20/20

by Carl Goodman

  Perhaps it was simply the ego of the artist seeking approbation from his subject. She hadn’t exactly been effusive. That was probably not fair, she decided. ‘Mathew, it’s brilliant. It’s actually unnervingly good. It’s just a shock to see yourself portrayed so realistically. I’m flattered,’ she told him, ‘I really am.’

  His relief was palpable. ‘I’m pleased you like it, Eva. I felt it captured you, both in appearance and in spirit.’ Harred seemed almost imploring. Eva could only smile and nod. They stood in awkward silence for several moments.

  ‘Where are you?’ Unexpectedly, Flynn broke the mood. Harred and Eva turned to face her. ‘There’s hundreds of people here and they all look amazing,’ Flynn said, ‘but where are you? Aren’t you going to paint yourself into the picture? You ought to, you know.’

  Harred smiled at her like a parent indulging a child. ‘I want to,’ he admitted, ‘but I haven’t worked out where yet. I guess I still have a while to make up my mind. I don’t even know what character I’d like to portray myself as.’

  Flynn scoffed. ‘Why not be yourself? Just as you are now, in jeans and T-shirt and with a paintbrush. You don’t need to dress it up. The painting is amazing. All you need to do is let people know you’re the bloke who painted it.’ She had taken him by surprise, Eva could see that. He struggled for an answer.

  ‘Mathew? We actually came here today to speak to Fredrick Huss. Is he here?’ Harred tore himself away from staring at Flynn and looked back at Eva.

  ‘No, he’s not. He’s away at the moment. I think he’s on church business. America,’ Harred added. ‘He’ll be back in a day or two.’

  ‘Is there anywhere we can contact him? We really need to talk to him.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told them, hands spread in apology. ‘Fredrick often goes away on church business. He disappears for a week or so at a time. He thinks New Thought can be very demanding, he’s said that to me on several occasions. I suppose every job can be,’ Harred added with a shrug, ‘even being a painter. At least Fredrick has one thing he can invariably find relief in, though.’

  Eva caught the note in his voice. ‘Which is?’

  ‘He’s a photographer,’ Harred said. ‘He takes his camera with him wherever he goes.’

  * * *

  When DCI Corrine Sutton next appeared she no longer had her stick. Eva glanced at her foot and noticed the cast had gone too. Sutton was walking almost normally, albeit favouring her other foot. She came into Eva’s office, closed the door and sat down in front of her desk without bothering to ask if it was convenient. ‘I understand you’ve moved in with Flynn,’ Sutton said.

  ‘Just for the time being.’ Eva lowered the lid of her laptop. ‘The insurance company is being pretty fair. I should be able to sort out another place to rent shortly.’

  ‘It’s just another hassle you don’t need,’ Sutton observed. She watched Eva’s face. It struck her that Sutton didn’t seem in the best of moods. ‘Why are Colin Lynch’s people still trying to kill you?’

  There had been enough time for her to think about the lie. ‘Unfinished business I suppose. Maybe somebody took Lynch’s death personally, I don’t know. I think they’ll give up eventually.’

  ‘Or they’ll succeed,’ Sutton said. ‘It doesn’t help progress on the case, does it?’

  ‘Cases,’ Eva insisted.

  Sutton raised an eyebrow but didn’t press the point. She was still testing. Eva could see that, even though the argument for a single killer had all but evaporated. ‘And you think you have a suspect? Fredrick Huss, pastor or whatever they call it at New Thought?’

  ‘Huss has been in contact with all four women. We now know that Alicia Khan had visited New Thought at least once. It had been organised through the university. It was actually a trip to see Mathew Harred’s painting, but Huss would have been there. So we can at least say Khan had contact with New Thought. I accept beyond that it becomes tenuous.’

  Sutton looked as though she didn’t disagree. Her demeanour started to concern Eva. ‘Flynn is following up on Huss?’

  ‘He’s in the US for a few days apparently. The church is based in New York and he has to go there several times a year. We’ll interview him again when he gets back.’

