Good Girls Don't Die

by Isabelle Grey

  She was relieved to see Sullivan soften. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to be obstructive. And I’m not going down the Courier’s road of blaming the police. But we’re all of us here to –’ He broke off and stared out of the window at his featureless view of the neighbouring office block. ‘She had so much energy,’ he said at last. ‘Always wanted more out of life.’

  He took off his spectacles and made as if to rub some grit out of his eyes, but she could see he was wiping away the pricking of tears. ‘If you’re in contact with her family, please let them know we’ve set up a Facebook page. She was very popular with readers. Her family may like to see that.’

  Grace waited for him to replace his glasses. ‘So might you be able to help us?’ she asked again. ‘If you can’t let us take away her notebooks, or whatever shots your photographer took, perhaps you could at least let us look at the material here, under your supervision?’

  Sullivan considered. ‘How about this?’ he offered. ‘I’ll go through everything. You tell me what you’re looking for, ask me questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.’

  ‘And if we need to follow up ourselves, will you give us names?’ asked Lance.

  ‘I’d have to get permission from whoever gave her the information.’

  ‘And what if that turns out to be her killer?’ demanded Lance.

  ‘Then I’ll have a pretty difficult decision to make, won’t I?’

  ‘You’re not serious!’ exclaimed Lance.

  ‘I’m not enjoying this any more than you are, DS Cooper,’ Sullivan responded. ‘Roxanne worked for this paper for four years. I can assure you that I care a great deal more about this appalling crime than you do.’

  Grace cut in before Lance could escalate the argument. ‘Thanks for your offer, Mr Sullivan. We appreciate it. How long do you think it’ll take you to go through the material?’

  The newspaper editor stared at the partition wall behind which sat a dozen people who would all endlessly be seeking his comments and approval over the next few hours. When he looked back at Grace, his eyes had a hunted expression. ‘If you can send over a list of what it is you want me to look out for, I’ll try and get back to you by the end of the day.’

  Grace stood up and held out her hand. ‘Thank you. I realise how busy you are.’

  Sullivan shook her hand, went to open the door, then almost immediately closed it again. ‘What about her phone?’ he asked.

  ‘It was recovered,’ Grace told him. ‘Along with her handbag.’

  ‘Then I’ll need it back,’ he said. ‘And whatever notebook she had with her.’

  ‘No way!’ said Lance before she could stop him.

  ‘The Mercury provides reporters with phones, so all stored data counts as unpublished journalistic material.’

  ‘We’ll make sure your property is returned to you, Mr Sullivan,’ Grace assured him, giving Lance a sharp jab in the ribs with her elbow. Both knew that the phone data had already been downloaded and copied, but that the half-dozen scribbled pages of shorthand in her notebook would take longer to decipher.

  She thanked the editor once more and hustled Lance out of the building.

  ‘What the fuck does he think he’s doing?’ he fumed, as soon as they hit the pavement. ‘All this academic bullshit when he’s got a serial killer right on his doorstep!’

  ‘He’s got a point, Lance. They’re not here to do our job for us.’

  ‘I’m not handing back that phone. This isn’t All the President’s Men!’

  ‘You know we have no choice. Any evidence we get from it is protected under PACE, not to mention the European Convention. If Sullivan doesn’t want us to have it and then we use it in court, a defence barrister will tear us to shreds.’

  ‘Anyway, at least we’ve got the information,’ said Lance. ‘He can’t stop us exploiting it, even if we can’t produce it as evidence.’

  ‘So long as we’re seen to do it right,’ said Grace.’ And, with any luck, we might find enough on Roxanne’s phone to help us frame the right questions for whatever’s in her notebooks.’

  Although they walked quickly, the short distance back up the hill to the police station gave Grace time to think. Her continuing uncertainty about what she had or hadn’t told Roxanne that night outside the Blue Bar left her paralysed and ashamed. And even if she’d been clear in her mind about how much she’d said, it would still cause difficulties if her name were to emerge from Roxanne’s notes. Until Gareth Sullivan had talked about press freedom, it had simply not occurred to her that a journalist’s sources would be protected, so she’d assumed that she’d be helpless to prevent the investigation exposing their contact. Now, she realised, it was entirely up to her to decide how much to reveal. More than anything, Grace wanted to bring her friend’s killer to justice. Yet wouldn’t it be reckless and stupid to destroy her career before it became absolutely necessary to do so?

