by Helen Cox
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘With no choice but to pursue the only person we know for sure has access to drugs.’
‘Selina,’ said Grace. ‘She didn’t say what kind of drugs she dabbled in so for all we know she does have access to stuff that blanks your memory.’
‘If so, Selina could have drugged Patrick on the night Jodie disappeared to keep him out of the way while she did . . . whatever she was going to do . . . to Jodie, and then she drugged both of you last night with something gentler, something that would keep you awake, lucid, but remove your inhibitions.’
‘And our memory.’
‘She may even have drugged Jodie the night that she disappeared, to make her more pliable and then used the anaesthetic on her,’ Kitt said, thinking. ‘On the audio recording she screamed out but then her voice was muffled. We didn’t know what could make her scream like that besides a weapon coming towards her but if she was being forced to take unknown substances or had a rag soaked with some kind of ether put over her face, I would imagine that would be just as scary – if not more so – than a knife.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Selina still doesn’t know you’re working with me. When I talked to her, she wasn’t going to be drawn about whether the secret society exists but given how she’s taken you under her wing a bit, she might tell you. There is a possibility that the secret society is somehow at the centre of this mess.
‘If you arrange another meeting with her, you might be able to trick her into revealing some sensitive information. Maybe you could pretend you’ve heard about it and want to join up?’
‘I guess it couldn’t hurt to try,’ said Grace. ‘It would look pretty suspicious if I just broke all contact with her right after you’d had your chat with her and anyway, for all we know, we might need to continue the undercover work to get some kind of confession out of her.’
‘I agree, let’s use your friendship with her to find out more and in the meantime, we need to get hold of Bertrand Hobbs.’
‘Yes, I wish we’d been able to talk to him sooner.’
‘Well, he was on the radio at the time of Jodie’s disappearance, so he definitely wasn’t the one to make her disappear – at least not physically – but there was that twenty minute window where he was playing songs during which he could have tipped someone off or could have organized something with an accomplice. We can’t rule anything out.’
‘I agree. With all the secrecy at play here, something tells me a budding journalist like him must know more about all this than he’s been letting on.’
Twenty-Three
Through the medium of some drink-fuelled text messages to Selina late on Friday night, Grace was able to organize a morning walk with their prime suspect along the river into town. Their route took them past the outhouse where they’d found the fibres, the limestone residue the owner couldn’t account for and the rags doused in anaesthetic. As they walked by, Grace did her best not to look at the building directly. It wasn’t just the fact that she didn’t want Selina to guess they were on to her, she also couldn’t look at the building without imagining what might have played out there the night Jodie disappeared. Instead, Grace looked for signs of discomfort or edginess in Selina’s demeanour. But she didn’t even pause for breath in her monologue about the preparations she’d been making in readiness for her trek through the Catskills.
Though Kitt had been adamant that they should stay in contact over radio, Grace insisted that, given the nature of the meeting, it was too much of a risk. It was thus agreed that Kitt would surveil from a safe distance and Grace would fill her in on the conversation afterwards.
‘Your bodyguard is hanging quite a way back today,’ Grace said as they started to cross over Framwellgate Bridge, which had spanned the River Wear since the fifteenth century. Up ahead was the arresting view of Durham Castle, which, as one would expect from the Norman motte and bailey design, was elevated on the hill in such a way that it dominated the city skyline. The impressive view took Grace’s mind off the fact that they were being followed and watched at every turn. She had got a closer look at Selina’s bodyguard when they first met up near campus and there was definitely something about him that unsettled her. Maybe it was how sharp and swift his movements were. Combined with his strength, Grace was sure he was very efficient at his job. This should have made her feel safer but somehow it didn’t.
‘I told him that we wanted to talk girl stuff,’ said Selina with a sly smile.
‘When really you are, like, going to initiate me into a top secret society?’ Grace said, making her eyes look as big and naive-looking as possible.
‘Shhh, keep it down,’ Selina said, with a little chuckle. ‘Your first pointer is that you’re going to have to be a lot more discreet. Like texting me about the society last night, you’ll notice I didn’t address your questions directly in the text message.’
‘No, you just asked me to meet you here.’
‘And if this conversation doesn’t go the way I’d like it to, I’ll deny we even spoke about the society. I’ll say I told you there was no such thing as the society. And on that note, you’re not wearing a wire, are you?’
‘A . . . wire?’ Grace repeated, while at once being grateful she’d said no to the radio. Was Selina going to make her strip or pat her down or something?
She gave Grace a long hard stare. ‘I think it’s important to check these things. Especially after I saw this.’ Selina pulled her phone out of her pocket and swiped the screen. She brought up a video and then turned the phone so Grace could watch it. The video was of Grace and Kitt sitting in the cafeteria at Venerable Bede’s. The footage had been taken right before Grace had approached Selina in the ladies toilets.
Grace’s eyes widened as she watched. Had Selina known about their undercover operation this whole time? Had she been watching them? And recording them?
‘Where did you get this?’
‘My bodyguard wears a bodycam. My dad makes us review the tapes once every week.’
