by S J Bolton
‘Room-mate?’ I was nearly twenty-eight. I wanted to spend the next three months sharing a room with a teenager like I wanted to spend the next three months emailing Joesbury on a nightly basis.
‘Just a living space. Separate sleeping accommodation,’ replied Joesbury. ‘And the girl you’ll be sharing with was Bryony Carter’s room-mate. She’ll know as well as anyone if anything dodgy is going on.’
Silence for a moment.
‘It’s worth repeating that you will not be an investigating officer, just there to observe and report back. The psychiatrist, Dr Oliver, will be the only person at the university who knows who you are,’ continued Joesbury. ‘Local CID will know nothing about the operation, so won’t be available as backup. Not that you should need it.’
‘How soon do you want me there?’ I said.
Seconds more ticked by. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘My spider sense is tingling,’ I said. ‘And it’s not like I have anything to keep me in London.’
A few more seconds, then: ‘I appreciate it, Flint,’ he said, in a voice that had chilled down a degree or two. ‘Term’s only just started so you’ve only missed a week. We can get you there by Monday evening, if you’re up for it.’
I agreed that I was up for it and, after arranging to meet on Sunday for a detailed briefing, Joesbury wished me good night and hung up. I walked through my small flat to the conservatory at the rear.
Over the Christmas break I’d put solar lights around the small lawn, and even in January they gave off a faint glow throughout the night. There was frost gathering on the leaves, turning their various shades of green into intricate white lacework. The grass looked like frosting on a Christmas cake.
I’d never been to Cambridge. I’d grown up in and out of foster care and children’s homes. I hadn’t struggled at school – I was bright enough – but I’d never really taken academia seriously. The UK’s premier universities hadn’t been an option for someone like me, but now I was going to be a student at one of them, amongst people who, intellectually, could wipe the floor with me.
Jesus, what was I thinking? I had no idea how to be an undercover officer. SO10 trained its officers rigorously. The programme was tough and not everyone who applied made it through. Whilst it wasn’t unusual for run-of-the-mill detectives to go undercover, they were rarely sent into situations that would last any amount of time. Besides, I’d joined the Met to work on serious crimes against women. If I spent the next few months off the grid, I could miss the chance to transfer to one of the specialist units. Why had I agreed?
Like I needed the answer to that one. I was doing it for Joesbury.
MARK JOESBURY SWITCHED on the light and pushed back the bedcovers. The room was cold: he slept with the window open summer and winter alike. And it was full of light. His bedroom wasn’t directly overlooked and he rarely bothered pulling down the blinds. When he couldn’t sleep, most nights these days, he liked to watch the moonlight playing around the room, listen to the traffic outside, see the shadows ebb and flow around the walls.
He got up, used the loo and ran a glass of water. As he drank, he realized the usual headache had kicked in already. He’d developed a constant, niggling cough from the bottom of his chest that his doctor told him was a sure sign he was drinking too much. He’d stop, no problem, once he got back to work properly. Once he got over this stupid obsession with Lacey Flint.
And he’d made a good start on that last one, what with dragging her into his latest case.
The computer in his tiny spare bedroom was never switched off. He tapped the space bar to restore the screen and typed out a quick email. Two words.
You awake?
The answer came back in seconds.
Yup.
Joesbury picked up his phone and pressed speed dial 4. Speed dial 3 got him Dana Tulloch’s mobile, speed dial 2 the house where his eight-year-old son lived with his ex-wife. The man on the end of speed dial 4 answered quickly.
‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘She’ll do it,’ Joesbury replied.
‘Good stuff.’ Soft noises in the background, as if someone was eating.
‘I’m not happy,’ said Joesbury.
‘We’ve discussed this.’ A low-pitched moan.
‘We shouldn’t keep her in the dark.’
‘She knows as much as she needs to. Decision made. You been on YouPorn lately?’
