by Clare Chase
As she crossed the room, back towards the hall, she spotted a wall calendar. She could hear Blake had started to question Zach Cross in earnest, but she paused for a moment, to see what appointments the professor and Freya might have had in the last weeks. It was easy to tell whose entries were whose. One lot were written in rough capital letters and referred to lectures, faculty meetings and the like. The rest were in neat italics and included a private view at a gallery in the centre of town at the start of the previous month. There was one recent entry written in Freya’s hand: Talk to Jonny, inked in for Monday 26 February. There was no time – it looked more like a statement of intent than an appointment. Tara sometimes added notes like that in her own diary; it was a way of shelving a decision she’d made, putting it out of her head until she could act on it. It was usually something that was making her stressed…
Back with Blake and Zach Cross, Tara put the glass on a low coffee table, inlaid with decorative tiles. The professor picked the drink up absently but didn’t put it to his lips.
‘So you last saw your wife a week ago last Friday,’ Blake was saying, ‘when she left the house. That would have been Friday the twenty-third of February. Where was she going?’
Professor Cross looked down at the rug on the floor. ‘To stay with a friend,’ he said at last. ‘Sophie Havers. She lives in London.’
So Tara would have expected Freya to have been carrying an overnight bag at the very least. But if she had been, the killer must have taken it with them. There’d been nothing of that sort at the scene. And yet the woman’s handbag and purse had still been present…
‘And can you please think back and tell me what time she left the house?’
The man hesitated. His eyes were far away, and Tara could see a tear rolling down his cheek. ‘Well – it was after supper. I don’t know what time. Not late.’
‘So you ate together?’ Blake asked. Zach Cross nodded. ‘What kind of meal did you have? I’m just trying to build up a picture.’
Tara could see where this was going. Stomach contents might be relevant when Agneta Larsson opened Freya Cross up.
‘Steak and chips, and then chocolate fondants. We were relaxed, as it was only the two of us. If Oscar, my son, is here we have to be more careful. He has type 1 diabetes.’
The professor hadn’t paused at the query. One up to Blake.
‘Do you often have people over?’ her DI asked.
Zach Cross nodded. ‘Fairly often. Entertaining is an add-on to my academic work. One of my colleagues or a visiting scholar might come to dine with us, for instance. And as I said, my son, Oscar – Freya’s stepson – is with us every so often as well.’
So his job had frequently affected Freya’s lifestyle too. There could be a bit of strain there.
Tara leant forward. ‘Will you be able to reach Oscar today, Professor, to break the news? Can we call him for you? We’re keen to make sure close family members hear what’s happened before anyone else.’
But the man shook his head, and now he spoke with more purpose. ‘I understand, but I would prefer to inform him myself. He’s a student, here in the city. I’ll be able to reach him on his mobile.’
‘We’ll probably need to speak to him too, in due course,’ Blake said, and Zach Cross’s face registered confusion all over again. ‘How about Mrs Cross’s parents – and any siblings?’
Professor Cross shook his head. ‘She was an only child, and her parents died in a car crash two years ago.’
She’d been very much alone then. Barring close friends, there’d been precious few people she could have confided in, if she’d had any sense that she was in danger.
‘Going back to when your wife left the house,’ Blake went on, ‘you remained here for the rest of the evening?’
There was no sign that the professor realised he was being asked if he had an alibi for the time that his wife had probably died. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I sat in the drawing room in front of the fire with a glass of port and a book I’d agreed to review. And then, after I’d made some notes, I went upstairs to bed.’ He shook his head and his eyes welled with tears again. ‘I was up until gone midnight. If I’d known…’
Tara passed him a box of tissues that sat on a bookshelf near the door and he took one, turned away from them and blew his nose.
‘Could we have the details of the friend your wife was going to see in London please?’ Blake said, once the man had had some time to compose himself.
The professor nodded slowly and got up from his chair. He moved as though gravity was having triple the normal effect on his body. Tara got up to follow him through to the hall, her notebook at the ready.
‘Here.’ He held an address book open at the letter H. Just one entry: a Sophie Havers in Hampstead. Tara copied down the details.
Back in the sitting room, Blake said: ‘Did your wife explain why she was heading off to her friend’s house so late in the day?’
More hesitation on the professor’s part. ‘I didn’t ask her.’
‘When did you expect her back?’
‘She said she might be gone ten days or so. She’d been working hard; needed a break.’
He sounded less and less sure of himself as he spoke. Tara controlled the urge to look in Blake’s direction. Plenty of time to discuss all this later… ‘I understand she worked at an art gallery,’ she put in. ‘She’d booked leave then?’ She knew what Jonny Trent had told her, but she wanted to see how Professor Cross explained it.
‘It was a bit last minute,’ the man said. ‘I spoke to Jonny Trent, who owns the gallery, to explain.’
Which matched what Freya’s boss had told her… Tara thought again of the woman’s entry on the kitchen calendar. She’d been planning to catch up with Jonny Trent about something important the previous Monday, three days after her husband had last seen her. Had anyone known about her plans? Could they have killed her to prevent the meeting going ahead? It seemed far-fetched. Perhaps Freya had simply been so stressed that she’d decided to get the hell out instead of tackling her troubles head on.
