Requiem

by Celina Grace

  “That’s what we thought,” said Olbeck. Kate hadn’t had a chance to talk to him yet. She looked over at him, noting with irritation mixed with concern that he looked even rougher than he had done the other day. What was the matter with him? He was acting like a teenager. Immediately her thoughts snapped back to Jay, and by association, the painting. You’ve got to do something or stop thinking about it, she told herself. This is how madness starts.

  Anderton was still talking.

  “We’ve spoken to Elodie’s parents. They’re not telling us much at the moment, but it seems our girl’s been moody, difficult, argumentative. Out of control, in her parents’ eyes. Now this may be nothing more than the usual teenage rebellion, but it may not be. I want all her friends interviewed. Let’s see what they can tell us. I’ve already cleared it with her father that we can use a room at the College for as long as we need for interviews. We need to find this ex-boyfriend of hers too.”

  Jerry raised his hand.

  “What about the bloke who found the body?”

  “Yes, indeed. I want to hear his story myself. Told us he thought he saw someone drowning, jumped in to try and save them, pulled out the body. Now he may be telling the truth, or it may be his way of covering up something more sinister. Kate.”

  Kate came back to reality with a start. “What, sir?”

  “Did you have a late night, or something? Wake up. What’s the jogger’s name?”

  Kate groped for a moment and then thankfully her memory returned.

  “His name’s Michael Deedham.”

  “Deedham, right. We need to interview him again. Mark, Kate, come with me after this meeting, and we’ll knock that off to start with.” Anderton reached the wall, turned sharply on his heel and began pacing back the other way. “Right, what else?”

  Kate thought it was time she made a real contribution. “Mark and I will start interviewing her friends. They may know a lot more about Elodie’s life than her parents do.”

  “Good point.” Anderton shot her a piercing glance. “Didn’t your brother know her?”

  Kate felt her heart rate begin to speed up a little. She could see the painting in her mind’s eye: the river bank, the mud, Elodie’s dead face. She swallowed.

  “That’s right.” She paused for a second. “I’m not sure how well he actually knows her though.”

  “Well, it’ll do for a start. What about girlfriends? Her mother mentioned her best friend, whose name escapes me at the moment. Anyone?”

  Olbeck shifted his position, leaning against one of the tables.

  “Amy Peters,” he said, looking down at his notes. We’ll track her down.”

  “The ex-boyfriend, too,” said Kate. “Reuben Farraday.”

  “Her teachers,” said Theo.

  “Good, good. All this needs to be followed up. Jane, get onto the CCTV from that stretch of the river. In fact, from anywhere near the last place she was seen alive, which was the Black Horse.”

  Jane’s red curls bounced as she nodded.

  Anderton finally came to a halt.

  “Right, that’ll do to go with. Anyone else got anything to say?”

  “You haven’t mentioned the pregnancy, sir,” said Kate. “Do we mention it in our interviews?”

  “Christ, yes. How did I forget that?” Nobody answered him, although there were a few disconcerted glances exchanged. It was unusual for Anderton to admit to a mistake and even more unusual for him to make one. “So, Elodie Duncan was…what was it? Ten weeks pregnant when she died. Now, the question is, does this have any bearing on her death or is it coincidence? Why didn’t her parents mention it? Do they even know?” He ran both hands through his hair and dropped them to his side. “Yes, mention it. Well, see how the conversation is going and use your discretion. I want to know whether it’s important or not. Right, team, you’ve got your orders. Start digging. Get—”

  “The evidence,” they all chorused, finishing his sentence. Anderton grinned.

  “That’s right. Okay, Kate, Mark—let’s go.”

