HER HUSBAND’S KILLER an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Helen flushed slightly. ‘Valerie, Me, Clara? Anyone with a bit of know-how can get access to a password, Ruth. And to make it really easy, Ed used to keep it on a slip of paper in his wallet — I’ve found it lying around on his desk a few times. He never agreed with the computer services’ policy of expiring the passwords periodically — said he’d only got used to one when they forced him to change it.’

  ‘Ellis is a keen computer user, isn’t he?’ Ruth said, in answer.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So, he might know how to hack in to Ed’s files — to alter them.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m working on that,’ Ruth said. ‘We know that Mick had a blazing, ding-dong, toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with Ed the morning of the murder. If we knew why, then perhaps the rest would all come clear.’

  Chapter 14

  The entire plan was perfectly executed. The practice run-through had been just like the real thing, except that his eyes wouldn’t stay closed. I couldn’t bear him staring up at me from under those unevenly closed lids, like a tipsy judge, so I held them down with two fifty-pence pieces until they stuck. I can hear those two coins jingling in my pocket as I walk, I took them with me, a memento, and a private joke. What are they? No more than loose change. But what have they done? Where have they been? Next time I speak to the police, maybe I’ll buy us a cup of coffee with these fifty pences. ‘Sugar, Inspector? No, Inspector, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill poor Edward. Please — let me get these . . .’ Or maybe I’ll keep them as make-weights, ringing out like leper bells: Unclean! Unclean!

  * * *

  ‘I’d like to question her with her GP present,’ Hackett said.

  ‘Who?’

  The discussion of strategies had been going on in this distracted fashion for a full fifteen minutes, with Hackett making suggestions and Nelson either missing the point or deliberately obstructing him, and Hackett was beginning to weary of it.

  ‘I’m talking about Dr Wilkinson.’

  An innocuous statement in itself, but there was a suggestion of impatience, a whisper of insubordination — he’d heard it himself — and distracted or not, Nelson was sensitive to such things. He flashed a warning, his eyes kindling to gold for a brief moment, but quickly fading to dun brown.

  ‘I’d like a chat with Ellis,’ Nelson said. ‘A real chat, I mean. Formally.’ There was no emphasis on the ‘I’, no indication that he had heard Hackett’s suggestion at all.

  ‘Why?’ Hackett asked.

  ‘Why?’ The heat of Nelson’s glare was searing, but still Hackett could not force an apologetic ‘sir’ and after a second or two, Nelson went on: ‘He’s shifty, hiding something.’

  ‘So is half the academic staff of the college, from what I can make out.’

  ‘Got guilt written all over him.’

  ‘He’s edgy, sure, but—’

  ‘Edgy my arse,’ Nelson interrupted. ‘He reeks of guilt. It oozes from his pores like sweat.’

  Hackett had noted the nervy, twitchy movements of Ellis’s hands, the constant tightening of his jaw muscles, but he was a PhD student with everything to prove, and nobody fighting his corner, from what Hackett could make out.

  ‘He can’t even look me in the eye when I speak to him,’ Nelson added.

  Hackett shook his head. Nelson generally took sustained eye contact as a challenge to his authority.

  ‘He lies,’ Nelson went on. ‘Obvious lies. He can’t even be bothered to lie convincingly. Said he was looking for Mallory when I caught him hanging around her office yesterday, but Mallory says he’s been trying to catch up with the lying toe-rag for a couple of days. And he was here, loitering outside, just before Dr Wilkinson’s interview.’

  Hackett took a breath. ‘We’ve got Helen Wilkinson practically begging us to let her confess,’ he said. ‘Ainsley’s so beside himself with rage at his wife’s infidelity he can’t bring himself to set foot inside his own house. So, what makes you think Ellis—?’

  ‘Don’t use that tone with me,’ Nelson snarled. ‘Your inquiries into those two haven’t exactly come up with signed confessions. If Helen Wilkinson is falling over herself to confess, why is it that all you’ve got is “I’m not sorry he’s dead.”’

  Hackett was mildly surprised — Nelson must have been listening, at least to that part of his debriefing on the interview.

