The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  ‘Nadine’s been a busy bee,’ Kirsty commented.

  ‘I can see that,’ Anna said, stunned.

  ‘Paul’s off sick, by the way,’ Kirsty said. ‘So it’s just you and me.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘I’m going to make some coffee. Want some?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No thanks.’

  Kirsty took the office kettle into the tiny cloakroom across the corridor. ‘I’m going to need a ton of caffeine to get me through today,’ she said, coming back. ‘Charlie kept waking me up with nightmares. I think he might be going down with something. Please God let it not be that projectile vomiting thing that’s going round.’ Kirsty kept a photo of her three year old on her desk, blond and mischievous, clutching a toy truck. She didn’t obsess about him in that tedious way so many mothers did; nevertheless, Anna had the impression that it was dynamic little Charlie, rather than Jason, her husband, who was the love of her life.

  ‘Quite sure you don’t want a cup?’ Kirsty asked again, spooning coffee granules into her mug.

  ‘Positive,’ said Anna, who loathed instant coffee with a passion. She settled down to read her messages, all concerning actual or potential glitches that might disrupt next week’s conference. Thanks to Nadine, Anna would have to keep her head down till lunchtime fine-tuning next week’s arrangements. Hopefully, that meant that any mention of the Port Meadow stabbing could be avoided, at least for now.

  She logged on at her computer to email the caterers the latest update on the delegates’ increasingly complicated dietary requirements. Years ago, before the sky fell in on her life, Anna used to imagine all kinds of exotic futures for herself: an intrepid medic with Médicines Sans Frontièrs, or an eloquent human rights lawyer. She had never once imagined admin. She’d taken the job share as a way to structure her days, to help her stay sane while she pursued the real, secret business of her life, but some days, like today, she felt a sapping despair. Was this to be her life from now on?

  ‘Would it cheer you up at all to know that I have cake?’

  Startled out of her thoughts, Anna looked up to see Kirsty watching her. ‘Sorry, was I looking very suicidal?’

  Kirsty gave her a sympathetic grin. ‘Just a little bit!’ She continued to look at Anna with an expectant expression. She had something on her mind, but Anna didn’t think it was the murders. ‘Don’t you want to know why I have cake?’ Kirsty persisted.

  ‘It’s not your birthday, is it?’ Anna said dismayed.

  Kirsty attempted a seated curtsey. ‘Actually, it is!’ She waved away Anna’s apologies. ‘You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you! I hate those office traditions. Except the cake part, obviously! I stopped off at Patisserie Valerie on the way here.’ She lifted a beribboned patisserie box on to her desk. ‘Look what else I bought, in Blackwell’s. This is my birthday present to me!’ Kirsty passed her a glossy hard-backed book. ‘I was just having a sneaky flick through when you came in.’

  Anna glanced at it. ‘The Boy in the Blue Shirt. Oh, this is that new biography of Owen Traherne. Someone told me about it just recently.’ She had spoken without thinking and felt her body flood with adrenalin as she remembered that this someone was Isadora Salzman. Kit Tulliver, the author of the book that Anna was holding in her hands, had been one of her students.

  ‘Everyone’s talking about it,’ said Kirsty. ‘Owen Traherne is seriously hot property just—’ She broke off, concerned. ‘Are you OK? You’ve gone really pale.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Anna fibbed. ‘I just forgot to have breakfast.’ For a moment her grip on reality was so shaky, she was afraid that Isadora and Tansy might actually materialize in their airless little office, trailing small dogs, vodka fumes and murder.

  Dreading the onset of a full-scale panic attack (she hadn’t had a really bad one for years), Anna forced herself to breathe slowly and calmly while she pretended to be taking an interest in the blurb on the back of Kirsty’s book. There was a photograph of Kit Tulliver taken against a backdrop of leafless branches, a woollen scarf looped around his neck. Apparently, there was a tiny remnant of Anna’s psyche that wasn’t totally consumed by the need to stave off terror because she was still able to register that Isadora’s former student was remarkably good-looking. She gave the book back to Kirsty, hoping she wouldn’t notice how much her hand was shaking. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever read any biographies.’ She couldn’t tell if her voice sounded normal. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d just said.

