S. Bolton: Dead Scared

I thought for a moment and shook my head.

‘Killed herself in November. Made a few of the national papers.’

‘I must have missed it.’ Since the case we’d both worked on last autumn, I’d made a point of avoiding the papers and the national news. I would never be comfortable seeing my own name in the spotlight, and constant reminders of what the team had been through were not, as the therapists would say, going to help the healing process.

‘I still don’t get it,’ I went on. ‘Why are SO10 interested in a college suicide?’

Joesbury pulled another file out of his bag. Asking him not to open it didn’t really seem like an option so I sat and waited while he pulled out another set of photographs. Not that multiples were strictly necessary. I got the idea clearly enough from the one on the top. A girl, obviously dead, with wet hair and clothes. And a rope tied tight around her ankles.

‘This was a suicide?’ I asked.

‘Apparently so,’ he replied. ‘Certainly no obvious evidence otherwise. This was Jackie in her better days.’

Joesbury had pulled the last of the photographs to the top of the pile. Jackie King looked the outdoor type. She was wearing a sailing-style sweatshirt, her hair was long, fair, shiny and straight. Young, healthy, bright and attractive, surely she’d had everything to live for?

‘Poor girl,’ I said, and waited for him to go on.

‘Three suicides this year, three last, four the year before,’ he said. ‘Cambridge is developing a very unhealthy record when it comes to young people taking their own lives.’

EVI STOPPED, WILLING the wind to soften so that she could hear the snigger, the scuffle of feet that would tell her someone was watching. Because someone had to be watching. There was no way these cones had blown on to the path. There were twelve in all, one in the exact centre of each flagstone, forming a straight line right up to the front door.

Three nights in a row this had happened. Last night and the night before it had been possible to explain away. The cones had been scattered the first time she’d seen them, as though blown by the wind. Last night, there’d been a pile of them just inside the gate. This was much more deliberate.

Who could possibly know how much she hated fir cones?

She turned on the spot, using the stick for balance. Too much noise from the wind to hear anything. Too many shadows to be sure she was alone. She should get indoors. Walking as quickly up the path as she was able, she reached the front door and stepped inside.

Another cone, larger than the rest, lay on the mat.

Evi kept her indoor wheelchair to one side of the front door. Without taking her eyes off the cone, she pushed the door shut and sat down in it. She was in the grip of an old, irrational fear, one she acknowledged but was powerless to do anything about, dating back to when, as a chubby, inquisitive four-year-old, she’d picked up a large fir cone from beneath a tree.

She’d been on holiday in the north of Italy with her family. The pine trees in the forest had been massive, stretching up to the heavens, or so it had seemed to the tiny girl. The cone was huge too, easily dwarfing her little plump hands. She’d picked it up, turned to her mother in delight and felt a tickle on her left wrist.

When she looked down, her hands and the lower parts of her arms were covered in crawling insects. She remembered howling and one of her parents brushing the insects away. But some had got inside her clothes and they’d had to undress her in the forest. Years later, the memory of delight turning to revulsion still had the power to disturb her.

No one could know that. Even her parents hadn’t mentioned the incident in decades. A weird joke, nothing more, probably nothing to do with her. Maybe a child had been playing here earlier, had left a trail of cones and popped one through her letter box. Evi wheeled herself towards the kitchen. She got as far as the doorway.

Heaped on the kitchen table, which several hours ago she’d left completely clear, was a pile of large fir cones.

‘YOUNG PEOPLE COMMITTING suicide is hardly uncommon, though,’ I said, thinking as I spoke. ‘The suicide rate is higher among the student body than the rest of the population, isn’t it? Wasn’t there a case in Wales a few years ago?’

‘You’re thinking about Bridgend,’ said Joesbury. ‘Although technically, that didn’t involve a university. Cluster suicides do happen. But they’re rare. And Dana’s mate isn’t the only one who’s worried. The media attention is getting the governing body very edgy too. Outlandish public suicides don’t look good for one of the world’s leading academic institutions.’

‘But no suggestion of foul play?’ I asked.

‘On the contrary. Both Bryony and Jackie had a psychiatric history,’ said Joesbury. ‘Jackie in the past, Bryony more recently.’

‘Bryony was receiving counselling?’

‘She was,’ said Joesbury. ‘Not by Dana’s friend herself, what’s her name …’ He pulled a stack of paper from the file and flicked through it. ‘Oliver,’ he said, after a moment, ‘Dr Evi Oliver … not with her but with one of her colleagues. There’s a team of counsellors dedicated to the university and Dr Oliver heads it up.’

‘What about the other girl?’ I said.

Joesbury nodded. ‘Jackie had her problems too, according to her friends,’ he said. ‘So did the young lad who hanged himself in his third week.’ Joesbury glanced down at his notes. ‘Jake Hammond. Nineteen-year-old English student.’

‘How many cases are we talking about?’

‘Nineteen in five years, including Bryony Carter,’ said Joesbury.

‘Well, I can see why the authorities are worried,’ I said. ‘But I don’t get why SO10 are involved.’

Joesbury leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He looked thinner than I remembered. He’d lost muscle definition from his chest and shoulders. ‘Old girls’ network,’ he said. ‘Dr Oliver contacts her old Cambridge buddy Dana, who in turn gets in touch with her old mentor on the force, another Cambridge alumna.’

‘Who is?’

‘Sonia Hammond.’

Joesbury waited for the name to register. It didn’t.

‘Commander Sonia Hammond,’ he prompted. ‘Currently head of the covert operations directorate at Scotland Yard.’

I’d got it. ‘Your boss,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you reported to a woman.’

Joesbury raised one eyebrow. I’d forgotten he could do that. ‘Story of my life,’ he said. ‘Commander Hammond has a daughter at Cambridge, so she has an added interest.’

‘Even so,’ I said. ‘What on earth do they think an undercover operation in the city of dreaming spires will achieve?’

‘I think the city of dreaming spires is Oxford,’ said Joesbury. ‘Dr Oliver has this theory that the suicides aren’t coincidence. She thinks there is something decidedly sinister going on.’

AFTER EVI HAD thanked the young WPC, she locked and bolted the front door, still more shaken than she wanted to admit. The policewoman had been polite, searching the house thoroughly and stressing that Evi should call immediately if anything else happened. Otherwise, though, she clearly wasn’t planning any action other than a report. There had been no evidence of a break-in, she’d explained, and fir cones were hardly threatening.

The woman had a point, of course. Evi wasn’t even the only one with keys to her house. Her cleaning company let themselves in every Tuesday. The building was owned by the university and it wasn’t impossible that there’d been some unscheduled, emergency visit by maintenance. Why fir cones should have been brought into the house by a maintenance team was another matter, but not one the young officer was going to spend any time worrying about.