by S J Bolton
The Queen Anne house, built nearly three hundred years ago for the master of one of the older Cambridge colleges, was the last place Evi had expected to be offered as living accommodation when she’d accepted her new job. A large house of soft warm brickwork, with blond limestone detailing, it was one of the most prestigious homes in the university’s gift. Its previous occupant, an internationally renowned professor of physics who’d narrowly missed the Nobel Prize twice, had lived in it for nearly thirty years. After meningitis robbed him of his lower limbs, the university had converted the house into disabled-living accommodation.
The professor had died nine months ago and when Evi was offered the post of head of student counselling, with part-time teaching and tutoring responsibilities, the university had seen a chance to recoup some of its investment.
The flagstone path was short. Just five yards through the centre of the knot garden and she’d be at the elaborate front porch. Carriage-style lanterns either side of the door lit the full length of the path. Usually she was glad of them. Tonight she wasn’t so sure.
Because without them, she probably wouldn’t have seen the trail of fir cones leading from the gate to the door.
‘YOU’RE LOOKING AT Bryony Carter,’ Joesbury told me. ‘Nineteen years old. First-year medical student.’
‘What happened?’
‘She set fire to herself,’ he replied. ‘On the night of her college Christmas ball a few weeks ago. Maybe she was pissed off not to be invited, but dinner was just coming to an end when she staggered in like a human torch.’
I risked a glance at the figure enveloped in flames. ‘Grim,’ I said, which didn’t seem enough. Choosing to die at your own hand was one thing. To do it by fire was another entirely. ‘And people saw this happen?’
Joesbury gave a single, short nod. ‘Not only did they see it, several took photographs on their iPhones. I ask you, kids!’
I started to look through the rest of the photographs. The burning girl had thrown her head back and it wasn’t possible to see her face. One thing to be grateful for. More of a problem were small, vague shapes visible through the flames that looked like chunks of flesh melting away from her body. And her left hand, outstretched towards the camera, had turned black. It looked more like a chicken’s claw than anything you might see on a human body.
The fifth photograph in the stack showed the girl on the floor. A long-haired man wearing a dinner jacket and a shocked expression was standing closest to her, a fire extinguisher in his arms. An upturned ice bucket lay nearby. A girl in a blue dress had a water jug in one hand.
‘She was pretty high on some new-fangled hallucinogenic drug at the time,’ said Joesbury. ‘You have to hope she didn’t know too much about what was going on.’
‘What has it got to do with SO10?’ I asked.
‘First question I asked,’ he replied. ‘Local CID aren’t unduly concerned. They’ve done the classic three-tick-box check to determine a suicide and found nothing to suggest anything sinister.’
I took a moment to wonder how many acts would be considered more sinister than setting fire to yourself. ‘I’m not familiar with that,’ I said. ‘What you just said about tick-boxes.’
‘Means, Motive, Intent,’ said Joesbury. ‘First thing to check with a possible suicide is whether the means of death was readily to hand. Pistol close by the shooting hand, noose round the neck and something to stand on, that sort of thing. In Bryony’s case, the petrol can was found outside the dining hall. And the investigating officer found a receipt for it in her room. He also found traces of the drug she’d been using for Dutch courage.’
Someone leaned over to put an empty glass on the table and caught sight of the photograph. Without looking up, I slid the pictures under the file.
‘Next box is motive,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Bryony had been depressed for some time. She was a bright girl but she was struggling to keep up with the coursework. Complained about never being able to sleep.’
‘What about intent?’ I asked.
Joesbury nodded. ‘She left a note to her mother. Short and very sad, I’m told. The report prepared by the first officer on the scene and the SOCs report on the state of her room are in the file,’ he went on. ‘No evidence of staging that they could see.’
Staging refers to tricks sometimes used by killers to make a murder look like suicide. Placing a gun near to a victim’s hand would be a classic example. The absence of the victim’s fingerprints on the gun would indicate staging.
