by Faith Martin
Robin smiled grimly. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. I don’t think it’ll take a certain person too long to step into his shoes and carry on where he left off. They might be celebrating prematurely.’
The doctor looked at the inspector with a slightly cocked head. ‘Do I smell a theory forming?’
Robin grunted. ‘It’s not exactly rocket science, Doc,’ he said. ‘Every man and his dog could figure out who’s behind this. Let alone my super. It’s just proving it that’s going to be a bugger.’
And in that, DI Farrell wasn’t wrong.
* * *
To get to Beckley from her CRT office was a doddle, so Hillary set Puff off up the A34 for less than a mile before turning off at the Islip turn. She turned and glanced at Claire as she did so.
‘So how long has Mia de Salle been working at the reserve?’
‘Not long, guv. Less than a year.’
Hillary nodded. When she’d rung Dr de Salle requesting an interview, the woman had been reluctant to talk to her at her home, instead arranging and agreeing to a meeting at her place of work instead. Which had turned out to be the Otmoor wildlife reserve. It specialized in butterflies and certain birds, Hillary knew, but she didn’t think it was a particularly large reserve. Nevertheless, being so close to Oxford, naturally it was of great interest to academics, so it wasn’t, perhaps, surprising to find one of their main witnesses had a posting there.
‘Some coincidence, her working now so close to where our victim used to live, isn’t it, guv?’ Claire mused, echoing Hillary’s own thoughts.
In fact, right at that moment, they were about to drive past the village of Woodeaton.
‘Yes,’ Hillary agreed thoughtfully, ‘but that’s all it can be. We were only given Michael’s case to look at a few days ago, and since she’s already been working there some while, she can’t have somehow wangled the position on the spot in order to keep an on eye on us. She’d need to be clairvoyant!’
‘Got it, guv. Memo to self: don’t be paranoid.’ Claire grinned.
‘I remember going to the Otmoor reserve once as a kid,’ Hillary reminisced. ‘One of those school day-trip things. I seem to remember lots of walks through swampy-looking ground, and having to draw butterflies and try and find a certain flower. Ragged robins, maybe.’
Claire smiled. ‘I used to love school trips out when I was a kid. Anything to get away from the classroom.’ But Hillary, Claire supposed, who’d taken an English degree at a non-affiliated Oxford college, wouldn’t have minded swotting all that much.
‘The entrance has to be somewhere down here,’ Hillary muttered, turning her ancient Volkswagen Golf down a small lane and craning her neck to look around. Sure enough, she saw the signage not long later and turned into a half-empty car park.
The weather was cloudy, but it didn’t look as if rain was imminent. In the hedges, pussy willow was beginning to flower, exchanging their velvet pearly white/grey buds for lemon, pollen-laden flowers. At least there were still some places for the remaining wild bees to feed, Hillary mused grimly.
As a kid, she seemed to remember all her summers playing out to the heavy, pleasant backdrop of the continuous drone of bees. Last year, she’d actually had to make the effort to notice them, and had been relieved whenever she spotted one hovering over the celandines and daisies.
‘Do you think these places are going to be enough?’ she asked, making Claire, who was walking beside her towards the small shack that guarded the entrance, cast her a puzzled look. ‘To save all the bees and butterflies and birds, I mean?’ Hillary added helpfully.
Claire shrugged. ‘Dunno, guv,’ she said indifferently. Her adult life had been more geared to feeding and raising her kids than worrying about saving the creepy crawlies.
Hillary mentally shook her head at this lacklustre response, and reached for her ID as she approached the entrance proper. The friendly staff member in the shack was able to point them in the right direction at once. Apparently, Dr de Salle was down near the reed beds, monitoring something or other to do with caddisfly larvae.
As they walked, keeping strictly to the paths as directed, Hillary wondered what Mia de Salle must think, or feel, working so close to the spot where her former lover had been found murdered. She was intrigued to be meeting this witness and suspect, perhaps more than any other, since she was the one who seemed to arouse the strongest feelings in all the other people involved in Michael Beck’s life and death.
