by Celina Grace
“That’s good. If you need any more help from us, any information, or help from Victim Support, for example, then please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.” Kate and Fliss handed over their business cards and prepared to leave. “We’d like to talk to your head of drama now. Would you be able to let him know we’re on our way?”
Chapter Four
The two officers walked to the drama department, their footsteps following the concrete paths that wound through the campus. Both women were in their usual plain clothes but here and there Kate could see the thronging students giving them some curious glances. She took no notice and kept her head high, concentrating on what she was going to ask this Zac Downey when they found him.
As it turned out, he was waiting for them by the door to the drama department. It was a long, low modern building, with the indoor theatre cum auditorium situated at the back of the structure. Fliss murmured something about the distance of the departmental building from the rest of the college, and Kate nodded. She could see the students in here were quite noticeably more self-consciously ‘arty’ – there were a lot of piercings and tattoos, ‘interesting’ hairstyles and, now and then, something really jarring, like the girl dressed in a head-to-foot zebra-striped onesie, or the tall, blonde boy actually wearing a tie-dyed mini-skirt over his jeans and heavy boots. Kate stared, fascinated, and then realised that someone was addressing her by name.
“Detective Sergeant Redman? I’m Zac Downey.”
Kate shook the hand that he proffered. He was quite a short man, or at least wasn’t what you would call tall, but he was slim and muscular, his black T-shirt showing well-defined arm muscles. He was also good-looking in a way that Kate couldn’t quite define, because there was nothing particularly arresting in his face or colouring. Nevertheless, there was a charm and an attraction in his face and features. What he did noticeably have was a very sympathetic, mellow voice, pitched to a tone of suitable gravity for the occasion. Kate thought back to Doctor Telling and how she’d always thought she had one of the most soothing voices of anyone Kate knew. Here, perhaps, was the male equivalent.
Zac Downey ushered them into his office which, unusually for an arts teacher, was kept along minimalist lines. There was no clutter on his desk, no teetering piles of cardboard folders stacked on the floor. Kate and Fliss seated themselves on two black leather chairs and, unusually, Zac didn’t seat himself behind the safety of his desk. Instead he pulled up a third chair so as to make a little circle with their own seats.
“It’s good to see you again, Detective Constable, albeit in such sad circumstances. I hope I can be of assistance.”
Kate saw a tinge of pink colour Fliss’s girlish cheeks. Her companion was clearly too rookie at this job to have yet developed an adequate poker-face. Perhaps she was attracted to this handsome drama teacher as well.
Kate bit back an inappropriate giggle and cleared her throat. “Yes, I understand that you were on the scene when DC Durrant arrived. Can you just take us through what happened again, sir?”
“Please, call me Zac. One of the things I pride my department on is the informality. I find it really helps the creative process and gives my students confidence.” Seeing Kate begin to frown, he went on hurriedly. “You’re right in that I was one of the first people there. I always get to work early – I find I can really blast through the admin if I get here before everyone else.” Kate nodded encouragingly. “Well, I’d just unlocked my office – the window by my desk faces the direction of the theatre and that’s when I saw John. He had his phone to his ear and he was – well, pacing up and down, I think you’d say. I don’t know why the sight made me – well, I guess I just caught sight of his face, and I knew something was wrong.” Zac paused for a second. Then, with obvious effort, he went on. “I ran out of the building and over to John, and that’s when... That’s when I saw them.”
There was a moment’s silence. Kate could see him clench his hands and then relax them again.
Zac cleared his throat. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’m still – it was such a shock, such an awful shock. I’m still in shock, I think.” He was silent again for a moment. “I realised who they were at once. I knew both Kaya and Joshua quite well, they’d been my students since day one of their course.”
There was a notable accent in his beautiful voice – American, Kate realised after a moment, without being able to pinpoint whereabouts in the States he could have come from. She made a mental note to ask him later.
“You knew both of them well, then, Mr Downey?”
“Zac, please. Yes, I’d say I knew both of them quite well. Well, you know, as well as any teacher might know his students. We only see one side of them, after all.”