  The two men fell silent,

  ‘You spoke to Wilkinson’s secretary,’ Nelson said, at length.

  ‘Twice,’ Hackett replied. ‘Once about the staff interviews and once about the professor’s files being messed about. The professor certainly didn’t mince his words on their relative performances in the Research Assessment Exercise — and of course the merging of faculties means some departments simply won’t be viable.’

  ‘Let’s get her in again, see what she knows about our Mr Ellis.’

  Hackett suppressed an exasperated sigh. ‘What about Dr Wilkinson?’

  ‘What about her?’ There was no mistaking the look: Nelson was not about to tolerate any further discussion in the matter. Hackett, however, was not a man to give up without a fight.

  ‘I just think, sir, that you should consider—’

  He got no further. Nelson was on his feet and shouting and Hackett, permitting himself a heavy sigh, decided he had better do as he was told.

  * * *

  Mrs Roberts had been brought in a second time immediately after Ruth Marks’s revelation that she had been ear-marked for early retirement. She was, after all, the person most likely to have access to Prof Wilkinson’s password and hence the Apocalypse file. Initially, she had denied any knowledge that Edward was planning to pension her off, but she was a woman not used to deception, and the dishonesty had proved hard for her to sustain, especially when they had discovered that she’d made discreet enquiries to the heads of several departments about the availability of secretarial posts. She had confessed, then, but although she had admitted to lying about the security of her job with the professor, she was unrepentant. It was not, she had told them, because of any inadequacy of hers that Professor Wilkinson had planned to get rid of her, thus implying that the inadequacy was all his. She vehemently denied having tampered with the Apocalypse file and although she was almost certainly hiding something, they could get no further.

  Today, Mrs Roberts was discretion itself. Hackett had unwittingly prepared her for the ordeal of a third confrontation by manifesting in the short walk from their temporary base in Mallory’s office to hers, a terseness, ill-temper and rudeness that was untypical of him, but which approximated, if rather pallidly, to Nelson.

  She had arrived at Mallory’s commandeered office some ten minutes after the summons, girded mentally with the steeliness and unassailable pride of a middle-aged Boudica.

  Yes, she told them, a number of academics had exchanged heated words with the professor. No, she did not know the details of their disagreements. ‘I think,’ she said, settling back in her chair in a physical intimation that she would sit there all day if necessary, without betraying a single secret, ‘that you really ought to be addressing these questions to the staff concerned, and not me.’

  Nelson let her go after half an hour, disgusted with her.

  Ruth Marks was more forthcoming, although no more helpful, as it turned out. She stood at the threshold of Mallory’s office, her arms quite relaxed at her sides. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this a transformation! Incredible, isn’t it, what a flick with a duster and a new perspective can do to enhance a place?’

  Hackett covered a smile, but Nelson was not in the mood for levity. ‘Dr Marks—’ he began, but Ruth swept past him and began a deeper assessment of the alterations they had made to the office.

  ‘The tarantula, for instance. Now I knew that wouldn’t appeal to you, Inspector Nelson. All those beady eyes on you.’ She gave a sensuous little shudder. ‘As for the skull . . . To be frank, if it were my office, I’d rather have it sitti
ng on the desk scowling out at my visitors than on the shelf glaring at me.’ She tilted her head. ‘But you know best.’ She perched on the edge of Mallory’s desk, staring thoughtfully up into the empty eye sockets of the skull. ‘Most people assume it’s an attempt by the old curmudgeon at humour, but in fact it’s a reminder of what could happen. The cigarette? It’s the last one from the very last pack of Capstan Extra Strength that Mallory ever smoked. There’s even a family resemblance, don’t you think?’

  Nelson, who was not incapable of patience when the occasion demanded it, had listened to all of this with his head tilted on one side. ‘I’m intrigued that you seem to know so much of the personal histories of your colleagues,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can be as informative on the subject of John Ellis.’

  She laughed, shaking her head, still with her back to him. ‘Amassing a body of knowledge about a staff takes time and energy.’ Her eyes twinkled and Hackett again sensed that edge of sexual mischievousness he found both stimulating and disturbing. ‘And in the departmental hierarchy, Ellis, as a doctoral student, ranks just above an amoeba.’ She looked over her shoulder, adding in a confidential tone, ‘I don’t like to waste my energy.’