Joesbury’s skin was starting to goose-pimple. ‘Can’t say I have,’ he told his boss.
‘Check out Dirty Brunette Finds New Use For Her Tongue.’
‘You need to get a life, guv. And a girlfriend.’
‘Could say the same about you, buddy. See you in the morning.’
Joesbury put the phone down and walked back to his bedroom. Yeah, he needed a life. And a nice uncomplicated girlfriend. Someone like a nurse, or an air stewardess. What he wanted was Lacey. He was still carrying his phone. His finger hovered over speed dial 1. They’d spoken fewer than ten minutes ago. She’d be awake. He got into bed and pulled the quilt round his shoulders. The phone lay beside him on the pillow.
He knew he wasn’t going to call.
Sunday 13 January (nine days earlier)
THE GIRL AT the wheel of the Mini Convertible was staring straight ahead along an empty road. The trees on either side were very tall and thin, like long, skeletal fingers reaching to the sky. The few remaining leaves were still as stone. Wind that had earlier been racing across the Fens like a possessed soul seemed, at last, to have exhausted itself and the girl could hear nothing.
Except the voice in her head.
A sudden vibrating movement told her the car engine was running again. Her left hand reached down. The handbrake was off. This was it then.
Something, it could even have been her own foot, was pressing down on the accelerator. Tentative at first, and then with increasing pressure. More and more, until the pedal reached the floor of the car.
When the rope that had been firmly tied round a beech tree at one end and the girl’s neck at the other reached its full length there came a sound a little like that of a firework spluttering its last.
The Mini continued to speed forward for some seconds after the girl was no longer actively working the pedals. It stopped only when it collided with a food-delivery van heading the opposite way. The driver wasn’t injured, although what he saw in the driver’s seat of the Mini would feature in his nightmares for quite some time to come.
The girl’s severed head broke free of the rope, bounced a little way along the road, and came to rest amidst some nettle stumps.
Monday 14 January (eight days earlier)
‘AND THIS IS second court, Miss Farrow,’ said the porter, using the name that would be mine for the next few months. For the foreseeable future, I was to be Laura Farrow.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, knowing something was expected of me. What I really wanted to say was, it’s overwhelming.
I was finding the whole city of Cambridge overwhelming. The grandeur of the ancient buildings, the secret gardens and the name-dropping wall plaques; the boys on bicycles, college scarves wrapped carelessly round their throats, and the clear-skinned, plump-faced girls with their long limbs and intelligent eyes. Everything spoke of a world I would never truly understand, that I couldn’t even think of belonging to. And the red, navy and pale-blue college scarf I wore round my neck felt as though I’d stolen it.
With every step I took through these cloistered, medieval buildings, I could feel myself shrinking. It wasn’t going to be hard, pretending to be a vulnerable student, out of her depth in a new environment.
Minutes earlier, I’d presented myself at the main gate of the college I was to join. St John’s, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the university. The porter on duty, a middle-aged man with neatly combed hair and an impeccable uniform, who’d introduced himself as George, had been expecting me.
‘Most students don’t face this trek,’ he was saying as w
e passed through what looked like a castle gatehouse but was simply a passageway from one court to the next. ‘At the start of every term we have a drop-off system but it was easier just to help you carry your bags.’
I glanced behind to smile at a younger man who was carrying two of my bags. One of them, loaded up with books, was pretty heavy. The other contained my new student wardrobe. I was carrying the bag with my new Scotland Yard-issue laptop, plus personal effects and stationery supplies. George had insisted on carrying my gym bag.
‘There are a lot of porters,’ I said, as another man, as slick in his uniform as George himself, passed us and greeted George by name.
‘Lot of students,’ countered George. ‘We’re one of the biggest colleges in the university.’
I already knew that. Late the previous evening, DI Dana Tulloch had pitched up at Scotland Yard. After glaring at Joesbury, she’d attempted to explain the relationship between the university and the colleges, and how the Cambridge system differed from most other UK universities.
