“No! Not like that.” He wrapped his arms around his body as if trying to hold himself together. “I did go to her house a few times. Sometimes she wasn’t there.”
“And when she was?”
“We never… we just sat on the wall outside and talked. Once, when it was pouring with rain, she let me in.”
“What happened?”
“I tried it on — I didn’t mean to — but she was so…” His knuckles whitened as he squeezed himself hard. “She said I was a good friend and she didn’t want to spoil it. So we just drank coffee and chatted. She’d been badly messed up by her home life — all that religious fervour stuffed down her throat from birth. I just wanted to help her work her way through it.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“She was Daniel’s girlfriend, for god’s sake!”
“They only started going out a few weeks ago.” I paused for a moment. “How did you feel about that?”
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him.
“How long had you felt this way about Lara?’
‘Since I first saw her. When I started the life-drawing sessions for A-level students last spring, I rang this model called Annie. Only she couldn’t do it — we start straight after school and she was modelling for the Fine Art students at the university until six. Anyway, she said she knew someone, and it was this girl’s day off so…”
“It was Lara?”
He nodded. “She’d never done it before, but she was great. The kids all wanted her to come back the next week, and she became a regular. We tried a few other models for variety, but she was the best. She had this incredible quality, a kind of stillness.”
“And she was beautiful, with fantastic tits.”
“Don’t talk about Lara like that!”
“Tell me the truth. Did you kill her?”
Adam raised his haggard eyes to mine. “Of course not. I was at home. The baby wasn’t well and I was up and down with him all that night. Check it out with Ruth, ask the neighbours if you don’t believe me. They must have heard Shaun crying and me trying to pacify him.”
“Of course I believe you. But I had to ask. For Daniel’s sake.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
I stood up to go. “This model you mentioned, the one who sent Lara to you, where does she live?”
“Annie? She lives in the flat above Lara’s.”
Someone spoke from the doorway.
“Adam Keele?”
I turned round.
It was Detective Inspector Laverack.
I pretended to leave but hung around in the corridor. From the next room I could hear the busy sounds of an art class clearing up towards the end of the lesson, so I had to strain to catch what Adam and Laverack were saying.
The word Lara was repeated many times, and Monday night was mentioned more than once, along with alibi and obsession. Laverack’s voice remained level but Adam’s rose with each reply until he was almost shouting. Several times I clearly heard him say, “I had nothing to do with it!”
I peeped into the room. Laverack was perched on the edge of a table, making notes in a small book. Adam’s arms were still tightly wrapped around his body, which was bent over in a hollow curve as if he couldn’t take the weight of the onslaught.
“I think you should come down to the police station so we can continue this interview there. You don’t want your next class seeing you in this state.”
“But I’ve got nothing to say!”
Laverack rose to his feet, twitching his suit trousers back into their razor-sharp creases. He extended his arm, indicating the doorway. Adam shrank back, and so did I.
“I’m not going anywhere!”
“Then I’ve no alternative. Adam Keele, I’m arresting you on suspicion of —”
I heard an anguished cry, then rapid footsteps crossing the hard floor. Everything happened very fast after that. Adam shot past me. I stepped back into the room to remonstrate with DI Laverack.
“Why are you still here? Get out of my way!” Laverack pushed me aside as he ran after Adam.
A bell clanged just above my head, nearly deafening me. Hordes of children in the familiar navy and plum uniform streamed into the corridor. I couldn’t see Adam at all, just Laverack’s head bobbing through the crowd, a mobile phone pressed to his ear.
As the classrooms filled up and the congestion eased I caught up with him.
“For Christ’s sake!” he was saying. “Get the fire brigade!”
“What’s happening?”
“He’s on the roof and he’s threatening to jump.”
We took the first exit we could find and ran round the exterior of the school, scanning the rooftop as we went.
“There!” I shouted. From the car park at the front of the school I could see a figure standing right on the edge of the parapet, three storeys up. A man in a black shirt, arms spread wide, his mouth open in a silent howl.
Moments later a fire engine swung into the car park. There was a burst of feverish activity, and soon an extending ladder was manoeuvred into place against the rooftop. A fireman stood poised on the bottom rung.
Adam was pacing up and down, shaking his hands in an agitated manner, muttering to himself, then calling out, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“I don’t think this is a good idea. Let me speak to him.”
“Please don’t interfere. This is a police matter.”
I looked up. Adam had stopped pacing, now swinging his head to and fro as if he was debating with himself. The fireman began to climb the ladder. Adam leaned dangerously out, watching what was going on.
Then he shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I loved her, but I didn’t kill her!”
With arms flung wide he launched himself into the air, spinning like a broken-ribbed umbrella, and smashed on to the hard ground.
Seven
“What do you mean, no pictures?”
I held my mobile half a metre from my head in case Tony’s voice ruptured my ear drums.
“For god’s sake, Tony. I knew the man.”