‘Oh. So you didn’t know . . .’
‘That you were stabbing me in the back until earlier this morning? That’s right.’
‘I am not doing this to stab you in the back, Selina,’ Grace said. If even half the things Selina had told Patrick the night of the party were true, Grace would feel terrible for adding to her trust issues.
‘Then what is going on?’
Grace explained the whys and wherefores of her decision to try and befriend Selina in an undercover capacity. To her credit, Selina listened without interruption, even though you didn’t have to be her best friend to notice the hurt look in her eyes.
‘So you see, the goal was always to establish your alibi for Jodie’s disappearance at which point we could move forward with the investigation.’
‘And now you know I don’t have an alibi?’ said Selina, raising an eyebrow.
‘Nothing immediate happens,’ Grace said. ‘It just means that we can’t remove you from the suspect list. We keep chasing down leads to do with the case, and assuming no evidence surfaces that links you to Jodie’s disappearance—’
‘Which it won’t because, unlike some people, I know how to be a friend.’
‘Then that’s the end of the story. If there’s no evidence there’s no case, it’s as simple as that.’
‘You know what the sad thing is?’ said Selina. ‘If you had made a proper appointment with my father to see me, I would have put some money into the investigation myself. Now that I know you went behind my back like this, I don’t want to ever see you sniffing around me or my family again.’
Selina made to walk off but Grace caught her arm. She did it as casually as she could so as not to arouse the protective instincts of her bodyguard, who after reviewing the footage with Selina must be watching her even more closely than he was before. Assuming Selina had told her bodyguard who Grace was, of course. After having her cover blown, the last thing she needed was a physical bl
ow adding into the mix.
‘I will let you storm off. As you have every right to do, but before you do, I need to ask you something. I know I don’t have any right to ask you for anything but something happened to me at your party the other night. Something bad.’
Selina frowned. ‘What do you mean? Did someone hurt you or something?’
‘I . . . don’t think so. Not in the physical sense, but you might remember I said I was a bit out of sorts the day after. It was actually quite a great deal worse than that. I couldn’t remember anything. Well, nowt much. The whole night was a bit of a blank. I don’t drink often – thanks again to my parents – but I’ve never had a reaction like that to alcohol.’
‘You were . . . in higher spirits than I expected,’ Selina said, a smirk crossing her lips in spite of her previous upset.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to say anything – I’m not one for rubbing people’s faces in their drunken antics as long as they’re not hurting anyone but . . .’
‘Oh my God, what did I do?’ Grace said, cringing.
‘Towards the end of the evening you streamed “Thong Song” on your phone, climbed up on the kitchen counter and used it as a dance stage.’
Out of nowhere, something flashed in Grace’s mind. An image of a crowd of people clapping and cheering. She was somewhere elevated, like the kind of height one might achieve by standing on a kitchen counter. She got a sense of her movements. Gyrating would be the only appropriate verb. And somewhere nearby, like she was hearing it from underwater or something, she could hear the husky vocals of Sisqo.
‘Oh no,’ she said, covering her eyes with her hands. ‘Not again.’
‘Again?’ Selina said. ‘You mean that wasn’t a very special performance for just us?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever danced on a kitchen worktop before but I have woken up on a few morning-afters following a lot of booze and found that I’ve inexplicably downloaded “Thong Song” at around the three a.m. mark.’
‘How many times exactly have you drunkenly downloaded that track?’
‘This will make seven,’ Grace admitted. ‘Do you know what happened to me after that?’
‘Nothing. Like I said, I could see you’d had enough so I sent you home.’
‘The thing is,’ said Grace, ‘I wasn’t just reacting to alcohol. Something else was going on with me that night and that’s why I can’t remember everything.’
‘Like what? Oh, you don’t think someone slipped something in your drink?’
‘I don’t think it, I know it,’ said Grace. ‘I bought one of those rapid drug tests off the internet and I got a positive result.’ This was yet another blatant lie but her bridges were burned with Selina so she might as well go for broke. There was no test but Grace was hoping that calling Selina’s bluff would pay off.
‘Oh my God, what did you test positive for?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grace said, ‘the test only offers an indication. You have to wait forty-eight hours to find out what drug was in your system. ‘Did you notice anyone acting oddly at the party?’
‘Besides you, I knew everyone at that party pretty well. I can’t believe that anyone would— Oh no.’
‘What?’
‘OK. Usually I’m super-vigilant at my parties because I just want people to have a good time and part of that is making sure things don’t get out of hand. Some people walk into the house of a millionaire’s daughter and think anything goes so you have to be mindful.’
‘But, something happened? Something unusual?’
‘Probably not unusual for your average house party but unusual for one of mine. I had to ask this bloke to leave because I didn’t recognize him. I only let people I’ve invited in so it was a surprise to see someone I didn’t recognize. When I asked who invited him, he said he’d delivered some food someone had ordered. I assumed whoever placed the order had had a phone call from him when he was outside and buzzed him in while I was otherwise distracted. He left without any trouble once I explained it was a private party. I didn’t think much of it at the time because there was some food sitting on the counter in the kitchen – though now I think of it nobody had touched it. Maybe, for some reason, he’d used that as a cover to get into the party and he was up to no good, spiking people’s drinks. Certainly, nobody else who was there would’ve done that. They know if I caught them they’d never be invited back.’
