A Little Death

by A. J. Cross

  Watts was scouring the list of POIs. ‘I’m struggling to see Myers being able to do that but if you think about it, he’s got the workers at that Sanctuary place putting themselves out to help him. That tells me he might be capable of a bit of manipulation when it suits him. From what he said here in interview, we can’t rule out his and Elizabeth’s paths crossing when they were both out and about in the area around the college. I think she was the type to feel sorry for somebody like him. If he struck up a conversation with her I don’t see her as the kind who’d ignore him or complain about him.’ He glanced at Hanson.

  ‘I like this outside-the-box approach.’

  Corrigan was watching information appear on the board. ‘Turner’s not the caring type but I’d say he’s capable of acting it to suit his purposes. And then there’s Vickers. According to him, Elizabeth didn’t reject him outright. Could be he’s another who’s able to persuade to get what he wants. All three are in the frame.’

  His index finger against his mouth, his eyes went from the board to Hanson. ‘I’m only just seeing how much of this case is to do with relationships.’

  She looked at the information and saw the point he was making. He took the laptop from Julian and added three words to the board.

  Hanson read them. ‘Locard’s Exchange Principle.’

  ‘We’re all familiar with it,’ he said. ‘Criminals leave traces behind at scenes and take stuff away with them. Apply that same principle to relationships: we all give to them and we all get something back, right? From what we’ve been told, Turner is selfish and demanding. Why would Elizabeth stay with him?’

  Myers’ words drifted around Hanson’s head: He wanted her to do something for him. Give him something. Corrigan looked at her.

  ‘Any ideas as to what Elizabeth might have been getting?’

  ‘Kudos? Affirmation?’ She had another thought. ‘Didn’t Jess Simmonds tell you that when she was in a relationship with Turner the other students viewed them as this good looking “golden couple”? If my impression of Turner is accurate, it was probably a similar situation with Elizabeth. They made a very attractive couple. Along with the kudos and the affirmation, maybe it gave her a sense of being valued by her peers. I’m guessing she hadn’t had much experience of that kind of belonging when she was younger.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Watts.

  ‘OK. What have we got?’ Hanson read words aloud. ‘Elizabeth Williams was a kind, caring, intelligent and responsible young woman, independent but also a little naïve, a little too trusting and with a need to belong.’ It made sense. It also introduced another possibility.

  ‘I can see how this links to one or other of the three POIs. But what if her killer isn’t one of them? Maybe her naivety led her to accept someone she didn’t know at all?’

  Watts’s eyebrows shot upwards. ‘Hang on! I’m just starting to get optimistic.’

  She looked at him. ‘You don’t need me to tell you we have to consider that the killer might be somebody Elizabeth didn’t know.’

  He let his head fall back. ‘Just when it was starting to make sense.’ He got up from the table, went to the board and added a large question mark beneath the list of persons of interest. ‘If he’s faceless, we’re nowhere.’

  Hanson quickly tapped laptop keys. ‘So what we do is we create the next best thing.’

  He watched as the words raced across the board: Silhouette of a Killer.

  She looked at him. ‘Elizabeth is going to help us.’ She pointed to the descriptive words they’d generated.

  ‘She’s already begun by telling us about herself. Now she’s going to tell us what kind of person her killer is. No one else has mentioned the existence of any such person. Maybe she’d only just met him, or maybe she was keeping him secret? Either way, if she was regarding him as a potential partner, psychological research has something to say about sexual attraction and partner selection.’

  ‘I thought it might,’ grumped Watts.

  Ignoring him, she continued, ‘Research on the “Matching Phenomenon” suggests that we’re drawn to those we perceive as like us on various levels such as intellect, education, physical attributes, social background and so forth.’ She saw Watts rummaging in his pockets.

  She waited. ‘You’re not buying this?’

  ‘I’m hanging on every word while I find my paracetamol. Carry on.’