“Could you tell me about them?”
Zac Downey was silent a moment longer. He looked to Kate’s right side, as if seeing visions that only he could understand. The silence stretched out so long that Kate opened her mouth to ask him again but then he spoke.
“I told you it was a shock, an awful shock, when I saw them and it was – of course it was. How could it not be? But, Detective, thinking back on it, perhaps I wasn’t...surprised.”
“Really?” asked Fliss. Kate wouldn’t have said that, but she was definitely thinking it.
Zac nodded slowly. “There was something about Kaya – it’s hard to put my finger on it – there was something almost—” He looked up, as if searching for the words on the ceiling of his office. “Almost too much about her. That probably doesn’t make any sense. She was very vibrant, very beautiful, she had lots of friends, she had Joshua but...but... Oh, I’m being so vague, I know, but it’s because I can’t really say why I thought she was, well, vulnerable. It was just – if you looked past the surface, past Kaya’s looks and personality and energy – you got the impression that underneath it all, there was a very scared and emotionally scarred little girl.” Zac fell silent.
Kate thought about what he’d just said. “Was there any reason that you knew of for thinking like that about Kaya?” she asked, after a moment.
Zac shook his head. “No, not that I knew of. Oh, you know, I’m probably leading you up the garden path, here. It’s probably nothing. It’s just – that was the impression I had of Kaya, sometimes.”
“And Joshua?” asked Kate.
Zac shifted a little in his chair, rubbing one finger along his clean-cut jaw line. “He was different,” he said eventually. “Joshua was much quieter, much more introverted. The sort of ‘still waters run deep’ type. I always felt he was sort of swept along by Kaya. She almost overpowered him, you might say.”
“It doesn’t sound like they had much in common,” Kate said.
“Well, no, perhaps not. Personality-wise. But they both loved drama. Kaya because it gave her extrovert personality an outlet and Joshua, perhaps because of the opposite. He could act well – almost as if he was coming out of his shell.”
Kate nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Fliss scribbling wildly. “We heard that Joshua and Kaya had been a couple for some time,” she said.
Zac nodded again. “Yes, they got together in the first term. I’d put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, and they played the leads.” He smiled sadly. “I suppose it was almost inevitable that they’d end up romantically involved.”
“So they had a pretty good relationship? For teenagers?”
Zac smiled again, possibly at Kate’s cynicism. “I suppose so, Detective. I can’t say that I knew that much about the ins and outs of their relationship. It wouldn’t be very appropriate for a teacher, would it?”
Kate agreed with him, but silently. She looked down at her list of questions but they seemed to have covered most of the main points. “Is there anything else you can tell me, Mister Downey?” she asked, a good question that sometimes yielded some interesting answers.
This time, though, Zac frowned thoughtfully and then shook his head. “I’ll be sure to contact you if anything else occurs to me.”
“Right,�
� said Kate. She handed over her card and waited for Fliss to do the same, but it appeared that she’d already given Zac Downey her contact details on their first meeting.
“Oh, by the way,” asked Kate, thinking of the question of his accent. “Whereabouts do you come from?”
Zac looked a little alarmed at the question. “I came over from the States about three years ago. Why?”
“Oh, no reason,” said Kate. “I just like placing people’s accents, that’s all. Whereabouts in the States?”
“Vermont,” said Zac. “You know it?”
Kate shook her head regretfully. “No. I’ve never been to America. One day, perhaps.”
“You’d love it, I’m sure,” said Zac, smiling. “I mean, I love England but I miss the hometown, you know?”
Kate and Fliss nodded in agreement. Then, as the time had clearly come to leave, they thanked the drama teacher and made their way outside.
“So, what do you think?” Kate asked as they walked back to the car. The sunshine of the early morning had faded away, blotted out by thick grey cloud. Kate wished she’d worn a warmer coat.
“Of Zac?” Fliss cogitated for a moment. “He’s observant. I think he could probably tell us a bit more about them, if he had a good think.”
“I agree,” said Kate. “Perhaps you could follow that up with him later on? We’ll go and see the parents now.”