  The jogger who’d reported the discovery of the body, Michael Deedham, lived in a red-brick Edwardian villa in Charlock, the neighbouring suburb to Arbuthon Green. Both Charlock and Deedham’s house were a great deal more prosperous and respectable-looking than the poky terraces and down-at-heel flats that made up most of Arbuthon Green. Deedham was an athletic-looking man of around forty, balding and muscular. He had looked more at home in the damp tracksuit he’d been wearing when Kate and Olbeck had seen him at the crime scene than he did in the well-cut suit he was wearing when he opened the door to them. Although they’d rung ahead to announce their visit, he still looked a little disconcerted at their appearance.

  They were ushered into a sitting room at the front of the house that was furnished with a battered leather Chesterfield and a rather jarringly modern armchair. Children’s plastic toys and a jumble of wooden train set pieces were scattered over the worn Persian rug.

  “Sorry about the mess,” said Deedham, kicking a battered plastic doll and a few toy cars over to the skirting board. “Two kids under three, what can you do?” He didn’t seem to require an answer. “What can I do for you?”

  He had a brisk manner which Kate associated with teaching for a living. She asked him what he did for a job.

  “I’m a management consultant,” he said. “With Seddons Hargrove.” Kate nodded to give the impression that she actually knew what a management consultant was. What was it exactly that they did?

  Olbeck and Anderton had seated themselves on the Chesterfield, leaving Kate to choose the modern chair. She perched somewhat gingerly on its edge.

  “We’d just like to talk to you again about the events of the day before yesterday,” began Anderton. “Take us through the timeline, so to speak.”

  Deedham had taken the only other chair in the room, a rickety wooden one. He frowned.

  “I’ve already given a statement.”

  “I know, sir,” said Anderton smoothly. “This is very much standard procedure. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not worried. I just don’t understand why I have to go through it all again. It was a pretty distressing experience.”

  “It must have been. So, you were on your usual morning run?”

  Deedham sighed and gave in.

  “That’s right. I run every morning, sometimes in the evenings as well. I’m training for the London marathon, and I have to put in the hours, because I’m deskbound for the rest of the day. Anyway, I was doing the usual route, along the path by the river, and I spotted something white in the water.”

  “Could you see it was a person?”

  “Not at first—I just saw this large, white thing in the river, then this hand came up.” He raised his own arm to demonstrate. “And I think, my God, it’s someone drowning. So of course I kicked off my trainers and leapt right on in.”

  “You didn’t realise that the girl was already dead?”

  Deedham looked annoyed.

  “No, I didn’t. Not until I got her out onto the bank anyway. Look, what was I supposed to have done, leave her to drown?” He pulled himself up. “I mean, I thought she was drowning. Jesus Christ, next time I won’t bother.”

  “All right, Mr Deedham. We know you were trying to do the right thing. We just have to have everything absolutely straightened out, to make sure we’ve got everything down correctly.”

  Deedham ran a finger around his collar, as if it had suddenly become too tight.

  “I tried mouth to mouth,” he said in a clipped tone. “Now you’re probably going to tell me I was wrong to do that as well.”

  Kate and Olbeck exchanged glances.

  “Of course not, Mr Deedham,” said Kate, taking up the conversation. “That was very public-spirited of you. I suppose even though you knew she was dead, you thought there might be a chance to bring her back to life?”

  Deedham nodded. All of a sudden his eyes filled with tears.

  After a
moment, he said with a catch in his voice, “I didn’t try for long. I could see it wasn’t going to work. She was cold as anything, lifeless—like a doll, really…”

  He trailed off into silence. Anderton let it spool out for a couple of seconds and then asked, “Did you know Elodie Duncan, Mr Deedham?”

  Deedham stared.

  “Know her? What, aside from pulling her out of the river?”

  “Yes. Did you know her in—life, shall we say?”

  Deedham was still staring. “No. I’d never seen her before in my life.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course. Why?” Nobody answered him. “I promise you I’d never clapped eyes on her before, poor girl.”

  “You know that she was the daughter of the Headmaster, Thomas Duncan, at Rawlwood College?”

  “Was she?” Deedham rubbed his balding head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Have you any connection to the College?”

  Deedham got up out of his chair and stood behind it, gripping the back of it.

