by Helen Cox
‘But it’s really difficult to copy someone’s handwriting that carefully,’ said Patrick. ‘And if it was Berkeley, why not just let me take the fall?’
‘I – I don’t know,’ said Kitt. ‘It’s easy to paint people as monsters in situations like these but maybe something just went wrong and they didn’t mean to do whatever they did to Jodie. Maybe she’s grown a conscience?’
‘Or maybe, like you say, she wanted to pin it all on Selina Grant for some reason we don’t yet know about,’ said Grace. ‘Her job and her reputation are at stake here. That’s a lot to lose.
‘All I do know is when we get to Berkeley’s house, I’m not going to stop asking questions until she tells me the truth. Regardless of what’s really going on here, she obviously withheld a huge amount of information when we interviewed her the first time round. It’s cost us time and money, and worst of all it has delayed us getting justice for Jodie. I won’t let her get away with that again.’
‘Have you told the police about Berkeley?’ said Patrick.
‘Yes,’ said Kitt. ‘But they think they’ve got their suspect and an off-the-record insinuation from a student DJ doesn’t really count as a development.’
‘Fair point,’ said Patrick.
‘Like any other suspect, we need to have something concrete and indisputable before they can act on it. Once we have at least a confession from Berkeley as to how she’s mixed up in all this, I’ll come back here to the nick with what I have.’
‘Since when do you say “nick”? Halloran’s rubbing off on you,’ said Grace. Then, on seeing Kitt’s unimpressed glare, added: ‘Sorry, that sounded better in my head.’
‘It’s only a fifteen or twenty minute drive to Berkeley’s house at Heddon-on-the-Wall so we’ll hopefully have something concrete soon enough,’ said Kitt. ‘I said I would check it out with Mal in tow which is why he’s also agreed to meet us at Berkeley’s.’
‘Well, it won’t hurt to have a trained police officer in the room,’ said Grace. ‘He might just command enough authority to make even Berkeley think twice about lying.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ said Kitt. ‘Though if he gets there first you can guarantee he’ll go in without us and we’ll miss Berkeley’s big confession. I love him but he’s not a man known for his patience in matters like these, so we’d best get going.’
Twenty-Eight
On any other day, on any other errand, Grace would have found the quaint village of Heddon-on-the-Wall nothing short of heart-warming. Situated a mere nine miles outside the bustle of Newcastle city centre, the village was home to a significant section of Hadrian’s Wall; a seventy-three mile dividing line forged of rock that stood in ancient times. In order to break up the uneasy silence during the car ride here, Kitt had dispensed some facts about the village that she deemed of historical and cultural importance. Neither the fact that the village was located on the ruins of an old Roman fort, nor the revelation that the name ‘Heddon’ translated as ‘hill where the heather grew’, however, was romantic enough to distract Grace from the fact that they were likely heading into a bitter showdown with Dean Berkeley over her possible involvement in the disappearance of one of her own students.
Kitt parked Halloran’s Fiat in the small cul-de-sac. There was no sign of his police vehicle so it looked as though they’d arrived first. Climbing out of the car, they made their way towards the driveway for 134 Akenside Crescent.
The crescent was deserted.
Dusk was approaching so everyone was likely inside starting to put the tea on. Very sensible. Much more sensible than putting pressure on a corrupt academy dean to confess their crimes. Despite her small frame, Berkeley was intimidating enough when she had the upper hand. Who knew what she’d do when she was backed into a corner? The only sound Grace was aware of was her own breathing and the crunch of her trainers on gravel. She looked down at the small white pebbles and her breath caught in her throat.
‘Kitt,’ Grace said.
‘What is it?’
‘The gravel. I think it’s limestone.’
Kitt looked down with a start. ‘I think you’re right.’
‘Why does that matter?’ asked Patrick.
‘Limestone powder was found in the outhouse where the attackers kept and likely drugged Jodie,’ said Grace.
