by Alison Bruce
Phil’s expression suddenly shut down. ‘So what about you and Matt?’ He sounded calm at first, but then began his vent in earnest. ‘That was in this house. On your bed, and loud enough for people to hear in the centre of Cambridge. Did I have a problem with it? No.’
‘I was drunk.’
‘Not as drunk as he was, I’d bet. He spent the first two weeks here looking totally ashamed.’
‘Thanks, Phil.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Meg?’ He reached out to touch her but she pulled away. ‘It was the heat of the moment, all right? I didn’t mean it.’
‘Worried that you said too much? You’re quite happy to sleep with me when it suits you, so I’m sure you don’t find it that unpleasant.’ She was pleased to see how uncomfortable he looked, and rewarded him by glaring more fiercely. She didn’t want to give in to him and she hated the suspicion that she probably would. ‘The police will find out she wasn’t a virgin.’
His eyes hardened again. ‘And what – arrest me? I don’t think so.’
Meg had hoped he would deny it, though she couldn’t explain why. Couldn’t even begin to form another coherent thought. She backed towards the door. ‘I hate you, Phil.’ And, as she said it, a lump formed in her throat.
His response was a sharp laugh. ‘So much for friends with benefits,’ he shouted after her, and clicked his door shut in her wake.
Jamie-Lee kept crying; the tears came and went in unpredictable waves. Earlier she’d walked along Sussex Street and ordered a jacket potato at Tatties. She’d then taken a seat near the window and idly watched customers drift in and out of the music shop opposite. With a clear view of the sales counter, she soon realized that guitar picks seemed to be their biggest seller.
Guitar picks and sheet music; half the sales were one or the other and she occupied herself for a while trying to predict who amongst the customers would buy which item.
It was an innocuous way to spend half an hour. And it was that very thought that set the tears rolling again. Who was she to while away careless minutes after what had happened?
She had thought she cared about the other housemates, but did she?
Did she really, when one had taken to her room and died while she herself had been too wrapped up in guitar picks or sheet music or whatever that particular hour’s diversion had been.
She turned away from the window, only to catch the eye of the couple sitting at the next table. She bowed her head and sobbed quietly into a serviette, until one of the waitresses leaned across and asked, rather redundantly, whether she was all right.
Her response was to push back her chair and dash for home.
She opened the front door just as Libby was hurrying out. The younger girl looked at her with almost equal despair, then, instead of leaving, Libby grabbed Jamie and the two of them clung together.
Finally Libby spoke. ‘I thought I was okay. But I’m not.’
‘I know,’ Jamie murmured. ‘It hurts so much.’
TWENTY
Goodhew’s Bel-Ami jukebox was set to random play, but so far he had barely noticed any of the 45s that had clicked and whirred their way on to the turntable. The room was dark and, behind him, his window looked out on Parker’s Piece and across to the police station.
The verdict on Rosie Brett’s death had been left open since there hadn’t been any conclusive evidence that she’d planned to kill herself by jumping from the nearby bridge into oncoming traffic. But Goodhew read ‘open verdict’ as ‘Well, she might have done’ – and he didn’t see how any family could ever step out of the shadow of uncertainty hanging over those words.
Goodhew had given evidence at the inquest, and he could remember her parents; they had sat side by side, but were conspicuously separate in their posture and reactions. Her mother kept wanting Rosie’s dad to say more, while he just wanted it all to be over. She looked like someone trying too hard, but behind his smart suit was a man who seemed to have given up on trying at all. Even then, Goodhew had begun to wonder whether Rosie’s home life had been miserable. And now he knew.
The single changed again and this time he listened to the jukebox’s mechanical routine and waited to hear the next track.
Nathan Brett stole his concentration first. Pulling Nathan’s file should have been the first thing he’d done after he came back from talking to Charlotte.