‘So she was out of sorts? Sufficiently tired that she hadn’t prepared as she normally would if she was planning to take a break?’ Blake’s tone hadn’t changed, but she knew him well enough to tell what he was thinking.
The man frowned. ‘She was certainly preoccupied. I offered to give her a lift to the station, but she said she’d rather walk.’
‘She didn’t have too much to carry then?’ Tara waited for the professor to sketch in the details.
‘Just a smallish overnight bag,’ he said.
Which was as she’d thought. The question of its whereabouts remained. As for the walk to the station, the weather would have been bitterly cold that night. Taking the shortcut through the nature reserve would have reduced the journey to around half an hour on foot… though her decision to walk at all seemed pretty strange.
The professor must have followed the same train of thought. ‘I never imagined… I mean, this is a quiet district. If I’d—’
‘The only person responsible for what happened to your wife is her killer, Professor Cross, and we will do everything in our power to bring that person to justice.’
On the face of it Blake was stemming the professor’s words of self-reproach, but he was also laying down a promise – they were coming after whoever was guilty. No one would be discounted, least of all her husband.
Blake had kept his tone neutral but the professor swallowed. ‘How did Freya die?’
‘It looks like strangulation. We’ll have to wait for confirmation. We made the initial identification using the photograph on her driving licence but we’ll need someone to come over to Addenbrooke’s to do the job officially in due course. It doesn’t have to be you.’
But the man shook his head. ‘I want to see her.’
The DI nodded. ‘I understand. We’ll arrange it as soon as we can. In the meantime, I wonder if we might have a quick look upstairs, just to get an idea of
how Mrs Cross left her things. There might be something there that will give us a lead.’
Tara held her breath, wondering if the professor would object and force them to wait for a warrant, but after a moment he nodded. Not before he’d weighed up the request though, Tara reckoned.
They climbed the winding stairway to a galleried first-floor landing. Tara was especially interested to see the bathroom, which turned out to be an en suite, fitted in classic style, white with a large claw-foot bath at one side.
There were still two toothbrushes present, each in a squat glass on a shelf over the basin.
She saw the professor follow her gaze. ‘Freya had a travel set that included a folding one,’ he said. He walked over to the basin and bent to open a cupboard next to it. After a second he sighed. ‘That’s definitely what she took. It’s not in its usual place.’
At that moment they were interrupted by a knock at the front door. Tara left Blake with the professor and went downstairs. Through the bay window, she could see DCs Kirsty Crowther and Evan Lewis.
Kirsty nodded a greeting as Tara let them in. ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘DCI Fleming’s assigned us as family liaison officers.’
Two. Standard practice when a family member might also be the killer. Tara wondered if Zach Cross would notice. The more he felt watched, the more he’d clam up.
Blake and the professor reappeared in the hallway and Tara introduced them all.
‘DC Crowther and DC Lewis will take you to Addenbrooke’s when the time comes,’ Blake said. He glanced at the pair for a moment. ‘Please can you go through Mrs Cross’s key contacts with Professor Cross? We’ll need to work out who might be able to help us with our investigation. The professor needs to inform Mrs Cross’s stepson too.’
Kirsty nodded. Evan was already exchanging quiet words with their charge.
‘I’ll need to ask you for more information, Professor,’ Blake said, ‘but I’ll give you a chance to take stock now. We’re very sorry for your loss.’
Tara turned to shake the man’s hand too, just after Blake. His grip was strong and his gaze when it met hers told her he was trying to work out what they thought. Behind all the anguish, he was wary; she could see that much.
When they left the house they turned towards the centre of Newnham, rather than the nature reserve. It was the long way round to the Lammas Land car park, but they didn’t want to cross the crime scene again. The going was slow, the pavements still icy.
Tara’s head was full of Zach Cross’s story; if ever a tale sounded made up… She hadn’t yet looked in Blake’s direction though. It was partly because she was watching her feet; bits of the pavement were like a skating rink.
She heard him sigh. ‘Are you going to tell me what you think, then?’
She paused a moment before replying. ‘It’ll be interesting to hear what Freya’s friend in Hampstead has to say.’
For just a second she let her gaze slide sideways and her eyes met his. He looked as though he wanted to communicate something unrelated to the case, but at last he shook his head.
‘I agree. I’m not sure Zach Cross did it, but he’s hiding something. We need to get more background, so we know where to aim our questions. After that we’ll go back in and catch him out.’
Tara took a long breath, the air so cold she could feel it deep inside her. She knew she was behaving like a kid, but seeing Babette and Blake together the night before had made her feel awkward around him. She really needed to snap out of it. She relayed what she’d seen on Freya and Zach Cross’s kitchen calendar.
Blake rubbed a stubbly chin. ‘Interesting…’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You didn’t go rummaging through their cupboards as well, did you?’
She shot him a withering look, but wondered fleetingly if she might have, if she’d had more time.