  “No, I haven’t got any connection to the College. I don’t understand all these questions. What are you implying?”

  “It’s standard procedure, sir,” said Kate, knowing that Anderton liked her to step in at these moments. It’s something about the softer voice, Kate, he’d said when they’d talked about it. She’d called him an utter sexist, but it did seem to work when a suspect was becoming aggressive. “I’m sorry if you find this intrusive, but you have to understand that in a murder case, we’re operating from a standpoint of complete ignorance. We have to ask a lot of questions to try and see where we’re going.”

  Deedham looked at her. She smiled, and he looked a little mollified.

  “You’re being very helpful, sir,” Kate added. “We are very grateful. As I’m sure Elodie’s parents are for what you tried to do for their daughter.”

  “Okay,” said Deedham, shortly. He sat down again, pulling at his jacket sleeves. “I’m being totally honest with you. I’d never seen her before or heard of her, and I had no idea she was anything to do with whatever it was College. That’s all.”

  There was the sound of the front door banging open and then the squeal of young children’s voices out in the hallway. A few seconds later, the doorway opened and a yelling toddler barrelled into the room. The little boy came to a screeching halt as he realised there were three strange adults in the room.

  “It’s all right, Harry, it’s all right,” said Deedham, picking his son up. The boy hid his face in his father’s broad chest. A woman put her head around the door.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, looking puzzled.

  “It’s the police,” said Deedham. His wife’s face clouded. “They want to know whether I knew Elodie Duncan.”

  “Who?”

  Deedham looked at the police as if to say ‘you see?’

  “That poor girl I pulled out of the river.”

  “Knew her?” His wife came fully into the room. She was a small woman, neat and pretty, with a chin-length bob haircut. She had a baby settled on her hip, a girl of about eight months who looked at the police officers with round eyes and began sucking her small thumb.

  “Of course he didn’t know her,” said Mrs Deedham. “He’d never seen her before in his life.”

  The little boy in Deedham’s arms began to struggle. His father put him down on the floor, and he immediately ran over to a box of toys in the corner of the room and began throwing them aside, clearly searching for a particularly loved one. The officers exchanged glances. The time for questioning was obviously at an end. They got to their feet.

  “So what do you think?” asked Olbeck as they drove back to the station.

  Anderton was driving. Technically, his work status warranted a driver, but Kate had noticed that he always preferred to drive himself. He liked to be in control.

  He shrugged and made an indeterminate noise.

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing about his statement that doesn’t add up but…I don’t know.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Kate. “He’s very defensive.”

  “It’s not so much that.” He slowed the car for a T-junction, glancing at her in the rear view mirror. “There’s something about him I don’t like. I can’t put my finger on it. It may be important—then again, it may not.”

  “Should we talk to his wife?” asked Kate. “See if she says anything that, well, doesn’t quite tally?”

  Anderton pondered. “Yes. But it’s lower priority at the moment than the other interviews. We start at Rawlwood College tomorrow, nine sharp.” They were approaching the station. He caught her eye again. “You talked to your brother yet?”

  “Not yet, sir, sorry,” said Kate, adequately disguising the drop of her stomach. “I haven’t been able to get hold of him. I’ll try again once I’m back at my desk.”

  Chapter Six

  Kate called it a night at nine thirty that evening. She said goodbye to Olbeck, still hunched over his keyboard, and let herself out of the office, raising a hand to the duty sergeant on the front desk as she left the building.

  Settled in the driver’s seat, she checked her phone before she drove off. Nothing from Jay. Where the hell was he? She’d now left him three messages. Trying not to worry, she put the key in the ignition, locked her driver side door and drove off.

  Kate’s new house was situated at the end of a terrace of Victorian buildings at the end of a cul-de-sac. The last streetlight lay twenty feet from her garden gate, meaning her walk up the path to the front door was always slightly nerve-wracking after dark. I must get an outside light, she told herself yet again, knowing she’d forget about it once she was through the front door.