‘If Berkeley was involved in Jodie’s disappearance she might have transferred the powder off her shoes or clothes,’ said Kitt. ‘We’re going to need to be very careful here. The evidence is mounting against her. We should be OK because we outnumber her but, above all, we need to keep her calm.’
Slowly, the trio kept walking up the path, until Kitt stopped abruptly and held Grace and Patrick back with her arms.
‘What’s— Oh . . .’ Grace said as she noticed the same thing Kitt had.
The front door was ajar.
‘That can’t be good,’ said Grace.
‘Agreed. Maybe we should wait for DI Halloran,’ Patrick said. ‘Going in there doesn’t seem like the best plan right now.’
‘I don’t think we can do that,’ Kitt said. ‘We’re assuming Berkeley is the culprit but there’s also a chance that she might be in trouble in there. That someone has come after her. Just stay behind me and if I tell you to run, run and bang on the doors of the nearby houses. Anything to get some more witnesses to the scene as soon as you can.’
Grace swallowed hard as they walked the last few steps up to the door. Kitt prodded it with a gloved finger and it swung open.
Kitt waited a moment, listening. For signs of a struggle perhaps?
‘Dean Berkeley,’ she called out. ‘It’s Kitt Hartley. Are you in?’
Kitt stepped over the threshold. Patrick and Grace followed after her.
A dog started barking and all three of them jumped. The barking was coming from one of the rooms further down the passage. By the depth of the bark it was clear it was a big dog and Grace didn’t relish the thought of grappling with a ferocious hound on top of everything else. Kitt, a card-carrying cat person, slowed her pace but didn’t stop.
‘Dean Berkeley?’ Kitt repeated again as she glanced into the living room before moving on through the passage towards the barking mutt.
‘Dean Ber—’ As Kitt peered into the dining room her words cut off.
Taking a deep breath, Grace followed Kitt into the room to see Berkeley lying pale and wide-eyed on the jade carpet. The dog, that Grace had feared would be a snarling Rottweiler, was in fact an over-stuffed basset hound. The poor thing was standing over his late owner, sounding the alarm. On closer inspection, Grace could see a dark stain near Berkeley’s head and a ring of red around her neck. Grace noticed a knife in Berkeley’s hand, also stained red.
‘Oh my God,’ Grace said, whipping away from the sight and turning to Patrick who was standing just behind her. She looked up at him and he down at her. That mournful look, that she knew so well now, flared in his eyes.
‘Is she . . .’ Patrick started, unable to finish.
‘She’s dead,’ Kitt said and then addressing the dog added, ‘Easy now, fella.’
Collecting herself, Grace turned back to face the scene in the room. Kitt was crouching near the body and giving the dog a little pat on the head. He began to whine.
‘Either she died by suicide or someone wants it to look that way,’ said Kitt.
‘How can we know for sure?’ asked Grace.
‘We can’t. It’s impossible to say anything for sure until the pathologist has been to the scene. But finding the door left open like that is a bit suspicious. Whoever it was wants us to believe that Berkeley slit her own throat and bashed her head as she fell to the ground. But that seems a very graphic way to off yourself when there’s probably a car in the garage. Carbon monoxide poisoning is comparably less painful.’
‘Nothing like a cosy chat about methods of suicide,’ said Grace.
‘Sorry,’ Kitt said. ‘No way to avoid it, I’m afraid.’
‘Maybe she left the door open on
purpose in the hope that someone would find her quicker?’ said Patrick. ‘She might have been able to accept death but not the idea of her body lying here undiscovered. Maybe it was a way of signalling something was wrong.’
‘Maybe.’ Kitt took her phone out of her pocket and started to dial. ‘Either way, we’ve got to be careful not to touch anything – Grace, what did I just say?’
‘Sorry,’ Grace said, pulling her hand away from a piece of paper sitting on the dining room table. ‘I only touched the sides of it. I was very careful.’
‘What is it?’
‘A note, printed off her computer, I think.’
‘Another note. We seem to be getting a lot of these lately. What does this one say?’ Kitt said, standing and moving over to the table so she could get a look at the piece of paper.
