The Silent One

by M K Farrar

  “I’m sure we will.” Erica set her coffee mug down on the kitchen counter, announced the end of the time of the interview and switched off the recording device. “Well, thank you for your time, and the coffee. We’ll leave you in peace.”

  “Not at all. Are you able to tell me when Paul will be released?”

  “He’s free to leave the station, since he’s there voluntarily, but I believe he’s currently with his solicitor. I suggest you contact the station directly.”

  “Oh, right.”

  She didn’t look terribly comforted by Erica’s words.

  Erica didn’t tell her that officers would be here with a search warrant sooner rather than later. She didn’t want to give the other woman the opportunity to search for and dispose of any evidence that might prove her husband’s guilt.

  A knock came at the front door, and Sarah straightened in alarm.

  Erica followed Sarah back down the expensively tiled hallway to the front door. Sarah opened it to reveal several people on the doorstep. Erica recognised a couple of the police officers and one of the detectives with them. His name was DI Alex Carlton from Homicide and Serious Crime, and while Erica hadn’t worked with him directly, they’d done a couple of courses together and she always heard positive things about him. She felt confident enough in his abilities to leave the search in his hands.

  “Mrs Young,” DI Carlton announced, “we have a warrant to search this property in connection with the death of Adam Humphries in the early hours of this morning.”

  Her eyes widened and she glanced to Erica as though hoping the other woman would back her up. “A search warrant? Is this really necessary? I’ve told you everything I can.”

  “I’m afraid it is, Mrs Young,” Erica said. “Please, just continue to be as helpful as you can, and they’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

  The woman looked completely out of her depth as the officers entered her home, and Erica and Shawn stepped out. They made their way back to the car. Erica slipped behind the wheel, and Shawn climbed into the passenger side.

  She started the car but didn’t pull away from the kerb. “It must be lonely being in that big house by yourself all day. If Dr Young is leaving before she even wakes up and then is home late as well, she must be alone a lot.”

  “Sounds like a good life to me,” Shawn said, his tone jovial. “Left alone all day in a big house with nothing to do. Bliss.”

  Erica laughed. “You’d be bored out of your mind within twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re probably right.

  “And she volunteers,” she said. “It’s not as though she’s on her own from morning to night.”

  “He came home at a normal time last night,” Shawn said with a frown. “She said they ate dinner and watched television, so he must have not worked late.”

  “Hmm. Maybe there was a reason for that.”

  “You think he might have come home deliberately early, creating an alibi for himself?”

  “Possibly.” She sighed and glanced back at the house to see Sarah Young still standing in the open doorway, watching them go, while police officers walked in and out of her house. “I feel sorry for her. She seems sad. Lonely.”

  Shawn gave a tight smile. “I wonder how much her husband has to do with that.”

  Erica signalled and pulled out into traffic. She took her eyes off the road for a moment to glance back at the house.

  Sarah had gone.

  Chapter Seven

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  Jas’s head appeared around the edge of Paige’s door.

  Paige sat up. “Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry for running off like that earlier.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. You seemed really upset about Adam.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not... well, not really. I just keep thinking about how he was hanging out right next to where we were last night. I think he even tried to say something to me, but I didn’t really hear him and so I just smiled and turned away.” She clamped her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. Do you think he might have been trying to tell me something important?”

  Jas wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Nah. Adam was just trying to join in, that’s all.”

  “We didn’t let him, though, did we? He was always on the outskirts of everything, and we could have called him over, or bought him a shot like everyone else, but we didn’t.”

  Jas pulled a face. “Yeah, because Adam was a bit of a freak, wasn’t he?”

  “Jas! You can’t say that. The poor bloke was murdered.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t make it any less true. I think if the police are going to ask us about him, then we need to be truthful about everything, even if it does make both him and us look bad.”

  Paige’s heart raced at the prospect of telling the police everything. Would she tell them that she’d woken the following morning to find blood all over her hands and sheets? Or that she had no memory of coming home last night? They were bound to ask about the bruising across her nose and her twin black eyes. Thank God they wouldn’t be able to see the bruising on her body as well, the purple and green marks on her hips or between her thighs. What if they did? What if they suspected something and wanted to see the rest of her body? Could the police make her strip down to show them? She grew lightheaded at the possibility, and suddenly found it hard to catch her breath.

  Jas frowned and sat on the edge of her bed. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

  She bundled her hands into her lap, trying to hide how badly they shook. “The police are going to want to ask me questions, aren’t they? What if they ask me something I can’t answer?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said hurriedly. “But I can barely remember getting back last night. It’s all just a blur. I had too much to drink.”

  “So, tell the police that. You’re an adult. You’re allowed to have a few drinks and let your hair down. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, of course I didn’t.”

  Did I?

  “Anyway,” Jas continued, “it was most likely Professor Young who killed him. He was taken in for questioning. I expect if the police want to talk to us, they’ll only ask us if we saw Professor Young hanging around or knew of any relationship between him and Adam.”