“Okay,” Fliss said, looking apprehensive.
“I know,” Kate said. “It’s the worst part. But we have to do it.”
*
Kaya Trent’s mother lived in a small, pretty cottage on the outskirts of Abbeyford. Kate drew the car up to the kerb, alongside the sage green picket fence with a beautiful cottage garden on the other side of it. Even in the spitting rain that was beginning to fall, the flowers looked incredibly vibrant, the sunshine colour of the last daffodils a welcome splash of brightness in the gathering gloom of the day. Kate and Fliss scurried towards the little porch, the rain beginning to strengthen as they rang the doorbell.
If the front garden had been a verdant oasis of luxuriant growth and colour, Kaya Trent’s mother was a horribly faded contrast. Kate could see that she had once been very pretty, as beautiful as Kaya had been, but now the good looks had been stripped from her, as if yanked by a rough hand. She looked bleached, all her colour gone, her brown eyes ringed in shadow that was almost as dark. Even her voice had almost gone – she showed them to seats in the small, overstuffed, bohemian living room with a whisper.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mrs Trent,” Kate said, seating herself in an armchair covered in faded tartan. Fliss took the right-hand seat of the battered sofa, the leather worn thin and shiny as glass on the armrests.
“It’s Ms,” said Kaya’s mother, managing a tremulous smile. “I’m not married. But please, call me Dorothy.”
“Thank you, Dorothy. I appreciate that you must be under tremendous strain at the moment and I’m going to try and keep this meeting as short as possible. We just have a couple of questions that we’re hoping you might be able to help us with, something to help us try and make sense of this dreadful situation.” Kate could see Dorothy’s eyes begin to brim with tears and went on hastily. “Have you any other children?”
“No. Kaya’s father left us when she was very young, so it’s always been just the two of us.” Dorothy’s quiet voice faltered as the realisation obviously struck her anew – that now it was just the one of her. Kate, dispassionate as she was attempting to be, could not help but wince in sympathy at the thought. God, these poor parents. It was the worst thing that could happen, wasn’t it? Worse, if it were possible, than murder; that your child had been so unhappy that they had just not wanted to live anymore. She swallowed and she heard Fliss clear her throat.
Dorothy blinked rapidly, clearly fighting for control. “Just the two of us,” she repeated hoarsely.
“I see,” Kate said hurriedly. “I’m really sorry to have to ask this, but was there anything about Kaya’s mood, her demeanour, that stood out to you? Had she changed at all, over the past few weeks?”
Dorothy looked down, still blinking. “She had been rather moody lately. Nothing that struck me as sinister – nothing that really gave me cause for concern. She’d become quite secretive... there were a few phone calls that she obviously didn’t want me to overhear.”
“On the landline?” asked Kate, thinking that they could pull the records.
“No, on her mobile.”
Kate nodded, thinking that perhaps they would go through Kaya’s phone history anyway.
Dorothy went on. “There was one thing. About two months ago, Kaya suddenly got it into her head to contact her father. I don’t know why she suddenly thought of it – he’d never been in regular contact with her. I mean, she hadn’t set eyes on him since she was about eight. But all of a sudden, nothing would do but she had to find him.”
“I see,” Kate said. “Did she contact him?”
“I’m not sure. I think she certainly tried to. There was one day when she said she’d be out all day, she said she was going up to London, to Camden Market, but when she got home I could see she’d been crying. But she refused to tell me what was wrong.”
There was a moment’s silence. Kate was about to ask another question when Dorothy burst out again. “I don’t know why she suddenly wanted to see her father. She’d never shown any real interest before. It was almost as if someone had put her up to it, but why would they?”
“Who do you think might have done that?” asked Kate.
“I don’t know. I don’t know that anyone did. I suppose Joshua might have suggested it to her, perhaps? I don’t know.”
“How did Joshua and Kaya’s relationship seem to you, Mrs – Dorothy?” asked Kate. She braced herself for more tears but that question, at least, didn’t seem too overtly painful.
