Trev, no doubt, would insist he was merely concerned about her and trying to be supportive, but that’s not how his intrusions made her feel. She felt threatened, vulnerable, scared. She hadn’t heard from him at all over the past couple of months, so what had stirred him into action now? Was it that she was forcing through the sale of the house? Or that she had a job and was back on her feet, was right at the heart of a major murder inquiry while he had to work in a shop? She guessed he felt aggrieved and, if he couldn’t control and dominate her in any other way, intended at least to make it impossible for her to remain oblivious to his presence in her life. He couldn’t possibly kid himself that she felt comforted by a text promising her that she was not alone, must know his unwanted attention could only revive visceral memories of helplessness and pain. But if she called him on it, he’d merely say he was trying to be supportive and that she was being neurotic, suspicious and ungrateful.
She shook herself and, spotting a young couple ahead of her rise from a bench, nipped over to sit down before anyone else could claim it. She had a choice: she could either let a few unanswered calls fuel imaginary fears or she could treat them seriously and consider going down official routes to protect herself. She didn’t want to be afraid, but past experience had proved what Trev was capable of. She must send an email tonight to her solicitor asking again that all contact go through him and that the house be sold as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, Grace told herself, it was more important to think about what had happened to Roxanne. Although it hurt, like deliberately touching an inflamed tooth with the tip of her tongue, she forced herself to think clearly and professionally. At least Roxanne hadn’t been beaten or raped. Dr Tripathi thought it likely she’d been taken by surprise as a ligature was thrown around her neck from behind and then tightened too rapidly to give her any chance of escape. She was petite, shorter and lighter than the strong, muscular builder. But what on earth had she been doing alone with him amongst the trees?
Grace needed to put herself inside Roxanne’s head. Had her friend’s ambition led to her death? Rachel Moston’s murder and the mystery surrounding Polly Sinclair’s disappearance were the biggest stories to hit Colchester in years, and in Roxanne’s hunt for a fresh angle, she had been facing massive competition. The media had latched on to the girls’ landlord before his arrest, so it wasn’t impossible that she had approached and even spoken to Zawodny before the vigil. But Roxanne also knew about Zawodny’s boat; she had been the source of the Courier’s story about the police searching it. She knew that a bottle had been retrieved as evidence from the murder scene. If that hadn’t come via a leak from within the investigation, then she must have realised that only the killer could possess this particular piece of information. But had she heard it from Pawel? And if so, even in pursuit of a career-changing scoop, would she honestly have believed she could tough it out alone with Rachel’s killer? However badly Roxanne wanted to schmooze the national dailies and get a foot in the door in London, surely she’d never have been stupid enough to place herself in such danger?
Grace looked out across the grass. Some young men in shorts and bare feet were throwing a Frisbee to one another; a group of tired mothers were fastening fractious children into buggies ready for the walk home; and an elderly couple holding hands on the bench opposite caught her eye and smiled. It was hard to believe that death might be waiting under the shadowy trees that cloaked the picturesque castle walls, yet it was true. Grace shivered. Maybe Roxanne had convinced herself it couldn’t happen, that she was invincible. It’s probably how Roxanne would think. It’s how Grace had once thought. Before Trev broke three of her ribs and fractured her cheekbone.
She was suddenly weary. Besides, it was no good: some piece of the puzzle was always missing. She’d never solve it by thought alone.
Yet the moment Grace rose and set off across the grass, avoiding the Frisbee players, she began to spy a fresh possibility. According to Ivo Sweatman, Roxanne’s source had claimed it was the police who’d been asking about the boat and the bottle. What if it hadn’t been Zawodny that Roxanne had expected to meet? What if Roxanne had gone to talk not to a suspect at all but merely to someone she believed had access to inside information? Expecting to talk to someone who posed no threat, she had instead encountered her killer.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Grace looked up curiously as the door to Keith’s office finally opened on Thursday morning. When the Murder Review Group team had arrived late yesterday afternoon, they had been whisked off upstairs, and they were already closeted with Keith when she’d got here first thing this morning. She was eager to meet them. It would be good to set out the facts and ideas she’d connected up last night about who Roxanne might have been talking to, and to see if the new team would reach similar conclusions. But as the first figure exited behind the SIO, her heart jolted into her throat: Colin Pitman, her old DCI from Maidstone.
Over the four years she’d worked with Colin, she had considered him a great boss, funny and astute, who wielded his authority with a light hand. Once upon a time he’d gone out of his way to make her feel a vital member of his team and supported her promotion to DI. But watching him now beside Keith Stalgood, she knew she’d take Keith’s stern expression over Colin’s easy smile any day. She’d learned the hard way that Colin’s constant search for consensus had been at best pragmatic and at worst a gutless need to be popular – she’d seen it in his face when she’d handed him her resignation. She watched him now, trying so hard not to meet her eye, just as he had that freezing February day outside Maidstone Magistrates’ Court when Trev was convicted. She felt a weight settle round her heart. Last night she’d emailed her solicitor and had been relieved to receive no more calls or texts from Trev. She’d made an effort, as she settled to sleep, to rinse the past out of her mind. And here it was, walking in the door and expecting her to smile politely at it.
