A Game of Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  She waited while Jessica thought for a long time.

  ‘By the way,’ Claire said casually. ‘You might want to know that your husband is not, in fact, dead, but in hospital. The chances of him making a full recovery from his suicide attempt are, so I’m told, slim. He is almost certainly brain damaged from the prolonged hypoxia. Probably, Jessica, it would have been better if he had died, wouldn’t it? Then you could have produced a belated and false “confession” from him, couldn’t you?’

  Jessica lowered her eyelids so Claire couldn’t read her expression, but her hands linked together as though she was praying. Jessica praying? To whom? And for what?

  Claire glanced at her watch. ‘The police are heading up to Mow Cop.’

  Had she not been looking for it she might have missed the tiny start Jessica Kobi gave. But she was waiting for it.

  Jessica licked her lips and withdrew, deep in thought. Then she gave a little huff of a laugh. ‘I wonder what they’ll find there.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’

  Willard was waiting for her outside with a request.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ Willard said, ‘that you’d consider speaking to Tom and Shane?’ He hesitated. ‘Try to explain.’

  ‘I don’t mind talking to them. In fact, I think it’s best. They might hear something through the media.’

  She glanced back at the door of the interview room. ‘And you’re going to need an extension.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘How is Kobi?’

  ‘At the moment he’s on a ventilator and they’re not sure if he’ll be able to breathe on his own.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘He’s narcissistic. The one thing a narcissist can’t bear is not being top dog. The minute he realized he was about to be rumbled his life was in danger. From himself. He wasn’t quite willing to take the blame for Marvel’s murder. And, I think we’ll find that in no way does Marvel’s fate resemble any of the other murders. This one, I believe, will prove to be Jessica’s.’

  ‘We have a team up at the Cop. Any clue as to where?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve been thinking about this. The cairn,’ she said. ‘The Old Man O’Mow. I think he’s hiding her. I would start looking there. And Zed,’ she added.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Don’t speak to Jessica until you have hard evidence. You’re going to need an extension to question her. Don’t underestimate her. She’s a clever girl.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ he responded gruffly.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  While the police were working with sniffer dogs and taping off the area surrounding Mow Cop Castle, Claire was making her way to Tom Trustrom’s house. Shane’s car was already in the drive.

  As she pressed on the doorbell, she could only think that it was better that she broke the news sensitively rather than they find out through a leak on social media.

  But it was going to be difficult.

  Tom was, as before, spread across the sofa, a blanket over him, his breath coming in short, rasping gasps, while Yvonne watched from a dining-room chair at the far end of the room. Shane was perched on the edge of the armchair. At first the hostility and suspicion between father and son was as tangible as a nuclear cloud. Both father and son were apprehensive about what was going to come next. And, with some surprise, she also realized Kobi’s ruse was still active. They hadn’t quite shed their suspicion of each other.

  She began on neutral ground. ‘You may or may not have heard the police are searching the area around Mow Cop for Marvel’s body.’

  Neither responded to this but still avoided looking at one another. Shane said gruffly, ‘What makes them think they’ll find it there?’

  ‘They’ve unearthed new evidence.’

  ‘What new evidence?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘So why are you here?’ Shane’s voice was truculent.

  ‘I wanted to prepare you.’

  Tom spoke for the first time. ‘Has this got anything to do with Kobi trying to hang himself?’

  Claire was cautious. ‘Possibly.’

  Both started at this. But for the first time father and son looked at each other and on Shane’s face was the hint of a thin smile.

  ‘We don’t know much more at the moment,’ she said. ‘The police investigations, as you can appreciate, take some time, but I wanted you to be aware that your request, Tom, might just bring you an answer.’

  Tom closed his eyes and she saw his lips move. He was, she remembered, a lapsed Catholic.

  When he opened his eyes he looked straight at his son and something fell from both their faces. That hardness, hostility, suspicion was replaced by light and hope. The thaw was as tangible as the melt on the first day of spring and the cold atmosphere that had existed only seconds before was washed away.