  Paige’s head shot up. “Relationship? What do you mean? He’s married, isn’t he?”

  “So? Since when has being married ever stopped anyone?”

  “No, I mean, he’s married to a woman.”

  Jas’s blue eyes lit up. “That might be why the professor killed him. They were having a torrid affair, and Adam said he was going to tell his wife and everyone else if the professor didn’t leave her for him, and so he killed Adam to keep him quiet.”

  “You can’t go around saying things like that, Jas! Professor Young is probably innocent, and you’re going to spread rumours that could get him in serious trouble.”

  Jas threw up both her hands. “Hey, it’s not just me. Everyone is saying it.”

  Paige widened her eyes in surprise. “They are?”

  “Yep.” She smacked her lips together, as though satisfied after a good meal. “If you didn’t hide in your room all day, you’d hear how it’s all round campus. Just you wait. I bet the police will be able to find proof of it at some point soon.”

  Paige didn’t know what to think. Could Professor Young really have been the person to kill Adam? If so, she didn’t have anything to worry about. She was completely innocent, and the bruises on her body and the blood really had just been because she’d been stupidly drunk and had fallen up the stairs or something.

  But if it wasn’t true, and she was guilty of doing something terrible, she’d be allowing an innocent man to take the fall.

  Paige had spoken to Adam a couple of times. He seemed like a nice bloke. Quieter than most of them, a little more introverted, but sometimes she thought that was a good thing. So many of the
boys all tried to outdo each other—who could be the loudest, the funniest, who could pull the most girls. Some of the girls were just as bad, and she’d played her own part in joining in at times. Last night had been a perfect example of that. She regretted it now. She wished she hadn’t had so much to drink, then she’d have remembered what happened. Instead, she couldn’t shake the horrible nagging feeling that the blood on the sheets had something to do with Adam Humphries’ body.

  Maybe she should speak to the police and tell them the truth—that she couldn’t remember what had happened. It was their job to figure out mysteries.

  But what if I had something to do with his death?

  She didn’t think that, did she?

  The police would be able to figure it out. Except, she wasn’t sure she even wanted them to.

  Did she have it in her to hurt someone like that? Maybe she did. It was in her blood, wasn’t it? Killing.

  It was her horrible secret, this thing she had to carry around with her. If anyone at the university found out, she would never fit in here. It had been bad enough in her hometown, but because it was something she’d grown up with, it had felt as though everyone had known there anyway, and so people just accepted it. But she didn’t want that tarnish to follow her here as well. She’d come here to make a fresh start, to remould herself into a newer, better version of Paige Arland, but already, within a matter of weeks, all of that had been ruined.

  No, it wasn’t ruined. Not yet. She could still pull everything back again. All she needed to do was keep her head down and her mouth shut, and just forget that last night had even happened. No one had any reason to tie her to Adam Humphries’ murder. A bad memory and a bit of blood certainly wasn’t enough.

  Then why aren’t you telling the police...?

  Shut up, shut up, shut up.

  The police would find out who hurt Adam, and then she could stop worrying about it. This wasn’t her fault. It had nothing to do with her.

  She was barely aware that Jasmine had said something. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I think me and Lucas are going to end up as an item.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Paige couldn’t think of anything less important than Jasmine’s love life.

  Jasmine pouted. “You could at least pretend to be happy for me.”

  “Sorry, Jas. I am happy for you.”

  “What do you think of Ben?”

  “Ben? I don’t think anything of Ben.”

  She did really. She thought he was a bit of an entitled prick, a bit like Lucas. They were those kind of guys who came from families who’d always had plenty of money and whose parents had always done everything for them.

  Jasmine nudged her in the side, and Paige tried not to wince as the knobbly bone pressed into one of her bruises.

  “I thought the two of you might get together, you know, so we could hang out as a foursome.”

  Paige’s jaw dropped. “Me and Ben? You’re not serious.”

  “Why not? He’s good-looking. You’d make a cute couple.”

  “You’re just saying that because it would be convenient for you.”

  “I want to hang out with my boyfriend and best friend at the same time. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  Pleasure at Jasmine saying she was her best friend flooded through her, melting the ice that had formed around her heart. Was she really her best friend? Even back home she’d never truly had a best friend. She’d always felt the taint of who she was, and the distance that created between her and others. Even if the kids hadn’t really cared, once the parents found out, they’d never been so keen on allowing play dates when they were younger, or just hanging out when they became teens.

  She sighed. “No, of course not. I just really don’t think Ben and I would make a good couple. I don’t think he’s even interested in me.”

  And I’m definitely not interested in him, she thought but didn’t say.

  “How do you know if you don’t even give it a try?” Jas tilted her head to one side and blinked begging, puppy-dog eyes at her. “Plleeeassse... Just one double date?”

  Paige dropped her shoulders and relented. “Ugh. Fine. Okay then. Just one date.”

  Jasmine let out a squeal and threw her arms around Paige in a hug. “You are the best friend ever! We are going to have so much fun, I promise.”