‘What did this guy look like? Can you describe him?’
‘Not very memorable. Short buzz cut. Quite chunky. Still had his coat on.’
‘What colour was the coat?’
‘Black – why?’
‘I know you said you wouldn’t help us but if you cared about Jodie at all you will turn your CCTV footage from two nights ago over to the police.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t be certain, but I think the man you talked to might have taken Jodie.’
Twenty-Four
Kitt and Grace settled down in the seating area outside the Castle View Café on Silver Street. Grace and Selina had parted ways about half an hour ago and when she’d caught up with Kitt it had been decided they would stop for a pot of tea to talk over all that Selina had divulged.
Grace would have preferred to make some tea back at the dorm room. Largely because it was beyond entertaining to watch Kitt brew Lady Grey in the floral teapot and teacups she’d transported from York especially for that purpose. The fact that Kitt had brought along her own china was amusing enough but it was even more comical to watch her do this to the backdrop of her Marilyn Manson poster. Kitt, however, was determined that she was parched and couldn’t wait until they got back to the dorm for a pot of tea. Consequently they’d managed to find what seemed to be the last spare table in the centre of Durham. As it was a busy Saturday, people were zipping all around and a few street performers were trying to draw the crowds to their corner of the main square in order to relieve them of their spare change.
‘So, what can you tell me?’ said Kitt, as soon as the waitress delivered their drinks.
Grace held the hot chocolate to her lips, inhaled the sugary goodness and then took a quick sip before responding. ‘The first thing you should know is that my cover is blown with Selina.’
‘What?’ said Kitt. ‘How? And why didn’t you tell me that straight away?’
‘I thought it safer to deliver that news when you had a calming cup of tea in your hand,’ said Grace. ‘Her bodyguard has a bodycam. He snapped us in the cafeteria.’
‘So she’s known this whole time?’
‘No, just since this morning when they reviewed the footage but she was pretty upset about it.’
‘I’ll bet she was,’ said Kitt. ‘With no alibi and all the possible reasons Jodie could have been a threat to her she’s still our top suspect.’
‘I don’t think she will be for long,’ said Grace.
‘How so?’
‘Patrick’s mysterious man in black seemed to have gatecrashed Selina’s party. She caught some guy in a black coat at the party without an invite and ejected him. She reckons if anyone spiked our drinks it’s him.’
‘Hm, if I hadn’t watched Patrick get arrested last night, I might have taken their mutual blaming of events on a “man in black” as a sign they were somehow working together. But Patrick just gave himself up to DI Thompson, and I don’t believe he’d do that if he was trying to escape justice. Unless this is all part of some bigger plan they’ve hatched I don’t yet understand.’
‘We shouldn’t have to take her word for it for much longer,’ said Grace. ‘She’s got CCTV outside her house, remember? With a bit of luck she’s caught him on camera. The only problem is that she’s so angry about the way we’ve gone behind her back she says she’s not going to help the investigation. I tried to convince her to hand the footage to the police but she was really hurt, so I’m not sure what she’s going to do.’
‘If she’s got any sense she’ll hand it over s
traight away and get herself off the hook. The context of Jodie’s disappearance, the radio show and the secret makes me suspect that he is hired by whoever it was Jodie was trying to expose. His appearance at Selina’s house is strange though. I wonder if he might work for her father?’ said Kitt.
‘Selina’s father has already got one man following her around whenever she’s out of the house, it’s not a stretch to believe he might hire another one,’ said Grace. She’d only had a small taste of what it felt like to have your every move watched by someone during her walk with Selina and it was even more intrusive than she’d imagined it to be.
‘Not a stretch at all. Especially if, as you suggested, he knew Jodie was going to tell the world about how he abused his daughter when she came out to him. People would rightly boycott his business over something like that,’ said Kitt. ‘That said, I did some research while I was hovering around keeping an eye on you this morning and there’s no immediate warning signs that he’s into anything underhand – at least not from his online presence.’
‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking – there’s also the fact that something like that would be big enough for Jodie to take it somewhere more high profile than a student radio station.’
‘Hm. I suppose you’re right about that.’
‘If you’re right about Bertrand Hobbs being paid off though, then he could have paid any number of people to keep his dealings quiet. I imagine someone with his amount of money could make almost any problem go away. And for all we know Jodie could’ve been one of them.’
‘Maybe Jodie took it to other outlets and, just like the police, they were either too scared of what Grant might do with his high-powered lawyers when they had no proof or they’d been paid off to ignore anything relating to the family.’
‘But they would have had Selina’s testimony as proof.’
‘Sadly, the testimony of a victim in these cases doesn’t hold the water it should. And we don’t actually know if Selina would have been willing to testify against her father and call out his abuse. For many reasons other than money, she may have been too fearful.’