Keith introduced the three senior officers as John Kenny, Lena Millington and Colin Pitman. Grace had heard that Colin had been made up to superintendent, and now wondered how much his relief at her departure had been due to getting rid of a problem that might jeopardise his promotion. If so, he owed her one! Meanwhile she found comfort in the idea that he might be dreading their imminent encounter more than she was, and when he could no longer avoid acknowledging her, watched him flush with what she hoped was shame.
Keith explained that the review team had been given an office upstairs, where they’d be evaluating the evidence, strategy and direction of the investigation and making recommendations for how to progress it. The team were authorised to ask questions and check facts as and when necessary. There was no denying the sour resentment that washed around the office: it was not just highly unusual for the chief constable to have called for an external review so early in an inquiry, it was humiliating. Nevertheless Keith now set a positive tone, insisting it was vital to ensure nothing had been overlooked, especially in the search for Polly Sinclair, and urged them all to welcome the team and make good use of fresh oversight.
Keith moved quickly on to an efficient round-up of reports on the various lines of inquiry – DNA, toxicology and other results from the post-mortem wouldn’t be in for a while yet – and was keen to tell them that, thanks to Superintendent Kenny’s intervention, all the data gathered about who was where and when at the campus vigil was now being fed into a simulation programme that would allow them to track any given individual in real time. They had already constructed skeleton outlines for the routes followed by the victim and other persons of interest, including Pawel Zawodny, which they hoped would prove fruitful.
Lance reported that so far today Zawodny was sticking to the same routine as the previous two mornings, and shared Warleigh’s sense that Zawodny was on his best behaviour because he knew he was being watched, stressing that at this stage that was only a hunch. Duncan hoped today to get the CCTV footage – which had been held up by the usual bureaucratic nonsense – from Colchester Town rail
way station. And Grace confirmed that she had sent a preliminary list of questions over to Gareth Sullivan at the Mercury, but he’d come back to her saying that he, too, was having difficulty deciphering Roxanne’s personalised shorthand squiggles; she promised to chase him up by lunchtime if she hadn’t heard from him again by then.
After a word with the review team, Keith returned to his office, closing the door. Lance turned his back on the intruders so that he could grimace at Grace without being observed. She leaned closer, angling her head towards where Colin stood with his colleagues talking to Joan on the far side of the room.
‘He was my guv’nor in Kent.’
‘No way!’ Lance swivelled to take a better look. Her former DCI was an attractive man: fit, dark-haired and bright-eyed, always dressed in a spotless white shirt; she’d probably even quite fancied him when she first joined his team. She’d certainly been aware early on that he cheated on his long-suffering wife. Now, although Colin didn’t acknowledge their inspection, Grace saw his neck stiffen. It almost made her want to laugh; for a second she felt free, like a kid no longer afraid of a bully because she was safe with the cool gang at the back of the classroom.
‘He’s actually not stupid,’ she said. ‘Maybe Keith’s right and fresh eyes on the case can’t hurt.’
‘We’re not stupid, either,’ Lance retorted.
‘True,’ she said, pulling her chair closer. ‘I need to speak to Keith, but d’you mind if I run something by you first? Something that occurred to me last night?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Remember Danny Tooley, the kid in the bookshop on campus?’
‘The one we saw Roxanne talking to?’
‘Exactly,’ she answered, matching his matter-of-fact tone, despite her flare of grief at the recent memory of Roxanne flitting from bookshop to cafe. ‘We know Roxanne was keeping tabs on him. Schmoozing him.’
‘And we spoke to him at the vigil, right?’
‘Yes. What if he knew who Roxanne was planning to meet?’
‘Is his statement not amongst the rest?’
Grace shook her head. ‘I checked. He never made one.’
‘Then we should chase it up,’ agreed Lance.
Grace nodded uncomfortably and looked at her watch. ‘I’m going to have to shoot off in a second. Hilary wants me at the media conference. The chief con’s coming over for this one, and they’re expecting a big turnout. But there’s one other thing.’ She lowered her head, speaking more quietly. ‘I only remembered last night. When I went to speak to Danny about Polly wanting a lift home, I asked if he knew Pawel Zawodny, if he’d ever seen him with Polly in Colchester.’ She made herself meet Lance’s curious gaze. ‘Danny lives in Wivenhoe, so I also mentioned that Zawodny has a boat on the river. I hoped it might jog his memory.’
‘Shit!’
‘I know. At the time I spoke to Danny, it seemed more important to try and place Zawodny with Polly than to worry about something Danny might have known anyway. But it means he could have told Roxanne we were asking about the boat. And it weakens the argument for it being Zawodny himself who told her.’
‘Still doesn’t explain the bottle.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘And it’s possible Roxanne got that from someone else. But if Danny did tell her about the boat, then we need to find out what other information he gave her.’
Lance nodded. ‘And where he was getting it from.’
Just as Grace twisted in her seat to see whether the SIO was still in his office, he came back out, accompanied this time by Duncan.