In silence, Grace, Kitt and Patrick read the last words of Dean Regina Berkeley:
I’m so sorry for the pain I’ve caused. I know I can never make up for it. As I can’t undo the things I did or live with them, ending things here seems the only rational choice left to me. Up until a year ago, I had a good life so I’ve got to be grateful for that. Since I’m not going to be around to face the consequences, I may as well tell you everything that led me here.
If you haven’t already arrested Selina Grant by the time you read this, you need to do that right away. She was the one who pressured me to frame and expel Jodie after she learnt her secret. Jodie confronted me and taped my confession and was going to expose what I’d done. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my job, my house, my reputation. So I killed her.
I still can’t believe I did it. Even seeing those words in black and white doesn’t make it feel true. It feels like reading about someone else’s life. But I did do it. I hit her over the head with my Leaders in Education award and didn’t stop until she was gone. I threw the weapon into the lake at the academy.
This was all so unnecessary. If Jodie had just left all this alone, if she’d just left the academy as she was instructed to do, we could all have been saved so much pain. Now, like her, I’ll pay the ultimate price.
Patrick’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought Jodie’s letter said that Selina had kidnapped her but left her alive?’
‘It did,’ said Grace. ‘This is a completely different version of events. And it’s not very specific. Berkeley talks about Jodie finding out about Selina’s secret but it doesn’t say what that secret is.’
‘Also,’ said Kitt, ‘that dog is very well cared for. Pretty well loved by the cut of him and there’s no mention of who should care for him after she’s gone.’
‘That . . . is a bit weird,’ said Grace. ‘I don’t know what her living arrangements are but if the dog’s her only companion you’d think there’d be some mention in there.’
‘There’s no matching the handwriting on a printed note either,’ said Kitt. ‘We already know that Selina has more than one secret she wants to hide, so if Berkeley did write this the only way we’d get to the bottom of which secret she was talking about was if Selina confessed.’
‘And that doesn’t seem very likely. I get the feeling that even with all the evidence against her, her lawyers will encourage her to plead not guilty while they search for some kind of loophole,’ said Patrick.
‘I suppose the one thing the police could verify is the murder weapon. She says she threw it in the academy lake. If the police dredge it and find nothing then we know this letter is a fake,’ said Grace.
‘Maybe; finding something in a lake like that can be time-consuming because of all the sediment at the bottom,’ said Kitt. ‘The police might search for weeks and not find anything.’
‘If this letter is real,’ said Patrick, ‘then that would mean that someone else forged the other letter and that Jodie’s . . . really dead.’
‘Before we leap to any assumptions we need to know more. We could be looking at a few different possibilities,’ said Kitt. ‘Yes, one of them is that Jodie didn’t write the letter and that it was forged by someone who is yet to be identified. But there’s also a chance that the person who killed Berkeley doesn’t know about Jodie’s letter and just wrote something to frame Berkeley, not realizing that another letter, allegedly from Jodie, was already with the police.’
‘So there’s still hope?’ said Patrick. ‘That she’s alive, I mean?’
Kitt nodded. ‘There is some, but it comes with a caveat, I’m afraid. The fact that we’ve received two notes in the space of the same day does suggest that they came from the same person. What I’m still trying to figure out is who that person is and which, if either, of the two different versions of this story is the truth?’
Twenty-Nine
Halloran strode into the living room and closed the door behind him. He’d arrived half an hour ago, just after DC Chalmers who had been dispatched from Durham station after Kitt had called in about the discovery of Berkeley’s body.
DC Chalmers was a gentle-spoken Asian lady who had politely insisted that they all wait in the living room for DI Halloran to arrive. Kitt had put up a bit of resistance about this, wanting, as ever, to be at the forefront of the investigation, but ultimately acquiesced when it became clear DC Chalmers was simply too courteous to be argued with.
For her part, Grace had been quite relieved to be moved to another part of the house. Of all the things she’d expected to find at Berkeley’s house, somehow her corpse hadn’t been one of them and she didn’t welcome the prospect of being in the same room as the dead body any longer than she had to be.