  Paige did her best to smile and hug Jasmine back.

  Somehow, she highly doubted that.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time they got back to the station, Rudd and Howard had returned from interviewing any of the university students who had known Adam Humphries—which turned out, wasn’t many.

  “Gibbs is looking for an update on where we are with Dr Young,” DC Hannah Rudd said, walking alongside Erica as she made her way towards her desk.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  No doubt her boss was going to let her know exactly where he thought she was already going wrong with the case. Sometimes she wondered why Gibbs even wanted to work with her.

  Rudd wasn’t finished. “And the CCTV footage has come in from the student union.”

  “Great. Hopefully, it’s going to give us some idea about who the victim was with last night, and if he left with anyone. At this moment, we have no idea who Adam Humphries was as a person. We don’t even know if he had any friends here.”

  “They’re so new into the academic year that none of them really got the chance to know him,” Rudd pointed out.

  Erica sighed and dragged her hand through her hair. “True. It might be an idea to check with a police department local to his parents, where he came from, and talk to his old friends and family, see what sort of opinion they had of him. We need to know why anyone would want to kill him, if he had a drug, or alcohol, or gambling problem. He might even have been involved in some kind of criminal activity, and that’s what got him killed.”

  Rudd nodded. “I’ll get onto it.”

  Erica stopped by her boss’s office and rapped her knuckles on the door.

  “Come,” Gibbs barked from the other side.

  Erica opened the door and stepped through. “Just wanted to bring you up to speed with where we are.”

  “Good, thanks.” He barely glanced up from his desk. “What’s happened with the professor?”

  “The search hasn’t revealed anything that would allow us to get a warrant for his arrest. Not sure what we were hoping to find though, since it appears we had the murder weapon at the scene.”

  Gibbs sighed and put down his pen, then sat back in his seat. “So, we’ve just let him walk out of here?”

  “Until we’ve got a reason to arrest him, we didn’t have any choice. I think the main focus needs to be on motive. We won’t get him on anything unless we can find a reason why Dr Young would want one of his students dead.”

  “His personal computer was on the warrant, and we already have his phone so that might give us an insight into any communication they might have had outside of the university, but I suggest we do the same for his office.”

  Erica nodded. “I’ll get that done. We have the CCTV footage from the student union back as well.”

  “Let me know if you find anything important.”

  She backed out of the office, happy to have an escape, and returned to her desk. A touch of her mouse brought her computer to life, and she clicked through the files until she found the footage she wanted. Maybe she should delegate this work to Rudd or Howard, but it felt too important to hand off. Rudd had said the students weren’t talking, and there were so many of them, it was hard to know which ones to apply some extra pressure on, but hopefully this would give them a better idea of exactly who Adam Humphries had spent his final few hours with.

  Erica hit play on the first of the security footage from the student union. “Shit.”

  This wasn’t going to be easy. The lighting was poor, and the place was crowded. All she could see were heads of students as they milled around.

  This camera mus
t have been positioned in the corner of the bar. It caught the faces of students coming up to order and the backs of the bar staff as they poured drinks and took payments.

  Erica scanned the faces of everyone at the bar, searching for the growingly familiar face of Adam Humphries. There were so many people, all around the same age, wearing the same style of clothes, and with similar hairstyles. It was the veritable needle in a haystack. She hated doing this kind of work—had little patience for it—but it was a necessary evil.

  She sipped her coffee and grimaced. It was cold. She was barely aware of movement at her shoulder as Shawn came to stand behind her, studying the screen as well.

  Shawn suddenly leaned forward and clicked pause. He jabbed his finger at a light-coloured head. “That’s Adam Humphries.”

  Erica squinted and craned her neck closer. “Are you sure?”

  The young man on screen didn’t have any discernible features that marked him as Adam Humphries to her. Was he too far away for her to tell?

  “Is he going to get any closer to the camera? I can’t really tell it’s him.”

  Shawn cocked an eyebrow at her. “I think you’re going to need to get your eyes tested some time.”

  “Oi, I’m not blind,” she protested.

  “It’s old age, Erica,” he teased. “It happens to us all, but I guess it happens to some of us quicker than others.”

  “Get stuffed. Hit play again so I can see this for myself.”

  He chuckled but un-paused the video. Sure enough, Adam Humphries pushed his way through the crowd to get closer to the bar.

  She recognised him. “Is he with anyone?”

  She scoured those around him. There didn’t seem to be anyone he particularly interacted with. He lifted his chin in a nod to a couple of people and smiled, but there was tension in his features.

  “He doesn’t look as though he’s having a good time,” she commented.

  “No, he seems tense.”

  “Is he just socially awkward or is it someone in particular who is causing him to act like that?”

  They both turned their attention to the screen. Adam managed to push himself to the front of the bar, where he glanced from side to side, leaning forwards slightly to get the attention of one of the bartenders. He finally ordered, and a pint of either beer or cider was placed in front of him.