  She sat on the edge of the table. ‘If Elizabeth had an arrangement to meet someone that weekend and she was attracted to him, he’s likely to have been pretty much like her. Not necessarily the same age but the same social presentation.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Watts. ‘She would want somebody presentable like herself. No scruff. On the ball. Strike Myers from the list.’

  Hanson stopped at a place in her notes. ‘Both her aunt and Vickers had the impression that Elizabeth was upbeat about something.’ She frowned. ‘We know she had her suit cleaned. Not the usual student garb, in my experience. Which suggests what?’

  ‘She had a date, an arrangement with somebody which she regarded as important,’ said Corrigan.

  Hanson paced, hands together at her mouth. ‘She wanted to present as sophisticated.’

  ‘How about she and Faceless had a secret arrangement to go off somewhere that weekend?’ said Watts.

  She sat on the table next to him. ‘Possible, but what do we actually know? Elizabeth Williams was looking for something.’

  ‘An internship,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly. How about she made contact with someone she thought might offer her work experience? The suit could indicate a formal arrangement she had to meet somebody to talk about that.’

  Watts looked doubtful. ‘On a weekend?’

  ‘Leave out the detail for now. She dressed in her smart suit. She wanted to impress. She’d identified him, even superficially as similar to herself and therefore not a threat, which would have lowered her defences. He was someone she could trust. He would have made judgements about her: her strengths and her vulnerabilities. If that person was her killer, whenever and wherever she went to meet him, he had Elizabeth Williams where he wanted her.’ Hanson stopped. ‘Which means he wasn’t a stranger to her.’ She looked at each of her colleagues. ‘They’d already met.’

  Watts broke the silence. ‘How sure are you about this?’

  ‘I’m hypothesising, which is all we can do, but it gets us considering the possibilities, given what we know about Elizabeth’s character and her plans as suggested by her behaviour that weekend.’

  ‘It could as easily have been someone who merely saw her and attacked her,’ suggested Corrigan.

  Watts caught Hanson’s nod of agreement. ‘Bloody hell. This just got worse again.’

  Hanson created space on the board, then reached for the laptop. ‘What else are you going to do right now? Keep after one or other of the persons of interest?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  She glanced up at him as she started to type. ‘Because while you’re doing that, there’s somebody out there believing he’s got away with murder. We need to consider all possibilities.’

  He propped his hands either side of his wide middle. ‘All this theory is just that. Theory. It could have nothing to do with what happened to her.’

  She went to the board and tapped an icon. ‘We know something which did happen. I want another look at that field.’

  The 3D image appeared, first of the lane, narrow, shadowed, lined with trees on either side, their branches joined and overhanging in parts, the robust hedge separating it from the field. Watts came and stood next to her.

  She waited, studying his face lit by the screen, his eyes absorbing the detail. ‘Say what’s on your mind, Watts.’

  ‘OK: Elizabeth Williams was buried in that field in the dark. It was black as the ace of spades when we got there, the lane hardly wide enough for one car and the gap in the hedge not easy to find. The first time I drove to it that night, I had the location de
tails, I was looking for it and I still missed it. He had to have been local to take her there and bury her. Turner and Vickers are just up the road.’

  She asked the question she knew he wouldn’t like. ‘If he was local, how is it he didn’t know that this seemingly lonely location wasn’t that lonely in reality?’

  He stared at the image on the board. ‘You’re asking how come he didn’t know that local kids use that field for games. How come he hadn’t picked up local knowledge that types came to the pavilion?’

  ‘He’s not on the fringes of local criminality or he’d have known about the pavilion drug dealing,’ said Corrigan.

  Hanson pointed at names on the board. ‘I’m starting to question how local this killer was. He didn’t realise he might attract attention but he did: Endo, the cannabis dealer and Michael Myers.’

  Watts folded his thick forearms, looking dismissive.

  ‘They’re all we’ve got,’ said Hanson, flicking pages of notes. ‘We need to take seriously what Myers told us. I’m confident as to when he heard those words because his memory of them is linked to a traumatic life event he was experiencing at the time: he was losing his home. Imagine how that would have felt for somebody like Myers who has so little.’ She closed the notebook and dropped it on the desk.

