EVIL CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, just speculation really, I think. To be honest, I don’t think anyone really knew her that well, not even Maria. Do I see Maria next?’

  ‘We’re not in charge of this investigation, Rae. Those kinds of decisions have to be made by the local squad, and it worries me that Tommy Milburn isn’t here. He’s the CID boss. I’ve known him for years, since we were in the West Midlands force together. I wonder if the locals have called him to let him know what’s going on? Maybe I should try to find out, but the local DI, Sue Wilding, seems a bit prickly and I need to be careful. To be honest, I can understand her attitude. Here we are, gathering intelligence on someone on their patch and she suddenly ends up dead. She must be wondering if there’s more to this than meets the eye.’

  They finished their lunch. Sophie re-joined the local CID group, who allocated several people for her team to interview.

  Chapter 29: Mistress Pandora

  Sophie and Barry called on George Markham at home in the middle of the afternoon. Looking ill at ease, he invited them in and took them to a rather disorganised sitting room. Books and periodicals were scattered over almost every surface. He told them he knew of the assault on Hattie, and her subsequent hospitalisation, but he did not know of her death. Sophie asked him how he’d learned of the incident.

  ‘One of the students in the organ music society called me this morning. We were all devastated enough already when we learned she was in hospital, but now this.’ He shook his head.

  ‘We need the name of the person who phoned you, Doctor Markham,’ said Sophie.

  Barry made a note of the details.

  ‘Am I a suspect then?’ Markham asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You were seen having an argument with her yesterday morning. What was that about?’

  Markham shrugged. ‘Quite honestly, I don’t really know. She seemed almost frantic with tension and just lashed out at me. I don’t have a clue what had happened earlier to get her into that state. Her car wouldn’t start, so I went out to lend a hand and she just exploded.’ He described the venom-filled abuse that Hattie had hurled his way. ‘Completely unwarranted by the situation, and also out of character as far as I’m concerned. I’d never seen any hint of a temper before.’

  Sophie had been watching him carefully. She leaned back. ‘Now’s the time to come clean about your relationship with her, Doctor Markham. There was clearly more to it than you admitted when we saw you a few days ago. So what was going on between the pair of you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He kept his eyes fixed on Sophie and ran a hand through his already tousled hair.

  ‘We know you lied to us. You gave her an alibi for that Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, but key details were wrong. You went to the cathedral for the evening service, not the morning. So why did you lie?’

  He shrugged. ‘Because she asked me to. Simple as that.’

  ‘So is this something that you’re willing to do as a matter of routine? Lie for students you hardly know, when they ask you to? It doesn’t wash, Doctor Markham. Maybe I need to remind you that your career is on the line here. Somehow that vulnerable young woman had enough of a hold over you to force you to provide an alibi for her when needed. You, a visiting lecturer on a Commonwealth exchange programme, with all the conditions that would apply to your post here. Do you think we’re stupid? The fact is, the more you waste our time and the more you make us dig out the truth from other sources, the deeper you’ll be in the proverbial. Cut your losses and tell us now.’

  Silence.

  ‘She was here on Thursday for much of the evening. She left shortly after ten. What was the reason for that visit?’

  He fidgeted in his chair, and ran his fingers through his hair again. ‘I cooked a meal — chicken casserole if you must know. She left shortly after we finished eating it. That’s all.’

  Sophie nodded slowly. ‘So that’s the way you want to play it. Well, this is when things get serious for you, Doctor Markham. You see, we already know that you didn’t start eating until nine. That leaves a clear hour when she was in your house and you were up to something. What was it? For God’s sake show a bit of courage and tell us.’

  ‘She spanked me.’ The words came out as a whisper.

  Sophie was silent for a moment while she took this in. ‘Where did this take place?’

  Markham spoke in a low voice. ‘In my bedroom. Look, do you think this is easy for me? Telling people that I like being spanked by attractive young women? For Christ’s sake, if this gets out, my name’s mud on campus. Can’t you just see it in the local press? “Middle-aged male academic in spanking scandal.”’

