A Murderous Mind Page 14

‘Quiet. No accent. He told Keith that he should think about … something. Just that he should think about it. Keith blew up after that, said he’d thought all he was going to and that was that. He told the man to fuck off. I heard that when I hurried by but that was all. Even then Keith was trying not to shout, not to be loud. Like neither of them wanted to be heard.’

  ‘Then why not go into the garage?’

  ‘Probably because Bri would have been there. Keith’s cousin.’

  She pulled herself together then, physically withdrawing into herself, like she was gathering her composure about her and redressing in it. Deborah glanced at her watch again. ‘If that’s everything. I have to pick up the kids in a bit.’

  Tess rose and Vin followed her example. The clock on the mantelpiece said it was only a few minutes after two and Deborah had previously told them that she didn’t need to leave until three, but it was clear that Deborah had said all she was going to. The door had closed.

  ‘What do you think?’ Vin said as they drove off.

  ‘Interesting, though it doesn’t get us a lot further.’

  ‘Her reaction to the man she saw?’

  ‘Might well be heightened in retrospect. She’s talked about it with her husband. Recently. It must have occurred to her that instead of seeing just some random stranger she might have spotted Keith Allen’s killer. That thought would leave anyone feeling very vulnerable and it would be easy to project that feeling backwards to the time you actually saw the two men arguing.’

  ‘Still, it’s possibly something as opposed to possibly nothing.’

  ‘True, and I suppose that’s a small step in the right direction.’ Tess agreed.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Three seminar groups for the same module had been brought together and crowded into one of the lecture theatres. Patrick took his seat beside Daniel. ‘Know what’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Did you get a text from Hank last night?’ Hank had gone home at the weekend and not yet returned.

  ‘Yes, said he wants to come back but his parents are trying to persuade him to wait a few days.’

  ‘Here’s Sam.’ Daniel waved him over and their friend flopped down into the vacant seat beside him.

  Their tutor, Paul Metcalf, came in. He had a man with him that Patrick vaguely recognized. Tall, neatly bearded, very correctly and smartly dressed. Patrick closed his eyes for a moment and the image of the same man coming into the hotel the day he had gone to see Sam and Ginny came into focus.

  The man stood, surveying the lecture room and the students in their tiered seats, waiting to be introduced.

  ‘Good morning everyone. I know this is a little unexpected but times have not exactly been normal. Now, you know that counselling services are available within the university, but I also know that it can feel difficult and awkward being the one that goes to seek them out. So I’ve brought in a friend of mine. You might well have seen him around campus. This is Doctor Tom Reece who lectures in applied psychology and also knows more about trauma and the effects of shock than just about anyone I know. He’s also going to talk through what’s available on campus and why you should be accessing it. So, if you’ll welcome Tom Reece?’

  Sporadic clapping as an uncertain and slightly awkward group stared down at this stranger. Patrick didn’t clap. He was trying to fit the shape of the man in front of him into the shape of the man he had spotted on the promenade the night he and his father had walked on the beach with Naomi. The figure fitted very well.

  Tom Reece took his place at the lectern, not bothering with the computer desk. He took in the room with a sweeping glance and silence fell, everyone curious now.

  ‘Violent death is, thankfully, not part of most people’s everyday experience here. It’s something we believe happens to other people. It’s something that happens in some mythical ‘out there’ place that we read about or see on the television and which is separate from us so when it comes and lands quite literally on our doorstep, the vast majority of us have no coping strategies in place. No framework within which we can act. It’s unknown territory and because of that it’s very frightening. Very frightening indeed.’

  Patrick switched off the words at that point, guessing what was coming. Talk about coping strategies and seeking help if they felt overwhelmed and being there for one another. Instead, he watched the man standing there in front of them all. And when he had watched enough to fix Reece’s features, his body language, his attitude in his head, Patrick began to draw.

