S. Bolton - Dead Scared

‘Hey,’ he said to Meg, his left eye just hinting at a wink, before turning back to Evi. ‘Detective Inspector Castell, Cambridgeshire Police.’

‘John Castell?’ asked Evi, her eyes flicking from him to Meg.

Meg nodded, still smiling. ‘Yes, this is John,’ she said. ‘John, this is Evi. Do you remember her now?’

Castell smiled properly as he held out his hand. The wide grin gave his otherwise plain face a considerable dollop of charm. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I was at Emmanuel. Read Law and Psychology. You do look a bit familiar.’

‘Well, it’s nice to meet you properly,’ said Evi. ‘Sorry if I’ve made Meg keep you waiting.’

‘Actually, I came to find you,’ he replied. ‘Your secretary told me you were here. I’ve been asked to have a look at your report of an intruder on Friday night.’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Meg. She stretched up to kiss Castell on the cheek before disappearing inside the building.

‘I wouldn’t have thought Friday night merited a detective inspector,’ Evi said. ‘Do I get special attention because I’m Meg’s friend?’

‘Partly that,’ said Castell. ‘But I’ve been keeping a watching brief on the suicides as well, so I’ve come across your name a couple of times before now. I wanted to have a chat with you about Friday, if that’s all right.’

‘Of course.’

Castell reached into his pocket and held out a small, thin sheet of paper in a clear plastic bag. Evi took it and looked down. The writing was very faint.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘A receipt,’ replied Castell. ‘From a card and gift shop in town. Dated three weeks ago. It’s for two greetings cards and a small wind-up toy.’

Evi screwed up her eyes to make out the faint lettering. ‘It says skeleton toy,’ she said.

‘We took the toy you found in your house on Friday to the shop,’ said Castell. ‘They confirmed they’d had those toys in stock until a couple of weeks ago.’

‘So where did you find the receipt?’

Castell seemed to lean a little closer towards her. ‘Well, that’s the problem, Evi,’ he said. ‘According to the officers who attended your house on Friday evening, it was found in your desk at home.’

THE WOMAN BEHIND the hospital’s main reception desk gazed at Nick Bell as if he were a rock star who’d just wandered in off the streets. Not that I could entirely blame her. I made a point of avoiding exceptionally good-looking men myself, they always behaved as though they were doing you a big favour, but there was something about Bell, about the way he seemed oblivious of his looks and gave you his full attention, that was flattering in spite of all the warnings you could give yourself.

We’d gone back in to see Bryony again but there had seemed little point staying with a patient who was deeply sedated. ‘If she’s awake I just sit and talk to her for a while,’ Bell had told me in a low voice. ‘Any old stuff about what’s going on in the news, how the various university sports teams are doing. I imagine it must get quite bewildering for her otherwise, having no idea of the time, hearing nothing but nurses creeping around her and doctors muttering medical terminology.’

‘What about her family?’ I’d asked.

Nick’s mouth had given a little twist but he avoided making eye contact. ‘They’ve visited,’ he said. ‘Although not for a while. They live some way away. And she doesn’t seem to have many friends. I don’t know, maybe peace and quiet is what she needs. Maybe I’m just trying to salve my own conscience.’

We didn’t talk on the way out of the hospital. Nick seemed genuinely upset by the condition Bryony was in. Outside, the air was so cold I felt as though my face had been slapped.

‘It won’t be easy for you,’ he said, as we reached the car park. ‘Joining a university partway through the academic year. Friendships are already formed. Everyone around you will appear to know exactly what they’re doing. They’ll be busy. Won’t have time to look after a newcomer.’

‘I expect I’ll cope,’ I replied, before remembering I wasn’t self-reliant, cope-if-it-kills-me Lacey Flint any more. I was Laura Farrow, insecure and vulnerable. ‘I know what you mean though,’ I back-pedalled quickly. ‘Everyone seems to have formed tight little groups. I haven’t even met my room-mate yet. She’s never in.’

We’d reached my car. Bell glanced up at the clouds, which had taken on the colour of charcoal now the sun had gone in, then back down at me. ‘It was kind of you to come and see Bryony,’ he said. ‘Take care.’

He turned, walked quickly over to an old Range Rover, climbed inside and drove away.

I DROVE BACK to college via the B road where Nicole Holt had died. Remains of police tape still clung to trees and petrol-station flowers had been left at the side of the road. I parked and got out of the car.

It was an eerie enough spot. A narrow road, just wide enough for two cars to pass, with tall trees on either side. There were no street-lights and no kerb. Not somewhere you’d want to break down if you were female and on your own at night. It struck me as a very lonely place to take your own life.

In my Sunday-afternoon briefing, I’d learned that Nicole had bought a strong nylon rope in a hardware shop three days before her death (the police had found the receipt in her room) and had tied it round the thick trunk of a beech tree. The other end had gone round her neck.

The tree in question, still with police tape round its base, was on the left side of the road as I looked out of the city. It stood a good half-metre closer to the tarmac than most of its neighbours. By choosing this one, Nicole had minimized the chances of the rope’s being tangled on other trees.

I’d brought a torch from the car and by this time I needed it. I shone its beam up and down the tree trunk. Just over a metre from the ground, some of the bark had been broken away, no doubt by the sudden tightening of the nylon rope as it reached its full length.

The Mini convertible goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 11.8 seconds, according to the CID report into Nicole’s death. It wouldn’t have had time to reach that speed on this short stretch of road, probably hadn’t got to much more than thirty mph. Still fast enough to sever a slim neck.

I started to walk along the road, thinking that it would have required some planning, a suicide of this nature. You’d need to think about speed, distance, length of rope needed. Had the rope been too short, Nicole could be with Bryony right now, nursing a crippling neck injury. She’d been a history student. A suicide involving mathematical calculations didn’t really seem her thing.

I figured I was reaching the point where the rope had stretched tight and Nicole’s head had left her body. There would have been a lot of blood and I knew it hadn’t rained in Cambridge since Saturday afternoon.

Fearful of discovering I was walking across pink-stained frost I took a quick look down. No blood, just a few half-rotten remains of beech nuts and conker shells. And fresh tyre tracks. I looked back and followed them for a few yards. When they disappeared I stopped and shone the torch around. At the point where I was standing, a vehicle had left the road and driven instead along the grass verge. A short distance ahead, it had swerved to avoid a bank of earth and then gone on for another sixty paces before rejoining the road.

OK, think. The tracks had to be fresh because the CID file had contained a weather report. It had rained on Saturday afternoon and both road and surrounding ground had been damp. It hadn’t rained since, though, so any tracks or prints made after Saturday afternoon would still be here. Early Sunday morning, police tape had been stretched along the length of the road and, at each extremity, into the woods. It was still there.