I didn’t tell him that for those moments, as I stood watching Adam plummet from the roof, I’d felt myself split in half — news photographer and human being — and for the life of me I hadn’t been able to reconcile the two. That’s why I was paralysed. That’s why the camera stayed down by my side. It was happening to me increasingly these days.
“Got any pictures at all? A pathetic huddle of traumatised children? Elderly teacher collapsed with a heart attack? Keele’s distraught wife and kiddies being held back from seeing the body?”
I kept quiet, hoping that Tony could hear my thought loud and clear, the one that included the word sicko. He must have read my eloquent silence.
“Yeah, well, I’m entitled to the occasional tabloid fantasy.” He rallied. “Have we got a mug shot of Adam Keele on file?”
“Probably. He’s had quite a few one-man shows at the art gallery.”
“What about the head teacher?”
I cringed. Relations between the paper and Ravenbridge High School had been sensitive ever since Tony, as the new editor, went overboard on a leaked drugs story. Two boys from Year 11 had been found with a tiny cube of cannabis resin, that was all. But he had made the school sound like some crime-infested dump from the seediest, most drug-ridden part of an inner city. Mr Carpenter was a decent, hard-working head and had quite rightly objected to the coverage.
“Yes, we’ve got one of Mr Carpenter, but why?”
“The murder of Lara Ramsey will be front page again tomorrow obviously. But the Keele suicide will make a good page three lead. I want pictures of Adam and the head, and underneath, a photo caption saying something like, The boss who allowed teacher to bonk pupil — you get the gist of it.”
“Tony, that’s outrageous! It’s complete balls. Lara wasn’t a pupil at the school. She left a couple of years ago. And there’s absolutely no proof she was having
an affair with Adam. That’s just malicious gossip. You can’t blame the head for any of this. Remember the cannabis story? Remember how furious he was about that? We’ve only just got back on good terms with the school.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He sighed deeply. “Sometimes I wonder if you should be in the newspaper industry, Jude.”
“Sometimes I wonder too.”
I thought I could hear a strangled gurgle of frustration.
“Where are you now?” he rasped.
“I’m going to the hospital to see my son.”
There was silence.
“Right,” he said at last, at normal volume. “Matt told me Lara Ramsey was Daniel’s girlfriend, and about the asthma attack. You should have said.”
“Would you have listened?”
Another silence. “Anyway. Get back here as soon as you can.”
“You know I will.”
“See you, Jude.”
I threw the mobile on the passenger seat, feeling unnerved by the faint suggestion of sympathy from my boss. Did Tony have a heart after all? I started the engine, shaking my head in disbelief.
*
The route to the hospital took me past Jubilee Park. I slowed down, cruising along to check on police activity. There didn’t seem to be any. I pulled into a layby near the main entrance. The short wintry day was already fading. They’d be closing up soon.
As I passed through the tall wrought iron gates I checked the opening time. Six-thirty in the morning, winter and summer. Presuming that the killer brought Lara’s body through one of the two legitimate entrances, they must have done so some time after that. Of course there were illegal ways into the park, but they involved fences or thick hedges, and carrying a body at the same time would have been extremely difficult. Either way, legal entry or not, it would have been pitch dark and bitterly cold. Only the most dedicated joggers or dog walkers would have been around. The police had appealed for witnesses, but my strong instinct was that Lara’s attacker would have been far too careful to risk being seen.
I made my way across the park towards the pond, the surface of which was beginning to freeze over. The bench nearby, where the body was found, was pretty much equidistant from the two gates so there was no clue as to which one the killer had used. The ubiquitous blue and white tape marked out the immediate crime scene, otherwise the park had returned to its normal tranquil state. It was almost deserted now. The only person I could see was a plump middle-aged man walking slowly around the pond.
There were more flowers here, a whole florist’s shop of them. I stared at this strangely inadequate expression of grief. I had never understood why people placed bouquets where someone had died. Most of them didn’t even know Lara, had just read about her in the paper or seen the story on TV. Was it an attempt to prettify something ugly? A way to vent their outrage? Or were they simply saying sorry? I bent my head to read some of the cards. Dear Lara, you were just unlucky. Rest in peace. Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl, and bizarrely, Take care. Talking to the dead, that’s what it was all about. Though I doubted Lara could hear them.
In my peripheral vision I was aware that the plump man was on my side of the water now and edging his way towards me. I stood my ground, hoping he would pass by and leave me in peace to gather my thoughts before I went to the hospital to tell Daniel the terrible news about Adam Keele, but he stopped a few metres from me.
“Shocking business, isn’t it?”
I nodded, silently willing him to go away.
“I’ve visited a lot of crime scenes.”
I glanced sideways. He didn’t look like a weirdo. He wore a padded coat and one of those fur hats with ear-flaps tied on the crown. He seemed utterly conventional and ordinary. Then I reminded myself that that was exactly what you’d expect a certain kind of weirdo to do — cultivate the appearance of normality.
“This one gives me a very strong sense of evil.”
I began to make space between us, but I didn’t walk off. There was something oddly compelling about him. It was his voice, which was deep and clear and very sure of itself.
