Trick of the Dark

by Val McDermid

  'How was the weekend?' she asked, parking herself beside him.

  'Work, work and then some more work on the side. We had a strong tip but it needed a stake-out. So that was my weekend flushed down the toilet. I was hoping to sit in on a session last night in Kilburn, but I didn't get home till gone midnight.' He sighed. 'Still, it's money in the bank when it comes to building a case against these scumbags. What about you?'

  'We went to Skye.'

  'Speed bonny boat, and all that?'

  'Not any more, there's a bridge. There's also some very helpful mountain rescue guys.' Charlie told him what she'd learned from Eric and Calum. 'So, the knife being in her pocket was apparently fortunate but not remarkable,' she concluded.

  'That was a waste of time then,' Nick sighed.

  'Not entirely. There's the question of the phone call to the emergency services. The caller was a woman who said she was phoning from the hotel because Jay and Kathy hadn't come back. But nobody from the hotel had made the call. It's not a big place, Nick. They don't have huge numbers of staff running round the place. Especially in February, I imagine. It's odd, that's all.'

  'But odd isn't enough to make a case. Oh, by the way, I meant to tell you. I had a bit of luck with Stratosphone. They got taken over by MXP Communications in 2005, and it just so happens that we've got warrants out with MXP on this trafficking case. I had a word with the officer who's been dealing with them, asked her if she'd put in a word for me. Obviously, I didn't tell her what it was about, just said it was a tangential thing, might come to something or not. Anyway, she's making some inquiries with MXP for us.'

  'That's great. Thanks for coming through on that, Nick. But the funny phone call isn't the only thing I've managed to find out. I called Magda the other night, when Jay was out of town. I wanted to see what she might tell me. And you'll never believe what just landed in her lap.'

  'Try me.'

  'Eight hundred thousand euros. In untraceable bearer bonds.'

  'Fuck,' he said. 'I mean, what the fuck?'

  Charlie brought him up to speed, enjoying his astonishment. 'So it turns out Philip was an even bigger crook than either of his colleagues,' she said.

  Nick frowned. 'But that doesn't make sense. Why would he grass them up if he was at it too? Why risk an investigation that might screw him even more than them?'

  'I wondered about that too. On the face of it, it makes no sense. But maybe he thought they were being careless, exposing them all to unnecessary risks, and this was how he wanted to put a stop to it. Of course, that would be a pretty dangerous strategy. However ...' She paused and sighed. 'On the train coming down this morning, I had a thought. The letters are the motive for the murder, right?'

  'That's right. Without the threat of Philip shopping them, Barker and Sanderson had no reason to kill him. They were his mates, the company was successful, they were all on board the gravy train.'

  'So what if Philip didn't write the letters?'

  A long pause while Nick worked his way through the implications of that. 'But who else would have had access to the information?'

  'Magda, obviously. She was the one who "discovered" the back-up drive. We've no way of knowing how long she had it before she handed it over to the police.'

  'But she's got no motive for fitting up Barker and Sanderson, ' Nick protested.

  Charlie pulled a face. 'Well, she has and she hasn't. I'll come back to that. But here's the thing. I don't think Magda understands a balance sheet or a financial statement well enough to unravel complex stuff like insider trading. But I think her girlfriend does. I think Jay went through all Philip's financial data, looking for something she could use to frame Barker and Sanderson.'

  Nick stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles, then folded his arms across his chest. 'I know I'm being really dim here, but why would she do that? From what I've been able to find out, until those letters turned up, the local boys were struggling to find motive or opportunity, never mind any forensics. Why not leave it as an unsolved? Why take a flyer on trying to fit somebody up?'

  'Because Magda saw them leave the wedding party at around the right time. In her head at least they were prime suspects for having killed Philip. And Jay's in love with Magda. She wants to bind Magda to her more tightly. She wants to impress her. What better way to do that than deliver her husband's killers to justice? Especially if she's the one who really killed him. No better way of getting herself off the hook for ever.'