  ‘This is not biographies, Anna. This is the biography that’s just been green-lighted for a Hollywood movie. Michael Fassbender is going to play Owen. That’s how hot this biography is!’

  ‘Why did they launch the book in Oxford though? I thought Owen Traherne was Welsh,’ Anna said, to keep up her end of their conversation.

  ‘He might have been born in Wales,’ Kirsty said in a dismissive tone, ‘but he did his degree and postgrad studies here. He and Audrey made Oxford their home, brought their son up here, and he wrote all his best known poems here. He was Oxford Professor of Poetry for a while. And now he’s buried here. Naturally, Oxford’s literary mafia is going to claim him for their own!’

  To her relief, Anna felt the fog of fear dispersing as she recovered from her shock. ‘You seem to be doing a fair bit of claiming yourself,’ she pointed out.

  Kirsty laughed. ‘Can you blame me? Owen Traherne was seriously fit – if you like your men sexy and dishevelled!’ Flicking to the middle of the book, Kirsty showed Anna a photo of a big bear-like man in a rumpled cord jacket. ‘I mean, look at those eyes! I’m talking about back in the day, obviously, before poor Audrey committed suicide and he started drinking so heavily, not how he was at the end.’

  Anna frowned at the picture. ‘Maybe, back in the day,’ she admitted. ‘He does have amazing eyes.’ Amazing, but not very kind, she thought as she looked at that ferociously intelligent face. You would need a lot of courage to love and be loved by a man like that. ‘I actually remember one of his poems,’ Anna said to her own surprise. ‘I had to study it for A level.’ Her recall of her two years in the sixth form was imperfect to say the least. She’d been absent more often than not. But for whatever reason the Traherne poem had stuck. Anna thought for a moment, then recited, ‘“I have passed through the six gates; the gate of black ice, the rust red gate of shame, the shadow gate, where nothing has a name.” I can’t remember the rest,’ she said hastily to cover the fact that she had suddenly remembered the last passionate lines all too well.

  ‘He wrote that for Audrey in the last years of their marriage,’ Kirsty said. ‘Can you imagine any man baring his soul like that after you’ve been together that long? I’ve been married less than twelve months, and I’m lucky if I get a hot cup of tea out of Jason.’

  She looked wistfully out of the window then brightened. ‘Since you forgot to have breakfast, shall we bring elevenses forward and have my birthday cake now?’

  The sugar rush from Kirsty’s cake helped Anna to keep functioning until lunchtime. Emerging on to the busy street she quickly put on sunglasses, shielding her eyes from the dazzling September sunlight. She hurried past the Grand Cafe, forcing herself to ignore the savoury smells that wafted out.

  How was Kirsty going to feel when she found out that Anna had spent her morning methodically working her way through Nadine’s Post-its (not to mention a sizeable portion of Kirsty’s birthday cake), while somehow never getting around to mentioning that it was Anna who had found Naomi’s body? Kirsty was going to think she was inhuman.

  Anna was afraid that might be true. She supposed she’d been born with normal instincts, but then the sky had fallen in and they’d been supplanted by this new imperative to camouflage and conceal. And now she was voluntarily going back for yet another uncomfortable encounter with DCI Chaudhari. She had to do it, because of Naomi.

  That was the real reason she’d told her grandfather, Anna thought with a guilty pang. Not only because she’d needed him to reassure her that, in this matter at
least, she was sane. She’d needed him to uphold her shaky inner knowledge that this was the right thing to do.

  She noticed two stressed-looking young women consulting a street map. Anna recognized them as Walsingham undergraduates. The tall shy one had been sent home with glandular fever at a time when all their friends were hunting for rented accommodation for their second year. She guessed they were belatedly looking for somewhere now before the Michaelmas term started. On a nearby news-stand Anna saw a new headline: ‘“Oxford Ripper Will Strike Again,” Police Chief Warns.’ She imagined being nineteen years old and living outside college with a possible serial killer on the loose.

