Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller)

by Clark-Platts, Alice

  Brabents had turned pale. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘And then she came here,’ she said, relentless. ‘And you knew what would happen. She would meet boys. Do things with them. Did you see the online photos, Mr Brabents?’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Did you?’

  He stared at her, appalled.

  ‘Did you see what your daughter was doing here? Your beautiful daughter. Was that what made you snap?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Please …’ He sobbed quietly, murmuring to himself. She had to lean forwards to hear him. ‘Please, I loved her,’ he wept. ‘God, how I loved her. She was everything to me …’ He dragged his hands down, mixing gunk with snot and tears, his face in anguish. ‘I know it was wrong, but it didn’t harm anyone. It was just my own little …’

  Martin shook her head in revulsion. Nothing was said. Brabents’ irregular sniffs the only sound.

  ‘Mr Brabents,’ she said, breaking the silence eventually. ‘Did you drive across to Durham last Sunday night and arrange to meet your daughter at Prebends Bridge?’

  He cleared his throat, his eyes downcast. ‘No.’

  ‘Did you?’ she hissed. ‘Did you stand there with her and look into her eyes one last time? Before you held her close and put your hands around her neck, taking her life?’

  Brabents cleared his throat loudly and pulled his focus back to the room. He became calm, wiping his face and staring at Martin full on. ‘I’d like to see my lawyer now, if that’s all right.’

  She nodded and handed him a box of tissues from the windowsill before quietly leaving the room. Closing the door behind her, she leaned back on it.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said to herself.

  38

  Wednesday 24 May, 7.05 p.m.

  ‘We’ll need to get thirty-six hours,’ Martin said facing the team in the incident room. ‘We’ve got reasonable grounds for an arrest.’

  ‘Does the timing work? Brabents had an alibi, didn’t he?’ Butterworth asked from the back of the room, where he stood leaning against the wall.

  ‘An alibi provided by his wife,’ Jones said. ‘Who has since committed suicide.’

  ‘The Brabents family were fucked up,’ Martin said. ‘They argued and fought, and it seems as though he physically abused Rebecca, even if not the children. They came across as cool and trendy and however else you want to call it, but underneath he was running the show like a traditional old-fashioned bully.’ She swung on her chair, turning it towards the window, thinking, surprised to see the sky was getting dark outside. Where had the day gone? She looked at her watch. ‘Have we got Emily’s MacBook back yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Jones replied, reaching over her desk and getting hold of a file. ‘Here’s the report.’

  Martin scooted forwards on her chair to take it and scanned the contents. She narrowed her eyes and pushed herself back to the table where she’d been and flipped open a pad, looked through it for a second.

  ‘What is it, boss?’ Jones asked.

  Martin shook her head. She glanced up as if noticing the team for the first time, noticing their tired eyes – they been working round the clock. ‘Brabents’ brief will be here in a while, so let’s take the opportunity to have a break while we wait.’ She stood up and walked across the room as if to leave. Jones settled back into her chair, opening a can of Diet Coke.

  ‘Come on, Jones,’ Martin called as she reached the door of the incident room. ‘You can bring your Coke with you.’

  The women signed themselves into the evidence room, and Martin headed where she had been directed by the uniformed constable at the guarded door. The room existed as a crime-scene library, tall stacks of shelves forming long, narrow aisles, crammed with neatly labelled boxes and bags.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Jones asked, following behind.

  ‘Emily’s MacBook,’ Martin answered, scouting the shelves for a while before reaching up and bringing down a computer wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. She carried it to a table at the end of one of the aisles and took it out of its wrapping. ‘Grab a chair, Jones. Make yourself at home,’ she said vaguely as she turned on the power and waited for the machine to fire up. They sat in front of the screen, the white apple sign appearing first, followed by the other icons pinging into place. Martin touched the mousepad and opened up Emily’s email account.

  ‘The report listed that Emily had sent herself an email on the afternoon of the Regatta. Thought I’d check it out. She must have sent it from her iPhone.’

  ‘She didn’t have a phone on her when she was found.’