  Nick threw his head back and laughed in delight. 'That is so beautiful,' he said. 'You have an evil, devious twisted mind. That is so sick. But it fits with what we know about Jay. Indirect, cunning and untraceable.'

  'That's the trouble. The "untraceable" bit.' Charlie sounded as glum as she felt. 'All this poking about and we haven't got anything remotely solid. Nothing that would induce your colleagues to open an investigation of any of those old cases. I hate to say it, but I think we've got to admit defeat.'

  Nick scratched his head. 'It irritates the shit out of me to admit it, but I think you're right.'

  Charlie slumped, head in hands. 'This is just like Bill Hopton all over again. I feel like such a failure, Nick.'

  'You're not a failure, Charlie. I don't see what anybody else could have done in the circumstances.' Nick put his arm round her shoulders. 'You're going to be exonerated, you know. You'll be back doing what you do best.'

  Charlie made a noise like a half-choked snort. 'Instead of pretending to be some half-arsed detective?' She butted her head against his chest. 'Stop trying to make me feel better. It's a waste of time.'

  'I don't suppose you'd entertain an alternative explanation? '

  'I'd love one. Why? Do you have one?'

  Nick took a deep breath and let it out noisily. 'Well . . . It's all a bit "what if?" And seriously lacking in motive or evidence. But then, we've got bugger all on Jay, so we might as well have bugger all on other suspects, right?'

  Charlie eased out from his arm and twisted round to face him. 'What are you talking about?'

  'When I get stuck on a case, I try to figure out another way of looking at the evidence. When I was sitting on my stake-out, I started playing around with some other ideas. Take Jess Edwards' murder, for example. What's the one thing we do know about that? We know Corinna was in the meadow.' He stopped, expectantly.

  After a long pause, Charlie said, 'You're suggesting Corinna might have killed Jess?'

  'Why not? She put herself at the scene of the crime - if there was a crime - which is a good way of diverting suspicion.'

  'But what possible motive could she have had?'

  Nick shrugged. 'I've no idea. But I bet we could come up with a handful if we sat down and brainstormed it.'

  'It's very thin,' Charlie complained.

  'So's the case against Jay,' Nick said wearily.

  'What about the other murders?'

  He pulled a face. 'Well, I wondered about her PA, Anne Perkins. They've worked together a long time, and Anne was very defensive of Jay. And very quick to produce the alibi evidence. Which, incidentally, meant I also got sight of her diary for the week. It looks like she was working alone most of the time. Nobody to vouch for her.'

  Charlie chuckled. 'And on that basis, you think she slipped off to Spain, murdered Ulf Ingemarsson and brought his work back to Jay like a dog with a newspaper? Jeez, Nick, this Anne Perkins must have made some impression on you.'

  Nick gave a self-deprecating grin. 'Hey, I know it's a stretch, but Jay does seem to provoke strong reactions. For everybody who thinks she's somebody you wouldn't want your daughter to marry, there's someone with big loyalty to her. She's worked at close quarters with Vinny Fitzgerald and Anne Perkins for the best part of a decade. People don't stick around in that kind of job unless they're devoted to each other.'

  Charlie shook her head, unwilling to believe him. 'And Philip?'

  'Maybe it was Sanderson and Barker after all. I generally like the instincts of juries, Charlie.'
>
  'And all these killers just happen to cluster around Jay Stewart?' She shook her head again. 'Far too many coincidences, Nick. You're playing devil's advocate here. You don't really believe all that. But I might be able to use your ideas to throw a bit of sand in Corinna's eyes.' She stood up. 'I need to go and see her now. Tell her there's nothing I can do for her.'

  'I'm sorry,' Nick said. 'Really. And you're right. I was just trying to cheer you up with my crazy notions. For what it's worth, I think Corinna might be right. There's too much stacked against Jay Macallan Stewart to write off as bad luck. A bloke who lost four wives in incidents like these would be sitting in an interview room. But nobody suspected her at the time, which means nobody looked for the evidence to tie her in.'

  'Don't,' Charlie said, bitterness in her voice. 'Don't go there, Nick.'

  'Why? What have I said?'