  Shane moved first. ‘Dad,’ he said, reaching out a hand.

  ‘None of this is evidence yet,’ she warned. ‘But if the case is proven and sticks …’ She squeezed out a smile as pure white as toothpaste. ‘Put it like this,’ she said. ‘The truth will be good for both of you.’

  Tom’s breathing became laboured as he closed his eyes. His struggle was almost over. For a moment she almost wondered whether he had died right then. Had this not been about being buried with his stepdaughter but more that he wanted their names to be cleared of the suspicion that had poisoned the relationship between them? Shane watched him before glancing across at Yvonne. Claire reflected on the twisted knots that exist within families. One word and a thousand different scenarios. Yvonne took the hint, crossed the room and knelt by her husband’s side.

  It was time for her to leave.

  Zed Willard had always considered himself relatively fit. But the stiff climb up to the Cop was making him very out of breath. He was on the south side of the ruin, its stone crags sinister against a grey sky. In front of him was a team of forensic investigators ably helped by two cadaver dogs. And it wasn’t long before he heard them barking and saw the team move towards the cairn as though drawn by a magnet. He quickened his step. The dogs were now held back. Watched over by the ruined castle he imagined he heard, in the wind, the hymn singing of the Primitive Methodists.

  The police worked, marking out a grid around the cairn, pulling away stones that had been laid centuries ago and might have stayed so had it not been for this one lost girl. It was tiring work as, watched over by the representative from the National Trust, they numbered the stones. They would all have to be put back in order.

  After three hours’ work they found her.

  Death sucks out character, changes a living, breathing person into a corpse. Six years takes the process forward, changing a body into a collection of artifacts: hair, teeth, bones, material, cheap gypsy hoop earrings and a silver bracelet, which told its own story via unrelated trinkets – a galloping horse, a paint brush and a miniscule pair of silver ballet shoes. And then a sad, cheap, plastic handbag because if we have learnt only one thing in the millennium it is this: that plastic is more indestructible than a person. Predation, time and the elements had done their work. But it always surprised Willard that material, hair, jewellery, a plastic handbag with contents, all these survive when a person’s remains are long rotted away.

  He watched a woodlouse crawl out of the stones and held up his hand. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s enough. We need the team, a tent and a pathologist.’ The wind whistled its assent, fluttering a lock of red gold hair while DS Zed Willard made a mental prayer.

  Please let us find something that links Kobi and his Lady Macbeth to this poor girl.

  And this was where intuition, psychology and psychiatry gave way to science.

  Claire’s mobile phone rang later that day.

  ‘And there she was,’ Willard said. ‘Folded up like a piece of lino. We’ve closed off the scene and will get her to the mortuary as soon as possible. Poor little thing,’ he said, ‘still wearing her cheap, tarty clothes, plastic
handbag. Little else left now of her but bones.’

  ‘They might have trouble finding cause of death.’

  Willard nodded. ‘Well, we’ll have to take that as it comes, Claire. But sure as eggs are eggs she didn’t stick her own body underneath that heap of stones.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  But it still wasn’t enough to convict Jessica Kobi of murder.

  Kobi was on the Intensive Care Unit, breathing controlled by a ventilator, tubes running in and out, his only sound the feeble bleeps of machines.

  The last sense we lose is hearing. Nurses and doctors are taught this in the very early weeks of their training. Always assume the patient hears you.

  It is a habit one never loses. Claire bent over him and spoke very softly into his ear. ‘We have her, Kobi. The Old Man of Mow was hiding her, wasn’t he?’

  No response.

  ‘But it wasn’t you, was it?’

  Still no response.

  ‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ she whispered. ‘But whose idea was it to get married and protect each other? Hers? Yours?’

  Still no response.

  ‘We’ll get her, you know. If you ever get off this bed and out of here she’ll be joining you at HMP Somewhere.’

