“Where is it?”
“It’s in the garage. And the car keys and the automatic door opener are on that little table by the door, where he always keeps them. Do you see what I mean? Why would he go out without his wallet or his car? Where would he go?”
“I’ll go and check it out,” said Gerry, picking up the car keys and the garage opener from the table.
Annie nodded. Adele Balter was right, she thought. The house was in a very remote spot, and you couldn’t really get anywhere without a car. Hadfield certainly couldn’t have walked to Tetchley Moor from where he lived; it was over ten miles. Unless someone had dropped by to pick him up. She heard the distant sound of a garage door opening. “And all this had you worried enough to call us?”
“I saw the picture on TV last night, the one you showed me and Poppy earlier. Only for a second, fleeting, like, and I thought it looked a bit like Mr. Laurence, only the nose and mouth were wrong. I suppose when I got here today and saw . . . well, that he wasn’t anywhere to be found, and Miss Poppy in such a state, like, then I thought back on it, and I realized it could be him. That’s when I got worried enough to call you. The nose and mouth are wrong, but everything else is right. I can understand if someone had described him to an artist, like, they could have got that wrong easily enough. It’s all a bit of a puzzle. I just thought you people would be best to sort something like this out.”
“We’re glad you did, Mrs. Balter,” said Annie. “We’re going to have to talk to Poppy at more length at some point soon, but in the meantime, we’d like to phone Ronald. Do you have the number?”
“It’ll be in Mr. Hadfield’s contacts book, on the study desk.”
The door opened and Gerry came back in. She glanced at Annie and shook her head. “Nothing interesting,” she said. “But the car’s there all right. The engine’s cold.”
“OK. We’ll need to have a look around in Mr. Hadfield’s study, too,” she said to Adele. “And we’ll see if we can get a couple of constables to have a walk around the reservoir, just in case. We’ll get you over to the infirmary. I have to tell you, it’s not a pretty sight. There’s been some animal activity.”
“I used to be a nurse,” said Adele. “Don’t worry, I’m not squeamish or I wouldn’t be offering.”
BANKS RANG the doorbell and heard it ring faintly inside the house. At first nothing happened, then a small, sad voice came over the intercom. “I don’t really want to talk to anybody now. Please go away.”
Banks glanced at Winsome before leaning forward. “Neela? Neela Mitchell? It’s the police. We’d really like to talk to you about Adrienne. We won’t take up much of your time.”
There was another silence, then a buzz and a click. Banks turned the doorknob and the front door opened into a hallway that seemed to be filled with bicycles. They made their way through without injury and climbed the stairs to the second floor, by which time Banks was feeling a bit short of breath. He could feel his heart beating fast and realized he was terribly out of shape. He would have to do something about it. Soon.
When they arrived at the flat, Neela Mitchell was standing in the open doorway clutching a handkerchief. That she had been crying was obvious enough, even before she sniffled and led them inside the bedsit. Hers was about the same size as Adrienne’s two streets away, but the house was slightly more rundown, and it didn’t seem as if there was an en-suite bathroom.
Neela was a small, large-breasted girl, which made her seem slightly top-heavy, and she was wearing a baggy sweater and black tracksuit bottoms with a white stripe down the sides. She had wavy hennaed hair, a round face with light brown skin, and she wore wire-framed glasses. From her name and features, Banks guessed that her mother was Indian or Pakistani and her father British. Behind the lenses, her reddened eyes appeared slightly enlarged. She seemed so young and vulnerable that Banks felt his heart go out to her. She had just lost her best friend. But he had to be objective; it wouldn’t do to take anything or anyone at face value. The room smelled fresh, as if Neela had just given it a shot of lemon air freshener. Banks noticed a crushed cigarette butt in an ashtray on the windowsill and realized she probably had. Smokers were feeling guiltier and guiltier these days.
The bedsit felt crowded with three of them in it. There was a sink and hot plate in a little alcove, and Neela offered to make tea, but they declined.
“We don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Winsome said. “Professor Stoller at the college said you were Adrienne’s best friend, that we should talk to you.”
Neela nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so rude over the intercom, but I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone.”
“We’ll be as quick and painless as we can,” said Banks.
“It’s all right. I’d like to help if I can. I just can’t understand any of this, what happened to her. It doesn’t make sense. The papers mentioned she was in a car or something, had an overdose of drugs. That wasn’t like Adrienne. She didn’t take drugs.”
Banks and Winsome exchanged a glance. Again, the incompetence of the local paper was warping people’s perceptions of what had happened. Banks thought he might have to have a sharp word with Adrian Moss. Not that Moss wrote the rubbish himself, but he was supposed to be their media liaison officer.
“It wasn’t what you’d call a drug overdose,” Winsome explained. “I mean, nobody’s saying she was a regular drug user. The doctors think she died of an overdose of sleeping pills.”
Neela’s eyes opened wide. “Sleeping pills? Adrienne? You mean, like, accidentally?”
“We don’t know for certain,” said Winsome, glancing at Banks. “But at the moment, we don’t think it could have been an accident.”
“You mean she . . . she took them herself? On purpose?”