  In Maidstone, it had felt easy to pick up the phone and call Crimestoppers about the dealer who was supplying Lee with steroids and amphetamines, and afterwards to tell herself it had been a clear matter of doing what was right. She’d discovered too late that doing the right thing had seemed uncomplicated only because when she made the anonymous call she had envisaged no consequences to herself – apart from the natural glow of self-congratulation.

  If she had foreseen all that would eventually follow in the wake of that call, would she still have made it? She’d lost everything as a result – friends, job, home, husband and peace of mind. Did she really possess the guts to tell the truth now and risk losing her job and everything that went with it? Especially if the truth did not even assist the investigation. Could she really survive the potentially catastrophic consequences of her actions a second time? But equally, could she live with herself if she didn’t do what she believed to be right?

  She wished she could talk to Lance, ask his advice, but it would be totally wrong to entangle him in her blunders.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Ivo was bored with the game now. Of course he didn’t have to stay. If he wanted to join the awkward squad, he could walk out any time he liked. But – Keith’s doing, he was sure – he’d been specifically told that it would be DS Fisher who’d be coming down to go over the statement he’d given late last night, and he had no objection to trading questions for half an hour alone in an interview room with the Ice Maiden. All the same, he’d now been kicking his heels in here for over an hour, time in which his competitors were out and about looking busy.

  He’d had almost no sleep but managed to convince himself he felt alert and vigorous as long as he kept at arm’s length the memory of Roxanne’s prone young body in the dark, dewy grass. If he let that slip through his defences, then he felt about a thousand years old, like he’d definitely overstayed his welcome on this earth.

  He looked again at his watch and wearily supposed he had to expect some kind of payback in response to the front-page hammering he’d given the SIO and his team over a second killing happening while they were looking the wrong way. And of course, in their eyes, the accompanying photograph of the body, appropriately Photoshopped in the name of decency and in accord with the embargo placed on the precise deployment of the wine bottle, would pretty much put him on a par with the kind of paparazzi scum who frequented Paris road tunnels.

  Still, there was some consolation to be had from the fact that by the time word of the murder had reached his fellow cowboys it had been too late for them to update their final editions. This morning’s Courier had been the only paper to carry any kind of story about it, and Ivo’s editor had called personally to congratulate him on his considerable presence of mind at the scene. Ivo knew he ought to pat himself on the back, but frankly he felt sick that he’d got a medal pinned on him because of that sweet kid’s death. And when Keith was doubtless at this very moment facing a firing squad upstairs courtesy of his lords and masters. Oh well, Ivo reckoned Keith was man enough to understand that, given the situation Ivo had
found himself in, he could hardly have pulled his punches.

  Brothers in arms, that’s how he’d always thought of his relationships with various senior detectives over the years; though he had a more than sneaking suspicion it wasn’t how they regarded him. And last night, he’d been vouchsafed his first unassailable insight into why that might be. Sure, he’d been shown his fair share of gruesome crime scene photos and had sat through weeks of harrowing evidence while covering the trials of some of the country’s most notorious serial killers, but he’d always pictured himself and the police as opposing teams gleefully chasing the same ball. Last night had proved to him that a life extinguished was no sporting matter, and he’d finally grasped what lay behind Keith’s occasional flash of contempt. In fact, he now found it incredible that Keith managed to show him any forbearance at all. He wouldn’t give himself the time of day, frankly.

  The door opened and DS Fisher came in, disappointingly followed by Hilary Burnett. The Ice Maiden’s frosty gaze informed him that her opinion of the man who had stood over a woman’s body while he filed his story was, like his own, less than charitable. Nevertheless, his reaction to her disdain surprised him: it wasn’t often he actually gave a toss what other people thought of him.

  ‘You must think I’m a cold-hearted bastard,’ he told her. ‘And you’d be right. But I was fond of your friend.’