  ‘How did it start?’

  ‘Everything else I told you is true. We met through the church organ society. We all went for a drink one night after a recital. I was a bit clumsy and spilled some beer over her and she slapped my backside. I was taken aback that a student would do such a thing to a staff member. I joked about her doing it again and, to my astonishment, she did. She recognised something in me, and I her. It suited us both. It gave her a bit of extra pocket money and some decent food. I like cooking. I really liked cooking for Hattie, she was always so appreciative. It became a fairly regular Thursday evening thing.’ He shrugged again. ‘And that’s the extent of it. She asked me to give her an alibi for that Sunday morning, and implied that she would end our Thursday evenings if I refused. So I did as she asked.’

  Sophie said nothing.

  ‘Look, I’m not proud of this. But I would never have harmed Hattie. I really liked her and, until yesterday morning, we hadn’t had a cross word.’

  ‘Where were you late yesterday evening?’

  ‘Here. I had a meal out with a friend, then a couple of drinks. We were back here at about eleven, I’d guess.’

  ‘And then? Were you alone?’

  ‘She stayed for a while, and then left before midnight.’

  ‘Can you be more precise?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I’d had a few drinks. Maybe Val might remember more. She was driving, so she hadn’t had any alcohol.’

  ‘Details of your friend Val, please?’

  ‘She’s my secretary, Val Matthews. Look, please don’t tell her about my relationship with Hattie, not the . . . spanking thing.’ He jotted an address and a phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to Sophie. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with Hattie’s death, Chief Inspector. Please believe me.’

  ‘Someone killed her, Doctor Markham. Maybe someone with too much to lose if some sordid truth were to come to light. You’re on that list, near the top. So, before I leave, I want your passport. As they say in those Wild West movies, don’t leave town.’

  * * *

  Sophie could see that Sue Wilding was struggling to stay on top of all the information that was coming her way. She was new to her DI post, and had plenty of experience of routine, drink-fuelled violence, even murder. But this was a very complex case and far from routine. Not only that, it had a history stretching back several years, possibly more than a decade.

  ‘Should we bring him in? Charge him? What do you think?’ Wilding said.

  Sophie shook her head. ‘We don’t have any evidence against him, not yet. And there are all these other people still to see. We have these two young friends, Maria, the other student, and the young man from Plymouth who we know nothing about and who seems to have vanished completely. Gone back home, I expect. Then, at the top of the list, we’ve got this professor, David Murey. Will Barry and I talk to him? I’d like to compare him with Markham, and weigh the two up, if you’re happy with that. We can leave Rae to talk to Hattie’s friend, Maria. There’s a whole layer of murk here, just under the surface, and Hattie was involved. Maybe she was the focus of it. Whatever it was, we’ve had a glimpse from what Markham owned up to. There was stuff going on in Hattie’s past before she came to Exeter that makes me wonder.’ Sophie looked grimly at Sue Wilding. ‘Have you kept Tomm
y informed?’

  Wilding nodded. ‘Yes. He might be here tomorrow. Apparently in the meantime, I have to do whatever you suggest. I’m not happy with that. Does he think I can’t cope?’

  Sophie refused to be drawn. ‘So shall we split the load as I suggested? And it is only a suggestion. I’m here only in an advisory capacity, despite what Tommy may have said.’

  ‘But you’re not, are you? Not in reality. You’re running the show until he gets here.’ She paused. ‘And even when he does get here, you’ll still be trying to call the shots, won’t you? I could tell from what he said on the phone. Jesus. I know the two counties are planning to merge their forensic services, but this is way beyond that.’

