by Jill McGown
“So she went off with someone?”
“Perhaps,” said Judy. “Or started walking. We need to find anyone who saw her after that, but there’s been no joy so far. She may have been offered a lift, and the tyre marks near the scene make that likely, so we need to find anyone who saw a car arriving at or leaving the service road at Ash Road Green. We’ve had no response to the radio appeal so far.”
“What about the ex-boyfriends? Are any of them possibilities?”
“The most recent is one David Britten, and you have his description. He isn’t a strong suspect, and there is a possibility that the killer had access to a car, which makes any of the boys unlikely.”
“What about Cochrane?”
“Colin Cochrane has been interviewed—the chances are that he will be eliminated from the enquiry by DNA analysis. It looks as though Natalie may have been seeing a married man, but probably not Cochrane.”
“Does that mean we’re back to square one?”
“Not quite. There’s a strong possibility that Natalie went to the Green from the bus stop. I’m hoping we might come up with something from the bingo club regulars tonight. We want to know if anyone saw her hanging around the Green from about nine. And ask them about cars. You have details of Colin Cochrane’s car in front of you, but, once again, we are not regarding him as a prime suspect.”
Lloyd skipped the rest of the briefing and went along the corridor to his office to try to shift some of the work that persisted in coming in whether there was a murder to be investigated or not.
The theory was that murder room personnel dropped everything but the murder; he was supposed to have someone who took over the day-to-day running of the department. In practice that wasn’t possible, and it was after seven before he felt that he had made enough of a dent in it to be going on with, and turned his thoughts back to the matter in hand.
He had believed Cochrane, even before his decision to cooperate, if only because the man had no pat explanation for the things that had happened to him. He was bright; if he had murdered Natalia, he would have thought of something better than anonymous love letters, a last-minute decision to take a detour from his normal route, and refusing to say why the last half-mile apparently took him twenty minutes. Everything he had said had rung true; Cochrane struck him as someone who simply didn’t know why this was happening, and resented it.
Time to pack it in, he told himself. Time to winkle Judy out of her office and have her to himself at last. He walked through the deserted CID room and knocked on her door, but she wasn’t there; in the quiet building, he could hear her making calls from the murder room, and he resigned himself to wait.
He picked up Judy’s copy of the letter to Cochrane and read it again for some sort of clue to the personality of the writer, but it was difficult, with the purple prose, to get hold of anything, except that it began and ended like a letter from a youngster, and the bit in between wasn’t quite the same.
It was good to be back, he thought, sitting on the edge of Judy’s desk. He had missed Judy, missed her professionally as well as personally. He had been sorely in need of her sheer common sense when he had been faced with his theoretical problems; he always allowed himself to be distracted by non-essentials.
Judy could cut away the wood and find the trees; she was the sort of person who should be in command, because she always was.
“What’s wrong with the chairs?” she predictably asked, as she came in.
“Any thoughts on this?” he asked, waving the letter at her.
Judy nodded and took it from him, sitting behind her desk. “You know what it reminds me of?” she said.
Lloyd twisted round to face her, and grinned. “Modesty forbids,” he said.
She gave him one of her looks. “It reminds me of those big fat books that women write,” she said. “You know, sex and shopping sagas.”
Lloyd’s eyebrows rose. “I’ve never read one,” he said. “Are they like that?”
“Very. I’ve tried to read a couple, but I tend to give up at about page sixty when I get to saturation point with descriptions of sexual gymnastics and interior decor.”
Lloyd took the letter from her and read it again. Like Tom, he had been rather too taken with the advanced sexual techniques it described to notice that it was a little too advanced, grammatically, for the average fifteen-year-old, given that he thought they were all entirely uneducated in the first place.
That was what had seemed different about the bits in between the sexy bits; the syntax, of all things.
“You think she copied it from a book?” he said.
Judy shrugged a little. “I think she could have,” she said. “But she could have written it from experience, I suppose, if she’s good at that sort of thing.” She smiled a little sadly. “I mean at writing about it,” she said. “She seems to have got the knack of the practical side.” She took a breath, almost as though she had something to confess. “I think she might have been quite good at spelling, if that’s any indication,” she said, her voice light, trying and failing to sound cheerful. “I wouldn’t know about her literary ability.”
Lloyd heard then, for the first time, of Judy’s original encounter with Natalia, when she had seen her on the bus home. It didn’t have any bearing on the case, but it was unlike her not to have told him before now. It still upset her to think of it, obviously, so he didn’t dwell on it.
“The punctuation and grammar are good,” he said. “Even the bits in between the lurid passages. But they are more basic—the whole style is more basic. You’re right. It does read as though it’s copied from a book, but I think it’s by someone who knew what she was doing.”
Judy looked a bit puzzled.
“You know—like when you paraphrase what it says in history books for an exam. So that you’ve not too obviously memorized it—alter the vocabulary slightly—bring it down to your perceived level.”