  Nelson gazed at her with half-closed eyes. ‘Nevertheless, you did lie for him.’

  She faced him, now, raising her pale eyebrows and placing one long-fingered hand across her chest in a dramatic gesture. ‘When could I possibly have—?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ Nelson said. ‘Dr Wilkinson’s office. He wasn’t there to pay his respects.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, pretending wide-eyed innocence. ‘Wasn’t he? Are you sure, Inspector?’

  Nelson stared at her, and Hackett saw a dark creeping flush of red spill from his neck onto his face. What was it about Ruth Marks that constantly put Nelson off-balance?

  ‘I can’t say that I know why he wanted to see Helen. He didn’t confide in me,’ Ruth said soberly.

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  Ruth turned down the corners of her mouth, thoughtful now. The flippancy, the sly humour vanished, if only momentarily. ‘As I said — he’s a postgraduate student, doing doctoral research.’

  ‘What kind of research?’

  ‘Behavioural ecology,’ she said promptly. ‘Animal physiology. Invertebrates. Mallory’s his supervisor — he’d be able to tell you more.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘On the other hand . . .’

  Hackett wondered what she meant by that, but Nelson interrupted his question: ‘He’s worried about this research project or thesis, or whatever you call it?’

  Ruth Marks jutted out her lower lip, considering. ‘He’s built a certain notoriety for himself on the basis of a bit of dodgy maths. If he can’t back it up with actual data, he’s going to upset a lot of people who have personal investments in his theory.’

  ‘Investments — you mean cash?’ Nelson said.

  ‘Not up front, but he’s working on the trendy — and possibly lucrative — idea that population dynamics is linked to a self-regulating mechanism within the biosphere. Mother Earth protecting us from ourselves — a comforting notion, and quite popular in these post-Darwinian, post-atheistic, quasi-religious times.’

  ‘What, you mean Gaia, that sort of thing?’ Hackett asked.

  Ruth’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You astound me, Sergeant!’

  ‘My son’s into all that New Age stuff. Can’t get him to church on Sundays, but he believes in Gaia, all right.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry too much. For Gaia, read God. Homo sapiens is neurotic by default — ever since we became sentient, we’ve been trying to make sense of why we’re here. It — sorry, she — for Gaia is a she — is simply a trendier variant on the theme of deity. God with science PR — Saatchi and Saatchi style.’

  ‘I’m sure this is fascinating,’ Nelson said, ‘but can we get back to Ellis?’

  Ruth narrowed her eyes at the inspector, and for a moment, Hackett thought she might clam up, but after a pause which made her point eloquently, she went on, ‘John has upset the vast majority of behavioural ecologists, physiologists, zoologists, environmentalists — in fact just about every species and subspecies of biologist except the crackpots who would like Gaia to be true. He has quite a following on the Internet — you should see the email he gets. If he’s right — which any real scientist must seriously doubt — he could revolutionize our view of population dynamics.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t find the proof for his theory, all these people will be disappointed?’

  ‘That’s far too bland a term for it, Inspector. They’d be crushed. Humiliated. Mortified. Devastated. And you know who they’ll blame.’

  ‘What would happen to him?’ Hackett asked.

  ‘He’d be finished before he really got started.’

  ‘So,’ said Nelson, ‘He’s a worried man.’

  ‘They all are, about the one thing or another,’ she said. ‘The Senate is talking in terms of thirty per cent wastage. Redundancies — in a university — I ask you!’

  ‘You don’t seem particularly worried.’

  ‘Me?’ She slid a sideways glance at Hackett. ‘Didn’t your sergeant tell you?’

  Hackett shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying not to look like he’d been caught out, and reflecting ruefully that Nelson wasn’t the only one Ruth Marks put off-balance.

