It was an unkind thought and Harriet regretted it the moment it popped into her head.
People had lots of different ways of dealing with the deaths of those they cared for. Some collapsed beneath the weight of their grief, their lives spiralling down into a black pit of misery, guilt and depression. Others still threw themselves headlong into their work, choosing to bury their grief in something they could control. Neither path was better than the other and in the end the outcome was nearly always the same.
Grief wasn’t something you just got over, no matter how much you might wish you could. The one you had lost was still gone, the hole they’d created in the fabric of your life still gaped like an open wound and no amount of papering over the cracks could repair it.
Harriet found herself wishing she kept a bottle of whiskey in the lower drawer of her desk. After all, she was no stranger to throwing herself headlong into her work to escape the pain grief caused.
With hands that shook, she picked up the small case file and flicked it open. She was immediately assaulted by the visual images that made up the bulk of the file. Closing her eyes, she tried to clear her mind before returning her attention to the photographs.
Some mistakenly believed that hanging was a quick and easy way to die. And for those who committed the act and got it just right, it was both quick and relatively painless. However, the odds of getting the knot in just the right place for the drop to dislocate or even fracture the cervical vertebrae and cause vasovagal shock was uncommon.
Death wasn’t something that came easily. Conscious and subconscious reflexes worked to keep us alive and to fight against them was no mean feat.
Harriet swallowed back the welling emotion that threatened to see her lose the meagre contents of her stomach.
Turning over the images of the bodies, Harriet picked up the coroner’s report that lay at the bottom of the packet. She scanned the results, unsurprised to discover his findings were in keeping with the general thought that these were in fact tragic suicides.
Sitting back in the chair, Harriet closed her eyes and her mind instantly conjured the image of DI Haskell.
Why was it that everyone around him believed the three deaths were nothing more than a tragedy but he was determined to believe they were something more?
It was possible that his previous brush with suicide had clouded his judgement.
He hadn’t wanted to believe it then either. Being forced to concede to something so terrible would undoubtably have taken its toll on him.
But this, this was something different.
She caught sight of the small white card—his contact details scrawled across the front—clipped to inside of the file.
Harriet straightened up in the chair and tugged her phone from the inside pocket of her handbag.
As she waited for the call to connect, her gaze fell to the top image in the file. A close up of the last girl’s hand, twisted around her fist was what appeared to be a golden chain.
The fact that she was holding it at all was a little strange but not entirely uncommon. However, something niggled in the back of Harriet’s mind.
Sifting through the other pictures, she was only vaguely aware of Drew Haskell’s voice on the other end of the line as he answered.
“Hello?”
“Just a moment,” she said, her mind straining to put the pieces of the puzzle she’d just discovered together.
Why was it so familiar?
“Is this Dr Quinn? You called me.” He sounded incredulous but Harriet was too far down the rabbit hole to fully appreciate the irony in his statement.
“The chain wrapped around the last girl’s hand,” she said. “Is there another picture of it?”
“The chain?”
“Yes. I can see a chain wrapped around her fist. I want to know if you have a close up of it?”
“Well, I think so. Why?”
Was the suspicion in his voice simply there because of his job? Had it been foisted upon him—a by-product of the kind of work he did—or had his naturally suspicious nature led him to choose a career in law enforcement?
It wasn’t a question she was going to get an answer to now and Harriet dismissed the thought as quickly as it had arrived.
“I’d like to see it.”
“I’ve gathered that,” he said. “I want to know why.”
She sighed, her patience rapidly wearing thin as she pushed her hand back through her hair.
“I cannot finish making my assessment until I am in possession of all of the facts.”
“So, you think there’s something in all of this?” His words ran into each other.
He wasn’t even trying to conceal the excitement in his voice and it was that fact that caught Harriet’s attention. She needed to be cautious. There was no point in allowing her curiosity to destroy a man’s career.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re thinking it, aren’t you?”
“Look, do you have it or not?”
Drew’s laughter on the other end of the line took her by surprise and Harriet flopped back against her chair.
“You do think it’s suspicious.” There was a loud whoop of joy and Harriet pulled the phone from her ear. “I knew it wasn’t straightforward. I knew there was something off about every one of these and—"
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Harriet said, in attempt to rein the conversation back in. While looking over the file had raised certain questions in her mind, there was still the small matter of the coroner ruling all three deaths as suicide.
“What you’ve given me raises certain questions but I can’t in all good conscience say whether there was another person involved.”
“What kinds of questions?”
“Give me the photograph I’ve requested, if you have it, and we can discuss this further.”
“I don’t have it on me,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d need something like that.”
“I need everything you’ve got so far,” Harriet said. The thought of trawling through more photographs like the ones already spread out across her desk left her cold but this was the evidence she had to go on.
