by Ashley Dyer
“Hallucination, I think—like a bad trip.”
“I’m sorry it’s taken a while to get you that referral to a neuropsychologist.”
“But you said the scan was normal.” The doctor didn’t answer at first and Carver thought he’d made a mistake. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I did,” he said. “The EEGs are normal—you are not suffering epileptic seizures. The MRIs and CT scans show good recovery from the concussion. But even MRIs can’t always identify subtle nerve damage. If it were visual disturbance alone—lights and flashes, say—I would suggest migraine as the cause.”
“I don’t have headaches after the auras. In fact, I haven’t had many headaches at all since my first week here.”
“It’s fairly common to have migraine auras without headache,” the doctor said. “Think of them as an electrical disturbance, passing like a wave over the visual part of the brain—it’s common after head trauma. But most people see lights and patterns—you are seeing people and things that aren’t there, which is . . . unusual.”
The neurologist was unshakably calm, as always, and the halo of colors around him were pastel pale, but for a moment they intensified and Carver saw clashing colors of puce and lemon shimmer at the edges of the doctor’s face.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Carver said.
“You’ve made a good recovery,” the doctor reassured him. “But you have been subjected to psychological as well as physical trauma. So we need to consider the possibility that this is a psychosomatic response.”
Carver felt a spike of fear. “You’re talking about PTSD, aren’t you?”
“I’m saying it could be related to stress—you say these auras are related to emotion, after all. But we’re just exploring possibilities.”
Oh, God . . .
“Look,” the doctor said. “I’ll make a few calls, see if I can hurry things along with the referral.”
Carver nodded. “Thanks,” he managed. He’d known a few people on the job who had suffered posttraumatic stress. None of them returned to work after the diagnosis.
Chapter 27
Ruth sat in the hospital car park for ten minutes before even starting the car. She hadn’t lost control like that in years. Why now? Because you compromised a crime scene, stole evidence, put your career at risk for Carver, she rationalized. And in repayment, he had lied and lied and lied. But it wasn’t betrayal that had knocked the air out of her lungs; it wasn’t his lies. She had read enough on trauma to know the true answer: finding Carver—a man she cared about deeply—apparently having attempted suicide had triggered other traumatic memories. A therapist had once told her, You can’t ignore the effects of trauma. They’re like the living dead. You can lock them down tight and bury them deep, but someday they will claw their way out and come after you.
It was eight thirty p.m., and the Carver Major Incident Room was empty when she got back to the office. Only Tom Ivey remained at his desk, peering at his computer screen as though staring through a smeared window, his expression intent. He looked up as she came in.
“What did you get up to on my terminal?”
She walked around to his side of the desk. As she’d expected, he was working through the CCTV recording; the digital clock said he had missed the crucial moment.
“You haven’t found it, yet?”
“I will,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line.
She understood. A cop using another cop’s log-in was never up to anything good. More likely they were doing something illegal. Added to which, DC Ivey was a relative newbie, and as a detective sergeant, her word would carry far more weight than a lowly constable if the nefarious activity ever came to light.
“You need to rewind eight minutes,” she said.
He glared at her and Ruth said, “You’ve every right to be pissed off. But I’m not playing games—you need to rewind.”
He caught it that time. “That’s . . .”
“Adela Faraday,” Ruth said.
He swiveled to face her so fast that she had to take a step back to avoid a collision with the top of his head. “You recognized her and didn’t say anything?” He stared at her, and she could see he was trying to work out just how deep she was mired in Carver’s shit, and whom he should call first. “The boss showed you this days ago.”
“I know,” she said, hoping the detective constable’s instinct for self-preservation would make him hold off making that call—after all, he was in trouble himself for his lapse in security protocols. It made sense to hear her out, if only to work out his best plan of attack. “But I didn’t recognize her then.”
“So—what—it suddenly came back to you in a flash of inspiration?”
“No,” Ruth said, noting the sarcasm, thinking, Well, good for you, newbie. DC Ivey might be diffident, but he was no pushover. “I’ve never met her. But Adela Faraday’s picture is all over the Web.” She raised her chin, indicating the image on his computer screen. “I realized she looked familiar, and—”
“It suddenly kind of . . . clicked?” He gave a short laugh. “D’you really expect me to believe that?”
“I lied to you about why I was in your office,” she said quietly. “I used your terminal without authorization. So, no, Tom—I don’t expect you to believe me.” She paused. “But it is true.”
“She was on the CCTV for what—five seconds? So excuse me, Sarge, if I tell you that’s, just—”
“A load of bollocks?” she finished for him. “I know it seems that way. But it’s a thing with me,” she went on. “You know how some people say they never forget a face? With me, it’s literally true.”
He shook his head and reached for his phone.
“Don’t,” she said. “Look—have you heard of something called ‘face blindness’? It can be caused by brain damage. People can’t recognize faces, even family, children, their spouse—”
He nodded reluctantly. “My auntie had it, after she had a stroke.”