  At the end of forty minutes the students began to file out. Some stayed back to talk to their tutor and to this visitor, taking the leaflets he offered and accepting the concern. Patrick’s friends moved past without comment but Patrick held back, curious now.

  ‘You OK, Patrick?’ Paul Metcalf asked.

  ‘Fine thanks, I just wanted to ask something.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then.’

  Patrick waited until the tutor left. He saw him pause outside to exchange a few words with Sam and Daniel and a handful of others who had stayed to chat in the assembly area outside of the lecture theatre.

  ‘You were in the hotel bar,’ Patrick said. ‘I saw you there.’

  ‘The White Hart? Yes, I remember you.’

  ‘And on the promenade. I saw you on Friday night.’

  ‘You’re very direct, aren’t you?’ Tom Reece sounded amused.

  ‘Sorry. Yes, I forget I’m supposed to lead into things.’

  ‘I don’t mind. And yes, that was possibly me on the promenade. I stood and watched the sea for a while. It relaxes the mind. You have a good visual memory.’

  Patrick nodded. ‘It’s what I do,’ he said. ‘See things, draw them. I’d better go now.’

  ‘All right. Have a leaflet?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Patrick left and went through the automatic doors to join his friends and Tom Reece watched the group walk away. He wasn’t surprised that Patrick had recognized him or even approached him to tell him so, but he was intrigued.

  The boy interested him more and more.

  THIRTY

  It had been one of Naomi’s mornings for working as a volunteer at the local advice centre. Her taxi dropped her home just after two and Alec announced he’d made sandwiches and the kettle was on.

  ‘Busy session?’

  ‘It always is.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking, you know. I’ve got the same experience legal wise and so on that you have and they’re always looking for volunteers—’

  ‘You’d have to do the training course. Be a bit like going back to school.’

  ‘I know, and that’s fine. I just think I could be useful. Not that I want to tread on your toes or anything.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind. Like you say, you have all the right qualifications. You could be very useful. What brought that on anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. Restlessness, I suppose. A need to be doing. A need to feel useful. It still gets to me when ex-colleagues start dashing round working on important stuff and I’m left standing on the side-lines.’

  ‘You miss the force?’

  ‘No, I miss the sense of purpose. I suppose I miss the challenge. I feel like I’m stagnating a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘So, do something about it. Retrain. Or rejoin.’

  ‘Not in a million years. I don’t miss the hassle or the paperwork or my boss.’

  ‘No one would miss him. You could do consultancy work. You’ve had enough offers. If you don’t take them up soon they might stop coming in.’

  ‘Security and risk assessments. Right. I really see myself growing old doing that.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you do it forever. Just to give you something while you figure out where you actually want to go. It’s a networking opportunity if nothing else.’

  The kettle had boiled and Alec made tea and they took their late lunch through to the living room. Naomi sat in her favourite seat beside the window, Napoleon leaning against her leg for a mo
ment before harrumphing and slipping down on to the floor. ‘We’ll take him out after lunch,’ she said. ‘Then you can give McCormacks a call, tell Dale you’ll come over and go over the plans for the new system. He’ll be glad to see you.’

  ‘OK,’ Alec agreed. ‘Harry called, said Patrick was fine and at uni and Gregory and Nathan were looking into things. Whatever that means.’

  ‘Better not to ask.’

  ‘And DI Trinder called.’

  ‘The Internal Affairs guy Tess was telling us about?’

  ‘The same. Would like an informal meeting.’

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘That I supposed so, but I didn’t see how we could help any more than we had.’

  ‘We don’t have to talk to him.’

  ‘No, but he’s asking that the two of us and Alfie get together with him to “kick some ideas around”.’

  ‘Sounds like he’s treading carefully.’

  ‘Sounds like he’s a wanker. I must have met him before, I suppose, after the debacle that nearly got me killed, but I’ve no memory of the man. You said you’d encountered him?’