‘The university is like the umbrella,’ she’d explained. ‘It provides the teaching, mainly in the form of lectures, administers the examinations and awards the degrees. It also provides other communal facilities such as sports fields, the main library and so on.’
I’d nodded. So far, so good.
‘The colleges, on the other hand, are like homes,’ Tulloch had continued. ‘There are thirty-one of them. Each has a chapel, to take care of your spiritual needs, a dining hall for the physical, a library for knowledge, common rooms for recreation, big rooms for the dons and the fellows, little rooms for the undergraduates.’
‘Dons and fellows,’ I’d repeated, wondering if I should be making notes.
‘The colleges provide each student with a tutor, who acts almost in loco parentis,’ said Dana. ‘Your tutor oversees your studies, but also takes care of your well-being. Your tutor, for the sake of this exercise, will be my friend Evi.’
I’d yet to meet Evi. ‘Have you worked here long?’ I asked George.
‘Library on your right,’ he said, as we entered some buildings on the western side of the court. We passed through and stepped out on to a covered bridge of stone. The river was beneath us. ‘I’m the newest member of staff,’ he went on. ‘I’m just covering for one of the senior porters who’s had to take some sick leave. And now we’re in New Court, completed in 1831 in the Gothic style.’
Until that moment, I couldn’t have said what the Gothic style was, but looking around New Court I gathered that Gothic meant over-the-top elaborate, turrets from fairy tales, intricate carving that seemed more suited to a wedding cake than a structure of stone. We passed through another gateway and found ourselves facing much newer buildings.
‘This is where most of the undergraduates live,’ said George, as we headed for an awning at the entrance to the new block. ‘What do we say, Tom?’ He turned back to the man who was following us with my bags.
‘Start them at the back,’ replied Tom, a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair and kind brown eyes. ‘Let them move forward in their second year, then into First Court for their final year. They’re right by the main door then and it’s easier to kick ’em out.’
I gave the smile I knew was expected of me.
We entered the new building, climbing stairs and walking along a corridor that reminded me of a hospital, or a large police station. When we were almost at the end of it, George unlocked a door and stepped back to let me go inside first.
‘Your key is here,’ he said, putting it on a desk that ran the length of one wall. ‘We keep a spare in the porters’ lodge and your room-mate will have one. Nice girl, though we don’t see much of her. Now, no noise between eleven p.m. and seven a.m., parties need your tutor’s approval and your maid will report anything untoward to us.’
The room was some four yards square. Two desks ran along opposite walls. There were two easy chairs, two desk chairs, two wall-mounted bookcases. Two doors led off from the main room. One of them was ajar and I could see a small bedroom beyond it.
George had been watching me look round. ‘Everyone finds it strange at first,’ he said, ‘but you’ll soon get used to it. You’ve got an hour till dinner.’
I blinked hard. There had been tears in my eyes and George had seen them.
‘Good to have you at St John’s, Miss Farrow,’ he said. ‘You know where we are if you need us.’
I listened to their footsteps fade away down the corridor, thinking that their kindness had made me feel even more of a fraud.
‘Better get used to it,’ I told myself, and set about unpacking.
An hour later, I knew I’d never get used to it. I was trapped in a bubble of noise, of confident voices and the incessant chink of silverware. Surrounding me were pale faces above black robes, candles and floral arrangements, crystal goblets like raindrops along the starched linen, and all in a centuries-old dining hall in which Wordsworth and Wilberforce weren’t characters from history but alumni.
‘I think those flowers are expected to last most of the week,’ said the thin-faced, ginger-haired boy across from me. I looked down at the petals I’d unknowingly pulled from a yellow daisy, then back up at the boy, who could boast eighteen years and the kind of self-assured ease I’d never know.