“Well, it’s got an opposite twin—a few people at the other end of the scale—‘super-recognizers.’ We can recognize a face we’ve seen just once, sometimes even years before.”
He didn’t look completely convinced, but for now he’d left his phone where it was.
“There’s a Harvard study on it,” she said. “The Met’s even got a special unit—google it.”
He picked up his mobile phone, still doubtful.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
After a minute or two scrolling through the text, he glanced up at her, confusion and wonder on his face. “You’re not lying.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Says here there’s a test you can do,” he said.
“I aced it.”
“So why aren’t you doing this full-time?”
“Because I’d like to stay sane.” In fact, when she’d transferred to CID she’d had to resist pressure from above to keep her at a computer screen. “Anyway, investigation is a lot more fun.”
He considered her answer, and after a moment he nodded.
“So did Carver admit to knowing Adela? That is why you were in such a rush to get to the hospital, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She admired his ability to assimilate and accept information that most men found freakish.
“And?”
Ruth dipped her head. “He says he can’t remember.”
Ivey scoffed.
“I know,” she said. “Look, maybe Carver is lying. Or maybe it’s just a bizarre coincidence.”
“A coincidence that they went to the same hotel on the night Carver was shot? Possibly the night that Adela was murdered?”
“Wow, sounds bad when you put it like that.”
“It’s not funny.”
“No,” she said, and meant it. “No, it’s not. Which is why I’m going to shake the tree, see what falls out. Do you want to come along?”
He gripped the armrests as though he half expected her to haul him to his feet. “I should call my boss right now,”
he said.
“Sure. If that’s what you think you should do.” She made eye contact, fairly certain that he wouldn’t be able to pass up an opportunity to shine. But he took out his phone and started scrolling through his contacts.
“Of course, if there is anything to this, you would have to take the credit,” she added.
He looked up from his smartphone, amused outrage on his face. “Well, that’s generous.”
“I’m all about the giving.”
“Don’t give me that,” he said. “This is you covering your back.”
She smiled. “You got me.”
She watched, breathing slowly and trying not to fidget, while for a good thirty seconds he stared at the phone in his hand as though he was reading Tarot cards. Then abruptly he pocketed it.
“What did you have in mind?” he said.
The receptionist at the Old Bank was male, dark haired, handsome. Standing behind a mahogany counter that might once have formed part of the bank’s furniture, he looked almost as polished and gleaming as the woodwork.
He recognized Adela from the photo Ruth handed him, and he knew that she was the businesswoman found murdered in her apartment. But he hadn’t known her by that name.
“She registered as Anna Flynn.”
“You know that without having to look it up?” Ruth said.
“She always ordered good champagne—and she tipped well.”
“Always?” Ruth repeated. “So this was a regular thing?”
“Two or three times a month for the past six months. One night only.”
Ruth exchanged a look with Tom Ivey: she could think of a few reasons why a woman living a mile up the road might book one night in a hotel, at least two of which involved sex.
“Did she share this ‘good champagne’?” Ruth asked.
“I never saw her with anyone,” the receptionist said. “But she always requested two champagne flutes and sometimes she ordered a room service meal for two.”
“She never came down to the dining room?”
“I think she was too busy having fun.” The receptionist looked past her to DC Ivey, though not for the usual reasons. Men often assumed in a male-female detective combo that the man held seniority, but this guy was ignoring her because he liked the look of Tom Ivey more.
“Do you have CCTV at reception?”
He grimaced at the suggestion.
“In the lifts?” she said, already knowing the answer.
He inclined his head in gentle reproof. “The Old Bank prides itself on its exclusivity and its discretion,” he said, still eyeing Tom. Something passed between them and the young detective flushed.
Oh, she thought, how did I miss that? The brushed brass nameplate on the receptionist’s lapel read “Lucien Lloyd, Reception Manager.”
“All right, Lucien,” she said, rapping the counter to drag his attention away from DC Ivey. “When did Ms. Faraday last check in?”
His fingers rustled over the keys of his computer terminal positioned under an overhang of the counter, safe from prying eyes. Sure enough, Adela Faraday, aka Anna Flynn, had booked a room at the hotel eight days ago, on the night Carver was shot.
“Did anything unusual happen that night?” she asked.
“This is a celebrity-favored hotel,” he said. “Define ‘unusual.’”
She stared at him, showing no signs of the annoyance she felt, knowing that she could outwait him.
After a few moments, he gave an irritated shrug. “Well, your partner isn’t much fun, is she?” he said, with an accusing glance at Tom.
“She’s my boss,” Tom said, putting just enough edge into his voice. “And you need to answer the question.”
The receptionist suppressed a sigh. “There was a disturbance—a guest in the adjoining room complained, I had to call security.”
“What was the nature of the disturbance?” Ruth asked.
“Something and nothing.” He rolled his eyes. “A bit of shouting. A mirror was broken.”
She nodded, thinking forensics, trace evidence. “Well, you must keep a record of repairs and maintenance.”
“We do.”
“I’d like a printout. And we’ll need access to that room.”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question,” the receptionist said. “A guest has just checked in.”
