The Silent One

by M K Farrar

  “Just the one drink,” Erica pointed out. “He wasn’t buying for anyone else.”

  Shawn nodded. “So maybe the part about him being a loner is true.”

  Adam vanished back into the crowds.

  “Where has he gone?” Erica said. “We need to figure out what camera catches his location best.”

  She clocked the time on screen. Ten fifty-seven. “Is it just me, or does everyone seem to go out later these days? Who the hell starts their night at almost eleven p.m.?”

  “Drinks are expensive, so people have a few at home before they head out.”

  She rubbed her fingers across her mouth, thinking. “I wonder if Adam did that. Was he just in his room, drinking alone? Or was he with someone?” She was thinking out loud.

  “There’s more security footage of the halls of residence,” Shawn said. “It could give us a better idea. Let’s focus on this for a moment, though. Check the other cameras at this time and see where Adam went after he bought his drink.”

  It took them a little scrolling and flicking between screens, but finally they spotted Adam again, hanging out near a seating area. He was leaning against the back of one of the sofas, his pint still in his hand. Behind him, at the seating area, a group of students appeared to be having a good time. Someone approached with shots and set them down on the table, and the young people reacted with a mixture of hands punched into the air and head shakes. Despite the handful of protests, everyone stepped forward to collect their drink.

  Everyone except Adam.

  He watched on while glasses were clinked together and alcohol was thrown down the other students’ throats.

  “Who is that?” Erica tapped the screen above a pretty, dark-haired girl in a short dress. “She seems to be catching his attention more than the others.”

  Shawn craned his neck to get a better view. “Someone he likes, I guess.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I can see why.”

  “She’s a teenager,” Erica warned.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, just that she’s a pretty girl and I can see why he’d notice her.”

  “They’re all pretty,” she said.

  And they were. Such an abundance of youth. They all seemed to be long-limbed and slender, bright-eyed and excited for their futures. She remembered how it felt to be that age, how everything—but particularly her social life—had seemed so vitally important. To be left out of something would have been like heartbreak, enough to keep her lying awake for hours at night, wondering what she’d done wrong and how she could put it right. Now she’d give anything to have such minor worries.

  How did Adam Humphries feel watching everyone else having a good time, while he stood on the outside? Did it make him angry or sad? Had he said something to someone else that would give them reason to want him dead?

  On screen, Adam wandered off but returned five minutes later with a second drink—a vodka and Coke, perhaps? It was hard to tell.

  Someone said something to him as he approached, and he smiled and spoke back, but then returned to lurking on his own.

  Erica checked the time on screen. It was gone midnight. There was the chance Adam would be leaving soon, and that was going to be the most important part. Did anyone follow him out of the bar?

  From the body language of his fellow students, it was easy enough to see that the alcohol had been doing its job. Everyone was laughing more freely, and the personal space they’d had between them no longer existed. A few of the girls sat in the boys’ laps, or the girls danced together, with the male students watching on with undisguised lust. Adam Humphries was a mecca of stillness in this bumping, grinding throng of young bodies, silently standing, watching and waiting—for what, Erica didn’t know.

  Adam left again and returned with a third drink. It didn’t seem as though he was drinking as much as some of the other students—slow and steady, rather than downing shots. Sometimes, when people were awkward and found socialising hard, they tended to drink more not less, to cover their anxieties. Adam didn’t appear to be doing that.

  “He’s not drinking much,” she commented.

  “Lots of students don’t these days,” Shawn said. “They’re all into health and fitness, and they’re not big drinkers like they used to be.”

  “I don’t know, the ones in the background seem to be making up for it.” She checked the clock again. “Almost twelve thirty.”

  “Yeah, what time does the student union shut?”

  “At one, so they must be starting to wind things down.”

  Erica spotted something on screen and frowned. “Where’s the girl gone? The one with the dark hair?”

  Shawn craned his neck forward. “I’m not sure. Maybe she’s dancing.”

  “Maybe. Can we try to spot her?”

  They scrolled through some of the other camera screens but didn’t see her.

  The victim was on the move now, too.

  “Where’s Adam going?” Erica wondered.

  He’d set his drink down. He hadn’t even finished it, but it was easy to tell from his body language that something had caught his attention. He stood straighter, his chin lifted as though he was trying to see over the tops of all the heads of the other students.

  “He’s moving,” she said. “Let’s see if anyone followed him.”

  They lost sight of him on that camera and had to switch to a different one. Adam had the stance of someone with a purpose about him, heading directly through his fellow students, even knocking shoulders with a couple of them.

  He exited, pushing through the doors. They caught him again on the outside camera that covered the entrance, but he turned left, and they lost him.

  “Shit.”

  “Keep watching,” Shawn said. “See if anyone went after him.”

  A small group of people stood outside. They were smoking—no, on a closer inspection, they were vaping.

  “Isn’t that one of the people who was with the group he’d been standing near?” Shawn said, as someone else left the building.

  The person paused, looking both ways, before taking the same route as Adam.