  ‘I’m off to the United States as of August,’ Mark said. ‘I’ve been invited onto an interdisciplinary team working with neural nets — specifically the development of a part-biological and part-silicon-based brain. I’m going to be helping to develop the wetware — that’s the biological side.’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t look so horrified, Inspector. It won’t be a human brain, although they do use human brain cells — from donated cadavers. The brains are packaged and shipped to the research facility before the neurones start to degenerate. You can keep clusters of cells alive for a very long time, given the right tissue fluids and stimulation.’

  Hackett had never seen her so animated, so enthused about anything. He had thought her incapable of rising above her cynicism, but apparently this was something she believed in. Nelson, however, had heard enough. It seemed he disapproved of the whole concept of digging out people’s brains and then sticking them in jars and giving them electric shocks.

  ‘Yes,’ he said testily. ‘Thank you — that will do.’

  ‘Oh, well, that was easy,’ she said, heading for the door.

  ‘I didn’t say you should go,’ Nelson said, and the harsh grating of his voice seemed to give her pause. She turned, with a smile to face him once more.

  ‘So you didn’t fall out with Professor Wilkinson on the day he died?’ Nelson said, returning to his original theme.

  ‘I’m one of the few who can say that, hand on heart, and mean it,’ Ruth replied, solemnly miming the action.

  ‘Would Ellis have cause to argue with the professor?’

  Ruth considered. ‘Edward loved to pick fights with people, just to show how completely he could win.’

  Hackett sensed that the academic might be willing to say more, given the right sort encouragement. ‘You, um — couldn’t speculate as to why Ellis might argue with the professor?’ he said.

  ‘I could,’ Dr Marks said. ‘But would it be ethical?’

  ‘We really would appreciate some help here, if you think you can give it, Dr Marks,’ Hackett pressed, seeing that Nelson’s meagre reserves of patience were almost exhausted.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got a confession to the murders for you, Sergeant.’

  ‘But . . .’ Hackett prompted, thinking that her sharp perception really must rankle, if she was as unguarded in what she said to her colleagues.

  She smiled. ‘But I will tell you this: John Ellis is a troubled soul.’ She looked from Hackett to Nelson, revelling in having their undivided attention. ‘He has bad dreams.’

  Nelson invited her to take a seat, and Hackett moved to lean against the cabinet of beetles so that he had a be
tter view of her.

  ‘At first, they were simply rehashed versions of his interview with Edward, but apparently he’s started having a recurring dream. Now, I know it’s only a matter of days since Edward was murdered—’

  Hackett thought, How easily she says that word. Most people couldn’t bring themselves to use it at all, and those that did would hesitate, or look away, a reflection of their embarrassment or disbelief. Yet Ruth Marks used the word unflinchingly. For her, it was just a word, the most suitable one for the situation.

  ‘—But poor John has been sleeping badly, and whenever he falls asleep, he has this dream. He describes it as a “terrible dream”. He finds it deeply troubling. He can have it four or five times a night, and he wakes from it in terror. It’s disturbed his sleep patterns so much he’s taken to cat-napping during the day — and the instant he falls asleep he starts to dream.’

  ‘A nightmare,’ Nelson murmured, and Hackett and Ruth both glanced at him, but he seemed engrossed in some abstract thought.

  ‘The content of this recurring dream?’ Hackett asked, thinking she does seem to have a talent for gaining people’s confidence.

  ‘Why don’t I tell it to you, verbatim?’ she said. She closed her eyes for a few moments and sat upright, clasping her hands lightly in her lap. Opening her eyes, she began:

  ‘I’m sitting on jagged rocks; at my feet is a net full of oysters. I’m opening the oysters with a knife and scooping out the pearls. Helen Wilkinson is watching me and I suddenly realize that I’m using the knife that killed Prof Wilkinson to prise open the oysters. I can’t stop, because I don’t want to draw attention to the fact and I don’t want to upset Helen, so I carry on, opening the shells and casting the pearls into the sea, which is lapping at my feet. I’ve counted one hundred and twenty-five so far.

  Then Helen is gone, and Edward is standing over me. He says, ‘How many?’ and I answer, ‘One hundred and forty-seven.’ He dips his hand into the water and scoops out a pearl, then he drops it into a beaker of water. But it isn’t water, because it fizzes and Edward says, ‘Drink it down. It’ll set you right.’