  As she opened the squeaky little iron gate to the path up to the door, a dark shadow moved. A hand reached for her. There was a moment of cold terror and her hand holding the front door keys came up like a flash; they were a tiny weapon, but it could be the difference between life and death…

  She let out her breath in a half-scream as she realised it was her brother.

  “Jay, you idiot, you scared the absolute shit out of me!”

  Jay said nothing. He stood there, dumbly, shaking his head. Kate could smell the booze on him from three feet away.

  “Are you all right?”

  He finally spoke. “No, I’m not,” he said, in a slurred and teary mumble. “Sis, I’m so not okay. I didn’t want to scare you, I didn’t know where to go—”

  Kate had the front door open now and the hallway light on. She gently pushed Jay into her house before her and turned him to face her. He looked awful: unshaven, red-eyed, hair unbrushed and greasy.

  “You’ve heard about Elodie,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes,” said Jay and burst into tears.

  She let him cry, leading him to the sofa and wrapping him up in one of the blankets she kept there. Then she made him a cup of hot chocolate, listening to his sobs gradually tapering off, like a toy winding down. By the time he’d drunk his hot drink, he was dry-eyed again, his chest only occasionally heaving.

  “I’m really sorry, Jay,” said Kate eventually. “It’s awful. You must be feeling desperate.”

  Jay’s mouth crimped. For a moment, she thought he was going to start crying again, but he managed to control himself.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. He leaned forward and put the mug down on the floor with a shaking hand. “I can’t believe it. She was so amazing. Why would anyone do this?”

  Kate could only shake her head.

  “It shouldn’t have happened!” he cried and then buried his face in his hands, sobbing. Kate was reminded of Mr Duncan at the morgue, saying almost those very words.

  “Jay,” she said gently, after a moment. “We’ll need to take a statement from you. I can’t do it myself but Mark—you remember Mark?—he can do it for you. You can come to the station with me tomorrow.”

  Jay shook his head. “I can’t. I don’
t want to have everyone laughing at me for crying, and I can’t talk about Elodie without crying.” He wiped his face. “I can’t, sis.”

  Kate picked the empty mug from the floor.

  “We’ll talk about in the morning,” she said, before remembering that she had to be at Rawlwood College for the first round of interviews. “Actually, I’ve got to go out early. You sleep in, have a shower, have some breakfast. We’ll talk later when I get back.”

  When she was finally in bed, she lay wide-eyed in the darkness, staring up at the dim ceiling. She wondered whether Jay was lying awake in the next bedroom too. She hoped not. She rolled on her side, pulling the duvet up to her ear. She hoped she wouldn’t dream, but she could sense that the riverbank and the mud and Elodie’s white face were lying in wait for her, out there in the dark.

  *

  “You look as bad as I do,” said Olbeck the next morning when he knocked on Kate’s door. “Don’t tell me you went on a wild bender when you left the office last night.”

  “I could make a smart remark about that, coming from you,” said Kate as she flopped into the passenger seat. “And I won’t even start on the ‘bender.’”

  Olbeck laughed. “So how come you look so rough?”

  “I’m not that bad, am I?” Kate flipped down the visor to look in the little mirror and groaned. “Crap. Where’s my hairbrush?”

  As she brushed her hair, she told Olbeck what had happened last night.

  “Poor kid,” said Olbeck. “I’ll do his statement.”

  “I told him you would,” said Kate. She tied back her now-neat hair. “I obviously can’t do it myself, and he needs someone to be—well—gentle with him.”

  Olbeck glanced over at her. “Did he say anything about the night she died? Did he see anything?”

  Kate dropped her hairbrush back into her bag and snapped it shut.

  “He didn’t say,” she said, shortly. “He wasn’t anywhere near her when I left that night, I know that.”

  “All right, all right,” said Olbeck, peering through the windscreen. “You need to talk it through with Anderton later. Where’s the bloody turn off for the College?”