But she couldn’t let that affect her judgement. The whole point of reviewing a cold case was to go into it with an open mind, a different set of eyes and ears, and no preconceptions.
The wind was picking up, and the resulting susurration in the willows, hazels and other native trees soothed her. The grass paths they were following sometimes merged onto wooden boardwalks that traversed marshy areas, and it was at the end of one of these wooden pathways that they finally found Dr de Salle, squatting down and taking water samples from a small pond.
Hillary knew that Mia had been twenty-five years of age at the time of Michael’s death, and would have considered herself a young woman. But at thirty-five, things could have changed radically for her. Some people seemed to gallop towards middle age, while others seemed to be Peter Pans, never really aging at all — physically, mentally or emotionally. And Hillary was intrigued to see how the passing years had affected Michael’s lover.
As they approached the scientist, Hillary could see that she was wearing a beige-coloured all-in-one garment, vaguely like dungarees, that looked as if it was made of some hard-wearing material, and was no doubt very practical for someone who worked outdoors all day. She was also wearing less-than-attractive plain black wellingtons — again, very apposite for a job in this place.
She must have caught movement in her peripheral vision because she suddenly turned her head and looked over her shoulder at them. At the sight of the two women approaching her, she slowly stood up — and up, and up. She had to be at least six feet in height, Hillary thought, and in spite of the baggy and ill-fitting outfit, Hillary could also tell that she was whippet-thin.
As they got closer, Hillary began to make out more detail. (She really was going to have to get her eyes tested soon.) Dr de Salle’s head looked disproportionately large compared to the rest of her body, but Hillary could now see that this was caused by the immense weight of black hair that she had piled on top of her cranium. Plaited and twisted around and around in a coronet, it must, when it was unwound, reach at least to her waist if not further.
‘Dr de Salle?’ Hillary said by way of greeting, although she had no real doubt that she had mistaken her for another environmental-studies lecturer.
‘Yes.’
She was very striking close up, rather than beautiful, Hillary thought, with prominent cheekbones, a rather large nose and a wide mouth. Hillary’s first impression was that such a face belonged in a medieval painting — maybe of some saint or sinner being burned at the stake. She wore no make-up or jewellery, but then, she hardly needed any.
If Michael Beck had been starting to come across as a rather ordinary sort of man, he’d certainly chosen for himself a very extra-ordinary mate, Hillary thought.
‘I presume you’re the police officer who telephoned me?’
Hillary again took out her ID, introduced herself and Claire and explained her own former DI status, and how she was now working as a consultant to Thames Valley. She then went through the usual speech, about how the cold case team worked, and that Michael’s case was currently being reviewed.
The tall woman listened without comment until she’d finished and then nodded, only once and rather abruptly. It was an awkward gesture, but she didn’t seem to notice it.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘So, how can I help?’ Her voice was curiously flat, with little intonation in it, which gave Hillary an odd, unhappy feeling. Such a voice sounded as if it belonged to some kind of automated machinery rather than a living human being.
She sensed Claire�
�s own unease, and wondered if her colleague was picking up on the same odd vibe.
Mia de Salle watched them from beneath heavy-lidded hazel eyes. She didn’t appear hostile, exactly. Nor even impatient, if it came to that. She was not playing the ‘I’m busy so let’s get on with it’ card, but at the same time, Hillary didn’t believe she intended to be very cooperative either.
‘I’m sorry if this is going to bring up bad memories for you, Dr de Salle,’ Hillary began, ‘but I’d like to go over your relationship with Michael, from the beginning, if you don’t mind.’
She felt oddly exposed at the end of this boardwalk, with water and greenery all around. Which was odd because she’d always felt at home in the countryside. She had to resist the urge to pull her coat closer around her, even though the wind was not particularly cold.
