Cambridge Blue

by Alison Bruce

  She gave the chair’s armrest a decisive thump. ‘I’m putting the kettle on. If you were ten years younger, I’d say you were over-tired and send you to bed.’ His grandmother retreated and Goodhew closed his eyes until he heard the kettle start to boil, then followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘I thought getting it off my chest might help.’

  His grandmother raised an eyebrow. ‘Does that mean you’re turning over a new leaf?’

  Goodhew laughed, but without humour. ‘No, just a one-off.’

  ‘You know the bracelet analogy? Maybe the gems are just in the wrong order.’

  ‘And I suppose you already worked out what the right order is?’ He took three tea bags from the canister and dropped them into the pot.

  ‘No, I haven’t the foggiest.’ She pulled out a tray and he loaded it with the milk, sugar and two mugs. But she wasn’t about to drop the matter either. ‘If Lorna’s death was planned, why do it in such an open place? Even at 1 a.m., there must’ve been a good chance of someone seeing them.’

  ‘Someone put the GHB in Lorna’s coffee, but how quickly it took effect wasn’t entirely in the killer’s hands. Perhaps the original plan was to kill her down one of the footpaths.’

  He paused, aware that his grandmother’s train of thought had started to wander down an obscure footpath of its own.

  ‘Was she notably promiscuous?’

  ‘Possibly no more so than many single people. But what I am discovering is that she was a manipulator. She pulled strings in several people’s lives, then was there to pick up the pieces. I found some post at her flat, junk mail really, but it was all addressed to people she was connected to.’

  ‘Who?’

  He listed them: ‘Jackie, Victoria, then two I’ve just visited; Hayley Sellars and Wayne Thompson. I now wonder if the killer sent them to her as some kind of reminder. Maybe Lorna had done something to hurt all four of them.’

  ‘Does that put them on your list of suspects?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he mused. ‘The killer would hardly include themselves in the mail shot.’

  ‘Who knows?’ she replied. ‘They say the best place to hide is in a crowd.

  ‘And what’s it got to do with what was written on her palms?’

  ‘Lorna probably wrote the words herself, you know?

  ‘Maybe,’ he muttered, as he abruptly found himself heading down another stagnant backwater. ‘That’s the problem: too many pissing maybes.’ He carried the tray through to the sitting room and his grandmother followed.

  ‘Now you’re swearing,’ she observed.

  He sank into the chair again, and his tiredness returned. He smiled wearily. ‘I’m entitled to, it’s a belated attempt at misspent youth.’

  She changed the subject. ‘Could that man Bryn have killed her?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Why not?’ she persisted.

  Goodhew shrugged. ‘Gut feeling.’

  She pressed him. ‘You’re adamant?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She beamed. ‘And ten minutes ago I thought you were banging on my door because you didn’t know whether you could trust your own judgement any longer.’

  Goodhew smiled tiredly. ‘Touché.’

  His mind wandered and she left him uninterrupted with his thoughts. Ten minutes later, his grandmother left the room, although he barely noticed. In his mind he was reading the labels of the junk mail envelopes, flicking through them one by one.

  Jackie Moran.

  Victoria Nugent.

  Hayley Sellars.

  Wayne Thompson-Stark.

  He added more envelopes, one for Richard Moran, another for Alice Moran and a third for Bryn O’Brien. That made seven.

  He knew the police would soon be swarming all over Hayley and Wayne’s lives, dragging up all their worst memories. Hayley’s words drifted back to him; spoken in a quiet but determined voice. Lorna made everyone suffer. Her words rang with such certainty. Perhaps she was wrong, but she believed it.

  He flicked through the imaginary envelopes again, but now there were ten. Colin Willis had one this time, so did Kincaide, and the tenth was for Mel.

  Shit, it was like a Rubik’s cube, coming neatly together on one side, only to be jumbled up on another. Jumbled and blurred.

  He shut his eyes and pictured the cube gently levitating and unravelling.