‘Lady’s first time in Hall, cut her some slack,’ said the second-year physics student on my right. He’d taken pity on me earlier as I’d stood at the painted-arched doorway, feeling like an extra in a Harry Potter movie in my borrowed gown. He’d steered me inside, found me a seat and done his best to make conversation. After twenty minutes he’d given up. I was so nervous I couldn’t remember any of my cover story and I’d answered every question he’d asked me in monosyllables. I’d been hungry but faced with a three-course waitress-served dinner found I couldn’t eat. I needed a drink but didn’t dare pick up the impossibly thin crystal goblet. I knew I had to get to know these people and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
I was failing. Everyone who set eyes on me would know I didn’t belong here. Joesbury had made a massive mistake sending me, I’d made an even bigger one agreeing to come. I was so far out of my element I might as well be on Mars. And this was Monday evening, for God’s sake, when I normally work late, stop by the gym and shove a Tesco ready meal in the microwave.
When coffee was finally cleared away and people began to leave the room, I got up and slipped quickly through the crowd. I’d phone him, tell him it really wasn’t going to work.
‘Laura!’ A hand fell on my shoulder. I turned to see that the physics student had followed me out. ‘Good to meet you,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry. This place is weird, you just get used to it.’
As I tottered back to my room on borrowed heels, it occurred to me that, personal misgivings aside, the stage show that was needy, insecure Laura Farrow might just have pulled off a pretty impressive first act.
Tuesday 15 January (seven days earlier)
‘IT ISN’T TRUE that the rate of suicides at universities is higher than among the rest of the population. I know a lot of people believe it to be the case, but it isn’t.’
Dr Evi Oliver, the only person at Cambridge University who knew I was an undercover police officer, sipped from a glass of water on her desk. She’d been doing it a lot since I’d arrived, bringing the glass up to her mouth, sipping nervously and then putting it down again. The rest of the time, she was fiddling with a paper clip or rearranging papers. I didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to spot that she was as much on edge as I was. Mind you, given the news of the latest Cambridge suicide, the second-year student who’d decapitated herself early Sunday morning, it was hardly surprising. Something had gone seriously out of kilter in this city.
‘But it is prevalent among the young,’ I said, trying not to get distracted by the steady flow of students milling around a paved area immediately outside. The student counselling service that Dr Oliver led was in the town, a little way from most of the academic
buildings. I could see Regency houses, office blocks in the distance, the corner of a shopping centre. We were on the upper floor, but Dr Oliver’s large, bright corner office had floor-to-ceiling windows. ‘Young people get things out of proportion,’ I went on. ‘I think I read somewhere that they see suicide as a grand gesture. They don’t necessarily equate it with being dead for ever.’
I’d spent a fair amount of time, the last couple of days, reading up on suicide. One thing I knew was that the suicide rate in the UK was around sixteen per 100,000 people per year. In a city the size of Cambridge, with a population of nearly 110,000, you would expect between sixteen and eighteen people to take their own lives each year. In that context, some four or five dead students didn’t seem too alarming.
Dr Oliver leaned back and pulled a cord that closed the window blinds, effectively cutting off the view. ‘The sun gets quite intense at this time of day,’ she told me, and I couldn’t help feeling I’d been told off for not paying attention. Still, if she wanted my full attention, she could have it.
Evi Oliver looked like a Russian doll. Her chin-length hair was almost black and shone like patent leather. Her skin was the sort that would tan to a soft dusky rose but in January was creamy pale. She wore a lavender sweater that suited her well. She was younger and prettier than I’d expected. Mid-thirties at the most and, as Joesbury had said, a bit of a babe. She was also, as both wheelchair and aluminium stick told me, semi-crippled.
Catching me staring, she blinked at me. She had long black eyelashes, heavy with mascara, surrounding eyes so deep a blue they were almost indigo. ‘Suicide is the second most common cause of death in young adults,’ she said. ‘And the incidence is rising, especially among young men. But the idea that student populations are particularly vulnerable is based on several inaccurate studies and, frankly, is wrong.’