“Wait, is there any way I could get in to see their bedrooms and the place where they died?”
Drew fell silent and Harriet found herself checking to see if the call was in fact still connected. “Hello?”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “I was miles away. I think I could get you in to see Sian Jones’ room and the back garden. The SOCOs only finished there this morning and the parents haven’t returned to the property.”
Harriet’s stomach churned uncomfortably. What if you’re wrong about this? The voice in the back of her mind didn’t hesitate to go straight for the point of her greatest insecurity. She’d been wrong before and look how that had turned out?
“How soon?” Her voice sounded oddly choked to her own ears but if DI Haskell noticed the sudden hoarseness, he was too polite to say anything.
“I’m still outside,” he said. “We could go now.”
Harriet glanced over at the wall clock. “What, now?” Three thirty. The day was crawling by but it would soon be dark outside and the thought of poking around in the room of a girl who had more than likely taken her own life seemed wrong somehow.
“We won’t get many more opportunities like this,” he said. “Like I said, my boss wants this all wrapped up and—"
“Fine. I’ll be down in five minutes.” She started to end the call but not before she heard Drew voice again. “What did you say?”
“I said, thanks.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “There’s not many out there who would take a chance like this.”
The line went dead and Harriet was left to stare at the phone. Just what had he meant by that?
She set the phone back down on the desk and glanced over the photographs of Sian one last time.
“What happened to you?” Harriet asked the question to the empty air of her office before she push
ed the photographs back into the file and stood.
Sian wasn’t going to answer her, at least not here like this. If she was going to figure out what kind of mental state the teen had been in before she died, then she needed to go where she had felt safest.
And for a teenager, that place was usually behind the safety of their bedroom door.
Chapter Thirteen
“I thought you said five minutes,” Drew said to her as she tugged open the passenger door of his car.
“I lost track of time.”
He sighed and didn’t bother waiting for her to slip her seatbelt into place before he gunned the engine.
He handled the car easily, as though it was an extension of him rather than just a means of getting from point A to point B.
“Why are you so interested in the necklace?”
Harriet found it interesting that despite his apparent ease behind the wheel, he gripped the steering wheel tighter as he cast a sideways glance in her direction. Had he always been this way or was it a more recent habit he’d developed?
She pulled the file open on her lap and withdrew the photograph that sat on the top.
“For starters, the clasp is broken,” she said, examining the image closely.
“Broken. Are you sure?”
Harriet suppressed her irritation. “I’m very sure, DI Haskell. I know what a broken clasp on a necklace looks like.”
“I didn’t mean it like that—" he started but then seemed to change his mind. “What does it mean? That it’s broken?”
“Well it could be something and it could be nothing.”
“If it means something, tell me,” he said, exasperation colouring his voice.
“It’s impossible to tell if she was wearing the chain before she died. The bruising and swelling around her neck is extensive, making it difficult to say with any real certainty whether it was ripped off her.”
Drew said nothing but Harriet could see the cogs whirring inside his head as his concentration on the road increased.
“Couldn’t she have just ripped it off herself?”
Harriet nodded. “It’s entirely possible. What’s more plausible is that the clasp was already broken on the chain but that she held a sentimental attachment to it and wanted it close by as she ended her own life. What’s less plausible is the manner in which she’s holding it.”
She raised the picture closer to her face, scrutinising every inch of the close up shot of Sian’s hand and the chain wound around her fingers.
“I don’t understand,” Drew said, taking a right turn abruptly much to the irritation of the other road users who shared their displeasure with him in the form of their car horns.
“The chain has been wrapped around her wrist and is wedged up between her index and middle finger. Now I don’t know about you but that’s not how I would hold something so dear to me.”
Silence filled the car.
“Maybe she was afraid of dropping it?”
Harriet shrugged. “It’s possible. At this point, anything is possible. I don’t know enough about Sian to make any particular pronouncements about her.”
“Anything else?”
“I would have expected a note.”
“On her phone she had written the words, ‘I’m sorry’, but that was it.”
“It doesn’t say that in the file,” Harriet said, shifting through the papers in her lap.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think.”
Harriet turned to stare out the window as they left the city behind and headed out into the countryside. “Even so, ‘I’m sorry’, isn’t a whole lot to go on. Some teens—when they do take the time to leave notes—leave extensive, well considered missives behind. There’s usually something in there about what they want their parents to do with their personal belongings. Some describe how life will be better for those left behind without them there. Not to mention teens are much more clued in to technology so they tend to video record themselves, or use social media.”
“Maybe this was spontaneous?”
Harriet shook her head and turned her attention to the image of the girl in the photograph.
“They make plans. For most successful suicides, there are at least twenty-five attempts. It’s not an exact science, and the number of studies completed aren’t extensive, but what information we do have paints a certain picture.”