  She remembered the dark-haired girl was also missing. “Yes. It is. Go back, to before Adam left. Who went before him?”

  Had that group all gone, one after the other?

  They scrolled back.

  Erica pointed at the screen. “There she is.”

  The dark-haired girl exited into the night. She seemed unsteady on her feet. Shortly after, a couple of other people exited the building. Two of them turned right, while another young man went in the same direction as the girl.

  “Most of the first-year students live on campus,” Shawn pointed out. “They had to leave at some point. It’s probably just a coincidence.”

  “Maybe, but I think we need to find out who they are and talk to them. Perhaps they didn’t know Adam well, but he seemed to know them.”

  Another of the students left the building, followed by a couple of others. Erica wished the whole of the campus had been covered by security cameras. It would have made their job easy if they’d been able to track Adam Humphries’ progress farther than him leaving the student union.

  “We’re going to need to request CCTV from all areas of the university and get a couple of the DCs to go through them all, with extra attention to this time, see if Adam or anyone else unusual pops up.

  “Anyone else unusual like Professor Young?” Shawn suggested.

  She shrugged. “Possibly. If he was on campus when he shouldn’t have been, one of the cameras might have caught him.”

  Her gaze went back to the screen.

  “Someone must have seen or heard something,” she mused. “There are too many people around for them not to have.”

  “Let’s track down each of the group Adam seemed to be hanging around and speak to them individually. I think you’re right.” Shawn fixed her with his brown gaze. “Someone knows something.”

  Chapter Nine

  Erica rose from her desk,
planning to head back to the university with Shawn and track down the students Adam had been hanging around that night. They’d also go to campus security and see what other CCTV they had so they could try to pin down Adam Humphries’ route after he’d left the union, but she was halted by her phone ringing.

  She lifted a finger to Shawn to tell him to wait for a moment, and then answered. “DI Swift.”

  “Swift, it’s Mattocks.”

  Lee Mattocks was the head of SOCO for their borough.

  “Got any news for me?” she asked.

  “That’s why I’m calling. We found a phone at the crime scene. It was in the middle of the bushes, which is why we didn’t see it right away.”

  “The victim’s?”

  “We’re not sure yet. It’s locked, so we’re going to need to get Digital Forensics to see if they can get it open.”

  “Has it been dusted? Were there any fingerprints on the device?”

  “Yes, some have been lifted, but they don’t match the victim’s.”

  She pressed her lips together. “The phone is unlikely to be Adam Humphries’ then.”

  “So, it might be the killer’s?”

  “What about Professor Young? We took his prints so we could match them from the scene.”

  “Just like he would have wanted,” Mattocks quipped.

  “Hmm.”

  That was the problem with all of this. How much of the evidence they gathered was going to be explained away by Paul Young having been the one to find the victim, so his prints and DNA were already all over the crime scene?

  She tightened her fingers around the handset. “Let’s get the phone unlocked and then we’ll be able to find out who it belonged to for sure. It might not have anything to do with the murder, but anything found that close to the scene is important to check out.”

  “Sure, will do.”

  She hung up again. Shawn was looking at her, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

  “A mobile phone was found at the scene,” she explained. “Might not have anything to do with the murder, but it needs checking out. Can you give me a minute?”

  Shawn nodded. “Of course. I’ll meet you out by the car.”

  She was aware of the hours vanishing. Her official shift had ended hours ago, and she couldn’t see herself going home any time soon. She hated being so conscious of the time. Her sister, Natasha, would have picked Poppy up from school a few hours ago, and she imagined them all sitting around the dining room table, Poppy absorbed into their family, while she was on the outside.

  She glanced down at her left hand, the bands of her engagement and wedding rings still circling her finger. She couldn’t imagine a time arriving where she’d want to take her rings off. Just because Chris was dead, she didn’t feel any less married. Maybe that would change over time, but she couldn’t picture it yet.

  She placed a quick call to her sister’s house, just to say hi to Poppy and ask how her day had been. She was conscious of Shawn waiting for her, but she knew if she didn’t do it now, she might not get another chance before bedtime.

  Natasha answered. “Hello.”

  “Hi, it’s me. I haven’t got long. Can you put Poppy on for me?”

  “Yes, she’s right here.”

  Erica’s heart warmed as her daughter’s voice came down the line. “Hi, Mummy!”

  “Hi, sweetheart. How was school today?”

  “Good. I played horses with Charlotte at lunchtime.”

  She deliberately made her voice brighter than she felt. “That’s great. What did you have for dinner?”

  “We had pesto pasta,” Poppy lowered her voice, “but it had these little nuts in it that I didn’t like.”

  “Oh, well. As long as you tried them, that’s all that matters.”

  “I did,” she said resolutely, “and they were gross.”

  Erica suppressed a laugh. “Okay, I hope you ate everything else, though.”

  “I did. Are you going to be late tonight, Mummy?”