  ‘I agree with you about Endo’s limitations but there’s no indication that he and Michael Myers have ever met. Yet both described experiences which fit together logically.’

  He ran a hand over his hair. ‘I hear you but “Myers” and “logically” in the same sentence doesn’t increase my confidence.’

  He walked from her. ‘We’re saying whoever Elizabeth went to meet would have been somebody presentable and quick-witted like her. But how quick was he, given that he didn’t check out that field and its surroundings?’

  Corrigan was at the board, pointing to a photograph. ‘Both Turner and Vickers were at the college last year. It’s some distance from that field. They know that field’s location but maybe they haven’t been close to it that often.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hanson. ‘Local, but not local enough.’

  ‘What does the file say about where both those guys lived last year?’

  Watts pulled the case file, bristling with post-its towards him and opened it. ‘Turner had a rented place a few miles away in Selly Oak. He’s still there. Vickers lived just off the Bristol Road. Still does.’

  He thumbed pages. ‘Those cream wool carpet fibres under Williams’s nails. It says “expensive” to me. It’s saying “Turner”. He looks as though he’s got an eye for stylish stuff.’

  Hanson did a slow headshake. ‘You just said he rents. In my direct experience and those of my students, student rental accommodation is very basic.’

  ‘Then how about Vickers? As a lecturer he’ll be on a good wage with a “lifestyle” to go with it.’

  She and Watts didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, one being the financial largesse he fancied academics enjoyed. She looked doubtful.

  ‘Chong’s evidence is that Elizabeth got the fibres under her nails by gripping the carpet they were attached to, the inference being that it happened during the attack on her. Vickers is married.’

  ‘So what?’ he asked. ‘Wives go out.’

  She knew he was buoyed up by a return to their persons of interest. ‘Still risky.’

  ‘Maybe she was away for a few days.’ He looked at Corrigan. ‘We’ll drop in on him at home. He’s already rattled so we’ll be subtle about it but we’ll check out his domestic setup.’

  Hanson had had the discussion mostly her own way for the last hour and she wasn’t about to second-guess basic policing decisions. At this stage none of them was able to judge which actions were relevant and which weren’t.

  ‘Take a look at his garden while you’re about it. See if it’s full of trees, dead wood.’

  ‘And massive stag beetles,’ murmured Julian.

  Corrigan turned to Hanson. ‘You’ve still got it?’

  ‘Yes. I called in at the environmental science department yesterday but there was a meeting going on and no one around who I could leave it with. I’ll drop it off the next chance I get.’

  Later that afternoon, Hanson opened her front door in response to the bell, her mind on the case. She stopped at the sight of the statuesque blonde woman with a wide smile standing there. Friends from childhood, a staunch mutual support system still, they didn’t see each other nearly enough.

  ‘Cee! I don’t believe it. Come in.’

  They hugged, then arms linked headed for the kitchen. ‘This is great. Coffee? How about some walnut bread Maisie’s made?’

  Celia laughed, patting her waist. ‘What are you trying to do to me? Coffee’s fine. I’ve got a hair appointment in the High Street in an hour but I decided to drive down the avenue in case you were here. I hope you’re truanting and idling.’

  ‘I wish.’

  Celia raised her head and listened. ‘Ah. All alone. No tryst?’

  ‘No and that’s fine by me,’ said Hanson, starting on the coffee, not wanting to encourage further comment about the way she chose to live her life.

  Celia sat at the kitchen table, eyes skimming a number of photographs lying there. ‘Right now, I envy you. My house is a wellspring of teenage hormones. When I finally got all three out of the house this morning I closed their bedroom doors on the anarchy they’d left behind. Then I realised I was a free agent and within ten minutes I was on my way to Birmingham. I’ve spent the day in town, didn’t buy anything except lunch, booked the hair appointment and came here. Oh, thanks.’ She took the coffee.