  In the kitchen, Goodhew’s grandmother stared into the eye-level grill where the bread lay face up like a row of sunbathers catching the afternoon rays. She loved seeing the golden tan creep across the white slices. When the toast was uniformly brown, she stacked it on a plate, before stealing a glance into the sitting room. She watched until she was sure he really was asleep, then poured his tea down the sink and took her own mug into her bedroom.

  She turned on the bedside radio, just loud enough to pick out the banter from the Heart FM DJ; at 5.55 a.m. there was no chance she was going to get back to sleep.

  She glanced over at her late husband’s photo, then at the photo of Gary with his sister. What did he want to prove anyway? But she knew his trouble; he had inherited a little too much of his grandfather’s conscience. He had to learn to let go of the things that he couldn’t put right.

  On hearing the jingle for the start of the news, she carefully turned up the volume.

  ‘A woman’s body has been found in the centre of Cambridge in what looks like a shocking repeat of the recent Midsummer Common murder of Lorna Spence. A student made the grim discovery in the early hours of this morning, and early unofficial reports are are not ruling out the possibility that the deaths may be connected.’

  She swung her legs back off the bed and muttered under her breath, ‘So much for your sleep, Gary.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  As Marks spoke to the coroner’s office on his mobile, he turned away from the murder scene and found himself facing the window of a gift shop. A teddy dressed as a Beefeater smiled back at him. Marks wandered out of the bear’s line of vision and instead stood at the end of Rose Crescent, his favourite street in the city. Such a shame for him that for some considerable time, he’d be picturing Victoria Nugent’s crumpled body at the end of it.

  Marks hung up just as Gary Goodhew came into view. He glared, but his subordinate was too busy staring past him towards the cordon surrounding the body for his reproachful gaze to have any effect.

  Marks held on to most of the dirty look and managed to sound caustic. ‘Oh, it’s you, Gary. There’s definitely a problem when I find it easier to identify murder victims than to recognize a member of my own team.’ He immediately felt a stab of guilt, knowing that Goodhew wore responsibility like a second skin. He lived with it day in, day out, and Marks doubted that he could shake it off it he tried. If Goodhew wasn’t always around, it certainly wouldn’t be because he was shirking.

  ‘Who?’ Goodhew asked.

  ‘Victoria Nugent.’ Marks saw no surprise in Goodhew’s eyes, just a final, almost apologetic glance in the dead girl’s direction. ‘Preliminaries say between eleven thirty last night and two thirty this morning.’

  Goodhew looked for a second as though he was working on some kind of mental arithmetic, but all he said was, ‘How?’

  ‘Beaten and strangled. Actually, it might be the other way around. The killer pummelled her face into the ground, there’s not much blood, but what there is concentrated in one spot, like she wasn’t capable of struggling by then.’

  ‘Bryn?’ Goodhew didn’t often dabble with one-word sentences, but he was struggling to collate his thoughts. He hadn’t expected another death, and he was kicking himself because the one thing his limited experience should have taught him, was to always expect the unexpected.

  Marks looked quizzical.

  Goodhew rephrased it into something more comprehensible. ‘Has anyone spoken to him?’

  ‘Spoken to who?’ Marks still looked puzzled.

  ‘Bryn O’Brien.’

  ‘Where the hell
did you get that from?’

  ‘Must’ve mentioned it. He was the guy that dated Lorna Spence a while back.’

  ‘I know that, and he made a statement after her death, remember? I still don’t remember anything about a relationship between him and Victoria Nugent.’

  Goodhew shrugged. ‘Might be worth cross-checking the semen . . . if there is any, I mean.’

  ‘You irritate me—’ Marks began, then broke off mid-sentence.

  After a moment, Goodhew asked another question to fill the awkward silence. ‘Did the murderer leave any message?’