  ‘Right. Nor in her room or anywhere in the crime scene. But she did have one – Annabel said so in her interview with you. So, whoever killed her chucked it away, I’d guess. We need to think about getting clearance to dredge the river. ’Cause that’s where I’d have thrown it if I was the murderer.’

  Emily’s email account appeared on the screen, and Martin looked towards the top of it. In the three days since her murder, Emily’s account had received over a hundred emails from junk sites, advertisements, university notices. Yet more evidence of the relentless continuum of life as death knelt in its midst. Martin looked further down the page to the date of Emily’s murder, where a message from ‘Me’ had arrived at 6.13 p.m. Martin clicked it open. The message contained nothing but the jpeg of a photograph. Her eyes fixed on the screen, Martin pressed the photograph icon, and as the image came into view, both Martin and Jones sat back in their chairs. Jones glanced over at Martin, who still stared at the picture, frowning.

  ‘What are you thinking, boss?’ Jones asked.

  Martin hesitated before speaking softly, musing out loud. ‘I’m thinking that there was only one reason why Emily would email this photo to herself.’

  Jones waited.

  ‘Security,’ Martin said at last. ‘She knew what this photo was worth and she wanted to back it up somewhere. Somewhere other than her phone. And …’ She stood up and paced down the nearest aisle a way before turning back and facing Jones. ‘Let’s hypothesize that the people in this photo knew that she had it, had discovered she had it, what would they do?’

  ‘They’d be frightened she’d show it,’ Jones said.

  ‘Frightened?’ Martin asked. ‘Or angry?’

  Jones shrugged. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Angry enough to arrange to meet Emily and try to get her phone off her?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Indeed. Perhaps.’ Martin sat again, moving her head nearer to the screen, peering at the image that remained there. The photo showed the back wall of a pale building.

  ‘Looks like the garden behind Joyce College,’ Martin said. ‘I remember looking at it from Mason’s office.’ The wall was partly obscured by foliage, and thick bushes blocked total vision, leaving a large part of the wall in shadow. Simon Rush stood with his back against the building, his head in an expression of relaxation, turned to one side in an almost coquettish manner. Standing in front of him was the principal of Joyce. His hips were jutted forward and one thumb rested in his pocket. His head was bent close to Rush’s, a soft smile on his lips.

  ‘Look at Mason’s hand,’ Martin whispered.

  Jones nodded in silence. Mason’s other hand was spread out, his fingers resting on Rush’s waistline. His thumb clearly up and underneath Simon’s shirt.

  39

  Wednesday 24 May, 7.05 p.m.

  Stephanie sat in her kitchen, an incongruous bowl of cereal in front of her, given the lateness of the day. She had returned from taking Rosena to gymnastics practice, and the house was now resettling into the quiet stillness of the absence of inhabitants. Stephanie liked it like this. She could hear the hum of the tumble dryer, a tiny drip from the cloakroom tap, the tock of the clock in the sitting room down the hall.

  Stephanie bent her head to the table and let it come, what she had had to keep hidden from her daughter as she had sat in front of her, eating her tea and chattering about school. The sobs shuttled through her like a tr
ain, tears pooling underneath her cheeks. She clutched at the table edges, her knuckles white with desperation. This blackness, this blackness was coming again. It hadn’t visited for almost a year but now it was tiptoeing into her psyche; she could feel it like the edges of a blanket. The words to the Lord’s Prayer came to her all of a sudden. She hadn’t thought of them for decades, since her convent school days. The words repeated in her like a mantra, over and over again, and as they washed over her, the cries subsided. She hiccuped a breath and found a calm. She raised her head and wiped her face. What was happening to her?

  Stephanie looked at the blackboard menu stuck on to the kitchen wall with the list of things to do: Tues @ 5.30, dentist; R – netball skirt; milk and cucumber. She had yet to do the shopping, and, she realized, they had missed the dentist appointment. She shook her head slightly, sighing loudly and then inhaling oxygen like a drug. She had to pull it together. She eyed the blackboard again. Chores.