Goodhew turned towards the window, and Parkside Station. He didn’t want to distract attention from Shanie’s case, but felt compelled to find out more about Nathan. Apart from the lobby area, the station looked quiet. It usually was at this time of night, when most of the officers on duty were either out of the building somewhere, or running back and forth dealing with the latest drama to fall through the front door.
Goodhew unhooked a pair of binoculars from behind the open curtains and trained them on the foyer. There were five people presently there, four looking patient and one pacing; he guessed everyone had their hands full. He scanned the rest of the building and the only person he spotted was DI Marks, standing alone at his office window. He held a mug in his right hand, and his left was buried deep in his overcoat pocket.
It was a minor point, but why had he stopped for coffee after putting on his coat? And if he had only just arrived, why had he been motivated to turn up in the middle of the night?
Goodhew grabbed his own jacket and headed for the door. He paused only to switch off the jukebox, halting The Ventures’ ‘Perfidia’ mid-flow.
He crossed Parker’s Piece playing out the final bars of guitar in his head and wondering at the lengths he would go to for the sake of curiosity.
Goodhew reached his boss’s office door and found Marks standing in exactly the same spot.
The man spoke without turning. ‘I saw you walking over, you know.’
‘I fancied a cuppa and not much beats our drinks machine. Can I get you a refill?’
‘Sit down, Gary.’
Goodhew pulled a chair towards the window and sat with his arm resting along the sill.
Marks gave him a sideways glance. ‘You belong on the far side of the desk, Goodhew.’
‘Would you like me to move?’
‘No.’ He paused. ‘Yes, actually. I have a report on Shanie Faulkner. I’d like you to take a look, as you’re here.’
They settled into their usual positions on opposite sides of the table, and Marks turned his PC screen in Gary’s direction. ‘I have the video footage of the autopsy.’
Goodhew merely nodded. ‘Oh good,’ didn’t seem like quite the right response.
Marks slid Shanie’s file in front of him. It was already thick, considering the case was only five days old.
‘I just have the preliminaries.’
‘I know,’ Goodhew replied, then added, ‘you just said so.’
Marks gave him a sharp look, so Goodhew reached for the photos taken at the scene. He studied them closely and found everything as he remembered it. Shanie lying on her side, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The T-shirt had ridden up to expose her bloated midriff, as though the swelling of her body had lifted it to one side.
It was the clothes he was studying now, rather than the body. Her sweatshirt had the various Cambridge college crests displayed in rows across the chest; otherwise it was a bold purple and looked new. Her jeans were either well-worn favourites or bought to deliberately look that way.
Goodhew held his hand a couple of inches away from the photo and, by blocking his view of Shanie’s face, it was possible to picture those clothes in a different situation.
‘Did she smoke?’ he asked.
‘Not cigarettes. Some marijuana use.’
She had very few personal items in her room, and only enough clothes to fill a medium suitcase, some toiletries and her MacBook.
‘No books?’
‘About two hundred on the Mac, but that’s being analysed separately. The rest of the inventory is listed there.’
Goodhew pulled it out of the pile of documents and set it to
one side, cross-checking against it from time to time, as he looked through the rest of the photographs taken in Shanie’s room. The inventory was thorough, and listed everything down to an empty cheese and onion crisp packet and a bus ticket to Madingley, both found in the waste-paper basket, as well as the Boathouse Bitter beer mat used to protect the desktop from a succession of damp-bottomed coffee cups.
Finally he moved on to the autopsy notes. Initially he scanned the report: she’d been drinking and her blood-alcohol would have been a little over twice the drink-drive limit, at the time of her death. She’d taken sleeping tablets too, and an empty Zimovane blister pack had been found on the floor beside the bed, most of the contents having made their way to her stomach.
Goodhew’s attention strayed briefly from the page to Marks, and back again. He had a feeling that Marks’s thoughts were largely elsewhere at the moment.
Goodhew reread the report more slowly the second time, then when he finished he saw that he had his boss’s full attention. ‘I’m not sure what I was looking for,’ he began.