  Curling her fingers tightly around her phone, Anna turned towards St Aldates, determined to see this through. She didn’t want to be that driven impostor, that Anna lookalike who no longer knew what was right. She would march into the police station like a normal concerned person, and she would ask to see Inspector Chaudhari and make him listen to Naomi’s message.

  But when she arrived Inspector Chaudhari wasn’t there. The desk sergeant said he’d been called out a couple of hours ago and she couldn’t say when he’d be back.

  With every atom of her body urging her to bolt while she had the chance, Anna was surprised and impressed to hear her voice saying firmly, ‘In that case I’ll just wait here until he comes back.’

  She went to sit on one of the bolted down plastic seats. For forty-five minutes, she played phone solitaire and did crosswords while the life of the station went on around her. After an hour and a half, Anna was so hungry and bored that she drifted into a kind of trance.

  When Inspector Chaudhari eventually walked in with his sergeant, they appeared to be in the middle of an intense discussion. Their expressions were set and grim.

  ‘Sir!’ the desk sergeant called. ‘This lady’s been waiting to see you, sir.’

  Anna unpeeled herself from her seat and stood up.

  ‘Ms Hopkins,’ the inspector said, surprised. ‘How can I help you?’

  She quickly explained about Naomi’s message. ‘I don’t know if it’s relevant to your investigation, but I thought you should at least hear it.’

  He gave her a polite nod. ‘Much appreciated, but as it turns out, things have moved on since we last spoke.’ He glanced sombrely at his sergeant.

  Anna felt sick. ‘You found another body.’

  The inspector sounded more than usually weary. ‘Yes, unfortunately. In Christchurch Meadow. Same MO, as far as we can tell. We can’t tell you any more than that at present, obviously. But please, yes, give your phone to Sergeant Goodhart here, and he’ll record your message for our records.’

  Anna numbly unlocked her phone and handed it to Goodhart, and he hurried away up a flight of stairs.

  ‘I’m actually glad to have this opportunity to talk,’ the inspector said. ‘Perhaps we could sit down?’ He gently steered her back to the seating area and took the seat beside her. ‘I wanted to explain something about yesterday,’ he said. ‘We’re trained to try to get to the truth. One method for achieving that is to deconstruct people and situations. It’s not personal; it’s just a method that works, or mostly works,’ he amended.

  Anna felt herself tense. ‘You had a job to do. I understood that,’ she said coolly.

  ‘A bloody job and a half it’s been these past few weeks,’ he agreed. He looked down at his hands, so that Anna noticed them for the first time – strong square hands with blunt spatulate fingers. ‘All these women. Everyone getting on edge. The local media demanding to know why we hadn’t caught the “Oxford Ripper” yet. But after I got home I found myself trying to imagine things from your point of view. Well, I didn’t feel too proud of myself to be honest. And I realized I’d forgotten …’ He took a breath. ‘I’d forgotten how hard it must have been for you being here in this station. It must have brought back some really bad—’

  ‘It was a very long time ago,’ she said, cutting off his apologies, which she found almost more upsetting than his faux CSI tactics.

  To her horror he hadn’t finished. ‘I used to have to drive past the house every day on my way in to work,’ he added in a low voice. ‘You probably know it’s been torn down now.’

  ‘I do, actually. It was my house after all,’ she said childishly.

  She saw him register the snub. After a while he stood up. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and grab a sandwich. Hopefully, my sergeant won’t be much longer. And thank you once again, Ms Hopkins, for all your help.’

  He set off a little wearily up the stairs just as Sergeant Goodhart came hurtling down with her phone.

  To Anna’s surprise he lingered as she slipped her phone into the front pocket of her bag.

  ‘We’re going to get him, you know,’ he said abruptly. ‘We’re going to get whoever murdered your friend and these other women. I can’t tell you any more than that at this stage, but I just thought you deserved to know.’

  She swallowed. ‘Thank you.’

  Anna walked out through the automatic doors, telling herself that she’d done what she came to do. A totally pointless gesture, as it turned out, but she could tell herself that she had done her best for Naomi. Now Sergeant Goodhart had as good as told her that the net was closing in around Naomi’s killer. They’d catch him soon, and the city could go back to normal.