  What was she doing? The realization had hit her this morning in the shower. She had been engrossed in the routine of the ablution, thinking nothing, meditative in her actions. And then she had stepped out, goose-bumps spreading across her skin. She had caught a glimpse of her reflection through the condensation. Her hands were curled up in front of her face as she reached for a towel, and something in the movement reminded her of a creep, a skulking, stealthy motion, a move to grab, to attain. She was naked and suddenly she was ashamed.

  The box of her deceit yawned open with a pinheaded screech. Her own stupid self-importance. To know others’ secrets, to know things others did not. This had been keeping her going in these lonely days since coming to this country. But now it was as if she had awoken from a dream. She put her head in her hands. What was she doing?

  She swallowed. She knew what had to be done.

  She thought about Daniel, the way he wrote, how his voice had drawn her in. But then the emails just before Easter – the tone had changed. Stephanie had known it was wrong, deep down. He seemed to be going beyond the pale. And Emily … the manipulation. Stephanie pushed herself to standing and left the kitchen to stand before the hallway mirror with her handbag and tried to rectify her swollen face with her powder puff.

  She looked at her reflection. Well, it was better than nothing. She put on a bright-pink lipstick and rubbed her lips together. It was time now. Time for everything to be said. Looking back wistfully at the sanctuary of her kitchen, she made herself walk to the front door, put on her jacket and leave the house.

  40

  Something was changing in me, I could feel it. There was a runaway train inside my head, speeding away, pulling my centre of gravity towards something from which I could never return. I did try to rein it in, I did. But I kept looking at those websites. The internet became a fruit machine of porn for me. Videos and pictures, ordinary women sitting in chairs in their kitchens with their legs open. Men – and women I was amazed to see – debating whether a woman in a photo would be a good fuck, what her pussy would taste like. They were vile scabs of things, crusting over the detritus of humanity, the disgusting use of language to describe raw, untamed emotions, things which should be kept hidden, should be controlled. When had it become acceptable to spill these things outside of yourself? The idea that you could talk about fucking and tits and pussies, images oozing out of a computer screen like an infected discharge. It repulsed me. But once I started, I couldn’t restrain myself, I started to read about it, learn from it; think about it in the same terms as these cretins.

  This was the problem with the internet. People with barely a grain of literacy were allowed to tell the world about their thoughts, in cavemen terms. Dickens had described for us the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the poor, but at least he had had the decency to write it on behalf of the peasants, leaving the world with a gift instead of us having to hear their own dishevelled and angry ramblings. This is what we were subjected to now. And the irony was that the people who benefitted from it, the Nicks and Shortys of this world, contributed nothing. They merely sniggered and feasted their eyes on the spoils like some weird rugby-playing pair of Madame Defarges at the gallows.

  I didn’t know how to keep Emily. I saw her as a kite, drifting away from me, leaving me grasping at her tail. I was pathetic. Once, I remember, the thought reared up in me, screamed in my head, that she would never come to me. She would keep going back to Nick; he would always be her conqueror. That’s what gave me the idea, actually. It’s a reverse psychology if you like. My mother used to do it with me all the time, even when I was a teenager.

  Watch the child by the lapping water on the beach. Watch how he looks at the waves, how he wants to swim into the deep water. He turns back and sees his mother on her beach towel. She’s lying there, her sunglasses atop her head, a red-and-white striped swimsuit on. The child puts one foot into the foam of the waves. The mother has to make a decision. She does nothing, raises her eyebrows, inclines her head. Do it, she seems to be saying. The child hesitates. Slowly he withdraws his foot. He has tested her, and she has won. She pushed him to reach the fulfilment of his fears, and in the end he retreats. Why? Because what he thinks he wants, he doesn’t. And the mother knows it. Just like I know Emily.

  She would do it anyway. That’s what I told myself. She would do it, and the more I told her not to, the more she would pull away from me. So I would let her go to Nick. Stupid Nick. And she would go and sully herself with him and then, when she was broken and cold and alone, she would come back to me.