‘That’s fine. Just tell me what you did see. Just brainstorm it.’
‘There’s a note somewhere, right?’
Marks nodded and wiggled his mouse until the screen woke up. ‘I have a PDF of the screenshot.’ He double-clicked a couple of times, and a snapshot of the Facebook profile page popped up. He pointed to the screen. ‘At 11.52 she changed her status to: don’t make friends with the hot girl. She’s still a b**ch. Then, at 1.26 a.m. she changes it to: Cambridge is just like Merrillville. Neither likes a misfit.
‘Then she sent a single message to her mother, Sarah Faulkner.’ Marks double-clicked again and another PDF popped up. ‘Read it for yourself.’
Goodhew leaned closer, even though the sparse words were easy to pick out from across the desk.
Dear Mom,
I’ve been so unhappy, and all I think about is how very much you want me to succeed. I could have phoned you, I guess, but how about all the times I was miserable at highschool and you didn’t notice?
You will be okay, Mom. I can see your face now, and I know how you keep going, no matter what. I love you, but I’ve had enough of being ugly and clever and pretty and stupid all at once.
‘There’s a lot of anger there,’ Marks observed. ‘And the suicide note on the social networking site is pretty common for kids of that age. But . . .’ His voice trailed away.
‘But?’
‘I think the coroner will go with suicide.’
‘But you’re not happy with that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Marks strummed his fingers on the desktop. ‘I just don’t feel totally convinced.’
It was unusual for Marks to raise concerns in such an open way. It made Goodhew wonder whether Marks was questioning the findings or actually questioning his own judgement. Goodhew couldn’t think of a way to broach the question without sounding like a psychotherapist or a junior officer radically overstepping the mark.
Marks continued to frown. ‘Give me your thoughts on Shanie Faulkner,’ he said.
Goodhew turned the first photo towards his boss. ‘Shanie was socializing with her housemates and yet this is what she was wearing. Her personal belongings are virtually devoid of beauty or styling products. She owned two pairs of shoes – trainers and walking boots. No dresses at all, one blouse and everything else was either jeans, T-shirts or sweatshirts. It is fair to say that Shanie did not put fashion or personal grooming far up her priority list. But the sweatshirt worn in this photo looks brand new, that colour is unusual, and I’m guessing it’s more than just a bargain picked up from the market. She didn’t buy this because any old shirt would do; it looks like she specifically bought a Cambridge University shirt because she was enjoying her experience here. Or maybe it was a gift. Either way, she chose to wear it and, if she really had developed a strong dislike for Cambridge, it seemed to me that it happened after she got dressed that day, or at least it hadn’t been bothering her much, earlier.’
‘What else?’
‘Why didn’t her mother respond to her Facebook message?’
‘Both her parents are currently en route from Chicago, and they land at Heathrow at 6 a.m. We can get their statements first-hand then.’
Goodhew flicked through to the end of the post-mortem report: cardiac arrest due to respiratory arrest due to Zimovane and alcohol poisoning. ‘That seems quite straightforward.’
‘They’re running further toxicology tests too.’
‘Then that’s all we can do at the moment, isn’t it?’
Marks remained unconvinced.
In the entire time Goodhew had known DI Marks, his boss had proved decisive and matter-of-fact at the most emotionally testing moments. When he appeared distracted, it was only while following a case-related train of thought. If he was ever uncertain, he hid it well. And when he asked advice, it was to gain expertise or an alternative viewpoint, never because he was asking someone else to take the lead.
Obviously that wasn’t what he was asking of Goodhew now, but somehow it still felt that way.
‘You’ve seemed very preoccupied recently, sir.’ Goodhew spoke the words carefully, bracing himself for the knock-back he had no doubt his superior would swiftly deliver.
Instead, Marks simply looked curious. ‘Have I, Gary?’
‘I assumed you were worried about something.’
