A Murderous Mind Read online

  ‘How? Do you know them? From what we know they wouldn’t believe anything negative about Reece.’

  ‘I was thinking more of a quiet tip off. Josep Goldman will follow it up if he thinks there’s any threat to his family.’

  ‘Or he might just tell Reece about it.’

  ‘Which might not be a bad thing. Reece thinks he’s invulnerable. It wouldn’t hurt to let him know he’s not.’

  ‘And how do we get the police to take notice?’

  That question was asked again an hour later of Naomi and Alec.

  ‘Find a way of sending the pictures you have,’ Alec said. ‘Make sure they go to DCI Field, DI Trinder and to Tess. I suppose you could do the same thing for Reece. His email is easy, it’ll most likely be his name followed by the university suffix.’

  ‘And just hope there’s only one person with his name,’ Naomi cautioned. ‘Or someone will be wondering what kind of spam they’re getting.’

  ‘I don’t see what options we have left. Is Tess getting anywhere?’

  ‘Frustrated,’ Naomi said shortly. ‘There’s all these slightly cracked open doors and no means of shoving them the rest of the way.’

  ‘Then we do it,’ Nathan said. ‘And we see what shakes loose. If it all comes to nothing then we have to think again. Or consider other action.’

  No one asked him what he meant. There was no need.

  At five fifteen that afternoon four email messages arrived. Field saw his at once and Tess a few minutes later. While they were comparing notes, DI Trinder discovered that he too had been a recipient.

  ‘It’s Fincher’s walking stick,’ Tess said, examining the pictures. ‘I know it is.’

  Field ordered an unmarked car to the address then set about getting a warrant to search.

  Reece didn’t see his message until he checked his work email from home a couple of hours later.

  He considered what to do. Tom Reece had stayed ahead of everybody’s game these past years by not acting on impulse, by being careful and planning to the tiniest detail.

  Who had sent this? Who had seen? What was going on and had the police been informed?

  He had to assume so, unless this was a prelude to blackmail. That, he decided, would probably be the easier option to deal with.

  ‘We shall have to see,’ he told himself. He went through to the kitchen where his wife and daughter were chatting together as they prepared the evening meal. ‘Rhea and Steve will be popping in,’ his wife told him.

  ‘That’s good. I’d better get some beer. Steve isn’t a wine drinker.’

  ‘Already done. You want to lay the table?’

  Tom gathered up knives and forks and went through to the dining room. He thought about what to do next and decided that the best course of action was to do nothing. There was nothing in the flat to tie it to Dr Tom Reece. Nothing except, perhaps, Reg’s stick.

  He frowned at that one bit of vanity that had led him to take what he knew had been Fincher’s favourite walking stick. One, in fact, that Tom had given to him lord alone remembered how many years ago.

  But who would know that?

  His mind wandered back to the conversation with DI Tess Fuller. He hadn’t even known that Reg Fincher kept a journal. Was she bluffing? The conversation took on a different complexion if she already thought of Tom as a suspect in some way. Was she warning him of that? Why would she?

  Was she telling him that she had him in her sights?

  No one had come to speak to him about either Reg or the girl so it was more likely that he was just one of many names that might have emerged from Reg’s writing.

  Should he worry? What would be the point? Should he do anything? What could he do that would not be an obvious mistake. He could hardly go and look to see if the police were raiding his flat. That would be a meaningless and risky strategy and exactly the kind of forced error he had spent his life trying not to make.

  No, Tom decided. There was absolutely nothing to be done.

  So he dismissed the issue, packed it away for later consideration should that become a necessity and instead focussed his thoughts on preparing for an evening with his family and went back through to the kitchen to fetch the wine and salad and the basket of bread.

  FIFTY-TWO

  ‘Developments,’ Tess said as she stood on Alec’s doorstep the following morning. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve not had breakfast yet. Can we get you something?’

  ‘Tea and toast would be wonderful. I’ve been up all night. Not gone home yet.’

  ‘Come in, sit down and tell all,’ Alec said.

  ‘What makes me suspect you might already know?’ Tess said as she flopped down, gratefully, on the sofa.

  ‘You have a suspicious mind,’ Naomi said. ‘What’s gone on?’

  Tess filled them both in on the night’s events. The warrant arriving just before seven and the search beginning.

  ‘The hair will be easy to match, I suppose. The ring matches the description of the one taken from Rebecca Arnold. There’s a poetry book inscribed to Martia Richter on the flyleaf and a walking stick that I know belonged to Reg Fincher. Other stuff too … we’re still sifting but there were twelve little boxes in that drawer. Thirteen deaths including Reg Fincher.’

  ‘Why was the MO so different?’ Naomi asked. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘It’s a question I’ve been asking all along. It can’t be because the killer hoped to disguise this as natural causes. A simple tox screen would have picked up the barbiturate poisoning. A favour to a friend, perhaps.’

  ‘A friend?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘I’ve been reading Reg Fincher’s journals. He and Reece were good friends at one time. And Reg suspected that he had killed Martia Richter. And there is nothing in the diaries that a good lawyer wouldn’t throw out in ten seconds flat. The CPS would never wear it.’