Winsome nodded. “That’s the thinking. I’m sorry.”
Neela shook her head violently. “No way. I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Because she wasn’t the kind of person who’d do something like that. Kill herself. Not Adrienne. She loved life. She was saving up to go on safari in Africa after her finals the year after next. She wanted to go to a game park, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, see the big five and all the rest and then get a job with VSO. She would never kill herself before doing that. It was her dream.”
“People can change, you know, Neela,” Banks said.
Neela shook her head vigorously. “No. Not Adrienne. Not without my knowing.”
“Do you know if Adrienne had any problems lately, anything weighing heavily on her mind?”
“No. Not as far as I could tell. Nothing that serious. Oh, sometimes she’d been feeling a bit down lately, you know, but that happens to all of us. She had her moods. And she could get sulky.”
“Did you ask her what was wrong, why she felt down?”
“I might say, ‘What’s wrong?’ or something like that, you know, but she’d just shrug and say, ‘Oh, nothing’ and flash that little smile of hers. I don’t know what it is you want me to say, but there was really nothing odd or unusual about Adrienne lately. Or different. Maybe her moods were a bit more frequent or lasted longer sometimes, and she was more subdued than last year, but basically she was still Adrienne. She hadn’t undergone a personality change or anything.”
“Was she seeing anyone, a counsellor, therapist or psychiatrist? Someone like that?”
“No. Why would she?”
“If she was troubled by something, depressed or anxious.”
“But she wasn’t. Like I said, she got a bit blue sometimes, like the rest of us. And maybe she’d been a bit distracted recently, off in her own world, but I didn’t realize it was such a bad place that she was in.”
“Distracted by what?” Banks asked.
Neela looked at him as if assessing whether to answer or not. “I don’t know if there was anything in particular,” she said. “Certainly there was nothing she told me about. All I mean is that I hadn’t seen as much of her as I used to.
She’d been stopping in more on her own, said she had to work. She became a bit sort of withdrawn, maybe less enthusiastic about going out and having fun and doing stuff. She seemed a bit anxious, nervous, you know. I suppose distracted isn’t quite the right word. But not depressed or suicidal. Once or twice she seemed sort of frightened. No, that’s not really right. More apprehensive.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Nothing in particular.”
“Perhaps she really did have to work?”
Neela nodded. “We both did. It’s a hard year academically and exams are notoriously tough. You worry about things like that. It’s a big cause of stress. But they’re a long way off. Like I said, it was nothing, really. She had her moods. We all do.” Neela sniffed again and blew her nose.
“Do you know if she was taking any prescription medications?”
“Not that she ever told me about. I mean, it’s something that might have come up, you know, if she had been. We talked about all kinds of stuff. Or we used to. But she didn’t have any problems with her health. She went to the gym twice a week and worked out. She went swimming most mornings. We both did.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Just before last weekend. Friday morning. We went swimming.”
“And after that?”
“No.”
“Is that unusual?”
“A bit, I suppose. But it was only the day before yesterday I heard . . . you know . . . about what happened. That was only Wednesday. She hadn’t turned up for our tutorial with Professor Stoller.”
“Weren’t you worried?”
“No. We didn’t live in each other’s pockets. Not seeing her from Friday to Wednesday wasn’t a big deal.”
“What about weekends?”
“I never saw her much then, anyway. She worked at that animal shelter and usually stopped over with friends in Darlington.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No. They weren’t uni people. Just people she knew from the shelter, like.”
“Did you talk on the phone often?” Banks asked.
“We mostly texted. But not so much lately. She seemed to have lost interest.”
“Was Adrienne very attached to her mobile?”
“Well, she used to use it a lot. I mean, we all do. Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Spotify, or whatever classical streaming service she used, but she wasn’t a slave to it. Me, neither. We used Snapchat and WhatsApp mostly to keep in touch, send selfies and stuff, but again, not so much this term.”
“Would she go out without it?”
“Not usually, no.”
“Was she forgetful? Might she leave it behind in her flat when she went out somewhere?”
“Are you saying that she didn’t have her mobile with her when you found her?”
“It was in her bedsit.”
Neela shook her head. “That’s odd. Even though she seemed a bit off it lately, I don’t think she would normally leave home without it. I mean, would you?”
“Do you know if she ever used Internet dating? Tinder, that sort of thing?”
“Not as far as I know, she didn’t.”
“You said earlier that Adrienne didn’t take drugs. Are you sure about that?”
Neela looked down at her hands clasped in her lap.
“Neela, it would be best if you told us everything,” Banks said.
“All right. She took E now and then. We all did. OK?”
“All?”
Neela nodded. “But only now and then. Nothing bad ever happened. It’s not like she was addicted or it was dangerous or anything. Besides, you said she died of an overdose of sleeping pills. E isn’t a sleeping pill. Adrienne said it took her out of herself a bit, made it a bit easier for her to socialize.”
“When did you get this E? Where?”
Neela paused before answering, “At The Cellar Club.”
“Who from?”
“Just someone who hung out there. Not a student.”
“I saw The Cellar Club mentioned on a poster on my way to see Professor Stoller,” said Winsome.