‘And a couple of hundred people saw her do it,’ I said.
‘They certainly saw her in flames,’ said Joesbury. ‘And it’s the third suicide at the university this academic year. Does the name Jackie King ring any bells?’
I thought for a moment and shook my head.
‘Killed herself in November. Made a few of the national papers.’
‘I must have missed it.’ Since the case we’d both worked on last autumn, I’d made a point of avoiding the papers and the national news. I would never be comfortable seeing my own name in the spotlight, and constant reminders of what the team had been through were not, as the therapists would say, going to help the healing process.
‘I still don’t get it,’ I went on. ‘Why are SO10 interested in a college suicide?’
Joesbury pulled another file out of his bag. Asking him not to open it didn’t really seem like an option so I sat and waited while he pulled out another set of photographs. Not that multiples were strictly necessary. I got the idea clearly enough from the one on the top. A girl, obviously dead, with wet hair and clothes. And a rope tied tight around her ankles.
‘This was a suicide?’ I asked.
‘Apparently so,’ he replied. ‘Certainly no obvious evidence otherwise. This was Jackie in her better days.’
Joesbury had pulled the last of the photographs to the top of the pile. Jackie King looked the outdoor type. She was wearing a sailing-style sweatshirt, her hair was long, fair, shiny and straight. Young, healthy, bright and attractive, surely she’d had everything to live for?
‘Poor girl,’ I said, and waited for him to go on.
‘Three suicides this year, three last, four the year before,’ he said. ‘Cambridge is developing a very unhealthy record when it comes to young people taking their own lives.’
EVI STOPPED, WILLING the wind to soften so that she could hear the snigger, the scuffle of feet that would tell her someone was watching. Because someone had to be watching. There was no way these cones had blown on to the path. There were twelve in all, one in the exact centre of each flagstone, forming a straight line right up to the front door.
Three nights in a row this had happened. Last night and the night before it had been possible to explain away. The cones had been scattered the first time she’d seen them, as though blown by the wind. Last night, there’d been a pile of them just inside the gate. This was much more deliberate.
Who could possibly know how much she hated fir cones?
She turned on the spot, using the stick for balance. Too much noise from the wind to hear anything. Too many shadows to be sure she was alone. She should get indoors. Walking as quickly up the path as she was able, she reached the front door and stepped inside.
Another cone, larger than the rest, lay on the mat.
Evi kept her indoor wheelchair to one side of the front door. Without taking her eyes off the cone, she pushed the door shut and sat down in it. She was in the grip of an old, irrational fear, one she acknowledged but was powerless to do anything about, dating back to when, as a chubby, inquisitive four-year-old, she’d picked up a large fir cone from beneath a tree.
She’d been on holiday in the north of Italy with her family. The pine trees in the forest had been massive, stretching up to the heavens, or so it had seemed to the tiny girl. The cone was huge too, easily dwarfing her little plump hands. She’d picked it up, turned to her mother in delight and felt a tickle on her left wrist.
When she looked down, her ha
nds and the lower parts of her arms were covered in crawling insects. She remembered howling and one of her parents brushing the insects away. But some had got inside her clothes and they’d had to undress her in the forest. Years later, the memory of delight turning to revulsion still had the power to disturb her.
No one could know that. Even her parents hadn’t mentioned the incident in decades. A weird joke, nothing more, probably nothing to do with her. Maybe a child had been playing here earlier, had left a trail of cones and popped one through her letter box. Evi wheeled herself towards the kitchen. She got as far as the doorway.
Heaped on the kitchen table, which several hours ago she’d left completely clear, was a pile of large fir cones.
‘YOUNG PEOPLE COMMITTING suicide is hardly uncommon, though,’ I said, thinking as I spoke. ‘The suicide rate is higher among the student body than the rest of the population, isn’t it? Wasn’t there a case in Wales a few years ago?’
