by Celina Grace
The road they were travelling along ran along a high brick wall, ten feet tall. Olbeck spotted the turning, and the car swung into the winding drive of Rawlwood. They drove along through a thin bank of trees before the open lawns of the College began, and the building loomed into view, huge and black in full Gothic splendour.
“My God,” said Kate, looking at the turrets and bell tower and the mullioned windows. “It’s Hogwarts.”
“My school was a bit like this,” said Olbeck, slowing down to look.
“Wow. Mine definitely wasn’t.”
“Yes, well, don’t envy me,” said Olbeck. Kate was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. “Just because it looks fantastic on the surface doesn’t mean it was wonderful underneath.”
“True.” For a moment, Kate was going to ask Olbeck about his school days. He’d been to private school, she knew that, although she didn’t know the specific school he’d attended. He never talked about it.
Kate stared out the window as they approached the visitors’ car park. There were little huddles of students here and there, walking back and forth between the buildings, all dressed in the navy and silver uniform: the same uniform worn by Elodie Duncan in the photograph pinned to the crime room whiteboard. Several carried musical instruments in cases. One tiny, redheaded girl was struggling along with a case that was almost bigger than she was. As Kate watched, a grey-haired man, clearly one of the teachers, intercepted her and lifted the case from her small hands. The two of them walked off together, chatting, the case—was it a cello?—between them.
The two of them got out of the car. Kate stood, getting her bearings. It was difficult to know whether there was an unusual amount of activity because of what had happened to Elodie or whether this was just a normal day at Rawlwood. It would be easier to ascertain once they’d spent some time here.
They found the school reception and were guided to the south wing of the school by a rather superior school secretary, who glided along in front of them, occasionally nodding from side to side and snapping out descriptions such as ‘large common room,’ ‘bursar’s room,’ and ‘dining hall,’ as they swept past glimpses of wood-panelled rooms and lofty-ceilinged halls. She delivered them to a much less grand room furnished with a few odd tables and chairs. One of the chairs was occupied by Anderton, who was speed-reading through a pile of papers on the desk in front of him.
“Morning you two,” he said without raising his head. Kate and Olbeck stood aside to allow the secretary to sweep back out of the room with an audible sniff.
“Did you get the impression we’re not welcome here?” murmured Olbeck.
Kate shrugged.
“We’re never welcome anywhere,” she said. “Morning, sir.”
Anderton pushed the chair back and stood up.
“Right,” he said, sweeping the papers away from him. “Now, here’s where we’ll start—”
There was a commotion outside in the hallway, raised voices, a scrimmage of feet. Two seconds later, a teenage girl came barrelling through the doorway, all long legs and a fall of long brown hair.
“Police—are you the police?” she demanded breathlessly. Without waiting for an answer, she flung her school bag down onto the floor and raised both hands to her head, staring at the officers, wild-eyed. “I’ve got to talk to you, like, immediately. Are you the police?”
“Yes, we are,” said Kate, raising her hands in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “What’s the matter? Do you want to talk to us about—”
“Elodie? Yes, of course I want to talk to you about Elodie! Or rather about him. I need to talk to you about him!”
The officers looked at one another.
“Who are you talking about?”
The girl looked at them as though they were crazy. Worse, as if they were stupid. “I’m talking about Reuben Farraday,” she said. Then she burst into tears. “He always said he’d kill her, and now he has!”
Chapter Seven
The three officers stood nonplussed for a moment. Then Kate stepped forward, raising her hands in a calming gesture once again. The girl was still sobbing wildly.
“Okay, okay,” soothed Kate. “Calm down. What’s your name?”
The girl turned out to be Amy Peters, the best friend that Elodie’s mother had mentioned. Kate led her to a chair and sat her down, rummaging in her bag for a clean tissue.
The girl only cried for a few more minutes. Then she sat up, threw her hair away from her tear-stained face, and raised both hands to her temples as she took a few deep breaths. There was something stagy about her mannerisms, something not quite natural, as if she was exaggerating genuinely felt emotions. Perhaps she was. Hadn’t Mrs Duncan said something about Elodie and Amy having a falling-out?
“Miss Peters?” said Anderton. “Anything you can tell us will be helpful. You think Reuben Farraday had something to do with Elodie’s death?”
Amy stretched her eyes wide.
“Well, of course. He was a nightmare to Elodie, simply a nightmare. He used to threaten her regularly.”
“In what way?”
Amy took a handful of hair and held it back from her head. Kate could tell that she was the kind of girl who used her hair as a form of punctuation: pulling it, twisting it, throwing it back to give emphasis to her words.
“Elodie and Reuben split up about six months ago,” she said. “You know that, right? Ever since then—”
“Excuse me, Amy, but why did they split up? What was the reason?”
Amy gave her a look of scorn mixed with incredulity. She had all the superiority of the elite mixed with the ringing self-confidence of the average teenager. Kate was half amused, half annoyed.
“He was possessive,” Amy said dramatically. “Extremely possessive. Always wanting to know what she was doing and who she was with, never letting her have a moment’s peace. For God’s sake, she got enough of that at home. Reuben just couldn’t accept that she didn’t want to spend all her time with him, that she had other friends as well. He was a nightmare.”