  She let out a sigh. “Yeah, I’m afraid so, sweetie. Something’s come up at work. I’ll pick you up as soon as I can, but you might be asleep then.”

  “That’s okay. Auntie Tasha does good stories at bedtime. Her voices are funny.”

  Erica tried not to experience a pang of longing, together with a tightening of her heart. It was jealousy that her sister got to do bedtime with her daughter, and that Poppy might enjoy it more than she did with Erica. It was stupid. She knew she needed to be happy that Poppy was being well looked after.

  “Okay, love. Put your aunty back on the phone for me. I’ll see you later.”

  “’Kay. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  There was a pause and a rustle as the phone was handed over.

  “Hey.” Her sister’s voice had replaced her daughter’s. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. Just hate missing out on her bedtime, you know?”

  “I know. There’s always a way to get around that, though.”

  Erica understood exactly what Tash was implying, but she didn’t retaliate.

  Natasha wasn’t happy about Erica continuing to work. In her mind, Erica was putting her work ahead of her family.

  “What if what happened with Chris happens again?” Natasha had thrown at her during one particularly fraught argument. “How do you know you can protect Poppy? What about the rest of us? What about me and my family as well? Has it even occurred to you that you might be putting us in danger, too?”

  Erica had shaken her head. “You’re not in danger, Tash. I promise. What happened with Chris was extremely unusual. Nicholas Bailey and I had a shared past, even if I didn’t realise it at the time. That won’t happen again.”

  “How could you possibly know that? You come across criminals every single day.”

  “I’m more wary now, Tash. I’ll be far more suspicious. I made my own mistakes in what happened by not acting on my instincts. I was too worried about rocking the boat with the care home. I should have brought Nicholas Bailey in far sooner than I did.” She’d blinked back tears then, aware of her own failures and how she’d contributed to Chris’s death. She’d have given anything to go back and make different choices, but that was impossible. “Besides, I need the money. If I give up this job and end up working in a supermarket somewhere, how am I going to afford the mortgage? And are you going to be able to pay towards Dad’s care on your own?”

  That had shut Natasha up. However much she might complain about Erica’s job, there was no way Natasha could foot the bill for the care home alone.

  Erica ended the call and then picked up her stuff to go and join Shawn. Talking of food, she was hungry herself. She’d managed a soggy sandwich eaten at her desk for lunch, but that had been all.

  “Can we grab something to eat on the way?” she asked Shawn as she climbed in the car. “I’m starving.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Shawn rubbed his hands together. He was never one to turn down food. “What are you thinking?”

  “Something spicy. Chicken, maybe.”

  “There’s a new Portuguese place that’s opened up on the high street that does takeaway.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “If you ask for it hot, you won’t even need to put extra sauce on it.” Shawn raised his eyebrows at her bag. He knew she always carried a little bottle of Tabasco sauce around with her, which she added liberally to almost everything she ate.

  She threw him a grin. “Now, let’s not get too crazy.”

  THEY REACHED THE UNIVERSITY campus. Erica wiped off her greasy fingers on a wet wipe, her mouth still on fire from the Piri-Piri chicken. Shawn had been right. It had been hot enough for her not to need to add extra sauce.

  “Let’s go and speak to the security officer first,” Erica said. “They’re on campus twenty-four hours a day, so hopefully the night shift will have started. If we’re in luck, it’ll be the same person who was on last night, and if not, we can still see what areas the
CCTV cameras cover.”

  “Good idea.” Shawn frowned for a moment. “You have to wonder what the security officer was doing last night. If he was doing his job, why hadn’t he been the one to find the victim’s body? In his initial interview, he said he didn’t see or hear anything unusual either.”

  “I can understand that,” Erica said. “The victim was hit from behind, and it would have been fast. Chances are, he wouldn’t have made a sound.”

  They were still waiting on the report to come back in from the autopsy, but from the look of things, Adam Humphries had been hit fast and hard from behind. That kind of blow never gave up the sort of evidence they’d hope for in an attack. There was unlikely to be any defensive wounds, for instance, no DNA of the attacker caught under the victim’s nails.

  Shawn nodded. “True. I’m still surprised he didn’t stumble across the body, though.”

  They reached the security office.

  “Well, if he’s the one on duty, I guess we can find out.”

  They pushed through the glass doors. The security desk was much like many police stations, but without the official officers. Notices were pinned around the walls, warning students to keep their possessions safe, or to report suspicious bags, or to not leave drinks unattended in bars. A security guard sat behind the main desk, and below it were a line of monitors, each showing CCTV of various parts of the university.

  Erica flashed her ID as she approached. “DI Swift. Are you the guard who was on duty last night?”

  The man was in his early forties. He rose to his feet. “Yes, I am. The name’s Doug Ward.”

  “We wondered if we could talk to you?”

  His cheeks flushed red, and he nodded. “I did speak to a copper earlier.”

  “We’re aware of that. We’re the detectives working on the case, so we need to get some additional details.”

  “Right, of course.”

  She picked up an accent—not London, more Brummie.