  'It's what you didn't say. It's the implication. We can't get her for the crimes in the past. If we want to nail her, we have to wait till she does it again.' Her voice shook and tears spilled from her eyes. 'Can't you see? It's just an interesting variation on Bill bloody Hopton.'

  9

  Charlie sat on the same hard chair she'd occupied twenty years before. Back then, she'd been waiting for her first tutorial with Corinna Newsam. Now she was waiting for some other undergraduate to finish her business so Charlie could find a way to divert Corinna from a disastrous course. For the duration of the train journey from London to Oxford, she'd been trying to figure out what to say.

  This was one occasion when the truth wasn't an option. It didn't matter that Charlie actually agreed with Corinna. In fact, that was the most dangerous position for her to adopt in any conversation with her former tutor. While Charlie couldn't quite believe that Corinna was capable of killing Jay, there were some things you couldn't take a chance on. Either Charlie had to present Corinna with enough evidence to go to the police - which she didn't have - or else she had to make the case for Jay's innocence. Since there wasn't enough evidence, Charlie had no choice. She would have to protect Jay. And that meant lies.

  By the time Corinna had finished teaching, Charlie was as rehearsed as she was ever going to be. She took the chair opposite her former tutor, noticing that Corinna seemed to have lost weight in the nine days since she'd seen her last. Fear for your child would do that to a woman, Charlie thought.

  There was no time wasted in small talk. Corinna came straight to the point. 'You've news for me?'

  Charlie nodded. 'I've covered a lot of ground in the last week. Talked to a lot of people and found out a lot of things. It's been an interesting experience.'

  'I'm sure it has. I suspect you have a gift for finding the interesting, Charlie. But have you managed to find enough evidence to convince Magda?' Corinna leaned forward in her seat, hands clasped tight in her lap. The last person Charlie had seen that tightly wound was a paedophile priest waiting for the heavens to fall on his head.

  'All the evidence I have points firmly in one direction. You're not going to like this, Corinna. Jay Macallan Stewart is not a serial killer.'

  Corinna touched one side of her face, as though she wasn't convinced she could trust her hearing. 'You're mistaken,' she said. 'You can't have checked properly. Death follows her around like a pet dog. It defies logic to suggest that every time someone stands between Jay Stewart and what she wants, they simply happen to die.' Her voice was firm, her attitude the one that Charlie remembered from her student days - the teacher who had a solid grasp of her subject, who would welcome argument but seldom concede her point. Charlie knew her only recourse was coherent and substantial argument.

  'I know,' she said. 'But that's how it is. Sometimes the world runs counter-intuitive. Look, I'm not asking you just to take my word for it. For a start, I've not been working alone. A friend of mine who is a detective with the Met has been helping me with information that it's hard for a civilian to access. He's also got the skills I lack. He's been able to suggest how I should proceed when I've not known what to do for the best.'

  'Very enterprising of you,' Corinna said crisply. 'And I do appreciate it. I was right in thinking you were the person for the job. The sort of woman who has resources.'

  'And I'm also a scientist. That means I believe what the evidence tells me even when it runs against my theory of what was the case. Let me run through the deaths you told me about. First, Jess Edwards. Now, you say you saw Jay in the meadow very early on the morning of Jess's death. You were convinced at the time, even though it was still dark and she was some distance away.' Corinna made to speak but Charlie held up her hand. 'Please, Corinna, let me finish.' Let me lie to you and see if I can get you to fall for it. 'I tracked down Jay's girlfriend at the time, Louise Proctor.'

  'How did you manage that? The alumnae office has no current records for her. She severed all her ties with the college after she left. And no wonder. A vulnerable girl preyed on by Jay Stewart, preyed on to the extent that she tried to kill herself. '

  Charlie was pretty sure that hadn't been quite the way it was, but she was on pretty shaky ground since she knew next to nothing about Jay's early love life. 'That's the advantage of having a policeman in your corner. Law-abiding people aren't that hard to trace when you have access to official records. So, I spoke to Louise. She doesn't have any loyalty towards Jay. As you suggest, she holds Jay responsible for one of the more miserable episodes of her life. So there's no reason why she should lie for her. Agreed?'