  Sutton mulled over her words for a while. ‘And the Chatham Centre?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Somebody,’ Eva said as she lifted the lid of her laptop again, ‘is definitely trying to tell us something. I don’t know if it’s about the murders directly, though.’ She turned the screen so Sutton could see it. ‘I’ve had two messages; one mentioned Robert Isherwood and the other Grau Laska.’ On the computer three documents were open and partially overlaid on each other. One was the coroner’s report on Isherwood, the second was Raj’s investigation into Laska, the third Jamie Newton’s investigation into Chatham’s financial affairs. ‘We don’t understand Isherwood. He died in an unexplained car crash on the M3. We don’t understand Grau Laska, except that he’s a lens designer and of some importance to ProOptica, a company in which an investment subsidiary of the Chatham Centre has a significant interest. We do know that investment subsidiary is having cash-flow problems and we suspect they’re trying to get themselves bought out. They’re in it to the tune of sixty million. That could be a motive for murder.’

  Sutton slapped her hand on the desk then. ‘Murder yes, mutilation, no.’ Eva did her best not to flinch. The realisation that Sutton was more than simply dissatisfied with progress settled on her. Not so much settled, Eva thought as she braced herself for what would inevitably come next. It fell on her like a collapsing building.

  ‘You don’t have a connection between some assumed financial impropriety and four people having their eyes cut out, and you don’t have a connection between a photograph Fredrick Huss allegedly took and four women being sliced up like bacon.’ The rage in Sutton’s voice came as a complete shock. For a moment Eva did not know how to react. ‘I know I’ve been unavailable much of the time,’ Sutton continued, ‘but that changes now. I need progress, Detective Inspector Harris. I need something to change. I knew you were a risk when I accepted you into my station, but at the time frankly I didn’t have much choice.’ She held up her hand as Eva tried to interrupt. ‘It’s not been a total loss. I’m not saying that. But it hasn’t moved along anywhere near quickly enough and, again frankly, I did not expect the personal baggage you’ve brought with you. I’m telling you now, Harris,’ Sutton said as she stood to leave, ‘either you get this investigation shifted up a gear or I’ll find someone who can.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The smell of garlic hit her the instant she unlocked the door of Flynn’s apartment. Flynn had given her a set of keys, which had been good of her, Eva thought. When she looked in the dining room she saw a table laid for dinner. Four places, Eva noted. Flynn must be having friends round.

  ‘Hey,’ she said when she found Flynn in the kitchen stacking garlic bread on a plate, ‘I didn’t know you had guests. I’ll get out your way for the evening.’

  ‘That’d be awkward,’ Flynn said as she put food on the table. ‘Jamie and Raj will be here any minute. They’ll say I made them give up their evening under false pretences if you bugger off. I just thought a team dinner might be a good way to wind down.’

  For a moment the prospect horrified her, but then she realised she was actually starving. ‘It would be,’ Eva agreed. She could see the effort Flynn had made. ‘Thanks, Becks,’ she said, and made damned certain she sounded like she meant it.

  ‘We heard you had a bit of a kicking from the DCI. We’ve all been there. She’s a good cop on the whole but every now and then she gets out of her pram. Pressure from above I guess. I just thought a bit of Italian and a couple of bottles of wine might take the edge off, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I do,’ Eva admitted. ‘It’s a bloody good idea. I wish I’d thought of it myself.’

  Flynn laughed. ‘No way am I eating at your digs right now. I’ve seen the p
ictures, it’s not like it’s going to get any awards on Tripadvisor.’ Eva was about to make some flippant remark in return when the doorbell rang.

  Jamie and Raj had both brought wine. Jamie had chosen a Californian Pinot Noir and Raj a Shiraz from a region called Nandi Hills in Karnataka state in India. She had not taken either of them for wine drinkers, but when they sat around the table both seemed surprisingly knowledgeable. Then again she actually knew almost nothing about wine, so they could have both been bullshitting.

  By ten o’clock she was feeling mildly pissed. Not drunk, Eva thought as she contemplated her half-finished glass, but certainly a lot more relaxed than when she left the station. Flynn, Jamie and Raj all looked to be in a similar state. They sat in Flynn’s living room. Eva and Flynn sat in armchairs. Jamie and Raj lounged on the sofa.

