‘Did Jessica mention Polly’s overnight guest while I was upstairs?’ asked Lance.
‘No.’
‘Well, we’d better ask her.’ He turned back to the house, but Grace put a warning hand on his arm.
‘If she knew, we need to think first about why she might not have told us,’ she said.
‘We still need a name.’
‘Yes, but what if she was worried about getting someone else into trouble? In which case it might be counterproductive to march straight back in and call her on it.’
‘Maybe.’ Lance glanced over to Pawel’s Toyota just as the engine fired up. ‘But I’d also like to check he’s telling the truth.’
‘OK, but –’ The noise of the pick-up passing them in the narrow roadway drowned her out. ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘I’ve never been to Wivenhoe. I wouldn’t mind getting my bearings. How about you give me a quick local tour first? Then we can come back to Jessica.’
‘Yeah, fine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘There’s a cafe on the quay. We could grab an early lunch if you like.’
Grace hesitated. It was a friendly gesture, but she was reluctant to get involved in too much personal chat on her first day. Over the weekend, as she’d made a start on unpacking her boxes in the anonymous rented flat, she’d promised herself that she’d begin slowly: watch and learn what people were like, who was who, how and where she might best fit in.
‘Not sure I’m really hungry yet,’ she replied, and was both relieved and mildly disappointed when Lance didn’t seem to mind being turned down.
She let him lead the way, turning right into the High Street and walking down towards the river. Grace paused to peer along side turnings that became prettier as the water came into view. More redbrick terraces similar to Polly and Jessica’s rented house were interspersed with older and more charming pink, white or blue-painted facades with rounded bay windows and pointed dormers set into pitched roofs. One or two that had higgledy-piggledy half-timbering looked older still. Some boasted railings in front but most opened straight off the quiet streets.
Two girls – they looked Chinese – jogged past in expensive running gear. Grace found them incongruous in such a very English setting, but supposed that Wivenhoe, only two miles from the university campus, must be a pleasant place for students to find accommodation. On the way here, Lance had explained the transport links Polly might have used: there was a bus to the university and regular trains to Colchester – and on to London – from the station at the end of Polly’s street. A few students would presumably own cars, and Grace had also noticed half a dozen men in helmets and Lycra shorts speeding along on bikes.
Several people sat with drinks outside the pub on the quay, and a variety of boats were moored along the riverbank. Wivenhoe lay at the neck of an estuary that opened out into the North Sea – she had consulted an OS map before they left the office – and was surrounded by miles of mudflats, creeks, woods and gravel pits. Rationalising any kind of search for Polly would be a strategic and logistical nightmare.
‘Uniform were right to prioritise this one, don’t you think?’ she asked Lance.
‘Dunno. She’s over eighteen, fit, healthy, solvent, no apparent mental health problems. The weather’s been good, no accidents reported. If she wants to go AWOL after exams, no reason we shouldn’t let her.’
‘But not using her phone for more than forty-eight hours – for someone Polly’s age that’s like severing an artery.’
‘She’ll probably get some cash out today, and we can all stand down.’
Grace frowned at him, perplexed by his tone. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Nope, just keeping an open mind.’ Lance looked coolly at her, and she felt somehow put in her place. She reminded herself that she was no longer a detective inspector, just a sergeant again, the same as him. And, with a sinking heart, she hoped she wasn’t supposed to take any other meaning from his remark.
‘Seen enough of the neighbourhood?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Let’s go back and speak to Jessica. See if she does know who the mysterious lover-boy is.’
Grace followed Lance back up the High Street, hoping irrationally that this time Polly herself would be there to open the front door.
TWO
Dr Matt Beeston’s office was situated above one of the first ‘squares’ they came to after walking from the car park across a wide expanse of rolling green parkland that included two large ornamental lakes. Like the concrete and plate glass of the university Grace had attended, these buildings, too, had failed to blend into their setting in the way the architects must have hoped, and, fifty years on, the campus still looked like a stage set for some futuristic Sixties movie.