A man approached the counter from her left, and Ruth turned to him and flashed her warrant card. “Police business, sir, if you wouldn’t mind waiting over there.” She pointed to a cluster of chairs about fifteen feet from the desk and the guest looked put out, but also a little concerned. It had the desired effect on the receptionist; he was shaken.
She kept her warrant card in her hand, tapping and rotating it between her fingers. With the young detective hovering nervously in the background, she said, “I’m going to offer you a choice, Lucien. On the one hand, you could have a small, quiet team of CSIs who will tiptoe in through the service entrance and conduct their search without most of your guests even noticing they’re here. On the other hand, I could trudge back to HQ, organize a warrant, and a whole squad of detectives and CSIs will descend with enough crime scene tape to tie a big yellow bow around the entire hotel.”
She stared past him to a spot just above his head as if thinking it through. “Of course, they’ll want to talk to staff, maybe even canvass guests. Oh, and the press have been camped out on our doorstep for almost two weeks. If they get wind that Adela Faraday was up to who knows what at your bijou little gem two or three times a month . . .”
She raised her shoulders and let them drop, leaving him to develop that scenario in his own head.
On the surface, the receptionist remained calm, but behind the eyes she saw a man calculating the risks like it was a long and complex mathematical problem.
In fact, if the CSIs found any evidence pointing back to Carver’s shooting, it would get messy with or without the hotel’s cooperation, but the quicker they got to work on that room, the better.
Apparently, the problem was above the reception manager’s pay grade; he called the front of house manager, who had the guest currently occupying Adela Faraday’s room quietly upgraded to a suite. Ruth and Ivey headed upstairs, leaving a relieved reception manager to soothe the guest they had kept waiting.
Ten minutes later, Ruth stood with DC Ivey at the entrance of the lift on the second floor, twenty-five paces from the room where Adela Faraday had stayed, but with a clear view of it. She would leave him to finish organizing what followed. The hotel room represented a possible crossover between Carver’s shooting and Adela Faraday’s murder, so Ruth had resisted the impulse to have a nosey: she didn’t want to be accused of compromising the scene.
Ironic, she thought, given what you did at Carver’s flat.
Keeping an eye on the door to 214 she said, “Any questions?”
“No, I think I can handle it.” Even so, Ivey fiddled nervously with his smartphone.
“You know what they say about the only stupid question being the one you don’t ask? It’s true.”
“I’m not sure what we can gain from this,” he said. “We know Carver was here, but it doesn’t prove anything.”
“You’re right,” she said. “But the more information we have, the more we can make connections, fill in the timeline.”
He nodded, but still seemed unsure.
“Look,” she said. “We know that Carver was in the hotel at the same time as Adela Faraday. But we don’t know that he was in her room—and if he was, we don’t know if he was involved in the disturbance. We don’t even know, yet, if Adela left the hotel safely.”
The constable’s eyes widened. “Are you saying that DCI Carver—”
“I’m saying we need to find out what went on in that room.”
“Yeah. But without CCTV . . .”
Ivey was new, and she liked him, so she indulged him, falling into CSI training mode. “The CSIs will look for trace evidence, such as . . .”
“DNA?”
He turned the corners of his mouth down. “That room’s been cleaned loads of times since she was there.”
“Right. But a ten-minute clean and a change of bedding doesn’t wipe away every trace,” she said. “The CSIs will also look for traces of the broken mirror glass in the room.”
“I don’t see how that helps.”
“That’s because you’re not thinking like a detective. Remember, every contact leaves a trace, and DCI Carver’s clothing would have been taken as forensic evidence.”
“Oh,” he said. “They’ll look for the same glass on his clothing?”
“Now you’re getting it,” she said. “If they find a match, that would put him in the room, though it wouldn’t necessarily mean he was involved in the fight—he might have gone into the room after the event, for instance. So they’ll need to look for Adela’s hair on his clothes—which would put him in close contact with her.”
He frowned at the screen of his phone, looking puzzled.
“Question?” she said, her reserves of patience running low.
“Just . . .” He shrugged. “I thought you were on Carver’s side.”
Ruth Lake wasn’t easily shocked, but that rocked her on her feet. “A woman has been murdered, DC Ivey. This isn’t like covering for your mate who’s pulled a sickie to go and watch the match.”
“Sorry, Sarge.”
“You follow the evidence where it leads, not where you would like it to take you.”
He nodded, chastened.
She held his gaze a moment longer, knowing he would not be able to read in her eyes just how sick she felt at the thought that Carver might be guilty.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m heading downstairs, but I’ll stick around till the SIO arrives. Make your calls. Do not let anyone in or out till the crime scene guys get here. And you log anyone who goes through that door. Clear?”
“Clear,” he said.
She pressed the call button for the lift.
As it reached the floor below them, Tom Ivey shuffled his feet and cleared his throat.
“Um, that—thing,” he said, his voice low, “with the reception manager.”
“What?” she said. “My little white lie about bringing in a squad? Don’t worry about it.”