‘I met Michael at Bristol. We were both studying there. I was finishing up my PhD and he was doing his BA.’
Hillary nodded. ‘So he was younger than you?’ she asked, keeping her tone neutral and matter-of-fact, even though she knew the question itself had been slightly provocative. She’d chosen it deliberately for that reason, of course, needing to gauge early on the emotional make-up of her witness.
She knew that the original SIO had found this woman difficult to handle — or get a handle on — and so she was expecting some kind of defiance or prickliness at this question. Which left her feeling a little wrong-footed, and maybe a little disappointed, at the distinct lack of a reaction.
‘Yes, that’s right, by just over three years,’ Mia admitted, her voice still flat, even and without expression.
Her eyes suddenly darted quickly to the left, looking past Hillary’s shoulder, and before she could stop herself, Hillary shot around to see what had caught her eye. For some reason, she was half-expecting to see some knife-wielding maniac pounding down the boardwalk at her, but there was only a bird — vaguely sparrow-like, hopping around in a nearby stand of sedge.
‘Reed warbler?’ Hillary guessed, forcing her fight-or-flight reflex back into its box.
‘No,’ Mia said.
Hillary turned, forcing herself to be calm, and looked at the other woman carefully. Now, nine times out of ten, most people would have been unable to resist adding the actual name of the bird. It was human nature, after all, to feel a certain amount of pleasure in displaying a superior level of knowledge.
Mia de Salle merely continued to watch Hillary patiently.
Again, she felt Claire shift uneasily beside her.
‘You and Michael were together for some time?’ Hillary carried on, determinedly keeping her own voice calm and pleasant.
‘That’s right.’
‘And when he finished his studies at Bristol, you followed him here to Oxford?’
‘Yes.’
According to DI Weston, ‘followed’ was rather a tame word. More than once he’d used the word ‘stalked’ when referring to this woman.
‘But hadn’t you and Michael split up back at Bristol? According to one of his friends down there, you and he broke up just after Michael had finished doing his final exams.’
‘That’s not true,’ Mia denied flatly.
Hillary felt her shoulders becoming more and more tense, and forced herself to relax. She had reread DI Weston’s notes thoroughly, and according to one Brian Ormwood, who’d also been studying Ancient History, Michael had told him he’d broken up with his steady girlfriend, and would be returning to Oxfordshire alone — and be relieved to do so. Nor was it only Ormwood who had been left with this impression — a number of his fellow classmates and friends had confirmed that the murdered man had made it clear their relationship was over.
But it obviously hadn’t been clear to Mia de Salle. Or else she was incapable of accepting it.
‘When you left Bristol and moved to Oxford, where did you live?’ Hillary patiently tried a different tack.
‘In a small flat not far from Little Clarendon Street.’
‘Not with Michael?’ she said, making it sound like a fact, not a question.
The hazel eyes flickered for a moment — a minor victory of sorts, Hillary supposed — but otherwise her facial expression didn’t change. In fact, Hillary suddenly realized with a bit of a start, her facial expression hadn’t changed by so much as a millimetre since the interview began. Which was distinctly unusual. Most people smiled, frowned, and displayed all sorts of expressions without even realizing they were doing it. Human beings had a vast range of body language that provided visual clues as to their feelings; but not this woman.
This woman hadn’t even shifted her weight on her feet yet. She simply stood, watched, listened, and talked without any of it seeming to touch her. It all felt a bit surreal, and Hillary wasn’t finding it at all pleasant.
‘Michael had to move in with his parents,’ Mia responded to her last statement. ‘I didn’t think it appropriate to move into his family home with him.’
And from what the Becks had had to say about her, no doubt they’d have felt the same way.
‘But Michael could have moved into the flat with you, surely?’ Hillary pointed out reasonably.
‘Michael couldn’t afford it. He was looking for a job.’
The unspoken caveat being, presumably, that once he’d found a job, he’d be moving right in with her.
‘Did you have a flatmate at the time?’ Hillary asked.