  She closed her eyes and rubbed them with her palms.

  ‘Tea and toast,’ Alec said and set the mug and plate down on the small table beside the sofa. ‘There has to be something you can do.’

  ‘Field is bringing him in for interview, but—’

  ‘That’s something, at least.’

  ‘I’m beginning to understand what Joe Jackson must have felt like,’ Tess said. ‘We know he’s as guilty as hell. But there’s nothing. Nothing to make a definitive connection.’

  ‘You have to keep pushing,’ Naomi said. ‘If you’re right then he may well have killed a dozen times. You have to keep the pressure on.’

  ‘Right now, I have to eat this and then go home and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘Field is taking it from here. Interviewing Reece and then we shall have to see. CSI are going over that flat with whatever is finer than a fine-toothed comb and we have to hope he got careless.’

  ‘The stick?’

  ‘He’ll have handled it with gloves. There’s no way of proving he was at Fincher’s place. The glasses and bottle and anything he might have touched were wiped down. Unless we get incredibly lucky … waiting for him to get careless is like waiting for snow in August.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  It had been a very civilized affair. A request had been made that Dr Reece come in to answer a few questions and he had duly arrived. He and Field had chatted about the effect the murder had on the students and the campus and then Field had led the conversation around to Reg Fincher’s diaries.

  Tom Reece had read the extract and then laughed. ‘He promised to buy me a lead feather to use as a paperweight,’ he said. ‘If ever he found one. This was typical of our conversations, Chief Inspector. Time was Reg and I spent a lot of time together. He was good company, the sort of man with whom you could discuss anything under the sun.’

  ‘And when did you last see him?’

  Tom Reece thought about it. ‘Must have been three years ago. We spoke on the phone more recently. Maybe a half dozen times in the past few months. The last time was around the time he died. That day or the day before. I cou
ld check. He called my mobile …’ Tom Reece produced the phone and checked back through his records. ‘The day he died,’ he said. ‘The time before was about a month ago and before that, about the same. A month, five weeks.’

  ‘And what did you talk about?’

  ‘This last time or the ones before?’

  ‘In general.’

  ‘We might complain about the vagaries of academia. The pressures of research imperatives alongside the teaching hours. About the girls – my girls – and how they were doing. Reg would have made a very good father I think.’

  ‘And this last time?’

  ‘He seemed bored with retirement. A little disillusioned with it all. He had been such a busy man it must have been hard to let all that go. He told me he’d had a visit from the police. Your DI Tess Fuller, I believe. And that they’d talked about some of his old consultations. I got the impression he was pleased that anyone remembered him after all this time. Reg needed to be useful.’

  ‘But you didn’t go to see him.’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘And that night, you were?’

  ‘At home with my family.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘All night, yes. My wife will tell you.’

  ‘And when your wife was asleep?’

  ‘Then no doubt so was I. Look, I’ve come in and answered your questions, but you’ll appreciate that I have to go to work. That I have a busy day ahead.’

  Field had no option but to concede and let him leave.

  Tom’s route to work from the police station took him past the end of the road where the police had raided his flat. He slowed as he passed the junction and peered at the marked car that now stood by the back entrance to the house. A scientific support van was parked close by but he could see nothing more and drove on by, not wanting to draw attention to himself.

  Truth was, he felt better now. They had nothing but the ramblings of an old man who had chosen to record a random conversation. A silliness of the sort that characterized many a conversation between old friends and particularly, Tom thought, those for whom the academic world of pure ideas was a dominant feature of their lives. He’d had similar conversations with many others in his time.

  He arrived on campus and drove around for a while looking for a slot. Tom hated arriving this late in the morning; it was always a devil to park. Finally, he found a space and pulled in. If he hurried, he’d just about be in time for the usual lecture slot – though he’d called ahead and asked a colleague to fill in, just in case he didn’t make it.

  Walking across the campus he spotted Daniel and Patrick heading towards class. Neither looked his way and he paused to watch them as they hurried inside, chatting to one another and then to a group of other students heading in the same direction.

  Tom’s eyes narrowed as he wondered how much the boys knew or had been told about him. There were too many points of connection between Patrick Jones and Naomi Blake as she had been and Tess Fuller for the boy not to be aware of something at least in connection with Tom.

  He hurried on, getting to the lecture hall with minutes to spare and thanking his stand in for her time. Assuring her that everything was fine.

  And everything was, Tom thought. He had to let go of the past and move on. To dissociate himself from all that had gone before and begin anew. He was no longer the man who had taken the lives of those individuals whose remains had been found in that drawer in that little flat. That man was gone and he felt renewed.

  Opportunities beckoned and Tom looked forward, after a decent interval had gone, to embracing them all.

  Josep Goldman examined the letter and the images he had received that morning. It was printed on a sheet of plain printer paper, common stuff that could have been bought anywhere on a standard ink jet printer. The envelope was blank, but for his name, similarly printed on the front.

  He had studied it at length, letter, envelope, images, statements it contained that Tom Reece, the doctor who had treated his grandson might be implicated in murder.