“Other friends? Did Elodie have other boyfriends as well? Is that what you mean?”
Amy stared, her lip curled. “No. She wasn’t unfaithful. Of course not! She just didn’t want to spend all her free time with him, God, what little she had. She said she just felt completely suffocated by him, and so she dumped him.”
“When was this?”
“I told you. About six months ago. And ever since then, he’s been calling and texting and generally being a complete nightmare to her. He wouldn’t leave her alone.”
“Did her parents know about this?” asked Anderton.
Amy sniffed. “Not really. Elodie always said she could handle it. She didn’t believe he was actually serious.” For a second, her actressy manner departed, and she was just a young girl with tears in her eyes. Her voice shook a little. “She always said it was just words, that he didn’t mean anything by it. I feel awful because I believed her. I thought she knew what she was doing. And now it’s too late.”
She hung her head, the curtain of hair sweeping forward and hiding her face.
Olbeck cleared his throat. “What sort of threats did he make, Amy?”
There was no response from Amy for a moment. Kate saw a tear fall from underneath the curtain of hair onto the dusty floor.
“Amy?”
Amy sat up, throwing her hair back and wiping her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just very upset. Elodie was my best friend.”
“What sort of threats did Reuben make, Amy?” asked Olbeck, patiently.
“Terrible ones. When they first split up, he told her he’d kill her.”
“You heard him say that?”
“I saw it. On Facebook. He deleted it a few hours later, though.”
“Did you ever see him physically threaten or assault Elodie?”
Amy pouted. “No, not as such. He used to hang around sometimes and try and talk to her when we got out of class. God, he was such a
stalker. I don’t know why Elodie wasn’t more scared of him.” Her big blue eyes filled up with tears again. “She should have been. Look what happened.”
“Right, Amy, thank you,” said Anderton. He put a hand under the girl’s arm and helped her up. “DS Olbeck will take a full statement from you now, and you can rest assured we will be questioning Mr Farraday very closely and very soon.”
Amy sniffed again and tucked her hair behind her ears. She bent to pick up her school bag.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, tucking the strap over her shoulder. “First Violet and now this. I sometimes feel this school is cursed.”
Olbeck led her away to a desk in the corner. Anderton and Kate exchanged glances and Kate cast up her eyes very slightly.
“Teenage girls,” she said quietly.
Anderton looked suddenly grim.
“Don’t remind me,” he said. “I’ve got two of my own.”
“What about Farraday?”
“I think it’s about time we pulled him in, don’t you?”
“Should I—”
Anderton was already reaching for his jacket. He shook his head. “I need you supervising things here, Kate. I’ll handle it. Start working through this list.”
“Okay,” muttered Kate, dissatisfied. She would rather be out there, taking action, pulling in what sounded like their prime suspect, rather than taking statements from a lot of overly dramatic, snobby students in here. She chastised herself, Come on, this is important too. She watched Anderton leave and turned back to see Amy swishing her hair back yet again in the corner. Her teeth clenched with irritation. Then Kate suddenly realised she’d missed something. She walked over to where Olbeck was taking Amy’s statement and waited for an appropriate pause.
“Amy,” she said, when she could. “What did you mean by what you said just a moment ago?”
Amy looked at her, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”
“You said something about the school being cursed. What was that again?”
Amy looked a little ashamed of her dramatic phrase. “Oh, nothing. It was just after what happened to Violet last year—”
“That was it,” said Kate. She picked up a chair and joined them at the desk. “What did you mean by that? Who’s Violet?”
Amy curled a lock of hair around her fingers, rubbing it against her lips.
“Violet Sammidge,” she said, in a small voice. “Don’t you remember? She committed suicide last year.”
Olbeck and Kate looked at one another.
“I think I remember that,” said Olbeck. “In fact, I do remember that. Very sad. She was a pupil here, wasn’t she?”
Amy nodded. “We were both in the drama group. She was younger than me, and that’s how we met, in drama. She hanged herself in the cloakrooms. It was awful.”
“It must have been,” said Olbeck. He was looking at Kate in a familiar way. They never asked each other ‘is that important?’ in front of suspects or witnesses, but she had got to know the look he gave her when he was thinking it. So she got up smartly, thanked Amy and went back to her desk.
It was a long day. Kate interviewed a seemingly endless line of teenage boys and girls and several of Elodie’s teachers. Her music teacher, Graham Lightbody, she recognised as the grey-haired man who’d helped the tiny girl carry the huge cello case. He was a soft-spoken, urbane man, given to thoughtful pauses; he took his time to reflect on her questions before answering in measured tones. He too spoke about how special Elodie had been.
“We have a lot of students here with talent, Detective Sergeant. People expect to come to Rawlwood because we nurture the best students. Elodie Duncan was very good. Not the best we’ve had, I couldn’t say that, but I fully expected her to make a great career for herself in the arts.”
Kate nodded.
“People with great talent aren’t always very happy,” she said. “Did Elodie strike you as a happy person? Do you think she was generally content?”
Lightbody smiled. “She was a teenage girl, Detective Sergeant. You’re not very old yourself. Surely you can remember being a teenage girl?”
