up Edward’s phone and connected it to the projector, showing the screen on the wall. Edward’s background picture was an image he must have taken himself of what looked like Venice. He didn’t have many apps, I noticed at first glance, and no social media.

  That was interesting. I thought that all teenagers were on social media. I opened up his call history as Mills walked back in, sliding a mug of tea and some biscuits my way before taking a seat on the edge of my desk, looking at the wall.

  “Spoke to his parents,” he observed the most recent call from last night. “Just like they said.”

  The call didn’t last very long, a few minutes at most, but it was the time that I needed more than anything else. Six minutes past six. I
walked over to our whiteboard, wiped the remnants of the last case off, and drew a wobbly line, ending at seven, and added the call.

  “Freya made the call just after seven,” I muttered, “so she likely got there just before.” I added a little line for her.

  “Text messages,” Mills called through a mouthful of biscuit. He was leaning over the phone and had opened up a group message with Edward, Freya and the other four from earlier.

  They were arranging something for the weekend, but it seemed the others hadn’t known what to do until Edward stepped in.

  “He’s quiet on the chat until just after six,” Mills said. “I’m guessing that’s when he got out from the meeting.” He closed the chat and went to the next one, one of just Edward and Freya. They were talking about the book she wanted to borrow, and from the sound of it, he was still in his meeting with his professor when he replied.

  “If he left at six,” I muttered, tapping the whiteboard pen on my chin, “that gives us a full hour to work in. In that time, he gets back to his room, has a quick shower, then what?”

  “He and Freya didn’t set a time,” Mills noted, pointing at the text in question. “Just says ‘usual time,’ whenever that is?”

  “We can ask Freya about that when she’s in the right frame of mind,” I muttered, walking back to the desk and dunking my biscuit in my tea. “But she said she was running late,” I reminded him.

  “If seven is late,” Mills said. “Maybe just before then? Quarter to or ten to? That puts them in the right sort of time to think about dinner, so that might be it.”

  I was happy with it as a theory. “Anything else in there?” I asked, nodding to the phone. “Any mention of Billie Helman?”

  “She’s not in his contacts,” Mills quickly checked. “Might take a bit more time to scour through all the messages, though, and find out.”

  I hummed, walking over to my computer and sinking down, tapping it to life.

  “Billie Helman,” I spoke aloud as I typed. I spun around my chair as I waited, reaching over to my mother’s photograph and dusting the glass with my sleeve. Mills watched me.