  Marks held up a hand in protest. ‘You irritate me,’ he repeated, sounding more matter-of-fact, ‘because I need you to be available as part of the team. Instead you resort to your disappearing skills, you shoot off like a bullet once an investigation starts, ricocheting around the case until you hit a target. I only know—’ He stopped abruptly as PC Kelly Wilkes hurried over with a folded sheet of A4. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’ve found the dead woman’s mobile phone. It was handed in to PC Jerram, who’s working on nights, and he’s been trying to get hold of you. It appears to be registered to the dead woman, and he had a play around with it, says she was texting another mobile early this morning. He’s checked that number and it is registered to a Mr O’Brien. I said I’d ask you to ring Sheen as soon as possible.’

  Marks’ eyes narrowed as they studied first the note, then Goodhew’s impenetrable expression. Finally he sighed. ‘I was going to say next that I only know where you’ve been by the sound of the ricochet.’ He held up the sheet and flicked it with his finger. It gave a sharp crack. ‘That’s today’s ricochet, isn’t it?’

  THIRTY-NINE

  Ignoring his boss was not a deliberate ploy, and Goodhew was well aware that Marks had a point. But even so, just as Marks was making it, Goodhew stopped listening to him. Instead, his attention focused about two hundred yards further towards the city centre, as he watched a familiar figure turn and walk away from the police cordon.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ll only be a minute,’ Goodhew said, and ran towards the cordon before Marks could order him to stop.

  A couple of heads turned as he passed and he thought he heard Marks shout his name, but he was only interested in catching up with the man he’d just spotted. He made it past the barricade, and on to the market square beyond just in time to see Bryn O’Brien vanish behind the striped canvas awning of the organic fruit and veg stand.

  Goodhew kept running along between the rows of stalls as Bryn headed along a parallel path of the adjoining street, along the perimeter of the market. He didn’t try to hurry, and never looked back, but when Goodhew emerged suddenly from a gap to his right, O’Brien didn’t seem surprised either.

  He stopped squarely in front of Goodhew. Bryn’s smart clothes were gone now, and the scuffed boots were back, but this time teamed with jeans instead of overalls. That gave him two deep front pockets, ideal for stuffing his hands into, which was what he immediately did. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

  Goodhew turned and began to walk away, only speaking when Bryn caught up with him. ‘You came to find me,’ he pointed out. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I wanted to know who’s dead.’

  Goodhew kept walking, looking straight ahead, forcing Bryn to make all the effort. ‘Don’t you already know?’ he asked coolly.

  ‘Why would I?’ And what sounded like indignation in Bryn’s voice could have been panic.

  Goodhew slowed his pace slightly. ‘What are you afraid of, Bryn?’

  ‘The only person you knew connected to Lorna was Victoria Nugent. So—’ Goodhew halted abruptly and spun round to face Bryn. ‘Are you afraid that she’s the victim or afraid of having the police on your back?’

  ‘It is Victoria then?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Breaking news of a death should have prompted more sympathy, but Goodhew felt strangely detached. ‘But why were you looking for me?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘No, why me? Why not call the station, or ask the PC at the cordon or, come to that, wait for the Cambridge News like the rest of the general public?

  Bryn scowled. ‘I just thought you’d tell me.’

  ‘So you thought I’d treat you differently?’

  ‘Gary, what’s your problem?’ Bryn held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’m sorry you’ve got a bit of an issue here. The bottom line is, you did tell me, so you did treat me differently.’

  This time it was Bryn who started walking away. Goodhew watched him tramp towards the corner before catching up. He launched straight in. ‘Including Colin Willis, we now have three deaths and, as far as I can tell, you are the only person who knew all of them, so you’re right in the middle of this.’

  ‘I’m not in the middle,’ Bryn argued. ‘I just look like I am.’

  ‘OK, so when did you last see Victoria Nugent?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t know? Not last night then?’

  Bryn shook his head.

  Goodhew persisted. ‘Did you see her last night?’

  ‘No.’ It sounded as though Bryn was testing out the word at first, and he must have thought that it sounded all right, because he immediately repeated it again with more confidence. ‘I didn’t see her,’ he added for good measure.