‘All right, pet,’ Halloran said, putting his arms around Kitt. Grace averted her gaze to give them a bit of privacy and focused on Patrick. She had been rubbing the top of his back on and off for the past half hour, trying to comfort him over the fact that they were still in limbo about whether Jodie was dead or alive, but he hadn’t said much. The basset hound, who according to his collar was called Roxy – and thus was a she, not a he – sat on Patrick’s lap and looked sorrowfully about the room. The poor thing must have watched the whole scene play out. She looked up at Halloran and then put her head back down to her paws.
‘What’s the verdict then?’ said Kitt. ‘Is it what it looks like or is there more to it?’
‘We’ve ruled out suicide, but it’s a pretty good attempt at faking one,’ said Halloran.
‘How can you tell that it isn’t a suicide?’ said Grace, not really sure she wanted the answer. Whenever Kitt had been involved with investigations like this in the past, she had always felt left out when she missed some big excitement. Today she’d learnt not all excitement was the kind you wanted to invite. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Berkeley’s staring back at her, cold and empty. Maybe some people would think she had brought it on herself, especially if she was involved in some kind of drugs ring with Selina Grant. But Grace couldn’t bring herself to think that way. There were more lasting forms of justice for people like Berkeley than killing them.
‘It’s a silly little thing that gave it away. The knife in her hand is the wrong way round,’ said Halloran. ‘If she lifted it to her own throat in the position it’s in, then her skin would meet with the blunt side. As she couldn’t have rearranged the knife in her own hand after she died, it’s clear that somebody else did.’
‘But, why would someone take the pains to make it look like Berkeley offed herself, writing a lengthy note implicating her, and then make a mistake like that?’ said Kitt. ‘Seems like if you’re going to go to all that trouble, you’d pay attention to detail.’
‘I suspect this lass had a little something to do with it,’ Halloran said, rubbing Roxy’s head. She sniffed his hand for a moment as if trying to suss Halloran out and then, seemingly deciding he wasn’t a threat, nuzzled into him for some more fuss. ‘You said she was barking when you came in. The odds are she started when the attacker was here and they were concerned they were going to get caught.’
‘If that’s the case, she’s lucky to be alive,’ said Kitt. ‘I ca
n’t think someone who’s willing to off Dean Berkeley would think twice about putting an end to the dog, too, if they got in the way.’
Patrick, as though out of instinct, cuddled the dog closer. Grace reached out and stroked Roxy’s soft ears. She didn’t want to think about a person ending anyone’s life, let alone a defenceless animal.
‘I’m sorry to say, there is a chance they didn’t leave the dog out of mercy but because they ran out of time to do anything about it,’ said Halloran.
‘What do you mean?’ said Grace.
‘I mean, Berkeley has not been dead very long. Which means you must have found her pretty quickly after the attack took place. Possibly a matter of minutes.’
‘Mal, you’re not suggesting . . . the killer could have still been here when we arrived?’
‘Oh my God,’ Grace said, shuddering. ‘Tell me that’s not true or I’m never going to be able to sleep again.’
‘There is a chance that they heard you enter and left through the back door before you could see them.’
‘Good God,’ said Kitt, raising a hand to her chest. ‘That’s a reminder not to do any door-to-door investigating on my own. The only reason they probably didn’t come at us is because we were in a group.’
‘There’s a reason why the police make house calls in pairs, you know,’ said Halloran.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Grace. ‘If Selina’s in custody right now then she couldn’t be responsible for Berkeley’s death, could she?’
‘Not directly,’ said Halloran. ‘But people like that don’t do their own dirty work. She will have an accomplice, or at the very least a gun for hire.’
‘But she would have had to arrange it before she was arrested,’ said Grace. ‘Is that likely?’
‘The likelihood is, Selina had some kind of contingency in place in case she was arrested and went to prison. If they are a professional, the odds of us finding any DNA evidence on Berkeley’s body are slim. Those kinds of individuals know what they’re doing and are very tricky to catch.’