by Celina Grace
“Are you all right?”
Why could he not tell what was wrong with her? Was he really that obtuse? Kate found she was gritting her teeth with fury. “I’m just tired.”
“No, you’re not. You’re angry.”
Kate suppressed a scream. “I’m tired, and I want to go home.” For a second, she thought of telling him what he was doing bordered on sexual harassment but she wasn’t quite that suicidal.
“Come on,” Anderton said softly, and the change in his tone made Kate look at him. They were inches apart by this point and it was the work of a moment for Anderton to lean in and...
Kate broke the kiss, rearing her head back. Over Anderton’s shoulder, she could see her reflection, dark in the glass of the door, and what she saw shocked her enough to pull away completely. She looked like a different person.
“No,” she said and that was enough for Anderton to step back.
“There are rooms here,” he said, in a low voice. “We could—”
“No!” Kate said, the vehemence in her voice belying her body’s response to his words. “Are you mad? I’m going home.”
“Fine,” said Anderton. He sounded defeated and for a moment, Kate almost wavered. She met her own gaze in the dark reflection and closed her eyes for a second.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she managed to say in a more normal voice.
“Fine,” Anderton said again. For a moment, they looked at each other, and Kate opened her mouth to say something, but there was too much to say and, even if they’d had all night, not enough time to say it.
“Goodnight,” she said inadequately and turned and left, refusing to look behind her where Anderton remained standing in the dim little lobby.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning was bright and sunny, the sky a clear blue and littered with scudding white clouds. For the first time that year, the sun had some real warmth behind it, and Kate, locking her front door behind her, wondered whether to bother bringing her jacket. She said as much to Rav when she picked him up.
“Yeah,” said Rav. “We’ve got to that stage where every year, you carry your coat around for three weeks, just in case.”
Kate chuckled. Astonishingly, she’d slept well the night before – worn out with emotion, probably – but she was thankful that at least she was now able to regard what had happened with Anderton as nothing more than a momentary slip. Just a mistake. She was stabbed with guilt when she thought about Tin, but whereas ten years ago, a similar mistake had prompted her to immediately make a tearful confession to her then boyfriend, the benefits of being older and wiser meant that this time, she was at least taking time to think it over. She turned her mind to where they were going, and what they were going to have to do, and made a firm effort to dismiss any thoughts of her private life from her mind.
They were driving to see Veronica Stemmick’s parents. Fliss had booked a day’s holiday, for an unspecified purpose, so Rav was accompanying Kate instead. Kate was glad; not only did she enjoy his uncomplicated company but she wanted to discuss the case with him.
“So, I haven’t had a chance to read your entire report yet,” she said, adding hastily, “I will though, as soon as we get back to the office. But I was just wondering if – well, why suicide clusters occur? I mean, it’s a bit strange, isn’t it?”
Rav nodded. “I didn’t have time to cite all the papers I read but there’s a theory that it’s just an extreme form of mass hysteria. You know how you get these odd cases, sometimes, where there’s an outbreak of psychosomatic illness?”
“Yes,” said Kate, cautiously, trying to recall one.
“You know, fainting fits and sickness and stuff like that. Seems to happen quite a lot in girls’ schools. I’ll see if I can dig out some info for you. Anyway, suicide clusters could be seen as the most extreme example of that sort of thing.”
Kate was trying to recall the parts of Rav’s report that she had read. “You mentioned the suicides in – where was it? Bridgend. I thought that was – I mean, that area had a lot of poverty, a lot of drugs and external stressors...”
Rav shrugged. “It’s a theory, it’s not the theory. I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“Mmm.” Kate drove in silence for a while, thinking. Then she said, slowly, “You were here for the Elodie Duncan case, weren’t you, Rav? The murder at Rawlwood College.”
“Yeah. God, that’s years ago now.”