  ‘Stay the night,’ said Hanson on impulse, knowing that Celia’s husband would take it in his stride. ‘You could do your own thing here tomorrow morning then come to the university and have lunch with me at Staff House.’

  Celia brightened. ‘I fancy a pudding involving custard … Damn! I can’t. I’ve got to be home for when the engineer comes in the morning to fix the washing machine. I daren’t cancel. I’ve waited nearly a week as it is.’

  She watched Hanson gather up the photographs, one or two of them of Hanson’s parents and put them inside their folders. ‘Taking a ramble down Memory Lane?’

  Hanson shook her head, feeling Celia’s eyes on her. ‘Maisie had them out.’

  ‘She still does that?’

  ‘Yes.’ She knew the topic wasn’t about to go away. Celia’s next words confirmed it.

  ‘Surely Maisie can’t still believe that you single-handedly introduced red hair into your family? If she does, it won’t be long before she learns that her red hair gene was passed down to her by her father, aided and abetted by your mother who had reddish hair.’ Hanson said nothing, the words reinforcing her own worry.

  ‘You still haven’t told her, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When are you going to tell her, Kate?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Celia regarded her across the table. ‘Better make it very soon.’ After a small silence she said, ‘It would have been easy to do it when she was, say, four years old. She’d have accepted just a few words from you. Any questions she had, you could have answered later, as and when … What am I saying? You know all of this.’

  It was true. Hanson did know it. But as the years had gone on it never seemed quite the right time to raise it. First there had been Maisie’s demanding behaviour at nursery and in reception class, then the testing which established her high IQ, followed by the extra maths lessons to challenge her so that she wasn’t bored. Running through all of that had been Hanson’s worry that Maisie’s gift would set her apart from her peers. Amid such anxiety the information Hanson was withholding became less pressing. Time passed, Maisie flourished, as she continued to do at the King Edward High School across the road from the university campus where she now attended twice weekly maths lectures with students half a decade her senior.

  Hanson felt something squeeze inside her chest. Maisie was clever, full of c
uriosity and queries. In this last year she’d been asking increasingly direct questions about Hanson’s own family. Hanson knew that the borrowed time she was on was fast running out.

  ‘I am going to tell her. I just need to sort out how I do it.’

  After Celia left, Hanson returned to headquarters and an empty UCU. It was hushed and lifeless. The task she’d decided on nudged her. She raised her hand and moved it across the board, her finger circling and dragging words and dates.

  She stepped back, looking at the time line she’d constructed of last sightings of Elizabeth Williams based on information from all of those who had acknowledged seeing her on that last weekend, including the reluctant Vickers. She stood back to examine the progression of events as told to them, finding no contradictions or anomalies.

  So far as it’s possible to establish from what we know, Elizabeth walked or was taken away from her life sometime after six p.m. on that Sunday evening. She never contacted anyone and wasn’t seen again.

  She looked up on hearing the door open. It was Corrigan.

  ‘Hey, Red. Thought you’d quit for the day.’

  ‘I had. Has Watts left?’

  ‘He’s with the chief, putting a case for a re-enactment of Elizabeth Williams’ disappearance. Nuttall is arguing against, on the basis that we can’t be certain what she was wearing at the time, where she was when she disappeared or the location where she was killed. What happened to her after Sunday afternoon is a black hole. We can’t offer potential witnesses anything to relate to and get them thinking, “Hey, I saw her” or “I was at that location”. I kind of see Nuttall’s argument.’

  He came to stand next to her at the board. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  She looked up. ‘It’s a timeline of the weekend Elizabeth disappeared. It shows that the information we’ve obtained from various people so far appears to be consistent. She disappeared sometime after leaving her aunt’s house late that Sunday afternoon.’

  She leant against the table, eyes on the board. ‘I’ve been thinking about the discussion we had earlier about the killer’s choice of the field as a burial location for Elizabeth. If he was some stranger, how did he know about it? Like Watts said it’s not that obvious a location.’