  Wilding turned her back and walked away.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon. Sophie and Barry stepped up to the ornate porch of Professor Paul Murey’s large house and rang the doorbell. They heard a dog bark in some distant room. How would this play out? Sophie wondered. Hattie’s dubious link to a visiting junior lecturer was one thing, but a possible connection to one of the university’s most illustrious and senior professors was something else entirely. Sophie knew she’d need to tread carefully. A middle-aged woman opened the door and smiled at them. She was tall and shapely, with dark curly hair framing her round face. She wore jeans, a loose cream-coloured shirt and soft shoes.

  ‘Hello. What can I do for you?’ Her Scottish accent was just discernible.

  Sophie explained who they and said they would like a few words with Professor Murey.

  ‘You’re in luck. We’re both at home for once. He’s in the utility room at the back, racking some plum wine that’s been fermenting for a while. Come through.’

  They followed her through the hallway into to a spacious, well-fitted kitchen. A thickset man with dark brown hair was just entering the room from a side door, wiping his hands on a cloth. He looked at them enquiringly.

  ‘Two police officers, dear. They want to talk to you. Maybe it’s that gravel-throwing incident I reported.’

  Murey’s expression became wary. ‘Shall we go into the front sitting room? I think this is a university matter, Fiona. From what I can tell, it may have been a student. Leave it to me.’

  Fiona Murey looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged. ‘In that case, I’ll make a pot of tea.’

  The two detectives followed the professor back to the front of the house and entered a small, comfortable lounge. He gestured to a sofa and an armchair, and lowered himself into a second armchair on the opposite side of a low table.

  Sophie decided to take the bull by the horns. ‘Harriet Imber died this morning after being assaulted late last night on the quayside. I’m aware that you knew Harriet, so I require some information from you. Firstly, the nature of your relationship with her and, secondly, where you were yesterday evening and last night.’

  Murey put his hand to his mouth and stroked his lips. ‘Yesterday evening, Fiona and I were out with some close friends. They were celebrating a wedding anniversary. We had an early meal with them and then we all went to a concert in the Great Hall on campus. A chamber orchestra was playing.’

  ‘And that finished when?’

  ‘Ten fifteen? Maybe eleven when we finally left. We had another drink in the bar after the concert, and then walked back here.’

  ‘Did you stay in after that?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. We took the dog out for a walk a little later on, rather later than usual. About midnight.’ Murey paused, looking as if he already knew the importance of that particular time. ‘That’s when the assault took place, wasn’t it? I’ve been in touch with the university welfare services today. I contacted them when I heard the news this morning.’

  Sophie waited, but he said nothing further. ‘That leads on to my other request. The nature of your relationship with Hattie.’

  He looked at her warily. ‘You called her Hattie rather than Harriet.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Barry and I interviewed her a few days ago. I was at her bedside this morning when she died. I’m still waiting, Mr Murey.’

  This time he spoke more hesitantly. ‘The nature of our relationship was a professional one. I paid her for services.’

  ‘Sexual services?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not precisely. I never had sex with her. She was a dominatrix, Chief Inspector, and those were the services I paid for. I didn’t even know she was a student at the university until a few days ago. I would never have got involved with her if I’d known that.’ He paused. ‘My life is in turmoil at the moment, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  Sophie met his gaze. ‘Her life is over, Professor. It ended in a brutal way. Don’t look to me for sympathy.’

  ‘No. But you do need to know that she’d started harassing me for extra money.’

  ‘So did you kill her? To keep her quiet?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. And I’d really appreciate you not mentioning the exact nature of the relationship to Fiona, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. She has her suspicions about my needs but can’t bring herself to play the role herself, not to the extent I require. But she’s been edgy for the last couple of days, since that stone-throwing incident.’

  ‘So she’s completely unaware that you took Hattie to Cambridge for the weekend a couple of months ago?’

  His mouth fell open. ‘You know about that? But no, how could she know? But it wasn’t sex, Chief Inspector, I want you to understand that. It’s never been sex. It’s different.’

  ‘So was Harriet blackmailing you? Is that what you’re saying?’