“I know. But...I don’t know. Something about what’s happening at Abbeyford School seems similar to what happened there. I can’t say exactly how...” Kate slowed down for a junction and glanced at the sat nav, unsure of where she had to go next. “I mean, when we were working the Duncan case, it seemed straightforward at the time, but there was something underneath it that was actually driving it on. Something we couldn’t see for a while. I get that feeling here.”
Rav looked at her, startled. “You’re not saying there’s another abuse ring here?”
“No. No, of course I’m not. There’s no evidence of that, for one thing.” Briefly Kate thought of Claire Collins’ sad little script. “No, on the surface, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Kaya Trent thought Joshua Widcombe was cheating on her. She murdered him in a fit of adolescent jealousy and killed herself. Case closed.” Kate had reached the dual carriageway, out of Abbeyford by now, and changed up a gear with a shove, as if to emphasise her words. “Claire Collins was probably being abused by her common-law stepfather – she committed suicide. Case closed. Veronica Stemmick committed suicide, for reasons that we don’t yet know, but a definite suicide it was. Case closed.”
There was a short silence. Kate found that she was gripping the steering wheel too tightly, her knuckles white with frustration.
Rav obviously picked up on her mood. “So...what’s the problem?”
Kate threw him an anguished glance. “That’s the problem. There is no problem. I just feel – oh, that again, just like at Rawlwood, there’s something we’re missing.” She drove on for a moment in silence. “Oh, just ignore me,” she said eventually. “I’m probably just going mad.”
“No probably about it,” Rav said with a grin, and the tension abated slightly. Glancing over, Kate could see him chewing his lip and knew he was running over what she’d said. Oh well, perhaps a fresh pair of eyes might see something that she’d missed...
The sat nav announced to them that they ‘had reached their destination’. It turned out to be a nineteen twenties semi-detached house, not particularly attractive but neat and well kept. The small front garden comprised of a small, square lawn and a stone birdbath exactly in the centre, with beds of carefully planted bedding plants encircling it. The plants, placed at regular intervals, were not yet flowering, and the effect was rather sparse. Kate looked at the front of the house. Net curtains hung in the bay window of the ground floor and the front porch had been neatly swept. In the driveway, by the side of the house, an old but well-maintained Volvo was parked.
Another sofa, another cooling cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her, another bereaved parent talking in a voice interspersed with sobs about what a shock it was. Kate listened and made appropriate soothing remarks and hid the tremor that she felt when it occurred to her: how many more times would she have to do this? Once more? Ten times more? When was this nightmare going to end?
“Veronica had never seemed depressed,” her mother was saying, a note of bewilderment in her shaking voice. “Never really down. If anything, she seemed, well, a bit... a bit – sort of giddy, perhaps.”
“Can you elaborate, Mrs Stemmick?” Kate asked, in as gentle a tone as possible.
Mrs Stemmick sniffed and wiped her eyes. She used a handkerchief, rather than a tissue, something Kate hadn’t seen for years. “Veronica was always a bit all or nothing. She was either up high or down in the dumps. She didn’t seem to have a middle ground at all. Not that that made any difference to how we loved her—” Her voice broke again, and she put the
little white scrap of fabric up to her face for a moment, hiding it. Then, clearly making an effort at control, she lowered her hand. “Veronica was adopted,” she said, in a more formal tone. “She came to us when she was three. We never had any problems, not like they say you do, sometimes.”
Kate had had enough therapy now for the mention of adoption to cause her nothing more than a momentary pain. She nodded at Mrs Stemmick in an encouraging way, and Veronica’s mother continued.
“She was very good at drama. She really loved acting, always said she was going to be an actress and then get into directing films.” Mrs Stemmicks’s voice had strengthened a little.
Kate nodded. “Did Veronica know Kaya Trent? Or Joshua Widcombe?”
At the mention of those names, Mrs Stemmick had stiffened a little, as people tended to do. “That poor boy? Yes, she knew him. And his so-called girlfriend, what an evil girl.” The handkerchief went up again. “Knowing your child has – has – committed suicide is one thing, it’s devastating, but I can’t imagine what poor Joshua’s mother is going through, knowing what that girl did to him.”