Judy smiled. “I was more your maths and science type,” she said. “You don’t get many marks for making artful alterations to the text books.”
“But I didn’t notice any books in the house,” Lloyd went on. “In her room or anywhere else. The two usually go together—writing ability and reading.”
Judy thought about that. “And we’re saying that, either way, she has to have been a reader in order to have written that letter, aren’t we?” she said.
“Are we?” They doubtless were. He didn’t have her clarity of thought.
“Either these things happened, and she has a natural ability for kiss-and-tell memoirs—which you think means that she will almost certainly be a reader—or she copied it, or paraphrased it, in which case she had to know that she could. So she has to have read that sort of book, at least to the same extent as me.”
“Which is, you tell me, page sixty,” said Lloyd, and smiled. “You should try reading real books—you’d enjoy them much more.” He slid off her desk. “Well, we can find out about her reading habits from her mother,” he said. “As to her writing ability … her English teacher can presumably tell us about that.”
Tom knocked, and put his head round the door. “I’m off now, if I’m not needed any more tonight,” he said.
“Right, Tom,” said Judy. “See you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, guvs,” Tom said.
Lloyd returned his goodnight, smiling at the little joke, and turned back to Judy, plucking the pen from her hand as she sat making notes.
“What—?” She looked up, exasperated with him, as she so often was. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Closing you down. It’s time to go home. Way past time.”
She took her pen back. “But I want to try to track down her old English teacher,” she said. “This Mr. Murray’s new—he won’t know what Natalie was like at English. And I want to get some notes down before I forget them.”
“I said, it’s time to go home,” Lloyd repeated. “You will have written down anything important at the time.”
“Do what?” he asked, in injured innocence.
“Pull rank,” she said. “If you wanted to talk to someone, you’d be dragging me round half the county until midnight. And we have to be able to prove that Natalie wrote this letter if we think Cochrane murdered her.”
“Agreed. But it doesn’t have to be tonight. You can’t get in touch with anyone until tomorrow morning anyway. And we are checking out Natalia’s computer. If there’s a copy of this letter on it, we won’t need to bother any English teachers, will we?”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I just did.”
Judy put away the few things she had on her desk. Lloyd’s desk always looked as though a small dumper truck had tipped its load on it; he wished he could be more like her.
“Your place or mine?” he said.
“Yours,” she said immediately.
Lloyd pulled a face. “Yours will have less dust,” he said.
“Well …” she said. “Mine has probably got more dust, in fact.” She looked at him. “If you tell anyone this, I’ll kill you,” she said. “But I’ve been keeping your flat hoovered and dusted.”
He smiled broadly. “Why?” he asked.
“I didn’t like to think of it being neglected for weeks,” she said.
Judy was very fond of his flat. He rather suspected she was fonder of it than she was of him. “My place it is, then,” he said.
Hannah had known, really, that Kim would never be able to keep her mouth shut about Natalie, so it hadn’t really come as a surprise.
Her mother had invited her to stay for tea, but neither of them had really been able to eat. Or talk, not properly.
“Did I hear you telling Hannah that the police had talked to you, Kim?” asked Hannah’s mother, talking through the programme they were pretending to watch.
Kim nodded.
“Well, I hope you told them what they wanted to know,” she said.
Kim went pink.
“You knew her better than any of the other girls,” Mrs. Lewis went on. “Who she hung about with, that sort of thing. I know she had a bit of a reputation—I hope you told them that.”
“You’re making it sound as if it was her own fault she got killed,” Hannah’s father said, from the depths of the sofa.
“It very likely was,” said Mrs. Lewis. “Girls like that often come to sticky ends.”
It was her own fault, Hannah thought miserably, wishing with all her heart that they would change the subject.
“And the police need to know where to look. No one will be safe until whoever did that is behind bars.”
Hannah looked at Kim.
“I just answered their questions,” she said, half in reply to Mrs. Lewis, half in defence of her treachery.
“Do they have any idea who did it?”
“I don’t know,” said Kim.
“Mum! They’ve been asking Kim questions all day. She doesn’t need you doing it as well.”
Her mother looked apologetic. “Sorry. But I’m worried,” she said to Hannah. “And I don’t want you going out after dark until this man’s caught, do you hear?” She looked at Kim. “I’m sure your mum feels the same,” she said.
Kim nodded.
“Hannah’s dad will run you home tonight anyway, whether it’s dark or not.”
“Oh—it’s all right. My mum said she’d come for me. She finishes at eight.” She looked at Hannah. “Do you think you’ll be coming to school tomorrow?” she asked.
The very idea made Hannah feel sick. “I don’t know,” she said.
“The doctor said you should,” said her mother. “But I think you’ve got some sort of tummy bug. Maybe you should stay off another day.”
One more day. That wasn’t going to be enough. He’d see her. He’d recognize her. But … if it had been two days, and she hadn’t been to the police, surely he would realize that she wasn’t going to tell on him?
