S. Bolton - Dead Scared

The same year, French-language student Jayne Pearson had reported her suspicions of ongoing rape to the police. They’d found substantial levels of ketamine in her blood, although she’d sworn she’d never taken it. Unfortunately for the case, no conclusive physical evidence of rape was found. Jayne had died later that year, after a gunshot wound to the head. The fourth and last similar case Evi found was that of Danielle Brown, a neurology student from Clare College. Danielle’s claims were all too familiar by this stage. Bad dreams, trouble sleeping and vague recollections of sexual abuse whilst she’d been asleep. Danielle had hanged herself three days before the Christmas vacation but had been found before she’d suffocated.

The computer screen went into sleep mode but Evi didn’t notice.

Including Bryony, it made five instances of possible rape in five years. Statistically, that wasn’t remotely remarkable in itself. But when you factored in that all five women had attempted to take their own lives shortly afterwards, the coincidence was starting to feel stretched.

From: DC Lacey Flint

Subject: Field Report 1

Date: Tuesday 15 January, 22.22 GMT

To: DI Mark Joesbury, Scotland Yard

It’s now ten thirty in the evening, Sir. I’ve drunk so much coffee I’m hyper and enough mineral water to keep me on the loo all night. I’ve been chatted up by nineteen-year-old nerds who stand five foot four in heels and drunken jocks who think manly sweat a powerful aphrodisiac. And a lesbian with peroxide blonde hair who was easily the best company of the lot. Many more evenings like this and I might just try batting for the other team.

I stopped typing. I was whingeing on my first night on a case but – good God above – less than an hour after leaving my room I could cheerfully have wrapped a nylon rope round Joesbury’s neck and pulled it tight. The thought that I might have to keep this up for another three months was enough to give me suicidal thoughts. I’d wandered from library to TV room to coffee bar to pub. I’d been anywhere and everywhere I could find where students hung out. I’d made small talk all evening and learned nothing.

I leaned back in the chair, stretched and turned my head first one way then the other. A shiny blue jacket strung across the opposite desk and a faint floral scent reminded me of my room-mate’s existence. OK …

Evi Oliver is very bright and certainly committed to her job but seems nervy and uptight. Has issues of her own, in my opinion, and could well be the type to overreact to a problem. I take it you’ve run a background check, Sir. Any chance of sharing?

What I can’t ignore, though, are her concerns about the statistical anomalies in the suicide stats. Not only are there simply more of them than you would expect, but there is a disproportionate number of women on the list and the methods they’re choosing are untypically violent.

Practically none of what I’d written so far was in language suitable for a senior officer and I should just scrub it and start again, pretend I was writing to Dana Tulloch, or my DI at Southwark nick. Someone who didn’t rub me up the wrong way simply when I allowed myself to think about him.

I was too tired to start over. I went on to describe my visit to Bryony and her GP’s opinion that she was being neglected by her friends and family. It was nearly eleven o’clock by this stage and I had no idea whether Joesbury would be at home, on the top floor of that white-painted house in Pimlico, or out somewhere having fun.

Bryony Carter’s GP is exceptionally good looking and, whilst on the surface very nice, seems more involved with Bryony than I might expect a GP to be. Do you think I should try to get to know him a little better?

I finished by describing my visit to the site of Nicole Holt’s death.

The presence of another car on the road that night needs further investigation, in my view. I’ve compared the tyre print at the site with the prints of several tyres commonly used on Mini Coopers and found no matches at all. Not even close. A different vehicle was on that stretch of road close to the time Nicole died yet no mention of this in the CID report.

It was well after eleven by the time I finally pressed Send and put the laptop into sleep mode. It felt like I was alone in the block. I undressed, locked my door and crossed the corridor to the communal bathroom. Inside, I turned the taps on full pelt.

Evi had turned on the bath taps and begun the slow and difficult process of getting undressed when the phone rang. The first thought in her head, as always, was Harry. It was never Harry, though. Harry had probably forgotten all about her by now.

‘Hey, sweetie, it’s me.’

‘Hi, Mum.’

Her mother was so proud of her clever, brave daughter and was always such an effort to speak to because the need to seem fine was more important with her than with anyone.

‘How was your day?’

‘Pretty good,’ lied Evi. ‘Got lots done.’

Evi’s mother had been with her on the skiing holiday when Evi had seriously damaged the sciatic nerve in her left leg. Evi’s mother, the better skier of the two, had talked her daughter into taking a difficult black run. Evi had caught her ski on a rock, lost control and fallen into a crevasse. Any hint now that she was less than perfectly fine would be more than her mother could deal with.

By the time she said goodbye, Evi was getting anxious that the bath was overrunning. In the bathroom, the second thing she noticed was the message on the mirror above the bath. I can see you , it said. The first was that the bathtub was full of blood.

THE NOISE LEVEL outside had picked up by the time I got back to my room. Sleep wasn’t going to happen any time soon. And sharing a bathroom with six other women wouldn’t be the least of the challenges I’d face for the next three months. At eighteen I could have coped – hell, there were times in my life when I’d have given anything to have access to a bathroom of any description – but over the last few years, it seemed, standards of hygiene had crept up on me unawares.

Two messages in my inbox. The first was from Student Counselling Services acknowledging receipt of the completed questionnaire. The second was from Joesbury.

From: DI Mark Joesbury, Scotland Yard

Subject: Field Report 1

Date: Tuesday 15 January, 23.16 GMT

To: DC Lacey Flint

You might want to learn the art of the precise, Flint. If I fancy a novel I’ll visit Waterstones. I’ll make discreet inquiries about the tyre prints, but I wouldn’t get your knickers in a twist. The rain finished around four in the afternoon. Police attended the scene around three in the morning. That’s eleven hours in which any number of inebriated, over-privileged, public-school tossers could take a detour off the road.

Does it bear repeating that you are not there to investigate Nicole Holt’s death, or any of them for that matter, just to be a good-looking fruitcake and observe? Sweet dreams.

Five minutes went by and not a single word passed my lips that could be repeated in church. I was just about to email him back – which, given my mood, wouldn’t have been wise – when the door opened. A purple-haired girl whose limbs looked too thin to hold her upright stood in the doorway.

‘Laura?’ she said, swaying on impossibly high heels. ‘Thank God, a room-mate as old as me. God, I’m rat-arsed. Is there coffee in that mug?’

There was, it was steaming on my desk. She stumbled over to me, picked it up and drank from it. She didn’t seem to notice it was hot enough to scald her.

‘Talaith?’ I said. She was a little older than I’d expected. Maybe twenty-two or three.