Rav and Kate exchanged a glance. “So, Veronica was friends with both Kaya and Joshua, then?” Kate attempted to clarify.
Mrs Stemmick nodded tremulously. “They were all in Romeo and Juliet at the end of the first term. A couple of times, Veronica had some friends over here for lunch and to watch videos and things like that, and those two definitely were here at least a couple of times.”
“Did they appear to be close friends?” asked Kate.
Mrs Stemmick sniffed. “I couldn’t say. Of course, Veronica was a year or so younger than the others. That sometimes matters, doesn’t it, at that age?”
Kate made a noise of vague agreement. Her gaze meandered around the room; tastefully if not particularly interestingly furnished: a three-piece suite upholstered in beige, some china ornaments on the mantelpiece, a not-very-inspired collection of books in a small bookcase. Kate noticed the plethora of photographs on the sideboard, nearly all of Veronica, both as a child and as a teenager, with her parents or alone. She got up and moved nearer.
“Veronica was very beautiful,” she remarked to Mrs Stemmick in a low tone. Mrs Stemmick looked as though she didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Kate looked closer at the photographs, at a close-up shot of Veronica, obviously a posed studio format. A fey, delicate fairy-face, tip-tilted nose and finely modelled chin, large brown eyes and a cloud of light brown hair. Veronica could have been the original model for an Arthur Rackham drawing. Kate bit her lip, thinking of the slack, white face she’d seen two days before, half-submerged in greyish vomit.
Turning, she gave Rav a significant glance, before asking whether she and her colleague could have a quick look in Veronica’s room. Mrs Stemmick agreed, in some confusion, and Kate hastened to reassure her that it was just standard procedure, that she wasn’t to worry, that they would put everything back in its place.
She and Rav climbed the stairs. As was usual with houses of this age, the first floor consisted of a bathroom, the master bedroom, a slightly smaller second bedroom and the box room over the stairwell. The usual configuration of bedrooms was that the parents took the biggest room, with the bedrooms shared out in order of size with the oldest child getting the second biggest, right down to the youngest ending up in the box room. Here, that was not the case. Veronica’s room was the biggest on the floor, her parents relegated to the second biggest room. Kate pushed open the bedroom door, expecting to see the usual teenage mess. But it was tidy and clean, the bed made, the floor clear of objects and recently vacuumed. Kate had a feeling that was Mrs Stemmicks’s doing – keeping a clean and orderly house was clearly one of her priorities. Kate found herself wondering whether Veronica’s mother had a job.
She tossed a set of gloves to Rav and closed the door behind them. She and Rav had done many house searches since they began working together, and they didn’t need to say anything on this occasion. Rav moved to the wardrobe and began checking the dresses and coats hanging within. Kate began on the bookshelves – she always started with the bookshelves – pulling out books and shaking them out over the carpet.
They searched quickly, knowing instinctively that Mrs Stemmick would not give them much uninterrupted privacy. Kate checked the desk, the boxes under the single bed, examined the underside of the drawers of the small chest of drawers. Finally, she pulled back the bedclothes of the bed, tossed the pillows onto the carpet and turned to Rav.
“Are you okay to help me up with this?” Rav had been seriously injured in the course of duty, some years before, and Kate was always anxious that he must not overdo it physically.
“Yeah, of course. Ready? Up we go...”
The two of them upended the mattress and there it was, lying grey and innocuous on the white sheet of the valance that covered the bed base.
It was a mobile phone; a small, cheap model. Kate and Rav looked at the phone and then looked at each other, both feeling a small spark of excitement at the find.
“Got a bag?” was all that Kate said.
“Sure.” Rav took an evidence bag from his backpack and held it out with gloved fingers. Kate gingerly picked up the phone and dropped it into the bag.