But she would much rather not put it to the test.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tom drove home, windows open in the soft summer evening, his head still buzzing with questions and answers.
His theory had bitten the dust good and proper now that Cochrane was taking the DNA test in the absolute belief—knowledge, even—that it would clear him. But, he thought, there was that letter, and Cochrane’s reluctance to say what he was doing during the twenty minutes in which Natalie died. He hadn’t had sex with her, but someone had … supposing that was why she died?
Judy was getting a blood sample from the boy that Natalie had been going out with immediately prior to Cochrane; she said that she had seen Natalie with him on the bus, and that the relationship was still friendly.
Perhaps it had never stopped being friendly, Tom thought. Natalie had never been slow in coming across, by all accounts, and if Natalie had been expecting Cochrane at nine, she might have given up on him. If she ran across this Dave Britten, she might well have had a quick jump with him instead, going on her reputation.
But Cochrane had turned up. He had seen what she was up to, the boy had taken off, and Cochrane had bashed Natalie’s head against the concrete in a rage. Then he had strangled her, and gone up to the school to get his car.
And if Colin Cochrane had killed Natalie, he might wish he hadn’t been so cooperative about the DNA test, because Natalie’s killer would have had only to graze a hand on that concrete, just left enough blood or tissue for a sample—and they could work with minute samples—for them to have a DNA fingerprint. Saliva, hair. Anything.
He doubted that Cochrane knew that. Of course, they hadn’t heard yet if there had been anything found at the scene that didn’t belong to Natalie, but it was always a possibility on a close contact killing.
And what if Erica Cochrane had watched that film? What if she hadn’t left home at quarter to ten? What if she was there when her husband got in at twenty past?
His tracksuit would be covered in whatever it was he was so keen to wash off; he has no option, and confesses all to his missus, who bungs his stuff in the machine and works out how to give him an alibi.
She phones the police from the house, says she’s found a body, and then she takes the dog to the Green, thinking—as people quite often did—that if she reported the murder then she wouldn’t come under suspicion, and neither would hubby.
But then she had tried to be too clever. Given time to think, time to calm down, she had thought of saying she had seen the girl alive at five to ten, believing that Cochrane could say that he was home at ten, having picked the car up from the school. Except that she didn’t know that the next door neighbours had seen him come home; that had given her a jolt, by all accounts, when Judy had told her.
Of course, Cochrane was doing a very good impression of an innocent man. But then, thought Tom, he was in the drama group.
Kim was being driven home, her mother chattering as she always did, as she had to the Lewises when she had called for her on her way home from work. It was one of the evenings that she worked for the hair salon in the supermarket, and she had heard from a customer that Colin Cochrane had been taken away by the police that afternoon.
Hannah’s mum had been horrified. He was such a nice-looking man, who would believe that he would do something like that, it just went to show that you never knew.
“Well,” Kim’s mum had said, “it seems there’s been talk about him and one of the pupils—I hadn’t heard that, but that’s what they were saying.”
They didn’t know it was Natalie, Kim thought miserably. They didn’t even know it was anyone. It was just gossip, that was all. The inspector had said so. And Mrs. Lewis had assumed straight away that he must have done it, just because the police were questioning him.
But they were questioning him, and Kim knew why.
“Are you all right, love?” her mum asked. “You’re very quiet.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Soon be home. Hannah’s not looking at all well, is she? I think her mum must be right. She must have some sort of bug.”
Her mother drew up outside the house, where Kim’s Auntie Janice was keeping an eye on her little brother. Kim braced herself for more questions as soon as she got in. People thought it would be good for her to talk about it.
“Listen, love,” said her mother. “I know nothing can make this any easier, but—well, if you want, we could go away for a few days. Janice says she’ll stay with Mark. It might help to take your mind off it.”
Her mum couldn’t afford to go away for a few days. Kim smiled. “I’m all right,” she said.
“Well, if you want to, you just tell me and we’ll go. I’ll explain to the school.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Kim. “Honestly.”
“Good God, you’ve stocked the fridge!” came the startled voice from the kitchen.
Judy smiled. “Well, I haven’t eaten for seven weeks,” she called back.
He came into the living room. “Does this mean I’ve got to make you dinner?” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She walked over to him. “I’d be quite prepared to skip it.” She made to kiss him, but he pulled away from her. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Did you skip lunch?” he demanded.
“Well—yes. I was busy at the school. And I could talk to the teachers at lunchtime without causing too much disruption.”
“Did you have breakfast?”
“Er … no,” she said guiltily. “Not really. I had some toast. I’d arranged for the garage to look at my car first thing, you see, so I had to get the bus into Stansfield early, and—”
“When did you last eat?”
“I had a packet of crisps at the school—oh, and some biscuits.”
“It’s half past seven,” he said, and looked at her, shaking his head. “I’ll make something to eat.”
She followed him out into the hallway and into the tiny kitchen.