Kate forced a smile. She would be quite happy for most of her teenage years to be wiped from her memory. No you wouldn’t, whispered a voice. You wouldn’t want to forget him. As if there was any chance of that. She sighed inwardly before turning her attention back to the interview.
“What do you know of Elodie’s ex-boyfriend, Reuben Farraday?”
Lightbody raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid I know nothing of him. He wasn’t a pupil here.”
“You weren’t aware of any threats he’d made against Elodie? Any threatening or violent behaviour?”
“Dear me, no. Not at all. Is he a suspect in her death?”
Kate didn’t answer him.
“Did Elodie ever seem scared of anybody?”
“No. Not that I knew. But I’m afraid, Detective Sergeant, that I didn’t know her very well. She was a beautiful, talented girl, but as to what she was like as a person, I couldn’t say.”
Kate nodded. After a few more questions, she brought the interview to a close, thanked Dr Lightbody for his time and handed over her card. Once he’d left the room, she looked over at Olbeck, who was busy writing up the first of many reports.
“That’s me done for the day.”
Olbeck clicked his pen closed with a flourish.
“Me too. Let’s head back and see how Anderton’s getting along with young Mr Farraday.”
“You read my mind.”
Chapter Eight
Back at the station, Olbeck paused outside the interview room. “Coming in?”
Kate shook her head. “I’ll just watch.”
She went to the viewing room, nodded at Steve, who was monitoring the video feed, and settled down in front of the screen. Reuben Farraday was a good-looking young man with a flopping fringe of dark hair and good cheekbones. Elodie and he must have made a striking couple. Kate looked closely at his face. He was attempting a surly nonchalance, but she could see the fear in his eyes. A solicitor sat next to him—not the duty one but a glossy young woman wearing an expensive trouser suit. His parents were not in attendance; well, now that she considered it, they wouldn’t be. He was legally an adult.
“So, Reuben,” said Anderton, leaning forward. “I’ve been told that you and Elodie split up some time ago.”
“Yeah,” said Reuben.
“Was it an amicable break up?”
Reuben scowled. “It was all right.”
Anderton let the silence stretch out for a beat. Then he said, “We’ve been informed that you made specific and multiple threats to Elodie Duncan once your relationship was over. Can you confirm if that is true?”
Reuben’s eyes widened. The solicitor opened her mouth, but he spoke before she could.
“That’s not true!”
Anderton looked down at his notes.
“You didn’t, for example, threaten to kill her in a post made on Facebook?”
“You don’t have to answer that,” interposed the solicitor, smoothly.
Reuben was shaking his head. “That’s so not true. I don’t know who told you that. Who told you that?”
Anderton declined to answer him. He sat back and his tone of voice changed. Before he had been brusque; now his voice became gentler, almost fatherly. Kate smiled. She knew the old ‘good cop, bad cop’ cliché but Anderton was the only officer she knew who managed to flip between the two all by himself.
“Now, Reuben, we’ve been told that you and Elodie had quite an intense relationship. You were apparently quite serious about one another. It must have come as a shock when your relationship broke down.”
Reuben looked at him with a wealth of expression. He might be scared, but underneath it all he was still a teenage boy.
“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to. Elodie and me, we were okay. It wasn’t the romance of the century or anything. Half the time—” He paused for a moment. Then he said slowly, �
�Half the time I just felt sorry for her.”
Anderton raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean by that, Reuben?”
Reuben picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of his long black coat. He looked up from under his fringe at Anderton.
“She—Elodie—she had a lot of problems. She was—she could be hard work. But she was cool as well, you know?”
“What kind of problems, Reuben?”
Reuben broke the eye contact. “Oh, I dunno,” he said. “She used to cry a lot. I didn’t know what was the matter with her half the time.”
Anderton nodded as if he understood. “Did she ever confide in you about these problems?”
Reuben shrugged. “Sometimes. Not really. Sometimes she’d start to speak, start to tell me something, and then she’d kind of clam up again. I used to ask her what was wrong when she got upset, and I thought she would be going to tell me but—but something made her stop.”
“What do you think was the matter, Reuben?”
“I don’t know. I told you, she didn’t ever tell me.”
Anderton cleared his throat.
“Were you and Elodie sexually involved?”
Reuben flushed, to his obvious mortification. “’Course,” he said, uncomfortably. There was a beat of silence.
“But?” said Anderton.
Reuben looked away. Kate could see the heat in his cheeks even over the grainy image of the video feed.
“She didn’t—well, she didn’t really—” He took a deep breath. “She was kind of mixed up about sex.”
“Meaning?”
Reuben dropped his head.
“She was all over the place,” he mumbled. “Sometimes she’d be really into it, and sometimes she’d just get angry if I wanted to. I didn’t know what was going on half the time.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Anderton, his face expressionless. Kate wondered if he was thinking about his own teenage girls. “So you’re saying she could be a bit—well, a bit of tease?”
“No—not exactly…”
“Did that make you angry, Reuben?”
Reuben shook his head, not vehemently. It was more convincing than if he had been more emphatic. “I just felt sorry for her,” he repeated.