  So why didn’t she feel as if it was over?

  FIVE

  Barefoot in her long T-shirt and only half-awake after her usual restless night, Anna drew back her curtains. The sudden movement caused a startled blackbird to take off into a flawless blue sky. Those first few days after she’d found Naomi’s body, Anna had barely registered what seemed like perversely lovely weather. But now, almost two weeks later, she couldn’t help her delight at yet another golden autumnal morning in what was starting to feel like an endless Indian summer.

  Anna was especially grateful for the continuing fine weather since this was the morning she’d arranged to meet Bonnie’s previous owner, Jake McCaffrey, in the University Parks. Though they had emailed several times now and spoken on the phone, and Jake seemed like a pleasant guy, she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of some strange man just turning up at her house. Meeting him in a public place had seemed the wisest solution. However, she wanted Jake and Bonnie’s open-air reunion to be a success – something which would be that much harder if it was chucking it down with rain. Despite living through bomb blasts and terrorist attacks, her white wolf was comically averse to getting wet.

  Typically, Anna thought, mentally rolling her eyes at herself, as soon as everything had been finalized, she’d started having extreme misgivings about meeting this American who had been such a big presence in Bonnie’s life. For one thing, she felt as if she and Bonnie were finally starting to bond. Seeing Jake might just confuse her all over again. Also, apart from the fact that he had once owned her dog, she doubted they’d have much in common. Jake had told her he’d spent most of his adult life in the US Navy and was now helping to run some kind of international security business. He’d fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Anna had a horror of violence of any kind. Last but not least, he had grown up in the American South, not exactly famous for its liberal views.

  Jake’s slight but unmistakable southern drawl had taken Anna by surprise the first time they’d talked. Other things had surprised her; he was better informed about the world than she’d privately expected a former US marine to be – better informed, in fact, than Anna herself – but he didn’t seem to feel the need to impress. She’d noticed that he always tried to say exactly what he meant, even if this took a while to formulate. Once or twice when they were on the phone he’d lapsed into such a long silence that she’d begun to wonder if he’d accidentally wandered out of range.

  When she’d told him of Naomi’s death, he’d been speechless for so long that she did eventually say questioningly, ‘Hello? Are you OK?’

  And he’d said huskily, ‘Excuse me a moment. I think I need to take that in.’
After another long pause, he’d said, ‘Do they know who did it?’

  She’d explained about the other murdered women and that the media seemed confident that the police were closing in on the man they insisted on referring to as the ‘Oxford Ripper’. She could feel Jake still trying to come to terms with the untimely death of the woman who had solved the mystery of what had happened to his beloved dog.

  ‘And Bonnie found her?’ he said. ‘This sounds really dumb, but I’d had this idea I was sending her to live in some kind of English haven. I never envisaged dead bodies.’

  During his most recent phone call Jake had confessed that though he’d visited his aunt Mimi in Oxford a couple of times, he’d never properly explored the city she’d adopted as her home. To her dismay Anna heard herself politely offering to show him around. He’d texted her from London between meetings saying that Mimi had once mentioned a restaurant in the Cotswolds called the Black Bear Inn, and would Anna allow him to take her there for lunch as a thank-you for being his tour guide?

  Anna had heard good things about the Black Bear so she allowed herself to be persuaded.

  She showered and dressed in skinny jeans and a light cream-coloured Breton sweater. She couldn’t decide on shoes, eventually opting for short biker-style boots with buckles, which she thought looked stylish as well as being reasonably comfortable to walk in.

  Too nervous to eat, Anna made a pot of coffee in lieu of breakfast. While it brewed, she cleared out the old receipts and crumpled up tissues that had inevitably accumulated in her messenger bag over the past few days. In the front pocket she came across a card advertising a local vegan cafe with Tansy’s mobile number scribbled on the back. Anna had intended to throw it away with the rest of the rubbish, but at the last minute she’d returned it to her bag; she couldn’t have said why. She had liked Tansy and Isadora, but in that way you feel an affinity with appealing strangers on a train. She couldn’t seriously imagine getting in touch with either of them.