  I sat back in the chair in which I had positioned myself in the library and gazed out of the window. Yes, then she would come back to me.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I said to Emily. I was in her bedroom after letting myself in. Emily had given me the code to her building ages ago. She’d been pacing the room when I entered and continued to do so as I sat on her bed, feet on the floor, hands on my knees. I looked relaxed, although I didn’t feel it, if I’m honest. Nick had taken a couple more photos of Emily, and she had all of a sudden got cold feet, frightened by what people would say, what he was going to do with them. I couldn’t bear to think of it either, but something in me was pushing her, propelling her to see this disaster through to its terrible conclusion. Where I would be waiting for her.

  ‘Think of the way guys will look at you. They’ll awe you. I know they do because I’m a guy, right?’

  She nodded, listening carefully.

  ‘So these photos Nick took. What’s he done with them?’

  She shrugged. ‘They’re on his computer, I think. He couldn’t believe his luck. That I would do it. That I was his, sort of – plaything.’ She looked down at her feet, her hair falling over her face. I wanted to hold her, to tell her that it would all be okay.

  ‘Emily, look at me.’ She moved her head upwards, her eyes staring into mine. ‘It’s going to be fine. Really. This is what you wanted. Nick is in the palm of your hand now.’

  ‘But isn’t he just going to think I’m a slag? That I’m easy?’

  I wanted to scream at her and say yes, of course he is. But I had to wait. I had to bide my time. She would learn. ‘Not if you’re the one who’s in control, Emily. That’s the way it works. Girls who give it away indiscriminately, they’re the whores. Guys know they love it. Even Annabel’s coming round to the idea now, isn’t she?’

  Emily considered this. It was true to an extent. Annabel’s wardrobe had shortened and tightened since Emily had begun her online posturing. Even she could see the benefit of boys buzzing round the honey pot of sex on show.

  ‘Just imagine.’ I straightened my back, even I was getting excited by this idea. ‘Imagine a girl who will do anything you ask in the bedroom but she’s, like, your best friend. She’s basically like a guy but who looks like a fuckable girl.’

  Something in the back of my brain clicked. A cold sweat began to creep across my forehead. I was in the rapids now, hurtling over the tops of the white water, my wings skimming treacherous rocks like a bird. The
re was no stopping me now. A fuckable girl. I couldn’t get the phrase out of my head. It played over again like the interminable din of the ice cream van coming down the street, a sing-song chime: a fuckable girl, a fuckable girl.

  Emily coughed, and I brought myself back to her room. She had her chin in her hands, looking at me. She knew what the truth was, I was positive. She belied a vulnerability so that sometimes I wondered whether it even existed within her. Her eyes could change in an instant from meres of marshmallow to tarns of ice. Now they were dark, unreadable. Unreadable, unfuckable. To me, at least.

  ‘Listen, Emily,’ I said, searching my mind for how to persuade her. And then I had it. I remembered our drink in London over Christmas. ‘Remember what you told me once?’ She looked at me carefully as I continued. ‘You said it was empowering, doing what you want with your body. It’s your right to do it. Think about it.’ I spread my hands as an entreaty. ‘You don’t care, do you? Your body’s just a thing, right? You can do whatever you like with it.’ Emily’s eyes were wide now. She looked like a girl who says she wants to sleep with the light off but then craves the comfort of a nightlight. ‘What you wish,’ I said, to reinforce the point, ‘is to be with Nick and be looked up to. Not be someone who can just be walked over. Laughed at. Right?’

  ‘But everyone will just think I’m a slut. Those comments online …’

  ‘It’s already done, Emily!’ I couldn’t help it, I was raising my voice. ‘He’s already played you. The photo and the video – he’s done it already. So, either you act like a victim and you’ll lose him, or …’

  ‘I pretend I don’t care, and he’ll think I’m cool,’ she finished off.

  I stared at her. ‘But you don’t care, do you? I mean – that’s what you said. At Christmas.’

  Emily smiled shakily. ‘Sure. Yeah. I don’t care. Like, who cares about a pair of tits, right? Everyone’s getting them out at Sixes anyway. There’s this girl in Murdoch College – she got in FHM last month.’