  Was it her imagination, wishful thinking that made her wonder afterwards if one of his fingers, trapped in the pulse oximeter, moved – just a little?

  She could never be certain.

  Willard rang her later. He sounded cautiously jubilant. ‘We’ve got stuff from the burial site,’ he said. ‘Including a mobile phone. We’re running it through at the moment. I can’t believe they overlooked that one.’

  ‘It seems unlikely that they did,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t start getting excited. Not yet. You’re not there yet, Zed.’

  ‘Well, we’ve plenty of stuff to run through the labs. I’m hopeful, Claire.’

  She felt a sudden rush of affection for the detective. He’d been so involved from the first. In the end he had searched for the truth. And for that Claire respected him.

  It was now down to the lab. Evidence was provided by Caroline Morton, Home Office pathologist, who carried out the post-mortem, watched by DS Zed Willard and the team. She rang Claire soon afterwards.

  ‘Well,’ she said dryly, ‘this murder couldn’t have been more different from the killings of the other four girls. I’ve read up on the PMs of those four. They were all strangled. Not this one though.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘Stabbed. Multiple times.’

  ‘I thought the body was decomposed?’

  ‘It was.’ Dr Morton couldn’t keep the note of triumph from her voice. ‘But there were nicks in some of the ribs. Even two in her skull. She was stabbed a total of eighteen times. It was what the press like to call a frenzied attack. I would very much doubt that this is the work of Jonah Kobi.’

  ‘And you’re prepared to testify this in court?’

  ‘It’ll just be an opinion.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Zed Willard rang to tell her that the Family Liaison Officer would be working with Marvel’s family. But after the triumph Claire heard a note of doubt in his voice. It was often like this. Triumph when you put your hand on a collar. But however Marvel had died, whoever had killed her, they had yet to prove contact between Jonah Kobi and Jessica Wilson back in 2013.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Jessica was not going to confess and she was too intelligent to fool but the results started rolling in, lining up like swallows in late August. Claire had primed DS Zed Willard and his team and watched as he interviewed her, but it was just going over old ground. The girl was as resistant as Teflon. She didn’t have her husband’s conceit or a need for accolade and recognition. Her ego was unlikely to trip her up. Her speech was not unguarded but carefully edited. She had kept her secret for six years and was capable of holding on to it for another seventy.

  However Willard phrased his questions, Jessica Kobi was a stone wall.

  ‘Take me through that Saturday.’

  ‘I don’t even know what Saturday you’re referring to.’

  ‘The Saturday Marvel went missing.’

  Jessica’s response was disdainful. ‘Just remind me of the date.’

  And when he did her response was predictable. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘How exactly did you and Kobi pull it off?’

  The response was a simple shrug.

  ‘I’m not talking about Marvel’s murder, Jessica. I’m talking about the playing off of members of Marvel’s family. A bit of sport, Jessica? Or self-protectionism?’

  Jessica’s response was a bland stare. She didn’t even bother with the no comment response.

  Zed Willard screwed up his face. ‘You knew that father and son were in Hanley that afternoon? Searching for her. Maybe you even saw them? Maybe they even saw you with Marvel? Looking round the shops together?’

  No response.

  ‘So whose idea was it to bait the Trustroms? Yours?’

  Still no response.

  ‘Kobi’s?’

  The flicker in her eyes told Claire that this guess was more likely to be correct.

  ‘Ye-es!’ Willard played it like a eureka moment. ‘Of course. It was something he could play at even in prison. But you …’ He stared right into Jessica’s eyes. ‘When the focus returned to that one missing girl you worried, didn’t you? And Jonah was always going to be a concern, wasn’t he?’

  Jessica Kobi was staring straight ahead. It was anyone’s guess what was going through her mind. ‘But you never completely trusted Jonah, did you? Maybe Jonah played with you too? He wasn’t going to confess and there was always the risk that he would say where the body was.’ A flicker crossed the girl’s face. ‘You knew you’d been careless there, that there might be evidence to link you with Marvel’s body. I suppose,’ he said casually, ‘that you were in a bit of a hurry.’