  Anger surged through Goodhew. All at once, it punched him squarely in the gut. He grabbed at Bryn’s shoulder, spinning him around into a shop entrance. ‘Do I have gullible stamped on my forehead or something?’ he growled.

  Bryn paled. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  ‘I didn’t see her.’

  ‘I know, for a fact, you were the last person to be with her.’ There was no way they were about to debate this and he rammed it home with a prod of his finger. ‘I know you were with her at Lorna’s flat, too. Do you really think that we wouldn’t have the place under surveillance?’

  Bryn groaned. ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Let’s just say that depends on how soon the swab results come back from the forensics lab.’

  Bryn took a couple of seconds to digest this comment, acknowledging its impact by groaning again. Goodhew reached forward and hauled him out of the doorway. Bryn half walked and was half dragged around the corner into Petty Cury’s pedestrianized arcade and through the newly unlocked doors of a sandwich shop. A surly woman in a cheerful gingham apron was too busy wiping the work surfaces to even look in their direction. The long glass counter was still empty, so it was just as well that they had no desire to place an order.

  Apart from the counter, the place had a token table and two chairs. They both sat down on opposite sides. Bryn spoke first. ‘What happens now?’ he whispered.

  ‘I need to take you in, and you have to make a statement.’

  ‘So why are we here?’

  ‘I want to ask you some questions of my own.’

  ‘Off the record?’

  ‘You’re just telling me first. And I wouldn’t be economical with the truth if I were you, it has a way of coming out in the end.’

  ‘That’s what my mother always says.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s what I think too.’

  Bryn shrugged. ‘OK then.’

  ‘You made out you barely knew Victoria, and said there was nothing going on between you and Lorna. Why lie?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You had sex with both of them.’

  ‘But there wasn’t anything else going on.’

  Goodhew rapped the table with his knuckles. ‘Hello! Most people call that more than nothing.’

  ‘Why? If we’d only gone to the same gym or restaurant, now and again, then it would be fine to say there was nothing important. We just happened to . . . you know . . . that was all.’

  ‘Just happened to? And how did you just happen to break and enter into Lorna Spence’s flat?’

  ‘Victoria had a key, and she said
she’d lost something.’

  ‘The diary?’

  Bryn shook his head in dismay. ‘What don’t you know, eh?’

  ‘At the moment, I’d say everything that matters. She called you first, I assume?’

  Bryn nodded. ‘Yeah, she phoned me yesterday, said she wanted to meet up. I didn’t mind, actually.’ Bryn pulled an apologetic face. ‘I did fancy her, she looked just like August off last year’s calendar. It was still pinned up by the kettle until recently.’

  ‘Then you met her and threw it out?’ Goodhew replied sarcastically.

  ‘No, I met her and moved it next to the phone.’

  ‘This is a murder.’

  ‘I know, I know, and I’m sorry but I was just being honest.’

  Goodhew interrupted him. ‘OK. When did you decide to go to Lorna’s?’

  ‘Victoria suggested it as soon as I saw her again. She said she had a key and we’d be in and out in a minute. I didn’t like it, but she argued that it wasn’t a crime scene any more, and we weren’t breaking in. I thought that made sense, until we got there. Then I knew, straight away, that we were doing something we shouldn’t.’

  With only minor prompting, Bryn described everything Goodhew already knew.

  ‘So,’ Bryn concluded, ‘even I can see that the diary was invented, which means she wanted me there for some other reason.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer.’

  ‘It’s common knowledge that Lorna and Victoria fell out, but supposedly over a man. You’re the only one I can find who has slept with both of them, but you are also the only person who disputes this theory.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s my theory that, whatever they fought over, it wasn’t a lover. I think Victoria tried to make you think there was jealousy between them, after all, as a diversion from the real reason.’

  ‘Hey!’ The voice belonged to the surly woman with the gingham apron. They both looked up. She had her hands on her hips. ‘This isn’t a bus shelter. Are you ordering or not?’

  It was a not, Goodhew decided. He jerked his head towards the door. ‘I’m going to walk you to Parkside station.’