Dr Beeston, too, looked ill-suited to his box-like office, where broken vertical blinds failed to shield him from the bright sunlight. He peered at them from behind his unkempt desk and, before asking who they were, apologised that he was running late for a meeting. Although Jessica had told them he’d only just completed his Ph.D., he seemed more boyish than Grace had expected. He was physically slight but undeniably attractive in a cute sort of way and, despite his preppie clothes and the Arsenal pennant he’d hung on the wall behind his desk, it wasn’t a stretch for her to imagine Polly inviting him home and into bed.
Jessica had admitted that some of her reluctance to tell them that Polly’s overnight guest was a law lecturer had been down to the fear that she’d get him into trouble. And certainly the stressed way Dr Beeston was attempting to stuff a bundle of files into an expensive leather satchel made Grace wonder if maybe he was slightly out of his depth. Lance explained that they were detectives and would need five minutes of his time, and he gave them his full attention.
Matt’s first response was that he didn’t know a student named Polly Sinclair, but when Lance suggested he might have accompanied her home last Thursday night, he blushed furiously.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Her name had slipped my mind. Not very chivalrous of me.’
‘So you did spend Thursday night with her in Wivenhoe?’ asked Lance.
‘Yes. Why?’ His voice sharpened in alarm. ‘She’s not one of my students. And she invited me back.’ He seemed glad of the shelter of his desk, and busied himself again gathering up his papers. ‘I’ve never taught her.’
‘We’re the police,’ Lance explained patiently. ‘We’re not interested in university regulations.’
‘Right, right.’ Matt took a deep breath and sat down, the colour fading from his cheeks. ‘So why are you here? How can I help? What is it you want to know?’
‘Have you seen or heard from Polly since Friday morning?’
It took another moment for him to take on board how carefully he was being observed, but when he did, Grace was curious to note that his reaction seemed to be a mixture of discomposure and aloofness. He still hadn’t asked if Polly was all right.
‘We were both pretty hammered,’ Matt explained. ‘It was only, you know … I left the next morning with a hangover, and that was that. Isn’t that what she says?’
‘Did you contact her?’ asked Lance. ‘Arrange to see her again?’
‘No.’
‘Or try to?’
‘No. Look, she was sweet, but we both agreed it wasn’t the start of anything. She was no more keen than I was.’ His nervous attempt to sneak a look at his watch made Grace wonder how long it would take him to focus on anything other than himself.
‘We’re sorry to delay you, Dr Beeston,’ she said, speaking for the first time. ‘And we have no wish to embarrass you unnecessarily, but we have to ask: did you and Polly have sex that Friday morning?’
Now he looked well and truly scared. ‘Look, am I being accused of something here, because, if so –’
Grace continued to gaze coolly at him. ‘We need to corroborate other statements.’
He gazed back, apparently trying to work out what they really wanted. Then his face cleared. ‘It’s th
at foreign builder guy, isn’t it? The one who was spying on us.’
‘Who was spying on you?’
‘He had a foreign name. Russian-sounding. He came to fix something downstairs.’
‘While you were in the bedroom?’
‘Yes. He was creeping around outside the door. A real peeping Tom.’ He let out a breath of relief and sat back in his chair. ‘Has he done something to her?’
‘Polly hasn’t been in contact with anyone since Friday night,’ Grace explained, watching him carefully. ‘Her family are concerned about her. You’ve no idea where she might be?’
Comprehension was followed by a look of calculation, reminding Grace that he had a Ph.D. in law.
‘I spent Thursday night with her,’ he said. ‘I’d never met her before then, and left her house about nine o’clock on the Friday morning. I was here teaching by ten.’ He spoke with fresh confidence, though Grace had a hard time imagining him dominating a lecture hall. ‘So I’m sorry,’ he went on, ‘but I have no idea what might have happened to her since then.’ He picked up his satchel again. ‘Have you spoken to Student Services?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, as I say, I really can’t help.’ Matt looked from one to the other of them with an apologetic smile. ‘If that’s all you wanted, I hope you don’t mind, but I really am very late.’