  She blinked, as if taken aback by his soppy sentimentality. ‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘You know Ms Burnett?’

  ‘Indeed.’ He took his seat, giving himself a stern mental shake: pull yourself together, man!

  ‘We have the statement you made to my colleagues last night,’ she said. ‘What we want to cover now is the nature of the victim’s professional enquiries.’ She consulted the sheaf of papers she’d brought with her. ‘You said you never spoke to Ms Carson at the vigil last night?’

  ‘Roxanne? No. I think she was avoiding me, to be honest.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ivo smiled to himself at how easily she’d let herself be ensnared. ‘She’d mastered my first rule of journalism: you don’t share,’ he explained.

  Did the Ice Maiden give the ghost of a smile, or was that wishful thinking on his part?

  ‘So you don’t know who she talked to last night?’ she asked.

  ‘So far as I could see, she was just working the crowd. Maybe there were a few people she’d already hooked up with through social media. But I daresay you’ll have checked that out already.’

  ‘Yes. Do you know if she was pursuing a particular angle on Polly’s disappearance?’

  Ivo considered. DS Fisher was not exactly giving it away for free, so maybe he had to be the first to roll over. ‘I don’t know for sure,’ he told her, lowering his voice to sound more sincere. ‘But the way she’d clammed up on me suggests she was on to something she figured would be worth keeping to herself.’ Ivo deliberately acknowledged Hilary before shifting his gaze back to Grace Fisher and raising a questioning eyebrow. ‘Or someone?’

  But she looked back at him steadily: if DS Fisher was Roxanne’s source, then she clearly didn’t intend to let herself be spooked by any threat to reveal her identity. Good for her!

  ‘Was she on to something in connection with Polly Sinclair?’ she asked. ‘Or with Rachel Moston’s murder? Do you know?’

  ‘I thought you might.’

  She ignored his clumsy innuendo. ‘You printed a story about Pawel Zawodny,’ she said. ‘It contained information we hadn’t released. How did you obtain it?’

  He noticed Hilary shift nervously on her chair. And did he after all detect a flicker of apprehension in the Ice Maiden’s eyes? ‘Remind me,’ he urged.

  ‘You knew he had a cabin cruiser and that we were looking at it. You knew we had a vodka bottle in evidence.’

  He nodded, watching her carefully. ‘Roxanne tipped me off that the police were asking questions about a boat and about a vodka bottle.’ He’d already admitted that to Keith, so he wasn’t giving her anything new.

  ‘A vodka bottle? No more than that? Please think, it’s important.’

  He nodded, trying not to recall the photo he’d taken of the wine bottle between Roxanne’s thighs. ‘I put the rest together myself.’ He hesitated, then decided to let this be his good deed for the day – for the bloody decade, let’s face it. ‘The Courier’s research department found out the brand for me, and that it was recovered from the scene.’

  ‘Your research department?’

  Ivo shrugged. ‘Some necromancer in the basement with a scrying mirror, for all I know. I don’t ask, and they don’t tell.’

  ‘But you were told the bottle came from the scene, not the body?’

  ‘That’s all I had. Until last night.’

  She leaned forward. ‘Roxanne said we were asking questions. Did she say who we’d been talking to?’

  He shook his head. DS Fisher’s eagerness surely confirmed it couldn’t have been her who’d fed Roxanne those details: that ambitious little minx must have sniffed out some other clandestine informant. And not let on to him. But the Ice Maiden’s lustrous grey eyes weren’t getting any more out of him; whatever ideas Ivo might have concerning the identity of Roxanne’s informant he’d keep to himself, thank you very much.

  ‘We never mentioned those things to anyone,’ she told him. ‘Only a handful of people knew about the vodka bottle, including, of course, Rachel Moston’s killer. Which is why it’s so important that we find out who told Roxanne. And why the media respect the embargo.’

  ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid.’ He gave her his best candid look, inviting her to work harder, dig deeper. You could often learn far more from the questions people asked than from their answers.

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t see Roxanne last night with anyone who might have been her source?’

  He thought back: he’d seen Roxanne chatting with lots of people, but no one he recognised, no one who’d stood out as significant. He shrugged. ‘I want that story every bit as much as you do.’