  Corinna dipped her chin in a grudging nod. 'I suppose not.'

  'According to Louise, on the morning Jess died, Jay was in bed with her until after seven o'clock. By that time, the rowers were down at the boathouse and Jess's body had been discovered. '

  'That's impossible. How can she be sure? How can she remember one morning in particular so clearly?'

  Charlie assembled her thoughts. This was not the time to be talking about anomalies. 'Because it was the morning Jess Edwards died. And because they'd been lying awake since just after six. Jay was raging about Jess and the JCR election. When she went down to breakfast and found out about Jess, Louise remembers thinking how awful it was that Jay had been so mean about Jess right when the poor girl was drowning. So she has an alibi.'

  Corinna looked disgusted. 'How truly ironic,' she said.

  'What do you mean?'

  Her lip curled in contempt. 'If Jay had produced that as an alibi at the time, nobody would have believed it. They'd all have said Louise was lying for her out of love. But now Louise has every reason to hate her. And only now she comes out with it.' Corinna shook her head. 'I have to take your word for it, but it's hard to believe I was wrong. I know what I saw.'

  'I don't want to seem patronising, Corinna, but eyewitness reports are notoriously inaccurate. And there's a perfectly respectable psychological mechanism behind it. Our brains look for patterns. We seek resemblances. So we overlay what we actually see with what we expect to see based on visual clues. And as time goes by, we reinforce the memory with more details that come not from what we saw but from what our brain tells us we must have seen. You saw a figure who for some reason reminded you of Jay. You saw them in an area where you might reasonably expect to see Jay herself. And your brain filled in the gaps.' Charlie spread her arms wide and shrugged. 'We all do it all the time. You've nothing to reproach yourself with.'

  'I still believe my own eyes.' The stubborn set of Corinna's jaw didn't bode well for the success of Charlie's plan. But there was nothing to do but press on.

  'Fine. But you have to ask yourself who Magda's going to accept - you with a figure glimpsed through the dark, or Jay with her perfect alibi. At this point, Magda has no reason to distrust Jay. But you? She knows you're violently opposed to her and Jay being together.'

  Corinna's look was venomous. 'What else did you find out?' she demanded.

  'I checked out the Fatal Accident Inquiry into Kathy Lipson's death. There's no question that Jay cut the rope when Kathy fell off the rock pinnacle th
ey were climbing. But there's also nothing to contradict her version of events. Kathy was the driving force behind the trip to Skye. She'd apparently always wanted to do winter climbing in the Cuillins and you only get a couple of chances every winter. You have to grab it when you can. And sometimes the weather closes in on you, as it did on them.'

  'She could have pushed her off and made it look like an accident.'

  Charlie nodded. 'She could have. But there's no witnesses. And nothing in the physical evidence to contradict Jay's version. I spoke to two of the mountain rescue guys who brought her off the mountain. They were sorry for her. They understood the stigma she's suffered in climbing circles after cutting the rope. But they also totally supported what she did. It's right to cut the rope when you have the stark choice. You're both going to die unless you cut the rope, in which case one of you might live. It's hard to argue with that, Corinna.'

  Corinna glared at her. 'Has she got to you? Is this some kind of lesbian solidarity?'

  Charlie felt the blush of anger spread up her neck. 'That is incredibly insulting. I've just spent nine days and a chunk of change trying to prove your crazy theory. Not because I owe you a thing, but because I like your daughter and I think she needs somebody in her corner. But if you think I would cover up evidence of murder just for the sake of sisterhood, you are so far off the scale of sanity that I could probably call a colleague right now and have you sectioned.' She picked up her bag and gathered her coat around her, preparing to leave.

  'Wait,' Corinna said urgently. 'Please. I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm truly sorry.' Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. 'You see how this business has thrown me off kilter?' She stood up abruptly and went to a tall mahogany cabinet. She opened it and took out a bottle of red wine. 'I do know you better than that, Charlie. Forgive me. I'm just so bitterly disappointed. Take a drink with me?'