They didn’t speak about it then but continued their search, finding nothing else of significance. They tidied up, Kate tucking the bedsheets back around the mattress again and pulling the duvet up neatly, and then went downstairs to reassure Mrs Stemmick that everything was as it should be, hand her the card and number for Victim Support, and then make their farewells.
They had driven three miles before Rav broke the silence.
“So...” was all he said but with a tone that made Kate look over at him quickly.
“It might be nothing.”
“I know. But it might not be.”
Kate tapped the steering wheel with her fingers. “How many teenagers have more than one phone? How many people have more than one phone?”
“It’s not that.” Rav shifted in his seat, pulling his seatbelt a little away from himself. “Loads of people have more than one phone, mostly all old ones they don’t use anymore. But—”
“They don’t normally keep them hidden under a mattress,” finished Kate.
They drove on in silence. Then Rav piped up again. “It’ll be short work to dig into the contacts and call log, anyway.”
“Yep.”
“Are you going to tell the boss or shall I?”
At the thought of Anderton, Kate’s stomach gave a twist. “You can,” she said hastily and followed it up with, “I’ve got absolutely tons to do.”
“All right,” said Rav.
Kate looked over at him. “Oh, and one of the things I’m going to do first is read your report.”
“Knock yourself out,” Rav said, settling his head more comfortably against the head rest and closing his eyes.
“You sound like Theo,” Kate said, amused.
“He wishes,” mumbled Rav, sounding half asleep. Kate said nothing but chuckled silently. She glanced at the sat nav – twenty two minutes until they reached the station. She thought of that innocuous grey mobile phone, safely sealed inside an evidence bag, and felt another twinge of excitement mixed with anxiety. The sense of something more, something that they were missing, came back to her sharply. Perhaps this new discovery would shed some light on the darkness. She glanced over at Rav, fully asleep by now, and pressed her foot down a little harder on the accelerator.
Chapter Fourteen
“Interesting,” said Olbeck, leaning back in his chair. Kate was perched on the side of his desk and had just told him about the phone that she and Rav had found. “Think there’ll be anything in it?”
“Not sure. It could be completely innocent. Tech is looking into it now, and I’ll get Fliss to cross-check any numbers that come up.”
“Good stuff.” Olbeck stretched and then laced his fingers behind his head. “Feels like ages since we’ve had a chance to catch
up, we’ve been so busy.”
“I know.” Kate’s mobile rang just as she was beginning to elaborate on her recent activities. She glanced down at the phone, which she’d laid on the top of Olbeck’s desk, and saw that the caller was her brother, Jay. Biting her lip, she let the phone ring out and go to voicemail.
Olbeck had seen who the caller was. Kate muttered something about needing to get on and got up, but he put out a hand to stop her. “Jay sent me a message on Facebook the other day,” he said, his face concerned. “He was worried about you, said he hadn’t been able to get into contact with you, and there’s things he needs to discuss.”
“Jay contacted you?” Kate asked, annoyed.
“Yes, because he couldn’t get hold of you! Why are you screening his calls?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is my business. I’m your friend, and Jay’s friend too. Now, what’s going on?”
“There’s nothing going on,” snapped Kate. “I just don’t particularly want to talk to him at the moment, it’ll be nothing but wedding stuff and I really couldn’t give a damn, to be honest.”
Olbeck gave her an old-fashioned look. “You couldn’t give a damn about your own brother’s wedding?”
“It’s not that, exactly,” Kate said, on the back foot now and even more annoyed because of it. “It’s just—”
“It’s not just the wedding, anyway,” said Olbeck. “He needs to talk to you about your mum’s house and what you’re going to do with it.”
Kate felt her face set. “Now, that really isn’t any of your business.”
“Maybe not, but—” Olbeck’s desk phone began to ring, and he made a noise of impatience. “Look, Kate, you need to talk to Jay. And you need to talk to me, or someone. You can’t keep pushing us all away, it’s not healthy. There’s nothing wrong with being able to grieve you know, it’s not a crime. Have you seen Magda, lately?”