‘You’re thinking about Bridgend,’ said Joesbury. ‘Although technically, that didn’t involve a university. Cluster suicides do happen. But they’re rare. And Dana’s mate isn’t the only one who’s worried. The media attention is getting the governing body very edgy too. Outlandish public suicides don’t look good for one of the world’s leading academic institutions.’
‘But no suggestion of foul play?’ I asked.
‘On the contrary. Both Bryony and Jackie had a psychiatric history,’ said Joesbury. ‘Jackie in the past, Bryony more recently.’
‘Bryony was receiving counselling?’
‘She was,’ said Joesbury. ‘Not by Dana’s friend herself, what’s her name …’ He pulled a stack of paper from the file and flicked through it. ‘Oliver,’ he said, after a moment, ‘Dr Evi Oliver … not with her but with one of her colleagues. There’s a team of counsellors dedicated to the university and Dr Oliver heads it up.’
‘What about the other girl?’ I said.
Joesbury nodded. ‘Jackie had her problems too, according to her friends,’ he said. ‘So did the young lad who hanged himself in his third week.’ Joesbury glanced down at his notes. ‘Jake Hammond. Nineteen-year-old English student.’
‘How many cases are we talking about?’
‘Nineteen in five years, including Bryony Carter,’ said Joesbury.
‘Well, I can see why the authorities are worried,’ I said. ‘But I don’t get why SO10 are involved.’
Joesbury leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He looked thinner than I remembered. He’d lost muscle definition from his chest and shoulders. ‘Old girls’ network,’ he said. ‘Dr Oliver contacts her old Cambridge buddy Dana, who in turn gets in touch with her old mentor on the force, another Cambridge alumna.’
‘Who is?’
‘Sonia Hammond.’
Joesbury waited for the name to register. It didn’t.
‘Commander Sonia Hammond,’ he prompted. ‘Currently head of the covert operations directorate at Scotland Yard.’
I’d got it. ‘Your boss,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you reported to a woman.’
Joesbury raised one eyebrow. I’d forgotten he could do that. ‘Story of my life,’ he said. ‘Commander Hammond has a daughter at Cambridge, so she has an added interest.’
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘What on earth do they think an undercover operation in the city of dreaming spires will achieve?’
‘I think the city of dreaming spires is Oxford,’ said Joesbury. ‘Dr Oliver has this theory that the suicides aren’t coincidence. She thinks there is something decidedly sinister going on.’
AFTER EVI HAD thanked the young WPC, she locked and bolted the front door, still more shaken than she wanted to admit. The policewoman had been polite, searching the house thoroughly and stressing that Evi should call immediately if anything else happened. Otherwise, though, she clearly wasn’t planning any action other than a report. There had been no evidence of a break-in, she’d explained, and fir cones were hardly threatening.
The woman had a point, of course. Evi wasn’t even the only one with keys to her house. Her cleaning company let themselves in every Tuesday. The building was owned by the university and it wasn’t impossible that there’d been some unscheduled, emergency visit by maintenance. Why fir cones should have been brought into the house by a maintenance team was another matter, but not one the young officer was going to spend any time worrying about.
Evi crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle. She’d just switched it on when something scraped along the kitchen window. She jumped so high in the air she almost fell over.
‘Just the tree,’ she told herself, realizing she still hadn’t taken her painkillers. ‘Just that blessed tree again.’
Evi’s kitchen overlooked the rear walled garden, which led down to the river bank. A massive cedar tree grew just beyond the house and its lower branches had a habit of scratching against the ground-floor windows when the wind was strong.
Evi took her painkillers, waited a few minutes for the effect to kick in and then ate as much as she could manage. She cleared the plates and pushed herself through to the bedroom, only stopping to pick up the fir cone from the mat. She pushed it back through the letter box without so much as a shudder. The ones from her kitchen table were outside in the rubbish bin.