“What else would you expect?” I challenged him.
“Murder isn’t always a matter of wickedness. Sometimes I pick up anger, fear, desperation, passion, revenge. There is an element of all of those, but mostly this place gives me a terrible sense of cold.”
“That’s hardly surprising, in this weather.”
He looked at me directly for the first time. I felt trapped by his penetrating gaze. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about emotional coldness. Whoever did this calculated every move. But there is passion here too, heat that has turned cold.”
I forced myself to back away. “What are you, a medium or something?”
“Some people call it that. I prefer psychic detective.”
I tried to mask my spluttering with a fit of coughing. He wasn’t deceived.
“I can tell you’re not a believer.”
“No, since you ask. I think that psychic stuff is all rubbish, just a substitute for religion.”
Somehow he had moved near without me realising. “This isn’t a matter of faith,” he said quietly. “It’s a gift. Or to be more accurate, a curse. What I see and feel here is just as real to me as what your five senses tell you.” He took another step towards me. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a photographer. For the local paper.”
He smiled. “Then you have a very highly developed sense of sight.”
“I suppose so.”
“What I do is just another kind of seeing.”
“If you say so. I’d better go… I have to get to the hospital.”
“Don’t you want to know how this girl died?”
“Of course I do.”
“You knew her, didn’t you?”
“How did you…?”
“I can’t explain how I see it, but I do. She was special to you… or someone near to you.” His eyes had a glazed look.
“If you really do know something, you should go to the police.”
He frowned, looking down at his gloved hands. “I’ve tried, but they weren’t interested.”
I wasn’t entirely surprised by that. I couldn’t see the likes of Laverack and Naylor welcoming a psychic detective on to their team with open arms. I stared around the park, bleakly beautiful in the fading light.
He edged closer. “Perhaps if you put something in the paper?”
“About you?”
“If I turn out to be right, then next time the police will have to take notice of what I say. And it will be a scoop for the Ravenbridge Evening Post.”
“But you haven’t said anything. Just some stuff about cold and evil. That’s hardly a prediction. I thought you psychics could tell if what colour car was used, whether the killer had a limp or a birthmark on their left cheek.” As I spoke I realised Matt probably would want to interview this guy. “Be honest, have you picked up any other vibe about this place? Or about the girl who died?”
“The devil is involved.”
That stopped my glimmer of interest in its tracks. “The devil?” I asked sceptically.
“There’s Satanism in this, but some corrupt form, some imitation of the real thing.”
I began to feel slightly nauseous. Trauma and exhaustion and lack of food were taking their toll.
“You’ve lost me there. You’ve spun off into the stratosphere and left me way behind. I don’t do devils.” I walked briskly away but he trotted after me.
“Despite what you say, I see a sympathetic aura around you.”
“Is that so?” I kept walking. The Ravenbridge Evening Post could do without a feature headlined Local Psychic Detective Reveals Satanic Link. It would make us a laughing stock.
“Take my card.” He thrust something into my hand. “My name’s Foley, Norman Foley. Ring me if you want to chat. Any time.”
I stuffed the card in my pocket and strode towards the gates without looking back.
*
“Mr Keele is dead.” There was no easy way to say it.
Daniel looked bruised around the eyes, as if the terrible things he was being asked to deal with were physical blows.
“What happened?” he whispered.
I told him, leaving out Adam’s obsession with Lara, emphasising the fact that simply being a suspect had driven a sensitive grieving man to suicide. I knew it didn’t quite add up, but I could tell by Daniel’s blank stare that he couldn’t make sense of much anyway.
The male nurse came into the room. “Hi,” he said cheerfully. Then he saw our stony faces. “Everything OK?”
“Daniel’s had another shock.” I drew him to the far side of the room near the hand basin, glancing down at his name badge. “Gary, I hate to leave him, but I have to go back to work for a while. My boss is being difficult. But I’m still really worried about Daniel. You know what happened last time.”
He nodded. “Leave it to me. I’ll check him every few minutes.”
I could have kissed him.
“Oh — nearly forgot. There’s a woman to see Daniel. She came before —”
“Hockey-player legs?”
“She’s wearing trousers.”
D.C. Naylor didn’t wait to be invited. She flung the door open and entered the room at speed. “I’d like a quick word with Daniel, if you don’t mind.” She jerked her head.
I sat down in the chair. “I’m staying.”
Gary melted away.
Naylor thought about it. “All right. If you insist.” She turned to Daniel. “You mentioned a bracelet. We’ve searched Lara’s flat and we’ve found various bits of jewellery but nothing like the one you described. So I’d like some more detail.”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Maybe not. But there again, it could be important. Killers often like to keep a trophy belonging to their victims.”
My jaw dropped at her tactlessness. “Do you have to be so graphic?”
“You did ask. Daniel?”
I was about to protest when Daniel said faintly, “It’s all right, Mum.” He closed his eyes. “I made it out of glazed ceramic stones, every one a different colour, soft tones, like washed pebbles…”
If It Bleeds Page 6