  ‘I reckon it all goes back to that first diagram you drew,’ Raj said, ‘one psychopath, one rational motive. Huss could well be our nut-job. I reckon the rational motive has to be one of the investors in the Chatham Centre.’

  ‘Was Huss at Berta Nicholson’s party?’ Flynn asked.

  Eva shook her head. ‘No. I guess he was either in the US or on his way there at that point. I’m assuming he would have been at the party otherwise. It’s only Harred that seems to avoid them.’

  ‘So it was actually an orgy?’

  ‘Full on,’ Eva admitted finally. ‘Anything went.’

  ‘You get a lot more of that around here than you think,’ Newton told them. ‘It’s like doing drugs. There’s a lot of well-off people bored and looking for kicks.’

  Eva didn’t question how he knew that. Flynn ignored it too. ‘Do you think Nicholson could be involved?’

  Eva thought for a while. ‘No, I don’t. It’s just one stupid little detail that sticks out in my mind. There were class-A drugs available, everyone was screwing everyone else but Berta still insisted on there being a lifeguard on duty by the pool. That’s just not the mindset of someone who’s into hurting people.’

  Jamie poured them all some more wine. ‘So Huss is out of the picture for a few days. That means we can concentrate on the Chatham Centre?’

  Eva nodded her agreement. ‘Nicola Milne is our informant,’ she told them, ‘the optometrist. At least I think she is.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell them her real reason for believing that, because in one sense it ran against everything Eva had said to them so far. Deductive logic told her Milne could be the informant, but why she should be was another matter entirely. She had to admit it to herself, though. The reason she believed it was Milne was intuition, the look she had seen in her eye when Eva had left the clinic. Milne had stared, made eye contact, not broken away when Eva returned the stare. She had wanted to say something, but not in front of the others. Milne wanted to communicate. Ergo, Milne was the informant. Eva felt that in her gut.

  ‘Okay,’ Flynn grumbled. ‘Is it just me who doesn’t know what an optometrist is?’

  ‘It’s like a pecking order,’ Eva said. She could hear a slight slur in her voice but by then she didn’t care. ‘You go to get your glasses or contact lenses sorted, you see an optician. I suppose you could say they deal with putting stuff in front of your eyes. Next step is the optometrist. They look at the stuff going on inside the eye. Then you get the ophthalmologist, the ophthalmic surgeon. The eye-slicer,’ Eva told them. ‘They’re top of the tree. They do the actual intervention in the eye. They also make the big money.’

  ‘It makes my skin crawl,’ Flynn said, ‘anything to do with eyes. I suppose I’d have laser surgery if I needed it, but I’d have to be really short-sighted.’

  ‘You’d still need reading glasses when you hit fifty most likely,’ Raj said. ‘Laser doesn’t stop that. My aunt had it,’ he added.

  Eva swirled her wine. ‘That’s why Chatham is so riled up about Bright Eyes. He claims one implant will give you perfect vision for the rest of your life. No more glasses, no more trips to the optician, not ever. Just perfect vision until the day you die.’

  ‘No wonder they invested sixty million,’ Newton mused. ‘If they find the right buyer that’ll look like chicken feed.’

  ‘It still doesn’t give us a motive,’ Eva said as she took another sip. Then she frowned. ‘Not unless somebody is trying to cover something up.’

  ‘Like what though?’ Raj asked. ‘Chatham’s already put the lenses into nearly a thousand patients without any problems. I mean you hear of scandals about faulty medical devices to be sure, like those breast implants that weren’t safe, but surely we’d have heard something about Chatham’s lenses by now?’

  ‘A lot of those got implanted before the problem was discovered,’ Jamie reminded him.

  ‘Robert Isherwood’s lenses broke on impact,’ Flynn said.

  Eva winced. ‘So did the rest of his head. He hit that lorry so hard it would have been a miracle if they’d survived.’ She couldn’t completely dismiss the thought, though. ‘If it is Nicola Milne sending the texts then she’s pointed us to Isherwood and Laska for a reason. She either knows something or she suspects something.’

  ‘It could just be malice,’ Flynn pointed out.