She turned on the bathroom taps and started to undress. On her bedside table was an opened letter. It had arrived a few days ago in a thick padded envelope. She’d shaken it over the bed and watched shells, pebbles, dried seaweed and, finally, a snapshot of a family fall out. The photograph lay face up on the table. Mum, dad, young children. They’d been patients of hers the previous year and had turned into friends. They’d just bought a semi-derelict bungalow on the coast road of Lytham St Annes in Lancashire and come the spring, the mother had written, planned to demolish the house and build their new dream home. It would be their second attempt; their first hadn’t worked out too well. Evi was welcome, the letter insisted, to visit any time. There had been no mention of Harry.
Knowing she shouldn’t, Evi opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a newspaper article that she’d found on an internet archive. She didn’t bother reading the words, she knew them off by heart. She just needed to look at his face.
The bath would be filling up. Just one more second to look at hair that was somewhere between strawberry blond and honey, at light brown eyes, square jaw and lips that always seemed to be curved in a smile, even when he was trying, as in the picture, to look serious. Just one more second to wonder when the good days, the ones when she could push him to the back of her mind like old memories, would outnumber the bad ones, when he was hammering at the front, so vivid she could almost smell the lime and ginger fragrance of his skin. Just one more second to wonder when the pain was going to go away.
By the time the water began to go cold, Evi was almost asleep. She pressed the button that would activate the lift and bring her out of the bath. She managed to stand unaided for long enough to dry herself and rub body lotion into her skin. You have such soft skin, he’d whispered to her once. As she left the bathroom, there were tears in her eyes and she didn’t even bother telling herself that it was just the pain, so much worse at night lately, that was making her cry.
She hadn’t seen the message on the bathroom mirror, which only the steam from the hot water had made visible.
I can see you, it said.
‘SINISTER HOW?’ I asked Joesbury.
‘Dr Oliver believes there is – and I’m reading directly from notes now – a subversive subculture of glamorizing the suicidal act,’ said Joesbury. ‘She thinks these kids, backed up by an online network, are egging each other on.’
‘People said that about Bridgend,’ I said.
‘Always very difficult to prove,’ said Joesbury. ‘But there are documented cases of suicide pacts, of people meeting, usually online, and deciding to end it all together. They give each other the courage to go through with it.’
I nodded.
I’d read about such cases from time to time.
‘More disturbing,’ Joesbury went on, ‘is a trend of what I can only call bottom-feeders accessing websites and chat rooms specifically to find depressed and vulnerable people. They strike up friendships, pretend to be concerned, but all the while they’re pushing them towards topping themselves. And there are websites where suicidal people go to talk to like-minded others, discuss which methods are most effective, get a bit of courage together for when they finally take the plunge.’ Joesbury looked down at his notes again. ‘Dr Oliver calls it negative reinforcement,’ he said, ‘sometimes deliberate and malicious, of self-destructive urges.’
‘She sounds a laugh a minute,’ I said.
‘Dana tells me she’s a bit of a babe,’ said Joesbury, with a smile I could cheerfully have slapped off him.
‘So assuming I agree,’ I said, ‘what exactly will I be investigating?’
‘You won’t be investigating as such,’ said Joesbury. ‘At this stage it doesn’t merit a full investigation. Your job will be to spend some time with this Dr Oliver, let her know we’re taking her seriously.’
‘So I’m a token gesture to keep her happy?’ I interrupted.
‘Not entirely. We also need you to immerse yourself in student life and report back on anything out of the ordinary. You’ll pay particular attention to the online websites and chat rooms that fly around the Fenland ether. You’ll be our eyes on the inside.’
I was silent for a second or two.
‘We need you to be the sort of student who might be thinking about suicide,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Needy, a bit vulnerable, prone to depression. We also want you to get yourself noticed, so you need to step it up a bit with the appearance. Good-looking fruitcake. That’s what we want.’
‘So, absolutely nothing suspicious came up at Bryony’s post-mortem?’ I asked, more because I was playing for time than because I needed to know right there and then.