Grace and Lance accompanied him out, and he hurried off with a departing flutter of his hand.
‘Well, he was a charmer, wasn’t he?’ Lance observed as they emerged onto hot concrete.
‘He liked a student enough to sleep with her, but couldn’t care less where she is now,’ said Grace. ‘So much for pastoral care.’
The windless air, heated by sunlight reflected off the surrounding expanses of glass, lay heavily along the walkways and within the engineered social spaces. It would soon be the end of term, the end of the academic year, and Grace imagined there was already a feeling of winding down, of lassitude, about the place. She wondered if Polly was happy here.
Earlier, as they’d walked across the park, Lance had pointed out a group of tower blocks and said they provided student accommodation. Grace thought that if the architecture felt so unyielding even with today’s blue sky and greenery, then it must be pretty bleak in winter. It certainly explained why Wivenhoe was a popular place to find digs. Maybe she, too, should have looked there for a place to live, even though it would have meant a longer journey to work.
‘Fancy something to eat?’ Lance interrupted her thoughts.
She followed his gaze and saw there were several cafes and a couple of shops – a mini-market and a bookshop – amongst the more office-like buildings. ‘Sure,’ she replied, realising that she was now both hungry and thirsty.
They bought sandwiches, water and coffee and found a place where they could sit in the shade. The surrounding picnic tables and fixed concrete benches were filling up. The students in their colourful shorts, dresses and T-shirts were like an excitable flock of exotic birds, and Grace listened dreamily to the rising chatter. She allowed herself to give in for a moment to her tiredness, reminding herself that she was here now: she’d made it, and could afford to relax a little, unclench her shoulders and breathe more freely.
‘So Pawel Zawodny’s a peeping Tom,’ said Lance.
‘He was perfectly open about saying he’d heard them having sex.’
‘But what was he doing sneaking around upstairs? The washing machine’s in the kitchen.’
‘True,’ Grace agreed. ‘But Dr Beeston is the one who appears to feel compromised, not Polly’s landlord.’
Her attention was caught by a young man standing in the open doorway of the bookshop. He seemed a bit too neatly dressed, and somehow too poor, to be a student. He had that same undernourished look as the procession of thin, pale-skinned, restless youths she’d watched come and go in custody over the years. But, just as she was thinking how odd a figure he cut in this setting, the young man caught her eye. He gave her a pleasant smile before disappearing after some customers into the gloom of the shop. That explained it, she thought: he must work there.
‘But what if Pawel’s a voyeur?’ Lance stole back her attention.
‘More likely just opportunistic.’
‘Except sometimes voyeurism is a preparation for sexual violence,’ he said, munching on his baguette.
Grace smiled. ‘You’ve been reading the FBI studies.’
‘Yeah, I went to a lecture by an expert from Quantico,’ Lance told her. ‘Why, you think they’re wrong?’
‘No, but they’re working backwards from known serial killers. Doesn’t mean that all voyeurs are planning to abduct people.’
Lance put down his half-eaten baguette and wiped his mouth with his paper napkin. Grace feared she’d sounded patronising and cursed herself. ‘Pawel was in the house, heard them having sex. Wouldn’t you have been tempted to take a peep?’ she asked lightly. ‘Been just a little bit turned on?’
Lance looked at her in surprise, and she grinned, hoping to disarm him. It seemed to work, for he picked up his sandwich again. ‘I guess so.’ He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Like being in a cheap hotel and hearing people through the wall. You can either turn the TV up as loud as it will go or join in.’
‘Too much information!’ She laughed, and was glad when he laughed with her.
As they walked across the square to bin their rubbish, Grace glanced up at the row of windows where Matt Beeston’s office was. Her overall impression was that he was self-centred and immature. Those qualities didn’t rule him out as someone who could have harmed Polly in some way, yet – though the idea of an accusation of sexual misconduct had occurred to him a little too readily for her liking – she doubted his ability to lie convincingly enough to cover up more serious crimes.