A few nightclubs had sprung up around the college campus since the expansion, most of them simply back rooms of pubs fitted with a loud sound system and a few flashing colored lights. But The Cellar Club was far more sophisticated. It consisted of a large cellar that used to belong to an old carpet sales center and warehouse, now an arcade of student boutiques and used bookshops. Like the famous Cavern of old, it was dark and dank, with arches and walls of stone and brickwork plastered with concert posters. Though Banks had never been there on a busy warm night, he imagined sweat dripping down the walls as the strobe lights flashed and the beat pounded away mercilessly. But he had been there. They advertised raves. Not the old-style raves or the more recent illegal parties, where hundreds of people, alerted by phone or social media at the last minute, congregated and orgied all night in abandoned warehouses, but just dances that went on really late. The fire brigade had been out there once or twice on overcrowding issues. And The Cellar Club was a known magnet for drug dealers and users. Since its expansion, Eastvale College had become a target for dealers from Leeds and Manchester.
“Why The Cellar Club?” Banks asked.
Neela shrugged. “It’s the coolest place near campus. And the DJ is really wicked.”
“As in a DJ who plays records?” Banks asked.
“What? No, like, a real DJ.”
Banks assumed that she meant one of those idiots who spins records backwards and talks all the time. “And you and Adrienne used to go to these dances and take E?”
Neela nodded. “Sometimes. Not always. And not for a while. Mostly it was last year. There was a whole gang of us.”
“All girls?”
“No. Mixed. But we were all just, like, friends. Nobody was going out together or anything.”
“Just E? Any other drugs? Cocaine, speed, downers? I happen to know you can buy just about anything at The Cellar Club, Neela. You probably also know that Eastvale has a growing drug problem these days, and the college especially. Places like The Cellar Club.”
Neela looked horrified. “No. Nothing serious like that. Honest. Just a little E. And only now and then.”
“I know that E might seem safe,” Banks said, “but it has caused problems with some people who’ve used it.”
“That’s just dehydration, though, isn’t it? We always make sure we drink gallons of water.”
“There can be other problems,” Banks went on, aware he was sounding like a boring old fogey. “Contaminated pills. Depression. Heart disease. When was the last time you went to The Cellar Club?”
“About a month ago. Just after the start of term.”
“Did Adrienne take E on that occasion?”
“No. None of us did.”
“OK. Let’s move on. Did Adrienne have a boyfriend?”
“Not this term.”
Adrienne’s parents had said the same, but Banks was more inclined to believe her best friend. “You sound very sure about that, Neela.”
“I am. She didn’t have time, working at the shelter on weekends and keeping up with her term work during the week. Then there was her music. She thought it was important to keep practicing her violin, even though she didn’t have enough time for the orchestra anymore. She told me she wasn’t planning on dating anyone this year, and as far as I know she didn’t. Besides, she would have told me.”
“Usually when any of my best friends got boyfriends,” said Winsome, “I saw a lot less of them. You say you saw less of Adrienne. Might that not be why?”
“No. Not in this case. I would have known. Besides, she told me she didn’t have or want a boyfriend. Why would she lie?”
Good point, Banks thought. Though if the boyfriend were someone who might elicit Neela’s disapproval, Adrienne might keep it to herself. On the other hand, they say that young love puts a spring in your step, and best friends notice things like that.
�
��And last year?”
“Colin Fairfax.”
It was the boyfriend Adrienne’s parents had mentioned. The “nice lad” she took home for tea.
“What happened between them? Did they have a row?”
“Dunno. Don’t think so.”
“There was no big split up, no fight or falling out?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Was it because of someone else? Because Adrienne took up with another boy, or Colin with another girl?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did Adrienne cry on your shoulder? Was she upset about the breakup?”
“I’m sure she was upset, but she wasn’t the type to cry on anyone’s shoulder. We shared lots of stuff like best mates do, but she could be secretive, could Adrienne, and sometimes she kept her feelings bottled up.”
“Is Colin Fairfax still around?”
“Yes. We bump into him every now and then.”
“At The Cellar Club?”
“Not so much there. Just around campus. The coffee shop, the pub.”
“And did he and Adrienne get along all right?”
“They were fine. Just, like, old friends. But he wasn’t part of the gang. Mostly we hung around with Jessica, Cameron, Chloe and Callum and the rest.”
“Can you give us the full names, Neela?”
Neela did so and Winsome wrote them down.
“There was Mia, too, at first,” Neela said, “but she dropped out. I’m sorry I don’t know her second name.”
“When did she drop out?”
“Quite early. I remember she was around at the start of term, that was the twenty-fifth of September, but she’d gone by mid-October at the latest.”
“Why did she leave? Where did she go?”
“Dunno. I didn’t know her very well. I guess she decided Eastvale College just wasn’t for her.”
“And Colin Fairfax wasn’t part of the gang?”
“No. Like I said, we just saw him occasionally, to say hello to.”
“What’s he studying?”
“Modern languages.”
“Is there any chance he might have been stalking Adrienne? You know, pestering her to get back with him or anything like that. Is that what might have made her distracted, on edge? Frightened or apprehensive, even?”
Careless Love Page 11