‘I’ll take that as a no,’ Blake went on. ‘Right. I’m going to go and call Sophie Havers. I’d better break the news, anyway, and then I can find out what light she’s got to shed on all this. After that I’m going to head over to Jonny Trent’s gallery. Given the calendar entry you saw it looks as though there was something up at work. It might fit in with his caginess when you rang him too. I want to watch his face as I tell him about Freya’s murder.’
Tara would have liked to witness that too, but it was clear Blake had other plans for her.
‘I want you to talk to Matthew Cope again,’ he said. ‘Once he knows Freya Cross is dead he might clam up; it depends where his loyalties lie. You’ve already started breaking down his defences’ – he caught her eye – ‘best if you carry on the good work.’
She nodded. In truth, she’d relish the challenge, and she could see Blake’s logic. If Matthew Cope was prepared to protect Luke, even if he might be guilty, he was probably wishing he’d never made such a fuss about his disappearance. The last thing he’d want now was the attention of a more senior officer. He’d see Tara as an inexperienced underling who might botch the investigation and she’d play up to that. She’d aim to move him onto first-name terms before they’d finished their next discussion.
She thought again of Freya Cross’s body. If the man was shielding his brother, she’d do whatever it took to get it out of him.
Five
When Tara called Matthew Cope from her car she found he’d gone back to his home, on the north-east side of the city, towards the A14. She only paused for a second to warm her numb hands by the vent of the vehicle’s heater before heading off across town, through the crowded, exhaust-filled streets.
She drove on autopilot, her mind on Freya Cross. Seeing her like that, in the middle of Paradise Nature Reserve, made Tara think of Sleeping Beauty. Had the woman’s death turned the fairy tale on its head? Her ‘prince’ might well have been responsible for her never waking up. If a lover put you on a pedestal they were just as likely to pull you down because you’d failed to live up to expectations, as to ride off with you into the sunset. Kemp, the ex-cop who’d taught her self-defence after she’d been stalked, sometimes accused her of being overly cynical, but he understood why. She’d only been sixteen when it had started and though it had gone on for eighteen months she still didn’t know who’d been responsible. Every so often she dreamt of the packages they’d sent her, full of maggots, feathers and once, a pig’s heart…
Out on the north-east side of the city, her journey took her into what felt like countryside – there were horses in a field to her right. But the area was mixed. Quite soon she passed an industrial estate on her left, with a tattered banner across its metal fencing advertising vacant units to rent. After that there were some newly built houses assembled from soft cream bricks that echoed the colour of the historic buildings in town. But the buildings here were a far cry from the sort that tourists would expect when visiting the ancient university city. She drove on, past a series of prefabs and more industrial units that included a car mechanic’s outfit. The place looked grim under the grey sky and all around there was melting snow, discoloured by dirt to form grey slush.
After a while the road narrowed and Tara bumped her car over some potholes. Just as well it was a work vehicle; she doubted her own aging Fiat could have taken the strain. She’d left the buildings behind and now scrubby fields with overgrown hedges filled her view to left and right. The place was almost deserted, but then up ahead she saw a dark-blue Mercedes. She was instantly aware of their closing speed and gripped the wheel tightly. She steered her car tight into the side of the road as the Merc zipped past. The driver must have had their foot to the floor.
Swearing under her breath, she took a moment to steady herself. Some witless so and so with no manners – and no comprehension that they weren’t the only person who counted.
A moment later, her teeth still gritted in irritation, she came to the track which, according to her satnav, would take her to Matthew Cope’s place. Rounding a corner past an overgrown holly hedge, its spiky leaves now almost entirely visible thanks to the thaw, she saw a large square h
ouse – somewhat bigger than the one occupied by Luke Cope, and Victorian, she guessed, rather than Edwardian. It clearly had a lot of land around it, but whether that would be an advantage or a headache, Tara wasn’t sure. She liked having plenty of space around her own cottage, out on Stourbridge Common, but it was good not to be responsible for it.
She pulled up on the rough drive and then had to move the car again when she realised she was stranded – the driver’s side door was positioned over a large meltwater puddle filling a deep rut. The only other vehicle present was a BMW, which presumably must be Matthew Cope’s.
As she finally extricated herself from her car, she looked up and realised that the brother of the missing man was standing at the top of the steps to his front door, watching her. His hands were clutched together, his jaw tense.
‘What is it?’ he asked as she got nearer. ‘I heard on the news that a body’s been discovered in the Paradise Nature Reserve. They didn’t give any more details.’ His words were clipped. ‘Is it Luke?’
She shook her head. ‘The body’s female.’
He put a hand up over his mouth. ‘Freya Cross?’
‘Nothing’s confirmed officially, Mr Cope. I’m just here to ask you a little bit more about your brother and his disappearance.’
The man was silent as he showed her inside, down a shadowy hallway. The place smelt slightly of damp, overlaid with cigarette smoke. At the end of the hall they went through a door that opened onto a large kitchen which an estate agent would have described as ‘in need of modernisation’. All the same, it had plenty of potential, given its vast size.