She waited for Lance to knock back the last of his water, ready to throw away the plastic bottle, and noticed the young man back in position, looking out from his bookshop doorway. If he had looked in her direction she would have returned his earlier smile. She considered running her reasoning about Matt past Lance, but knew her thoughts were really just gut reactions. Not that gut feelings about people didn’t count, but they counted less than facts. Instinct and intuition weren’t evidence. She should have learned that by now.
THREE
Detective Superintendent Keith Stalgood’s ingrained habit of sighing gave the impression of an impatient, irritable man, yet it hadn’t stopped Grace warming to him when he’d interviewed her a month ago for the job on his team. She’d sensed straight away that this tall, well-built man, with a sharp face and a fine head of short, iron-grey hair, would be a good boss. Not that it would have mattered: after quitting her job and remaining unemployed for nearly four months, Grace had had little choice but to accept whatever was on offer and be grateful.
Her stepmother’s friend, Hilary Burnett, communications director for the Essex force, had fixed up the interview for her and then sweetly invited her to stay the night before. Over a microwaved lasagne, Hilary had shared what she knew about the man who led the Major Investigation Team. Formerly a DCI in the Met’s murder squad, Keith had elected to leave London in return for a promotion to superintendent. He and his wife lived in Upminster, so the commute to Colchester was no worse than before, though Hilary reckoned that, really, he was easing down into early retirement and wanted a quieter life.
But this morning, at Grace’s second meeting with him, she’d already decided that Hilary was wrong, that Keith’s impatience was due to a vigorous, practical mind. He certainly seemed happy that she and Lance had acted on their own initiative and gone in search of Matt Beeston after Polly’s housemate had reluctantly identified him as the missing girl’s overnight guest.
‘So why didn’t the housemate volunteer the information?’ asked Keith, rolling up his shirtsleeves as he came out of his office to join the team in their open-plan area.
‘She thought it would get Dr Beeston into trouble, because of sleepin
g with a student, but I think it was mainly to protect Polly,’ Grace told him. ‘She didn’t want us knowing that Polly had shagged one guy on Thursday, then possibly gone off with another on Friday. She insisted Polly wasn’t usually like that.’
‘Which matches what the parents say,’ said Keith. He glanced at his watch. ‘They’ll be arriving any moment. Everything they’ve said so far confirms that this is totally out of character. I know how naive parents can be about what their kids get up to, but Polly sounds like a nice girl.’
‘Jessica said Polly told her Matt had been a mistake,’ said Grace. ‘That by the morning she was hung-over and couldn’t wait to get rid of him.’
‘Matt Beeston is a member of the academic staff,’ said Lance. ‘Polly’s a modern languages student, wouldn’t be taught by him, but officially it probably shouldn’t have happened.’
‘No,’ Keith commented drily. ‘How old is he?’
‘Twenty-six.’
‘He claims he didn’t see her after leaving her house on Friday,’ said Grace. ‘And we confirmed that by ten o’clock he was teaching.’
‘Right. Though I’m not sure the fact that he went home with her on Thursday night takes us any closer right now to what happened to Polly twenty-four hours later. We’ve got no live data, no sightings, no leads.’ He turned to DC Duncan Gregg, a balding, overweight man who seemed, Grace thought, kind and unflappable. ‘Anything from the CCTV around the Blue Bar yet?’
‘Just this so far.’ Duncan tapped at his keyboard, then swung his screen around so Keith could view the brief sequence of grainy black-and-white footage. The camera angle remained static as three young women stumbled across the screen, laughing and clutching drunkenly onto one another. The one in the middle – Polly Sinclair – clearly had trouble staying upright on her high heels.
Grace snuck a quick look at her new colleagues: none of them spoke, their faces showing that they were all equally moved by the fleeting glimpse of a ghostly apparition.
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