by M K Farrar
“You were with a group of your friends over here, is that right?” Swift asked, already leading them over to a corner of the bar.
Paige had no choice but to follow. “Yeah, we were hanging out around the sofas.”
She gestured at the two low leather sofas, with an equally low table between them.
“Can you show me where you were standing?” Swift asked.
Paige glanced at her. “I was moving around. I didn’t just stand in one spot all night.”
“No, of course not. Just give me a general idea.”
Feeling awkward, Paige walked over to the sofa and stood beside one, then half perched on the armrest. “I guess I was like this.”
“Thank you.” Swift took a couple of steps towards her. “And from where you are now, where would you say Adam Humphries was standing?”
Paige shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying any attention to Adam.”
“He wasn’t part of your friendship group then?”
“No, I’ve already told you we weren’t friends.”
“Yet, on the CCTV footage, he was hanging out near your group.”
Paige couldn’t understand where she was going with this. “I can’t help it if he was standing near us. That didn’t have anything to do with me.” Her pitch rose towards the end of her sentence.
“I’m not saying it does,” Swift said gently. “I’m simply trying to get a bigger picture of Adam that night. He appeared to be trying to join in with your group.”
Heat rose to her face. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Should they have made more effort with Adam that night? If she had, would all this have never happened? Would Adam still be alive today? Was that what the detective was getting at? But the truth was that she’d barely given Adam a second thought. He hadn’t even been on her radar. Had she been on his, though?
“Okay.” Swift flashed her a smile. “So, let’s go through when you left. You went on your own. Why was that?”
“I just wanted to go. My friend was hooking up with one of the guys, so I thought I’d leave her to it. Like I said, I’d had too much to drink. I wanted to crash.”
“Did you tell your friend you were leaving?”
“I think I might have shouted it at her, but it was loud in here, and I wasn’t sure if she heard me.”
“But you left anyway?”
“Yeah. We both live in halls. It isn’t exactly far. I guessed she’d notice I’d gone and realise I went back to my room.”
Swift gestured to the exit. “You crossed the bar and left via that door.” She nodded at Paige and jerked her head, to demonstrate that she wanted Paige to do just that.
Paige exhaled air through her nose and then crossed the currently empty dance floor to the exit. The two detectives followed, and Paige stopped at the door.
“Of course,” Swift said, “Adam Humphries left not long after you.”
“What?” She snapped her head towards the detective.
“You were around at the same time he was killed, remember?” Swift said. “You must have realised he left when you did.”
“Do you mean he went straight after me? Did he follow me out?”
“No. Not that we’re aware of.” Something sharpened in her eyes. “Did you think he’d followed you out?”
“No. I just—” She stopped herself from saying anything else. What was she even about to say? That she thought he might have followed her out, and then what?
A flash of a memory jumped into her head. Someone behind her. Her glancing over her shoulder, recognising him and saying hello. But she couldn’t bring his face to mind. The person was just this shadowy figure.
Paige swallowed hard. Could Adam have followed her out? And if so, what happened between then and his murder?
She touched her fingers to the bridge of her nose. It was no longer swollen, the bruising already fading. Was it possible Adam had been the one to do that? Had she retaliated, and he’d ended up dead?
A second memory, the one of her bruised thighs, how tender she’d been between her legs the following morning. The ache in her belly, as though she’d been about to start a period that had never materialised.
No. Stop it! Don’t think about that!
She couldn’t stand it.
“Everything okay, Paige?” Turner asked.
She blinked rapidly and turned her face. “Yes, fine. I just feel bad for Adam, that’s all. I can’t believe he’s dead.”
The male detective frowned. “I thought you didn’t know him well.”
“I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel sad about it. I mean, he was still a student here, someone my age. I’m not cold-hearted or anything.”
“Of course not.” He flashed her a sympathetic smile. “No one was suggesting that.
“Shall we keep going?” Swift said. “Show us where you went next.”
Relieved to be given a way out of both the bar and the conversation, Paige opened the heavy door and stepped outside. Like inside, there weren’t many other students around.
“I remember walking out, I think, though it’s all hazy. I remember thinking that I was really drunk. I was swaying, and it felt a bit like the ground was coming up to meet me. I checked my phone, I think, to see if anyone had called me, but they hadn’t. Then I started walking back, and that’s where everything goes black.”
“It just goes black? You don’t remember a thing?” Swift checked.
“That’s right. All I remember is waking up the next morning with a bruised nose and a stinking hangover.”
“Let’s keep walking,” Swift suggested. “Take the usual route you would between here and the halls. See if anything comes back to you.”
Paige slumped her shoulders. “Fine, but I really don’t think this is going to help.”
“Humour me.”