Harriet chewed her lip. “Of course, there is something else that we haven’t mentioned yet.”
Drew’s shoulder’s tightened and he flexed his fingers against the leather of the wheel. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“Teenagers are more prone to clusterings of suicides. What we’re seeing here isn’t entirely uncommon.”
“You mean like a suicide pact?”
Harriet nodded. “It could be. Or there are indications that some do it as a means to feel as though they are a part of something.”
“Now that’s ridiculous.”
“It could be but you’ve read about the Werther effect. We see it at play in all areas of our lives—advertising is one prominent area—not just in something like this.”
Drew glanced over at her quickly. “I didn’t really get it, if I’m honest. All that psycho-babble bullshit tends to go over my head.”
“Look at it this way. Why do companies pay celebrities to endorse their products?”
Drew shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Because we’re conditioned as humans to look up to those who are greater than we are. Back when we were still all living in caves it was the strongest warrior in our tribe who was given the choice pieces of meat. People looked up to them because of the value they added to the group.”
Harriet sighed. “Nowadays instead of the strongest, or the fastest, we have the richest, or prettiest, or most popular to admire and emulate. Companies know all of this. They understand our desire to be just like those we admire most and so they pay celebrities to say they wear this perfume, or these kinds of trainers all so we in turn will run out and part with our hard earned cash just so we too can feel special. So that we can feel like we’re not so far removed from the person at the top of the pyramid.”
“Jaded, Doc?” There was a lightness to his tone that belied the serious expression he wore.
“Why contact me if you think all of this is just psycho-babble bullshit?”
“Because you’re my only shot to get the DCI on board with the case. If he hears from an expert that this isn’t just a bunch of suicidal teens, he’ll let me take a closer look.”
“You know I’m going to be completely honest in my findings. If I don’t agree with you, I’m going to say it.”
Drew shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time I got shafted by one of your lot,” he muttered beneath his breath.
“I take it you don’t hold ‘my lot,’ as you so fondly referred to us, in high-esteem.”
“No offence,” he said. “But like I said before it all feels too much like psycho-babble to me. Nobody really knows what someone else is thinking, not if they’re honest anyway.”
“I never claimed I did.”
“No but that’s what it’s really all about isn’t it? Your ability to peel back the layers in someone’s head so you can see how they tick. I just don’t think it sounds like a good idea.”
“But that still doesn’t answer why you think all of this is nonsense.”
Drew fell silent, his attention riveted to the road ahead.
“You don’t have to tell me if you’d prefer not to,” Harriet said finally, turning her attention back to her own window and the fields that flashed by.
“Someone close to me,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly. “She was seeing someone like you. Had been since she was a teen actually—not the same one obviously—different ones down through the years. They’d diagnosed her with all sorts but when I met her she was so normal. And we were happy, content even. And then they changed her meds and it was like something switched in her.”
Harriet
’s mouth felt dry and she gripped the folder in her lap a little tighter. He obviously didn’t remember her because if he had, Harriet had the sinking feeling that he wouldn’t have been sitting next to her so calmly.
“She started to go downhill. She was even admitted for a week and when she came out, I thought things were improving.” He fell silent again.
“But they weren’t.”
Drew shook his head. “She killed herself four days after she got out of the hospital.”
Harriet bit her tongue and dug her fingers into her knee. It was wrong to keep what she knew back from him. But would mentioning it to him cause more damage?
“You think they should have done more for her?”
Drew parked the car in front of a compact two-storey house. From the corner of her eye, Harriet spotted the fluttering yellow tape that declared to the world that something terrible had occurred there.
She met his haunted gaze as he turned to face her in the car. In the fading light he looked exhausted, the lines on his face exposing the raw unbridled emotion he had until that moment kept hidden.
“I think they killed her. She was doing just fine and they went messing with her. They couldn’t leave well enough alone and because of all of that she’s gone.”
“But you said it yourself that she’d had difficulties, issues that were there long before you two met. How can you say that what happened wasn’t something that would have happened anyway?”
“No.” There was a rough edge to Drew’s voice and Harriet knew that to push him further would only end with him breaking down.
“I am sorry for your loss,” she said, feeling the inadequacy in her words keenly. But what else was she supposed to say? There was nothing she could do for him, nothing that would take away his pain. All she could offer him was the knowledge that she empathised with his pain. In this world it was all anyone could offer someone else.
“No need,” he said abruptly. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill her. Anyway, we’re here. I suppose we should head in before we lose all the light.”
Drew pushed open the car door, letting a swirl of cold air slip inside. Gripping the case file to her chest, Harriet watched as he climbed out and headed up the path toward the front door and the guilt she felt inside gnawed at her.
The Hanging Time Page 8