  His son came into the room and sat down in the chair in front of the old man’s desk. ‘The police questioned him this morning. No lawyer was present and no charges were brought. He’s been allowed to go and he arrived at the university a few minutes ago.’

  ‘What do your instincts tell you?’ Josep asked.

  ‘That either someone seeks to blacken the name of an honourable man or that he is already blackened and this is the only way whoever sent this has to expose him.’

  ‘And this man, Fincher?’

  ‘Was murdered. He had a visitor that put barbiturate in his whisky. Fincher drank a good deal of the whisky. He fell asleep and did not wake up again.’

  ‘An act of kindness, compared to how the girl died,’ Josep said. ‘And who sent this letter, do you think?’

  ‘Someone who knows you or knows about you. And someone who knows the danger to Daniel. I think that is all we should be asking.’

  Josep nodded. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘We consider ourselves warned.’

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The raid on the flat a mile away from the university made it on to the lunchtime news. Field delivered a press conference, looking tired and drawn. He apologized for his appearance and explained that they had been up all night.

  ‘Crafty bugger,’ Alec commented. ‘Get the media and public sympathy on your side.’

  He appealed for anyone who knew the tenant of the flat or who might have witnessed him coming and going to come forward.

  The bulletin ended with interviews with one of the other tenants. A young woman who was clearly horrified that someone in her building was being connected to the university killing.

  ‘He lived upstairs from me. All this time and he was just upstairs. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I doubt he actually lived upstairs,’ Alec said.

  ‘I think it’s a nicety that will be lost on her,’ Naomi observed. She sounded depressed.

  ‘Something will happen,’ Alec told her. ‘There are enough people working on this, on both sides of the law.’

  ‘And is that what we might have to resort to?’ Naomi demanded. ‘We’ll have to put a contract out on him?’

  ‘We’re not exactly going to be doing that. I’m not going to say, “Gregory, go out and kill him” and neither are you. Tess and her team will get him. Just because Jackson failed doesn’t mean it can’t be done.’

  Naomi didn’t bother to reply. She hoped he was right. She hoped it would all be resolved in a way that satisfied the requirements of legality and order. She wondered what Joe Jackson would have done and decided, on balance, that she would rather not know.

  Patrick wandered out of the Arts building and across the concourse. He spotted Tom Reece as he crossed in the other direction, bag over his shoulder and books under his arm.

  Tom saw him at almost the same moment.

  ‘Good afternoon, Patrick. Everything OK?’

  ‘It’s good, yes.’

  ‘Good. I hear there’s been a bit of excitement. A police raid on a flat in Kingstone Road. They reckon it belongs to the killer.’

  Patrick studied him carefully wondering what response was expected of him. ‘I heard about that,’ he said at last. He remembered what Naomi and Gregory had been telling him about Tom Reece and he wondered how much Doctor Reece suspected he knew.

  ‘You’ll have to find another place now,’ Patrick said.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean. Patrick, have you been listening to gossip?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Gossip is speculation. It’s what might not be true.’

  ‘And are you accusing me of something?’

  Patrick sighed. He was getting in too deep and he knew it. He was playing a game that he recognized had no solution or conclusion. He was indulging someone who enjoyed his own power and the helplessness of others and, it belatedly occurred to him, he was prodding a killer with a stick and that was probably not the best idea he’d ever had.


  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘No one is going to believe you did anything wrong anyway. You’re home free, aren’t you, whatever.’

  Tom Reece smiled. ‘You are an interesting young man,’ he said. ‘A talented young man. And I don’t frighten you, do I?’

  Patrick considered. ‘You scare me,’ he said. ‘But there are other things that scare me more.’

  A flicker of something that could have been anger, could have been disbelief crossed Tom’s face. ‘It’s easy to say the words,’ he said. ‘Far less easy to cope with the aftermath. To know what you’ve brought down upon those you love.’

  ‘Like you’ll bring down on your family?’ Patrick said. ‘Like they’ll suffer when they find out what you’ve done?’

  Tom Reece turned on his heel and walked away. Patrick watched him go, considering the ramifications of the conversation they’d just had. He’d been foolish, he thought, or perhaps he’d just been true to himself. Patrick knew he wasn’t much good at behaving in the ways convention and good sense told him he should.

  In the end, he felt he had only one option left. He took out his phone and called Gregory’s number.

  Nathan was with him when Gregory received the call. He ended the call and relayed what Patrick had said to Nathan.

  ‘So, that’s decided then,’ Nathan said.

  ‘I don’t think we should tell anyone else exactly what Reece said,’ Gregory observed.

  ‘Or what Patrick said to us. No,’ Nathan agreed. ‘Some things are better kept quiet, don’t you think?’

  Gregory nodded. ‘You think Patrick can handle it?’

  ‘Patrick is … flexible,’ Nathan said, not sure if that was a good thing.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Tess had become a regular visitor in the past couple of weeks, popping in regularly to apprise them of any progress. Increasingly, it had been a lack thereof and Naomi could hear in her voice tonight just how frustrated she was.

  ‘This is now a massive, countrywide investigation,’ she said. ‘Five forces, god alone knows how many individual investigators, thirteen deaths, if you include Fincher’s—’