‘No.’
‘And you were paying the rent by yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Michael didn’t have any need to pay half the rent then? Not if you could afford to pay for the flat all on your own,’ Hillary pointed out, wondering how Mia was going to explain that one away.
‘Michael wouldn’t have wanted to feel as if he was living off me. He had his pride.’
Hillary nodded, mentally giving her that one. But she was not about to concede defeat. ‘Michael told his parents that he’d broken up with you,’ Hillary said, careful to keep her tone non-judgemental or argumentative.
‘That’s not true,’ Mia said steadily.
‘Then why, do you suppose, he said it?’
For the first time, Mia gave a little sigh. ‘They didn’t like me. And Michael was a good son. He didn’t like to upset them. But he was my boyfriend.’
Hillary was beginning to get a sense of her opponent now. Anything that challenged her view of their relationship, anything that didn’t fit with her version of how things had been, was simply going to be flatly denied.
Which meant there was little point in challenging her head on. She would get nowhere.
Instead, Hillary shifted tactics again. ‘But even though he was your boyfriend, you told DI Weston at the time that you didn’t see him that day — the day he died.’
‘That’s right. We hadn’t made plans to see each other that particular day,’ she confirmed.
‘And you have no idea what Michael was going to be doing on the day he died?’ Hillary persisted.
‘No.’
‘Do you think he could have been out in the local countryside taking his photographs?’ she tried instead.
‘No. He wasn’t into his photography much by then. It was something he’d been interested in when he was younger, but he’d moved on to different pursuits.’
Hillary wondered if that was true, or if the murdered man had just told her that to stop her pestering him, and asking if she could go for long country walks with him. He might not have wanted to be so isolated and alone with her. According to all the witnesses in the original investigation, this woman hadn’t wanted to take ‘no’ for an answer, and he must have been, by then, very wary of her.
‘His parents told me that you called their house often, asking to speak to him. But he’d asked them to tell you he wasn’t home.’
Mia gave her second reaction of the interview, with the barest shrug of her thin shoulders. ‘They were lying. Like I said, they didn’t like me. They were just trying to keep us apart.’
‘Do you
know why that would be?’ Hillary asked, genuinely curious.
‘No.’
‘You don’t sound very upset about that. Surely if you and Michael were together you would want to get on with his parents?’
‘His parents didn’t matter. Only Michael mattered.’
‘You loved him?’
‘Yes. Totally.’
At this, Hillary felt the hackles rise on the back of her neck. The words were emphatic, almost chilling in their certainty. And yet the emotion was totally submerged by the toneless voice, the blank, indifferent gaze.
But surely, Hillary thought, struggling to keep a clear head, this woman couldn’t have been this . . . odd . . . when Michael Beck had first met her, could she? Any man, let alone a young and not particularly forceful or experienced man such as Michael Beck had been, would have run a mile if she’d been like this back then.
She could understand, though, why Michael had been physically attracted to her. Although not beautiful by today’s standard, to a lover of ancient history her medieval face must have been appealing. And even in her less-than-glamorous clothes, Hillary could see that there was an ageless elegance in the other woman’s tall, willowy form. And when she let all that jet-black hair down, well, Hillary had no problem seeing the attraction.
But her demeanour, her personality, must have been different than this, surely? Warmer. More . . . well, human.
Was it possible that the death of Michael Beck had broken her? Had she suffered some form of mental illness or breakdown that had left her like this? If so, where had her family been? Or friends? Or even her local GP?
Or had it been a more slow transformation, with her coming to gradually realize that the man she had been so obsessed with was really dead and gone. Irretrievably gone.
For an instant, a half-forgotten line of poetry flashed across Hillary’s mind before she could properly get a hold of it. Something that went a bit like . . . ‘He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone. At his head a grass green turf, and at his heels a stone.’ Her old English tutor would no doubt be aghast at her for not being able to place it, but right then she had other priorities.