  ‘It could,’ Eva agreed. ‘For the moment let’s assume it isn’t. Isherwood is not obvious but we’ve found out more about ProOptica by looking at Laska. The trouble is we haven’t spoken to Laska. Laska is no longer at ProOptica. Did you have any luck tracking him down?’

  Raj shook his head. ‘I haven’t contacted the Slovak police. I don’t have enough reason to, so I’ve been going through public directories. I’m as sure as I can be that Laska hasn’t turned up in a ditch somewhere, but apart from that he’s disappeared. That might not mean anything sinister though,’ Raj added. ‘It’s just hard to track someone down from this distance if they’re not a company director or in trouble with the law.’

  Jamie scoffed. ‘So unless we find a reason to issue an international arrest warrant or a missing person report, we’ve got no way of getting assistance in finding Laska?’

  ‘Pretty much so,’ Eva agreed. Then she frowned. ‘Unless we could persuade Milne to put us in touch directly. Assuming she knows where he is.’

  ‘Would she do that?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. It might be worth a try.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Raj said, ‘are we actually talking about going to Slovakia to try to interview Grau Laska?’

  It didn’t strike her as a serious obstacle. ‘Why not? It’s not exactly the end of the earth is it? It’s a day, two days’ trip at the most. Flight time’s about two and a half hours. I’ve already checked,’ Eva added.

  ‘No way would DCI Sutton sign off on that,’ Flynn said.

  ‘And anyway, what would you do?’ Jamie asked. ‘Just interview Laska, assuming you could find him, or stop in on ProOptica as well?’

  Eva didn’t answer him. Instead she asked Raj. ‘Could you run a background check on them too? Is that difficult?’

  Raj almost looked contemptuous. ‘Not with a translation app. The legal structures are all aligned with the rest of the EU. I can probably get as much as I could on a UK company with a bit of work.’

  ‘So now all we need to do is find out if Nicola Milne knows where Laska is, and if she’ll help us,’ Newton said. He didn’t hide the scepticism in his voice. ‘Assuming it’s her and assuming the DCI will sign off a travel budget.’

  He was right to be sceptical, Eva thought. It seemed like a long shot. Even so it still felt like something they needed to follow up on. ‘Well,’ she said as she reached for her phone. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  * * *

  Raj and Jamie left around eleven after they had all helped Flynn clear up and stack the dishwasher. Shortly after that Eva crawled into her bed. Her head buzzed a little. The wine. She knew she’d had too much, but when she thought back on it she realised Sutton’s dressing down had actually shaken her. Not because it had been especially harsh (she had suffered much worse from Hadley), but because it h
ad been unexpected. They actually were making progress, Eva told herself as she lay staring at the ceiling. They had opened up new lines of inquiry on a four-year-old cold case and had made a connection between the victims of the most recent killings. Sutton was being unreasonable. And she doesn’t even know half of what’s going on, Eva thought.

  She had sent her message to the anonymous informant. Nicola Milne. She was convinced it was the optometrist from the Chatham Centre who had sent her the texts about Isherwood and Laska, although approaching her directly did not seem like a good idea. What, if anything, did she know? Whatever it was, Eva didn’t want to risk jeopardising her. Maybe she would respond, maybe she wouldn’t. She had sent the message. There was nothing else she could do. We need your help, Eva had told her, and we need to make this stop. We know about Laska. Can you help us to contact him without putting him at risk?

  The wine. Clearly, she wasn’t used to it. She should be asleep by now but instead thoughts kept running through her head. Out of irritation more than anything else Eva sat up and opened her laptop. Suppose Milne answered? Suppose she said she would help? How would she go about getting into ProOptica?

  The Slovak police would be unlikely to assist given what little she had, and she couldn’t blame them if they turned out to be uncooperative. Individually, the details were so thin they barely seemed like coincidence, but collectively a pattern was starting to emerge. A dilemma, then. She needed more information to further advance the investigation, but to get more information the investigation needed to be further advanced. Way too much wine, she decided.

  If she approached them on the basis of police business ProOptica would have every reason to politely decline her access, even though she had grounds to suspect that in some way they were connected with the murders. So where did that leave her? She went online to check her facts.