Peter Robinson - Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

Michelle tapped her pen against her lips and looked across the office, where DC Collins sat talking on the phone, shirtsleeves rolled up, scribbling on the pad in front of him. She hadn’t let him in on her suspicions about Shaw yet. Could she trust him? He was almost as new as she was, for a start, and that went in his favor. She had never seen him hanging around with Shaw or with any of the other old brigade, either, another plus. In the end, she decided she had to trust someone, and Collins was it.

“I’ll take DC Collins,” she said, then lowered her voice. “Look, there’s a couple of things I need to talk to you about, but not here.”

“After the funeral this afternoon?”

“Okay,” said Michelle, jotting Des Wayman’s address down in her notebook. “I should know a bit more about Mr. Wayman’s activities by then. Oh, and guess where he lives?”

“Where?”

“The Hazels.”

Annie pored over Luke Armitage’s notebooks and computer files in her office that morning. At least she felt a bit better, despite a poor night’s sleep. Eventually, the painkillers had kicked in and she woke up at half past seven in the morning, not even having got around to putting in the second Doctor Zhivago tape. This morning, though her jaw was still throbbing a bit, it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it had.

The one thing that intrigued her about Luke’s jottings was the increasing eroticism mixed in with the vague classical references to Persephone, Psyche and Ophelia. Then she remembered that Ophelia wasn’t a character from classical mythology, but Hamlet’s girlfriend, driven mad by his violent rejection of her. She remembered studying the play at school and finding it rather too long and dense for her taste at the time. She had seen several film versions since then, including one with Mel Gibson as Hamlet and another with Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia, and she remembered from somewhere the image of Ophelia floating down a river surrounded by flowers. Did Luke feel guilty about rejecting someone, then? Had he been killed out of revenge, by “a woman scorned”? And if so, who? Liz Palmer? Lauren Anderson? Rose Barlow?

Of course, the repeated references to “sweet white breasts,” “pale cheeks” and “soft white thighs” in Luke’s fragments of songs and poems could have been mere adolescent fantasy. Luke certainly had a romantic imagination and, if Banks was to be believed, adolescent boys thought of nothing but sex. But they could also point to the fact that Luke had been involved in a sexual relationship. Liz Palmer looked like a likely candidate, despite her denials. Annie also shouldn’t forget that according to the head teacher’s daughter, Rose Barlow, there might have been something going on between Luke and Lauren Anderson. Rose was unreliable, but it might be worth talking to Lauren again if she got nowhere with Liz and Ryan. Rose had been involved with Luke, in however slight a way, and she had no doubt felt jilted when he spent more time with Liz or Lauren. Or was there someone else Annie was overlooking, some connection she was missing? She felt that she was, but no matter how she tried, the missing link still eluded her.

Her phone rang just as she was turning off Luke’s computer.

“Annie, it’s Stefan Nowak. Don’t get your hopes up too high, but I might have a bit of good news for you.”

“Do tell. I could do with some good news round about now.”

“The lab hasn’t finished trying to match your DNA samples with the blood on the drystone wall yet, so I can’t tell you about that, but my team did find blood at the flat.”

“Liz Palmer’s flat.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Only a small amount.”

“Where?”

“Not where you’d expect. Smeared under the bathroom sink.”

“As if someone gripped it while leaning over?”

“Could be, yes. But there are no prints or anything, just a small smear of blood.”

“Is it enough for analysis?”

“Oh, yes. We’re working on it now. All the lab has been able to tell me so far is that it matches Luke Armitage’s blood type and that it doesn’t match the samples we took from Liz Palmer or Ryan Milne.”

“But that’s fantastic, Stefan! Don’t you see? It puts Luke Armitage bleeding in Liz Palmer’s flat.”

“Maybe. But it won’t tell you when .”

“For the moment, I’ll take what I can get. At least that gives me some leverage in the next interview.”

“There’s more.”

“What?”

“I’ve just been talking to Dr. Glendenning, and he tells me the tox screen on Luke shows an unusually large amount of diazepam.”

“Diazepam? That’s Valium, isn’t it?”

“That’s one name for it. There are many. But the point is that it was mostly undigested.”

“So he died very soon after taking it, and his system didn’t have time to digest it?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not the cause of death?”

“No way.”

“Would it have been enough to kill him?”

“Probably not.”

“Anything else?”

“In the flat? Yes. Drugs. Some marijuana, LSD, Ecstasy.”

“Dealing?”

“No. Not enough. Just for personal use, I’d say. And no diazepam.”

“Thanks, Stefan. Thanks a lot.”

Annie hung up and pondered what she had just heard. Luke had bled in Liz and Ryan’s flat, and he had undigested diazepam in his system. Where did he get it? She didn’t remember anything about medication in the information they’d gathered on him. She wasn’t even sure that doctors prescribed diazepam to someone that young. She should at least check with Robin. Even though Stefan’s team hadn’t found any in the flat, the first thing to do, Annie thought, getting to her feet and reaching for her jacket, was to find out if either Liz or Ryan had prescriptions for diazepam.

According to his file, Des Wayman lived in a two-bedroom council house on Hazel Way, just off the crescent at the Wilmer Road end of the estate. It was mid-morning when Michelle and DC Collins parked outside and walked down the path. The sky was covered in gray cloud and the air was so saturated with moisture it felt like warm drizzle. Michelle’s clothes were sticking to her, and DC Collins had taken off his suit jacket and unloosened his tie. Even so, there were damp patches under his arms. She was glad Collins was with her. He played second row for the police rugby team, and his solid presence was enough to put anyone off trying anything. As far as Michelle could make out, nobody had followed them, and she hadn’t seen any beige vans in the area.

Michelle knocked at the scratched red door of number 15. The man who opened it seemed surprised to see her. It was Des Wayman, no doubt about it. The pug nose gave him away, and the piggy eyes. He was wearing grubby jeans, with his shirt hanging out.

“Who are you? I thought it was a mate of mine,” he said with a leer. “I’m off out. But seeing as you’re here, how about coming with us for a drink?”

Michelle showed her warrant card and DC Collins followed suit. The man’s expression became wary.

“Mr. Wayman?” Michelle said.

“And what if it is?”

“We’d like a word, sir. Mind if we come in?”

“Like I said, I’m just on my way out. Can’t we talk down the pub?” He licked his lips and nodded toward the pub at the bottom of the street, the Lord Nelson. Then he looked at Collins. “And you can leave your chaperon behind.”

“It’d be better here, sir,” Michelle insisted. When Wayman made no move, she walked past him into the house. He stood and looked at her for a moment, then followed her into his living room, DC Collins right behind him.

The place was a tip, to put it mildly. Empty beer cans littered the floor, along with overflowing ashtrays. The heavy curtains were closed, allowing just enough light to illuminate the mess. The medley of smells was hard to define. Accumulated dust, stale beer and smoke, with overtones of used socks and sweat. But there was more: something vaguely sexual that turned Michelle’s stomach. She flung the curtains open and opened the window. The latter took a bit of doing, as it hadn’t been open in a long time and had jammed. DC Collins lent a hand, and the two of them finally got it open. The still, humid air outside didn’t help much, and the room looked even worse in full light.