Panic rose inside her again. She didn’t want to remember, and she didn’t want these detectives to force her into it either. But what choice did she have? All she knew was that she needed to keep the mental shutters down. Whatever lay beyond the wall she’d built to shield herself from the night was too much. Maybe it had been the alcohol that had caused the blackout, but perhaps it was simply her mind’s way of protecting her from the truth? And if it was something she needed protecting from, then forcing herself to remember wasn’t going to be good.
But she knew she couldn’t refuse, so she stepped away from the exit of the student union and took the path through the campus. Memories of that night fluttered at the edges of her mind like moth wings at a window, trying to get to the light inside. Paige squeezed her eyes shut, forcing them away again.
Someone coming up behind her. Her turning to see who it was. A hand on her arm. An arm across her body, steadying her. Stopping her from falling.
She clenched her fist so tight, her nails dug into her palms. The pain refocused her thoughts, brought her back to the present.
“Paige?” Swift enquired. “Do you remember something?”
Paige shook her head. “No, sorry. I don’t.”
“Okay, let’s keep going.”
Each footstep felt like she was walking her own green mile. That metal band had reappeared around her chest, and each breath was a wheeze, as though she was trying to suck in air through a straw. The memories fought for space in her head, crawling up over the wall she’d built—zombies trying to breach the barriers.
She kept going, a buzzing in her head, walking the route that would take her back to her halls and past the place where Adam had been killed.
Arms around her. Struggling in his grip. Feeling sick and frightened and unsure of what was happening...
She didn’t want to remember. If she remembered, everything would change.
“Anything coming back to you, Paige?” Detective Turner asked.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
Here we are, at the place where Adam’s body was found.
DI Swift kept pressing her.
“Do you remember walking past here, Paige? Perhaps you caught sight of someone? Maybe even Adam. He might have tried to talk to you.”
“Could you have seen someone fighting with him, perhaps?” Turner suggested.
“You’re missing around twenty minutes, Paige,” Swift said. “What happened during that time? Where did you go? What did you see?”
She burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything. I can’t make it happen!”
She was aware of people looking, but for once she didn’t care. She sensed the two detectives exchanging a glance, perhaps wondering what to do with her next.
“Okay, that’s enough for the moment,” Swift said. “Maybe it will come back to you at a later date.”
Paige sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Maybe.”
She had no intention of telling them she didn’t want it to.
Swift hesitated and then said, “Can I just ask one last thing?”
No! She screamed in her head. Just fuck off and leave me alone!
But instead she said, “I suppose.”
“There might still be DNA on the clothes you were wearing that night—something you might have picked up unintentionally.
Blood. Lots of blood.
“Would we be able to bag them up and take them back to the station? The dress you were wearing that night, and your shoes and bag? For all we know, the killer might have picked up your bag during your blackout and his fingerprints could be on it. Anything would help us at this point.”
She suddenly remembered that she’d thrown the dress away. But she didn’t have any reason to tell the detective no. “Umm, I washed the dress, so I doubt it’s going to have anything on it. I mean, there was blood on it... I had to wash it.”
“That’s okay. We can still take a look. It would be really helpful of you.”
She’d washed everything, but the blood hadn’t come out, plus the strap of the dress had been broken, so she dumped both her clothes from that night and the bedsheets as well, in the big industrial bins out the back that served the accommodation. These buildings produced a lot of rubbish, and the industrial bins had to be emptied almost daily. There was no way the clothes or sheets would still be there. Besides, she didn’t think she’d have ever been able to bring herself to wear that dress again anyway. She’d had to buy herself a new set of sheets so she’d have something to sleep in, though she’d spent a night with a bare mattress.
“I’ll go up and get it all now.”
“It would be better if you didn’t touch them again. Show us which ones they are, and we’ll bag them up.”
“Right, of course.”
She took them back up to her room and opened her wardrobe.
“Those are the shoes,” she pointed out. “And that’s the bag.” Quickly, she scanned her wardrobe. She spotted an almost identical dress to the one she’d been wearing that night. When she liked an item of clothing, she often bought a couple of variations of it. “That was the dress I was wearing.”
“Thanks, Paige. You’ve been really helpful.” DI Swift pulled a small book of receipts from her bag and wrote her one out for the items she’d taken. She handed it over together with her card. “If you think of anything else, or you remember anything from that night, even if it’s something different from what you just told us, please don’t hesitate to call.”
“Sure.”
Paige closed the door on the two detectives and swallowed down her guilt.
Chapter Twenty
“What do we think about Paige Arland?” Erica asked Shawn as they crossed the university campus, heading back into the car.
“She’s hiding something, that’s for sure. That reaction was more than just that she couldn’t remember because she’d had one too many.”
“I agree. But other than finding the phone at the crime scene and her being in the same vicinity as Adam Humphries, we’ve got nothing on her. It’s all just circumstantial. Certainly not enough to get an arrest warrant issued.”
Shawn cocked an eyebrow at her. “You think she might be responsible for killing Adam Humphries?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure what I think.”