  ‘Did you see her anywhere near Pawel Zawodny?’

  ‘Definitely not. And if I had, I wouldn’t have waited for an invitation to crash that particular party.’

  ‘Mr Sweatman, I don’t think you realise what you were meddling with.’ She fixed those eyes on him again. ‘Roxanne may have been killed because of what she knew.’ Her voice faltered. ‘It may have been you publishing your research that placed her in danger.’

  Ivo’s sharp mental picture of Roxanne flitting about the grass in her gypsyish skirt and denim jacket had the effect of snapping some small cog or flywheel inside him, sending his internal machinery into reverse and forcing his blood to flow backwards through the valves of his heart. He focused on this other lovely young woman who sat before him, her beauty different to Roxanne’s but equally fresh and alive. ‘I was fond her, you know,’ he blurted out. Fuck! What was happening to him? ‘Youth.’ He turned to Hilary, trying to recover himself. ‘Wasted on the young.’

  ‘It’s why we need to work together,’ said the communications director. ‘Not risk losing another young life.’

  ‘I should do a piece about you,’ he told DS Fisher impetuously. ‘Roxanne’s old buddy from student days working her butt off to track down her killer.’

  ‘How did you know we were friends?’ she asked sharply. As the obvious answer occurred to her, she seemed to deflate. ‘Roxanne told you.’

  Ivo nodded, leaning forward eagerly. ‘A friend’s personal appeal for help. That would stir a few hearts.’

  Hilary turned to the younger woman, put a hand on her arm. ‘It’s a good idea,’ she enthused. ‘It would jog people’s memories. Draw a good response.’

  ‘Give the police a human face, too,’ said Ivo winningly. ‘Make up for lost ground.’

  ‘Lost ground?’ Ivo saw a flash of anger in Grace’s eyes as she bit back whatever else she had evidently been going to say. Instead, she shook her head firmly. ‘I’d be glad of your help, Mr Sweatman,’ sh
e replied. ‘But let’s keep it official.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. Suddenly he wanted to be out of here. It was all getting a bit much. DS Fisher was cool-headed and smart-thinking, yet not at all the Ice Maiden he’d imagined. Perhaps the impression of aloofness she gave came from being totally unconscious of her own loveliness. He had taken it for haughtiness, but she was far from that: she was warm and quick and he liked her. Her thug of a husband was not merely a thug but must also be a fool if he was stupid enough to have thrown away such a prize.

  ‘Well,’ he said, pushing himself to his feet, ‘if we’re finished, I’ve got work to do.’ Seeing Hilary purse her lips, he laughed. ‘Yup, another hard day’s muckraking and scandalmongering!’ He turned to Grace; he must be going soft in the head, but he said it anyway. ‘If you ever want my help, DS Fisher, it’s yours.’ He wasn’t about to hand anything to anyone on a plate, but he’d be tickled pink if she ever came to him and asked.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Grace was relieved to accept Hilary’s offer to escort Ivo Sweatman out of the building: she was angry and wanted to see the back of him. This man and his dubiously obtained story had treated her to an unwelcome interview with the chief con and nearly derailed the investigation; far worse, he’d inveigled Roxanne into unwitting danger and then stood over her lifeless body in order to steal an image shocking enough to sell a few extra hundred thousand newspapers. And yet, while Grace knew him by his deeds to be utterly loathsome, if she was honest, she’d also been unwillingly drawn to some kind of warts-and-all humanity in him.

  She hoped that her reluctant whisper of liking was not merely because what he’d said had given her additional reason to hope she hadn’t said a word to Roxanne about the vodka bottle: for if she’d put away too much tequila that night to keep her mouth shut, surely she’d have divulged everything, including the intimate part it had played in the posing of Rachel Moston’s body? Yet Roxanne had clearly not even known what brand it was – Ivo’s paper had somehow managed to blag that. CSIs weren’t paid a great deal –perhaps not enough, anyway, to resist the temptation of an envelope stuffed with red-top cash – but only the crime scene manager and the photographer had been inside the tent and seen the body in situ. No one else at the scene knew that the bottle had been placed in the victim’s vagina.