Marks’s eyes narrowed. ‘Something about this case?’
‘No.’ Goodhew hadn’t yet been able to put his finger on what it might be, but it suddenly struck him. ‘Something parallel but not part of the case; something that is making you think this is suicide, but stopping you from following that line wholeheartedly.’
‘I think you enjoy too much off-duty snooping, Gary.’ Suddenly there was only coldness in Marks’s voice and no hint of the unspoken encouragement that Goodhew often felt his boss placed carefully between the lines.
Goodhew remembered Marks’s daughter – how old was she now? Sixteen? Seventeen?
‘Is it Emily, sir?’
‘Not even close.’ One corner of Marks’s mouth twitched with a smile. ‘Just come back to me with the full low-down on that sweatshirt.’
Goodhew knew the truth about the devil being in the detail, but he somehow doubted that Satan had done much lurking in a Cambridge University sweatshirt, which was precisely why a town-centre outfitters wasn’t going to be his first stop the next day. Probably not the second stop either.
TWENTY-ONE
Don’t most people reach a point when, however briefly, they wonder if they still want to live? Knowing they can choose can be the only thing that pulls them back from the precipice. It’s that affirmation of the control they still have over their own destiny that makes them decide to push the idea away.
Word for word, that was pretty much the opening paragraph that had appeared in the student newspaper last January. It was upbeat and empowering – and full of patronizing shit.
It encouraged the use of helplines and support groups, and explained how restricting the sale of paracetamol to smaller packs had reduced the incidence of ‘unplanned suicides’.
If it’s intentional, it’s planned – right?
The article was shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Meant for all those who wanted to find reasons not to, the ones who vented their anguish through repeated drafts of an apologetic explanatory note, only to find they’d then got enough out of their system to chuck the letter in the bin. They’d probably rewrite it during the next drunken binge, over and over, until they’d done the dance between advice and suicide note enough times to leave that phase behind and go on to live average, untroubled adult lives.
It was all shit.
Who stops to debate, once you know what you are doing next?
Not me.
TWENTY-TWO
For several years, Goodhew’s favourite spot at Parkside had been an unused desk at a second-floor window. It was in a recess which once hou
sed one of IT’s hub cabinets, a fridge-freezer-sized unit full of cables and flashing lights. The gap alongside it had been too big to leave empty but too small to be considered useful; the desk that had been slotted in there was due for disposal, but both the view and privacy had been great, at least until the advancement of technology dispensed with the cabinet and the vacant area had come to the attention of Sergeant Sheen.
Goodhew headed there next. Sheen had added two new shelves to the rear wall, filling them with a series of bulky lever-arch files. Sheen had one folder open on his lap, and glanced up and back to the papers without comment.
‘Come to see your old hideout?’ he murmured.
‘Hmm, I like what you’ve done with the place.’
Goodhew left it at that, and waited for Sheen to finish whatever he was reading. The vital point when dealing with Sheen, Goodhew knew, was acknowledging Sheen-speed.
The man was just a few years short of retirement and he’d undoubtedly spent his whole adult life working slowly and thoroughly. It was a habit ingrained in him as much as his Fen accent and stubborn expression.
Sheen was a hoarder of information; he held on to everything, from rumours and anecdotes to hard statistics. He’d been dragged reluctantly into the computer age, but had almost instantly become an Internet junkie. Of course, that didn’t mean he’d ever ditch the paper copies of all his notes. Digitizing information was one thing, but being able to spread pages on a desk and have different layers of Biro and creasing triggered his brain in a way no PC monitor ever would. Additionally, Goodhew knew that there were some pieces of local information that were retained in Sheen’s memory alone.
Finally Sheen removed his reading glasses, pushed back his chair and addressed Goodhew. ‘How are you going to challenge my poor old brain this time?’
‘With a long shot. There’s a family in Brimley Close, three kids, but the eldest died three and a half years ago, open verdict but suspected suicide, then—’