“Lucy Kim said that the killer struck the blow with the brick downwards with force. Paige Arland can’t be much more than five feet two, and I bet she barely weighs nine stone. Could she even be strong enough to kill him like that?”
“What if she was standing on a wall?” Erica jerked her head towards the raised border where Humphries’ body had been found. “She stood on the wall and used the additional height and gravity to strike him hard enough to kill him.”
“And her phone fell out of her handbag and into the bushes while she was attacking him,” Shawn suggested.
Erica nodded. “Exactly.”
Shawn rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Well, shit. That’s a possibility.”
“Let’s get back to the office and find out everything we can on Paige Arland. I did a quick check on her before we left to talk to her, just to see if she had an arrest record, but nothing came up. Something tells me there’s more to her story, though. I want to know every detail about what’s on her phone as well, every text message, every photo—but especially things from the night Adam died. Something happened, and I want to know what.”
They made it back to the office, and Erica placed a call to Karl Hartley to let him know that they needed everything that was on Paige’s phone ASAP. Then she logged onto her computer.
It didn’t take her long to pull up something of interest.
“Holy shit,” she exclaimed, sitting back in her seat. “Come and see this.”
“What have you got?” Shawn rounded his desk and stopped to stand at Erica’s shoulder.
“I did a little digging into Paige Arland’s background and look what I found. Arland is her mother’s maiden name, and she’s using it rather than her father’s name of Palmer. See the reason why?”
“Her father is inside?”
“Yep. He’s serving a life sentence for murder at Dartmoor Prison. Looks like he got into an argument with someone in a pub, and instead of either leaving things be, or even getting into a punch-up at the time, he left and waited for the other man to leave, followed him home, and then when the victim was fumbling with his keys, trying to get into his house, Joseph Palmer hit him with a broken bottle from behind.” She paused. “Remind you of anything?”
“Leaving a bar and hitting someone from behind, you mean?”
“Exactly. Seems her dad is a little more hands-on than she is, though, since he then proceeded to stab the victim in the throat with the end of the broken bottle. The victim’s wife woke up at the noise and had the good sense to call the police rather than trying to intervene herself, and Joseph Palmer was literally caught red-handed, still holding the bottle and drenched in the victim’s blood.”
“You think Paige might have learnt from her father’s mistakes and covered up her crime better?”
“It’s certainly possible.”
Shawn huffed out a long breath through his nose. “Maybe it is, but we still don’t have any proof.”
“What about the clothes she was wearing from that night? Have they been sent to the lab yet?”
“Yes, I sent them as soon as we got back, but it’s going to be a while before we get any results. If they’ve all been washed, though, we’ll be lucky to get anything off them.”
Erica nodded in agreement. “Even if bloodstains are found, she’ll just say the blood on the clothes was hers from where she banged her nose.”
“Perhaps, but we’ll need to take the amount of blood into consideration, and the dress might match fibres found at the scene.”
“Let’s hope so. We need something substantial.”
Her phone rang again.
“It’s Hartley.”
“Please tell me you’ve got something on Arland.”
“Nope, but I have something on Dr Young. Seems there might be something in the rumours about him and Adam Humphries.
”
Erica sat up straighter in her seat. “Tell me.”
“We got into Adam Humphries’ computer and found messages via his email and other social media that he sent to Young.”
The news surprised her. She thought Paul Young was hiding something, but her gut had told her it wasn’t that. In fact, since she’d questioned him, she’d barely given him much thought. Her instincts simply hadn’t been pulling her that way.
She pressed the phone closer to her ear. “What kind of messages?”
“Messages of a sexual nature. Saying what he wanted to do to him when he saw him next. Things like that.”
“Anything in return from Young?”
“Not that we’ve found yet, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. We’ll keep digging. Even if messages are deleted, they’re not gone completely.”
“Good work,” she told him. “I need to go and feed this back to my DCI. He’s going to want to know. Get in touch as soon as you find anything else.” She paused and then added, “I still want to be told if there’s anything of interest on Paige Arland’s phone, though.”
“Of course.”
Erica ended the call. She told Shawn about the developments and then rose from her desk to go and speak with her DCI.
Gibbs sat at his desk, knee-deep in paperwork.
“What have you got for me, Swift?”
She filled him in on what Hartley had found.
Gibbs slammed his pen down on the desk. “Good work. Get an arrest warrant. We’ve got him at the scene, his DNA all over the victim and the murder weapon, and now we have a motive. His wife says he was home, but they weren’t in the same room together. He could have sneaked out, killed Humphries, and sneaked back in again. I’d say that’s enough to nail the bastard.”
“Don’t you think we should give Digital Forensics a little longer to look a bit deeper into the online stuff?”
“Yes, we will, but we’ve got enough to bring him in for the moment.”
“If we arrest him, it’s going to ruin his career. Even if it turns out he’s innocent. The rumours were bad enough when everyone thought we just needed to question him about finding Adam Humphries’ body.”