  And that little dart struck home.

  Zed Willard studied his fingernails. ‘The trouble with Kobi is that you were never quite sure you weren’t part of the sport too. He probably goaded you, didn’t he?’

  For the first time Claire saw real fury light Jessica’s face. She was having trouble holding it in, taking great, scooping breaths in and out.

  But Jessica wasn’t about to break.

  ‘You can say all this stuff as much as you like,’ she said with a toss of her head. ‘You have to prove it.’ Her eyes locked on to Willard’s. ‘In a court of law.’

  ‘Don’t worry on that score, Jessica,’ Willard inserted smoothly, ‘the labs are busy working on it.’

  In his uncomfortable seat the solicitor shifted his weight.

  And that was how it was left, unsatisfactory, everything hanging on, nothing finalized. No certainties. Claire left the station worrying that they would never have the evidence to charge Jessica Kobi with the murder of Marvel Trustrom.

  But next day, in the light of the morning, a phone call from Zed Willard was more than welcome.

  ‘Thank God for plastic.’

  It wasn’t quite what she had expected but she could hear excitement in his voice.

  ‘Spill the beans, Zed.’

  ‘Marvel’s bag,’ he said. ‘Like a little time capsule. Everything preserved. Including a tissue and some lipstick.’ And then he spoke the words every prosecutor wants to hear. ‘Both have DNA on them. We have a match. We’ve got enough to charge her.’

  ‘Be careful, Zed,’ she warned. ‘Be warned. She’s clever. And Kobi’s out of the picture. He won’t be testifying against her. Whatever evidence you have she’s quite capable of batting it away. She’ll say the DNA comes from a previous encounter. She’s admitted that she and Marvel were sort of friends. And even if you can put her at the scene, she’ll plead coercion.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ he grumbled.

  But Claire had been pulled into many court cases. She knew how prosecution and defence could both manipulate what was, in truth, an inexact science, a reconstructi
on of a crime.

  But she attended the interview anyway. And straightaway she could see where Jessica was heading.

  Jessica wanted to emphasize her schoolgirl role even though she was now in her twenties. She had deliberately dressed for the occasion in a plain black pinafore dress with a white shirt underneath. Reminiscent of school uniform. Flat shoes and the final touch, her hair tied back. Very different from the woman Claire had met on the two previous occasions. What hadn’t changed though was her air of self-assurance or that confidant tilt of her head.

  Willard made a double take as he greeted her. ‘Jessica.’ He motioned her to sit down. By his side was a mousey looking PC, uncomfortable in her uniform which did look hot and scratchy.

  ‘You understand this will all be recorded?’

  Jessica nodded, looking bored. Willard cautioned her and then sat back. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what happened, Jessica? In your own words.’

  She leaned back. Still very confident.

  ‘He was my teacher.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The comprehensive in Biddulph,’ she said. ‘They were struggling to get a history teacher so I guess they didn’t look too hard into his antecedents.’

  ‘So when did you learn about them?’

  She lowered her eyelids. Had Claire not been a psychiatrist she might have thought it was through modesty or embarrassment, but she could see Jessica Kobi was actually enjoying herself. The hand passing across her mouth was to hide a smirk.

  ‘He seemed to like me,’ she said with a tiny toss of her streaked hair. ‘And I had a bit of trouble with some of my homework.’ A flicker of her eyelashes and a sideways flick of her eyes warned Claire that her next statement was likely to be a lie. ‘I was anxious to pass my exams so I was grateful to my teacher taking special trouble with me.’ Another flutter of the eyelashes.

  ‘When was this?’ From his tone Claire knew Willard wasn’t taken in by the act.

  ‘Work it out,’ she said carelessly. ‘I was sixteen years old.’

  ‘So we’re talking about 2013.’