  ‘Um, yes.’ Naomi took a bite of her sandwich and tried to remember exactly. ‘The last time was just before the accident. He was a keynote speaker at a conference I went to. A training thing on technology, I think.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t remember. I had a conversation with him at dinner. You know, they did that ‘you will mix whether you want to or not’ thing, seating senior officers and the rest of us round the same tables? Well, I ended up next to him. Can’t remember what we talked about. I was probably just trying not to slur my words.’

  Alec laughed. ‘So, what do we tell him? Do we go and have a chat?’

  ‘I suppose we do. It’s Alfie I feel for. We both dug the tunnel and escaped, he’s still in the thick of it.’ Not, she reflected, that she’d had any choice in the matter. The accident that took her sight had made sure of that.

  ‘Alfie will be fine,’ Alec said. ‘Tess said he’s part of the review team, so the mud can’t have stuck – not that he deserves any mud. I told Trinder that we were free tomorrow. Hope that was OK?’

  ‘So that’s what made you so fidgety. I suppose that’s all right. Frankly, Alec, I’m reluctant to be drawn in. I know nothing about the Rebecca Arnold case, you and Alfie Briggs were pretty incidental after the initial discovery of the body and I’m beginning to think that I can’t even tell anyone anything valid about Joe Jackson. I thought I knew him, but it turns out I didn’t and every new question that comes along convinces me even more that I knew nothing about him really. He put on a good show but it seems like that’s all it was.’

  They finished their lunch in silence until Alec eventually said, ‘I can ring him back?’

  ‘And what would be the point. Let’s get it over with, have the conversation and then be done with it. I suppose he’s just being thorough. Now, let’s go for that walk and then you can call Dale McCormack and arrange a time to go and see him. It’s time we moved on, Alec. I’m sick of being dragged back into what’s past and gone.’

  Tess and Vin arrived back at headquarters to find that the BIA who had been allocated to the case had already arrived and was asking to view the scene. Field had decided that as Tess and Vin had been, technically, the first officers attending, that Tess should be the one to take her there.

  ‘Can I grab a coffee first?’ she asked Field.

  ‘You can, and you and Vin can brief me on what Fincher and the witness—’

  ‘Deborah Tait—’

  ‘Right. Yes. What they had to say.’

  Tess glanced at her watch. Three forty-five. They had made quite good time from their last appointment but she was tired now and really not enthused about going out again – especially not back to the scene.

  Half an hour later and she was off again with Caroline Towser in tow. The BIA was a woman about the same age as Tess, she guessed. Short red hair – dyed a very vibrant shade – and an abundant scattering of freckles across her nose. She clutched a folder containing the crime scene photos in her hand.

  ‘It was a messy scene,’ Tess said, indicating the photos.

  ‘Looks it. I’m glad not to have been there, believe me. Bad enough seeing the pictures.’

  ‘All part of the job,’ Tess said and noticed Caroline smiling at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Just thinking how many times I’ve heard that phrase today,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a kind of mantra. I’m not sure anyone notices they’ve said it anymore.’

  ‘You could be right. I’ve never thought about it like that.’

  ‘You visited one of my old professors this morning.’

  ‘What, Fincher?’

  ‘Uh uh. He was an emeritus professor by the time I heard him lecture. Just came in from time to time, but he was a major figure before he retired. What did you think of him?’

  ‘Um … what did you think of him?’

  Caroline Towser laughed. ‘Intense,’ she said. ‘Determined to drag us all kicking and screaming into the scientific age. Utterly committed.’

  ‘Enthusiastic,’ Tess returned. ‘I got the feeling he was good at separating himself from the reality of what he was seeing?’

  ‘Probably. I suppose that goes with the territory, maybe. You have to be mindful but detached, at least that’s what we’re taught to be. Actually doing it takes a bit longer.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Tess said. They had arrived at the scene and Tess waited for the officer manning the barricades to let them through, aware of the media interest at a new arrival.

