S. Bolton - Dead Scared

‘FOUR OUT OF the nine were patients of ours,’ said Nick.

‘Did you know them personally?’ asked Evi.

He shook his head and a faint tinge of pink spread across his upper cheeks. ‘As far as possible we put the young women under the care of the other partners,’ he said. ‘Probably being over-cautious but there you go, better safe than sorry. I get the men and the women over forty.’

‘I’m registered with you,’ Evi reminded him. ‘And I’m a few years off forty.’

‘We assumed familiarity would have bred contempt in your case.’

Evi smiled. Women had been falling head over heels for Nick for as long as she’d known him. She looked down at the spreadsheet on her desk.

‘I have a list here of nineteen students who took their own lives in the last five years,’ she said. ‘Bryony Carter would have made twenty. Now we have another nine attempted suicides.’

‘I’m not getting a good feeling about this,’ said Nick.

‘Join the club.’

The night outside had got even colder. I pulled my collar up, wrapped my new college scarf around my face and set off. I was heading for the site of the first suicide this academic year. In late October, Jackie King had drowned herself beneath a bridge belonging to Clare College. She’d been a third-year English student.

The bridge was of pale stone, with three arches to let the boat traffic pass below. By the time I reached it I was having serious misgivings about my email to Joesbury. I probably shouldn’t have been so familiar. It was just easier, somehow, to talk to him when he wasn’t close.

The whole bridge was shiny with frost. I stayed close to the stone balustrade on the left-hand side and stopped in the exact centre, just as Jackie had done. Only she’d brought a length of washing line with her. She’d tied one end to a baluster. The other she’d fastened securely round both her ankles. The exact length of the rope had been important. She must have worked it out beforehand, cutting it carefully. I have no idea what happened to her during the next few seconds. I can only guess.

So here’s my guess. I think she must have sat on the stone rail and swung her legs over the side. She’d have looked down, just as I was doing now, seen the water black and slow-moving beneath her. She would have been cold. It was late in the year. It was also around four a.m.: she was caught on a CCTV camera making her way over here. She must have looked down at the water and asked herself what on earth she thought she was doing. She must have seriously considered giving it up and going home. She hadn’t. She’d jumped.

Jackie, Bryony and Nicole. Three young women who’d chosen to end their lives in what Evi Oliver called very untypical ways. She was right. Each death, or near death in Bryony’s case, had been complicated, considered and violent. So what was happening to women in this city?

‘Twenty-nine students, twenty-three of them women, either killed themselves or tried to in the last five years,’ said Evi, leaning back against the chair and trying not to let the pain show.

‘Friggin’ hell, it doesn’t look good, does it?’ said Nick.

‘No,’ said Evi.

Silence for a second.

‘I saw Meg yesterday,’ said Evi. ‘She mentioned a spate of suicides when we were here. Ring any bells with you?’

‘Can’t say it does. There was that chap who jumped off Great St Mary’s around exam time, but other than that …’

‘No, he’s the only one I can remember.’

‘And you’ve already spoken to the police?’

Evi nodded, then gave a small half-shrug.

‘What?’

‘I’m think I’m beginning to have credibility issues with the local CID,’ she said.

Nick frowned at her. Evi finished her wine and told him about her intruder, about the tricks that had been played on her, and the phone calls and messages from earlier.

‘And these emails have just vanished from your computer?’ he asked her. ‘I know nothing about IT. Is that even possible?’

Evi pulled a face.

‘Are you worried?’

‘A bit.’

‘Want to come and stay at my house tonight?’ he asked her. ‘Any number of spare bedrooms.’

Evi shook her head. ‘Kind thought, but I think I might die of exposure in the night.’

He laughed. ‘I could lend you a dog to cuddle, but you’re probably right. Look, why don’t I talk to my partners, show them this list? If I can get them on side, CID will have to listen to five of us.’

She thought about it for a second. ‘It can’t hurt,’ she said.

‘I need to get going. I’ll see you on Friday, right?’

Evi agreed that he would. ‘Actually, I thought I might bring someone with me after all,’ she said. ‘No, not a date. A new mature student who’s helping me out with some research. She needs to meet a few people. Would that be OK?’

‘Course. Now, want me to check the house for you?’

Evi opened her mouth to say she’d done it herself earlier.

‘Yes please,’ was what came out.

I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. I headed back to college, let myself into the library and checked emails.

Nothing from Joesbury. One from Evi, reporting modest progress. Her words, not mine. She’d found nine cases of students attempting suicide by various means. Medical confidentiality prevented her from giving me their names but it meant my list was approaching thirty.

Now I’d learned that Nicole had disappeared for a few days. Had any of the others done the same? And this pathological fear of rats? Was that remotely relevant?

I was about to close the laptop when a box popped up in one corner of the screen. Got the Cambridge Blues? said the text. The photograph was of a boy, in a college scarf, leaning against one of the bridges. I find it kind of spooky the way that happens. You’ll be searching the net for, say, party shoes, and suddenly all kinds of ads and boxes advertising shoes start appearing on your screen. I’d run several Google searches for information on suicides and, somewhere out in cyberspace, I’d been put on a mailing list for depressives. Curious, though, I clicked the box open and found myself in a blog about life in Cambridge, with an attached chat room. The Cambridge Blues, it was called, the survivor’s guide to the ultimate in academia.

The site was well designed and quite appealing, and I began flicking through. Here was a community of people who felt as disaffected by Cambridge as I did, albeit for very different reasons. They were writing about their experiences with eloquence and compassion for others. Sometimes very movingly. To my surprise I found myself clicking on the button that would take me into the chat room.

Quite a few people were online. I registered as Laura and began typing:

Almost found myself in tears today down by the river. Difficult to imagine being anywhere more beautiful. So why did it make me sad ?

Within seconds I had a reply.

Beauty never fails to move us. If we’re happy, great beauty makes us more so, if we’re sad it can be what tips us over the edge .

I’m finding it difficult to imagine anything worse than being somewhere you don’t belong . (Me again.) Surrounded by people who will never know you. Never have the faintest clue who you really are .

The people you need are out there, Laura. You just have to keep looking .

OK, enough was enough. I came out of the chat room feeling guilty. If Joesbury knew what I’d just done, he’d tell me I’d taken the needy-fruitcake act that was Laura Farrow a bit far. Trouble was, I had a feeling it hadn’t been only Laura in the chat room just now. That had been Lacey, too.