S. Bolton - Dead Scared

‘They want you to put it in writing, at the very least,’ Nick went on. ‘They also want to know if you have Ethics Board approval. If you get anything out of us, officially, it’ll be months down the line.’

Evi nodded. Exactly what she’d expected. ‘Thanks for trying,’ she said.

She waited. Nick hadn’t touched his wine yet. He looked as though he had more to tell her. ‘Let’s go and sit down,’ she said.

‘Beautiful house,’ Nick said, as he followed her into the room. ‘You were lucky to get it.’

‘I never thought of it that way,’ she said, crossing to the chair at her desk. ‘I assumed I got it because I’m disabled.’

Nick stopped in mid-stride. ‘Open mouth, insert foot,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You should see my bedside manner.’

Evi couldn’t help a tiny smile. He saw it the same second he realized what he’d said. ‘You see, I just can’t help myself,’ he went on. ‘I knew I should have gone into research.’

Evi indicated an easy chair close by. He sat, cradling his wine glass in both hands.

‘You could have told me on the phone about the partners,’ she said.

He raised the glass to his lips then put it softly down on a side table. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But I was curious enough to have a look at the records myself. And something occurred to me.’

Evi pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

‘A patient of ours who self-harmed would invariably be recommended a period of counselling,’ Nick told her. ‘They don’t all take up the offer, of course, and there’s a pretty high drop-out rate, but it’s rare for them to refuse the initial referral.’

‘That makes sense,’ said Evi. ‘Self-harm is often a cry for attention. Counselling provides that.’

Nick nodded his head at her. ‘If a student patient of ours self-harmed, we’d invariably refer them to you and your team,’ he said. ‘I rang round a few other GPs in the area, just to find out what their policy is. It’s the same. So, I think it fairly safe to assume that a student in the city who attempted suicide would be referred to you.’

‘We’ll have them on record,’ said Evi. ‘We’ll have the information I was looking for ourselves. Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘If your database will allow you to search according to reasons for initial referral, you can probably find them very quickly.’

He was right. When she had time, she’d be bloody annoyed with herself for not thinking of it first.

‘Give me a sec,’ she said, turning to face her screen and typing in the login name and password that would access the Counselling Services database. A few more seconds and she’d typed Episodes of Self-Harm into the search facility.

‘Here they are,’ she said, scanning through the entries. ‘Nine in the last five years. Seven of them women.’

From: DC Lacey Flint

Subject: Field Report 2

Date: Wednesday 16 January, 21.17 GMT

To: DI Mark Joesbury, Scotland Yard

Greetings from Starbucks, DI Joe. (Oops. Sorry, Sir, spent the last hour breathing in Prosecco bubbles and they’ve quite gone to my head.)

Anyway, here’s the big news. Nicole Holt disappeared late last October for four days. According to the girls on her corridor, she went off to lectures on Friday and didn’t come back all weekend. They’re pretty certain about the time because they remember she missed the Halloween party. Her friends weren’t too worried at first, they just assumed she’d gone to stay with her boyfriend in Peterhouse, but then on Sunday evening he turned up and he hadn’t seen her all weekend either.

You’re going to ask if they reported it, aren’t you? They didn’t. Bloody numpties! It was difficult, apparently. They didn’t want to make a big fuss and risk embarrassing her if she’d just gone off with someone. They phoned round a few of her friends but no one had heard anything. Then, at two o’clock in the morning, when they were starting to think that perhaps they should report it – what do you reckon, gals, do we involve those nice chaps in uniform yet ? – two girls from the ground floor found her in the stairwell.

‘In the stairwell?’ says me, in astonishment.

‘Yes, indeed, the stairwell,’ they reply. ‘Obviously she couldn’t have been there all evening or someone would have seen her. She was half asleep. Really dopey.’ (Not the only one, I’d suggest!)

So, my new best mates, Winkin, Blinkin and Nod, found a drugged-up, semi-conscious girl on the stairwell, couldn’t get any sense out of her, and were just about to call an ambulance when she came round. She was still a bit woozy, apparently, but basically seemed OK.

So, where had our friend Nicole been, you’ll be asking. So was I. So were they, surprisingly enough. Trouble was, Nicole had no idea. She didn’t know what day it was. Couldn’t tell them where she’d been, what she’d been doing or with whom. And she was exhausted. She just wanted to go to bed. The next day they tried to talk her into going to the police but she refused. They all assumed she’d been with another bloke and didn’t want to tell them about him. Her boyfriend jumped to the same conclusion and dumped her.

Don’t you just love men?

After that, not surprisingly, she got a bit depressed or, to use their words, ‘well weird’. What they seem to mean by that is she became jumpy and nervous, keeping to her room most of the time, not really talking to anyone, stopped going to lectures, complained about not being able to sleep and bad dreams.

And she developed a pretty bad rat fixation. Yes, you read it right, rats. Seemed convinced the building was overrun with rodents. Nobody else noticed but she heard them all the time, day and night. She even found a dead one under her bed one time. She went absolutely mental and, yes, I am quoting my new best friends again, because once they got started on rats there was no stopping them. Seems Nicole was the butt of a few practical jokes on the subject of rats. Someone set off a mechanical one in Hall one day and she nearly lost it, someone else broke into her room and covered the walls with photographs of them.

So, to summarize (and I heard you mutter ‘about time too’, by the way), Nicole sounds like a classic suicide case to me: depressed, not sleeping, bad dreams when she did sleep, not keeping up with coursework, dropping out of social life. On the other hand, she was picked on by some fellow students with a rather warped sense of humour and, most alarmingly, disappeared for several days shortly before she died.

Should we be worried about that, do you think?

Right, this is me signing off now, my coffee’s going cold and there’s just one more thing I want to check out before I stumble Lethe-wards. You see, all this academic bollocks is starting to rub off. Hope London’s a bit warmer than this place. Snow is forecast any day now but luckily I brought some boots.

Sleep well.

Joesbury got up and walked to the window. She’d sent him the email just five minutes ago. She’d be leaving Starbucks, probably the one on Market Street, pulling her coat up round her shoulders, wrapping that stupid college scarf round her neck, stepping outside. He turned and looked at the street map of Cambridge on his desk. If she was going back to St John’s she’d walk along St Mary’s Street. If. He had to be in King’s Parade in ten and could well walk straight into her. The case was turning into a farce. ‘Enter Brian Rix, stage left, with his trousers round his ankles,’ he muttered, as he found his coat, grabbed his wallet and left the room.