  ‘We’re up on the second floor,’ Tess said. ‘I don’t suppose you know someone in your field by the name of Hemingsby, do you?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Why?’

  ‘Just a name that came up.’ She led the way up the stairs to the shared flat. The CSIs had gone now and the place was deserted. Caroline stood in the doorway as Tess had done two days earlier, studying the kitchen and communal area. The smell of blood and death still permeated, still hung in the air and Tess noticed that Caroline wrinkled her nose, a slight frown between her eyes.

  ‘Stinks,’ Tess said. ‘You go away smelling of it and it stays in your nose for days.’

  ‘I know. But it surprises me every time. So, shared kitchen and seating area. Who slept where?’

  Slowly, methodically they walked the scene, Caroline comparing what she saw to the photos of the crime scene and taking more of her own. She asked about Ginny and Sam and about the girl who had been at her boyfriend’s that night. About the statements from those who had found the body. She was calm and thorough and Tess found herself liking the other woman. They stood together at the bedroom door, studying the image of the girl who had lain on the bed, her life ripped away from her with such violence and Tess could almost see the slight figure of Leanne propped up against the pillows.

  Tess watched as Caroline stepped into the room and crossed to the bed, comparing the photos to the remaining reality. Her hand moved as she visualized how the wounds had been inflicted from Leanne’s right side to the left, the assailant drawing the knife towards himself as he finally ended her life. She looked upward at the arterial spray on the walls and ceiling and finally she turned away.

  ‘Finished?’ Tess asked.

  ‘For now.’ Caroline’s voice was steady but her face was very pale, the freckles standing out against white skin.

  They returned to the car and Tess drove her to the hotel where Caroline had booked in for the night.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll be fine, thanks. Are you?’

  Tess smiled wryly. ‘I’m doing OK. When will you have something for us?’

  ‘Preliminary summary tomorrow, but I need to consult on this one. Talk to my supervisor and get another perspective. It’s a mistake to rush.’

  Tess nodded and watched as Caroline walked into the hotel, scuffing her feet on the steps outside as though wishing to wipe what was left of the scene off her s
hoes before stepping across another threshold.

  Tess drove away wishing it was as easy as that and suspecting that Caroline didn’t think so either.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Tom Reece slipped his key into the lock. He could hear music coming from somewhere in the house and his daughter, Hester, singing along to a song he didn’t recognize. He should keep up with his daughter’s taste in music, but since Hester moved on from the succession of boy bands and Rhea got a boyfriend who was into vintage rock, he’d pretty much given up. They were very much young women now, whether he liked that or not, and his role seemed to be shifting on a weekly basis from participant observer to observer that was occasionally invited to participate.

  Hester was in the kitchen, prodding at something in the oven. The scent of baking cake filled the room.

  ‘Hi Hes, how are you. Is that chocolate cake?’

  ‘It is.’ She straightened up and came over to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘Mum’s out in the garden hacking the roses down.’

  ‘I think it’s called pruning,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever. There’s less of them than there was an hour ago. She said we’d be getting pizza and chips out of the freezer for dinner so I thought I’d make a cake.’

  ‘Is Rhea coming back for dinner?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Steve has a gig somewhere.’ She turned up the radio and proceeded to sing along to yet another unfamiliar track. Tom went out into the garden to rescue the roses from his wife. Hes was right, hacking down might have been a better description. ‘You know you have to leave something above ground, don’t you?’

  ‘Says the gardening expert. Had a good day?’

  ‘Not so bad. You?’

  ‘I could rant. I won’t. I’ve come out to do some gardening instead.’

  ‘So, this is a displacement activity. And who are you really mutilating when you chop these poor defenceless plants to pieces?’

  ‘Oh, you’re exaggerating. They’ll grow back.’

  ‘And your preferred victims might not?’ He slipped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m told it’s just the three of us tonight and it’s going to be pizza and chips in front of the telly.’