  He hesitated. ‘It hadn’t reached that stage, not formally. But she was beginning to push me for extra money, testing the boundaries of our agreement. I began to see what might happen. That gives me a motive, doesn’t it?’

  ‘As you say. How did you first meet her?’

  ‘She has . . . had a website. It had an email contact form, so I used that. I had no idea she was a student. There wasn’t a hint, even after she found out who I was. She was very sharp, very in control.’

  Fiona Murey entered, carrying a tray of crockery, and set it down on the low table. Her husband looked up at her. ‘She was a student, Fiona. The young woman who was killed. It happened at the time I was walking the dog.’

  Very astute, Sophie thought. Puts the ball back in my court. Well, two can play at that game.

  ‘She was the young woman who flung gravel at your windows on Friday evening, Mrs Murey. Have you any idea why she would have done that?’

  Fiona Murey paused, then sat down on a hard-backed chair a little back from the others. ‘No. What I can say is that my husband wouldn’t have hurt her, Chief Inspector. It’s not in his nature. I do believe that he’d have seen his career ruined rather than do anything like that, particularly to a student at his university. Whoever assaulted that young woman, it wasn’t him.’

  Chapter 30: Troubled Little Girl

  Monday morning dawned bright but cold. A north wind had started up overnight, and Sophie shivered when her car door opened and Rae climbed in. The three of them had returned home the previous evening, but Sophie and Rae were making another visit to Exeter this morning. Barry was to remain in Dorset in order to try and find out more about Harriet’s past.

  Rae settled into the passenger seat. ‘So what’s on the agenda for today, ma’am?’

  ‘It depends on what time Tommy Milburn gets here. I really need to sit down with him and figure out how we best split our efforts, where we overlap and where we stay separate. It worked fairly well yesterday, but Sue Wilding was getting irritated. She feels she’s losing control. Maybe I need to be a bit gentler, a bit more restrained.’

  Rae was about to speak, but thought better of it. It was hard to imagine a restrained and gentle Sophie Allen. She clamped her mouth firmly shut and fastened her seat belt. They set off back to Exeter and the tangled knots of Harriet Imber’s life.

  As it turned out, DCI Milburn wasn’t due to arrive until noon, having
decided to travel back from Norfolk by train. He was clearly less worried than his second in command by having two Dorset detectives in the investigating unit. But then, according to the boss, she’d worked with him before, earlier in their careers. Sue Wilding was a good team leader, Rae thought, but there was a lack of clarity and too much abrupt decision-making, which Sophie put down to inexperience. ‘She’ll learn with time,’ had been her only comment during the return to Dorset the previous evening.

  Rae, with two local detectives, began interviewing people who’d been near the quayside at the time of the assault on Hattie. The area was popular with the students but, despite the Saturday night crowd, only a handful proved to be of use as witnesses to the events of that night, and that included the three students who’d managed to pull Hattie out of the water. The other four had merely spotted Hattie some fifteen minutes earlier when she’d arrived in the bar. Rae was puzzled. Her own observation of Hattie’s behaviour the previous evening, Friday, had shown a flamboyant young woman who’d seemed to be the life and soul of the party. Yet it was obvious that Hattie’s behaviour had been muted and restrained during her brief spell in the bar on Saturday. She had sat quietly at the bar until she received a text message. Then she left, leaving her drink unfinished. She had left more than half of her large glass of red wine when she’d slipped outside. Who had sent that message? The phone was probably now several feet underwater, and Hattie’s mobile network provider would take days to find the sender’s number. Divers would be searching the riverbed today, but the water at the quayside was notoriously mucky.

  Rae was speaking to one of the students who’d been at the club the night before. ‘You say that she didn’t seem her usual self. Did you know her well?’

  ‘Not really, but well enough to notice. She was much quieter than other times I’d seen her and she seemed nervous. She was chewing her fingernails right down, you know? She seemed totally different. It was kind of weird. Then after a bit she just seemed to vanish.’