‘Listen up.’ Keith had everyone’s attention. ‘Some violently offensive comments have been left on the Find Polly Sinclair Facebook page and on the memorials set up for Rachel Moston and Roxanne Carson. We’ve now established that the most unpleasant messages originated from Matt Beeston’s IP address.’
As Keith waited for the ripple of hushed comment to subside, Lance looked at Grace in astonishment: Matt’s was the last name they’d expected to hear.
‘Two particularly vicious new Twitter accounts have also been traced back to him,’ added Duncan. ‘He’s used them to slag off the women who made allegations of rape or sexual assault against him.’
‘What a sweetheart!’ muttered someone at the back of the room.
‘The chief constable rightly feels that none of the young women or their families should have to tolerate such distressing and distasteful abuse,’ Keith continued, ‘and that we should make it a priority to be seen to take decisive action as part of our ongoing inquiry.’
Strictly speaking, such offences did not fall under MIT’s remit, and there was an undercurrent of grumbling that, with resources already at breaking point, they were being dictated to from above for the sake of PR.
‘Matt Beeston had no particular connection with Roxanne Carson, did he?’ asked Lance. ‘No reason to troll her that we know of?’
‘She wrote a piece condemning the university authorities for failing to discipline him sooner,’ Keith reminded them. ‘That kind of publicity is likely to put paid to him ever finding another academic job.’
‘The worst of the Twitter abuse is about Roxanne,’ said Duncan.
‘But she was hardly the only reporter to lay into him,’ said Grace. ‘Some of the other newspapers were far worse. Why target her?’
Lance turned to her, a note of apology in his voice. ‘Because she was a woman?’
Grace felt sick. ‘Then surely this should put him back in the frame, boss?’ she asked, knowing full well how her question implied they’d made a mistake letting Matt go the first time. ‘Venting such an un-self-censored hatred of women when he’s already in a deep enough hole strikes me as pathological.’
‘He remains under investigation,’ said Keith. ‘The case papers for the rape allegations are with the CPS lawyers.’
‘What about the link between online abuse and domestic violence?’ she pressed. ‘This kind of harassment with constant texts and threatening messages is known to precede violent attacks.’
Grace noticed Colin nod sagely and fold his arms. Although his expression remained neutral, it was a familiar gesture that she knew signified opposition. It only served to make her persevere. ‘There’s a pattern of behaviour here that we should look at again.’
Keith thought it over before he nodded. ‘Find out first if Matt was seen at the campus vigil,’ he ordered. ‘Let’s not assume anything. But if he was there, bring him in immediately.’
Grace turned to Lance, who raised his eyebrows. He leaned over. ‘What about Danny Tooley?’ he mouthed.
She didn’t need reminding: the investigation was starting to go around in ever-decreasing circles, and they knew it.
THIRTY-NINE
Ivo wasn’t himself, and he didn’t like it one bit. It had got so bad last night that he’d had to get out of bed and empty all the alcoholic drinks in the hotel minibar down the toilet. Though that had raised the spectre of another far more dreadful night when he’d done the same thing, only to regret his action, take the scuffed plastic toothbrush mug from the mean little shelf above the hotel basin and scoop as much as he could of the diluted liquid back up. Mercifully the flashback had ended at the point when he’d lifted the mug, smelling of stale toothpaste, to his lips. As he’d done so, he’d known for sure that, over the long preceding hours of steady drinking, there was no way he’d have bothered to flush. He’d never been able to stomach the smell of toothpaste since.
Last night he’d flushed the toilet twice just to be on the safe side. He’d come a long way since then, he knew he had. He was supposed to look at the glass half full, not half empty – a handy metaphor for an alcoholic if ever there was one. But sometimes the shame of those days – who was he kidding? Those years – caught up with him and sent him reeling. The quacks had told him he must have the constitution of an ox, or he’d be long since dead from sclerosis of the liver. On the other hand, the absence of hangovers meant that it had taken him a whole lot longer than every
one else to accept he had a problem. All those lightweights who’d sloped off home when his own personal party was just getting started, those wimps moaning and crawling around the next morning in the office when he’d been fresh as a daisy – they’d had the luck to learn their limitations. He never had any limits. None at all.
Only one thread of life had remained throughout it all – work. Words, headlines, type, reels of newsprint, rolling presses; the ceaseless cycle of production had given him a pulse, kept his heart beating, stopped him ever quite drinking himself to death.
When he’d first started, the industry was still unionised, and he’d had to do his indentures on a local paper up in Yorkshire where they used hot metal to print the paper. If some upstart reporter upset the temperamental and highly paid nabobs of the compositing room, they’d discover their story covered the next day in a rash of especially embarrassing typos. By the time Ivo collected his union card, he’d progressed from flower shows and Women’s Institute meetings to the coroners’ and magistrates’ courts. And, when he made it south to Fleet Street, his first encounter with the rumbling, heavily laden lorries setting off into the cold, dark night and leaving behind the sharp scent of ink and the aroma of warm paper had been the most romantic of his life.
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