“They seemed very happy to me,” Dorothy said simply. “Well, up until about two months ago. It did seem then as if they’d had a quarrel or something, because Joshua didn’t come round for a few days, but then nothing seemed to happen. Perhaps it blew over.”
Right up until the moment where they cut their wrists, lying on a grassy stage, Kate thought but didn’t say. She wondered how much Dorothy actually knew about her daughter’s relationship with her boyfriend. Surely a self-respecting teenager would keep most of it to herself, if not to her friends. Friends – that was the next thing. They’d have to interview the best friends as soon as they were done here.
“Would you mind if we took a quick look in Kaya’s room, Dorothy? We’ll be very careful not to disturb anything.”
Dorothy looked as though she wanted to refuse, but after a long moment of silence, she nodded, reluctantly.
Kate and Fliss walked up the narrow staircase. There were only two bedrooms on the first floor and a small bathroom that had clearly been converted from what had once been the third bedroom. Kaya’s room was the one at the back, the smaller of the two bedrooms. Kate and Fliss stood in the middle of the carpet, looking around. Kate could see the remnants of Kaya’s childhood here, almost obliterated by the detritus of teenage clutter. The faded wallpaper bore a pattern of pastel-coloured flowers, but Kaya had stuck such a thick layer of posters over it so that only a glimpse of pink and blue petals could be seen here and there. It didn’t look as though Dorothy Trent had touched anything since the morning of her daughter’s death. Kate couldn’t exactly blame her. How excruciatingly painful would it be to have to tidy away clothes and shoes, books and make-up, knowing that their owner would never touch or use them again? Kate caught sight of a framed photograph of Kaya, over on the mantelpiece, and was surprised at the sudden surge of anger she experienced towards the girl. How could she have done this to her mother? Surely suicide had to be the most selfish act of all...
Recalling herself, Kate pulled a pair of gloves from her handbag and retrieved another pair for Fliss. Slowly, they began to work their way through the room, opening drawers, shaking out books
, peering under the bed, even lifting the mattress.
“Are we looking for anything in particular?” Fliss asked, moving to the small wooden wardrobe and opening the door.
Kate shrugged. “Anything that might be pertinent. Anything that might give us more of an insight into the—” She stopped herself from saying ‘crime’. “An insight into why this happened.”
Fliss nodded. She began to work through the overstuffed wardrobe, feeling in pockets. Different pairs of shoes were heaped in a pile at the bottom of the wardrobe. Kaya’s wardrobe tended towards the vintage look – there were lots of lovely fifties-style dresses in the wardrobe. Kate wandered over to admire them more closely. She didn’t really wear dresses herself, but every time she came across a particularly nice one, she told herself that she really should make more of an effort, clothes-wise.
There was a small desk in the corner of the room, its surface piled with text books, notepads and a small, closed laptop. Kate looked at the laptop, pondering. Was it worth getting that looked at? She picked it up after a moment’s thought and put it into an evidence bag, along with its charger.
There was nothing that raised any eyebrows in the search of Kaya’s room, apart from a small flat tin box, shoved under the bed, which turned out to contain a small bag of marijuana and a half-empty pack of rolling tobacco of an unfamiliar brand. But then, what teenager didn’t have the odd, crafty joint? It was part of growing up. Kate said as much to Fliss, who nodded. “There’s not much of it either,” she pointed out. “Nothing like there would be if she’d been dealing or anything.”
Kate agreed. “Well, I think you and I can both agree that there’s not much here for us.” She took a step back, sweeping her gaze around the room to be sure that it was as they’d found it. “We’d best get moving.”
Chapter Five
Kate made it to the office early the next morning, determined to get on top of the paperwork that seemed to breed overnight. She sat herself down with a strong coffee, yawning. Tin had stayed over last night, and they’d stayed up late watching a film and then hadn’t got much sleep after that. Kate smiled at the memory. Whatever little blip they’d had at the wedding seemed to have been forgotten. Perhaps, this time, one relationship might actually work out, she thought to herself, hoping she wasn’t jinxing herself by even pondering the idea.