Guilty Conscious

by Oliver Davies

  “One more stop before we head back?”

  He nodded, and we climbed back in the car, stricken.

  Ten

  Thatcher

  Dr Nura Kumar’s offices were across the other side of the city, and I wondered how much time the two sisters had spent shuttling between buses to get to where they needed. I sat back; my head turned to the window as I thought about everything Billie had shared with us. She’d been a devoted big sister, that much was clear, and there didn’t seem much in her in the way of violence. She had wanted Stella to be alright, not to exact vengeance on her behalf, but that might have changed at some point, a sudden, broken, desperate outpour of emotions. Edward could have gotten in touch, might have replied to a letter, might have seen her out and about and tipped the balance against himself.

  “Did you notice that she kept using the present tense?” Mills asked me as he drove. “For both of them? But Edward especially.”

  “I did,” I replied, and he looked at me in the mirror. It made me think that her surprise of hearing about Edward’s death was genuine. If she already knew, why would she have continued talking about him as if he were still alive? It often took people a while to fix that grammatical slip, and only someone who had known about the death would have spoken about him in the past. Despite her tenuous alibi, it put her in good standing in my book.

  “Do you think we’ll get much from the doctor?” he asked.

  I sighed, a little uncertain. I wanted to know as much about Stella, and what happened with Edward as we could, and what she shared in her sessions about him, her sister, and her father might help to open a few doors for us, but at the end of the day, we were investigating Edward’s death, not Stella’s, and it was easy to get side-tracked looking into the events that led to this poor girl’s end.

  “I think she might, given the circumstances,” I answered. “At least, she might be able to tell us a bit about Stella and Billie and their father. Or whatever Stella managed to share about Edward.”

  “That would mean that our killer was someone who knew about it all, knew the Helman girls. Someone from the party?” Mills said. “Someone from that friend group?”

  “If it’s not someone directly from Stella’s life,” I added, and he hummed in agreement.

  “What are your thoughts on Billie?” he asked me.

  “I think Professor Greenberg was right. She doesn’t strike me as a killer. She’s sad, rightly so, and it’s possible that she did lash out because of it. But I’m just not sure…” I trailed off at the end, unhappy to admit my confusion with it all.

  “I agree with you, sir,” Mills told me. “On paper, she’s the perfect suspect. Knew Edward, was there the night of the incident, knew her way around campus, her alibi isn’t exactly great… but Billie herself?”

  He shook his head, no doubt with the same image in his head as in mine. A young girl, looking a bit too thin for my liking, she looked like she hadn’t eaten well in a while, with chipped nails and drawn-on shoes, whose entire life now revolved around a café and a cat. Billie struck me as the sort of person who found it hard enough to get up every morning, let alone go out into the city in the night and bludgeon a boy to death. She also struck me as too smart, that if she wanted someone dead, we wouldn’t really know about it. It wasn’t a welcome thought, an invasive thing that I quickly dismissed, but Greenberg was right about her. She knew why we were there, knew we needed to ask questions, and had bid us to just get on with it. A welcome change from the usual brick walls and sour-faced shrugs we received when interviewing people.

  I was also glad to know that Mills and I were firmly on the same page which we might need to be when Sharp got wind of us looking more into Stella’s case than Edward’s. But they were linked, I knew they were, and somewhere in the two, we would find one person who tied it all together. Somehow. Billie remained a suspect, she had to really, and I was eager to find her and Stella’s father as well and see what might be made of him.

  “Did you still want to talk to the others?” Mills asked, pulling over to the side of the road outside an old Georgian style row of houses. “Edward’s friends?”

  “Billie mentioned that Fiona was the only one she missed,” I recalled. “Maybe they stayed in touch?”

  “Worth trying to get her on her own then, as you said before,” Mills muttered. “If she was on the fence back then, she probably has a less biased opinion than the rest of them.”

  I nodded my agreement, climbing out of the car and crossing the street. We walked to a house in the middle of the row, where a sign on the railing indicated that Dr Kumar’s workspace was situated in the basement below. We walked around the railing and headed downstairs.

  “I almost got one of these flats,” Mills muttered when I knocked on the door, looking around the damp, small space we stood in.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Not enough light,” he told me. Never were in these places. It’s why students were usually so fond of them.

  The door opened to a rather surprised looking woman holding a bowl of salad in one hand and pushing her glasses up onto her head with the other.

  “Yes?” she asked, taking a large bite.

  “Dr Kumar?” I asked.

  She nodded, still chewing, and we pulled out our warrant cards. Her dark eyes flicked over them once, brows drawing together, and she gave a little dip of the chin, letting us into the lower floor.

  You could see where it had been turned into a flat, with an open kitchen and living space, a bathroom tucked into the corner and a bedroom that now looked more like a personal office space. The walls were painted white, fake greenery hung about on tables and in large pots, and the space had the calm, clean feel that therapists managed to cultivate wherever they were situated. I noticed a set of stairs still ran up to the house above and thought she probably owned the whole building.

  It took home office to a whole new level.

  “How can I help?” Dr Kumar asked, setting her bowl down and wiping her hands.

  “We’re here to ask about Stella Helman,” I said, watching as her face fell slightly. “Her sister, Billie, told us that you might be able to help us.”

  “I thought the investigation was closed?” Dr Kumar said. “Suicide.”

  “We’re here on another investigation,” I told her, “one that we believed is linked.”

  “How so?” she asked politely.

  “We’re investigating the murder of a student called Edward Vinson.”

  Dr Kumar’s confusion wiped away immediately, the name as familiar to her as I hoped it would be. She let out a low exhale of breath.

  “You’ve just been to see Billie?” she asked.

  “We have.”

  “How was she?” Her questions felt more like orders, and her calm face didn’t shift as she looked us over.

  “Shocked,” I told her. “As she would be.”

  Dr Kumar nodded. “And how I can help?”

  “We want to know as much about what happened with the Helman girls and Edward Vinson as we can,” Mills told her. “Billie said you might enlighten us into anything Stella shared in her last sessions with you.”

  “Well, I shared what I could with the officers who looked into her death,” she muttered, “but I suppose you two come with a different set of lenses?”

  I smiled. “Something like that. Billie also said that we have her permission if it’s needed.”

  Dr Kumar nodded and rolled her shoulders back, leading us into her office where she waved at the sofa against the wall, walking herself over to a tall filing cabinet and swishing the drawer open.

  “Stella had been seeing you for about a year?”

  “Just over,” Dr Kumar replied, pulling out a file and sitting on her chair, which she then wheeled over towards us, pulling her glasses back down onto her face. “I saw Billie a few times after she died, but she’s not been back for a while. I hope she gets in touch,” she added quietly, “or sees someone.” She cleared her throat
and opened the file, looking up at me expectantly.

  “What did Stella tell you about that night?”

  Dr Kumar breathed in deeply. “Not much,” she said. “She blocked a lot of it out, really. She had pictures, flashes, but the brain is good at protecting itself. I think when the attack happened, she shut down. So, the details are hazy, but she was adamant that she knew who did it.”

  “Edward Vinson?” Mills said, and the doctor nodded.

  “Did she ever talk about anyone else? Any of the people from the party?”

  “Never directly. She often expressed some worry for Billie, that she’d lost her friends, but Billie herself didn’t seem to mind. I don’t think they were very close, from what she told me.”

  “And did anything change?” I asked her. “In the weeks leading up to her death?”

  “If anything, she was doing well,” Dr Kumar said. “Her last session, she even walked home by herself. Usually, she went everywhere with Billie. She didn’t mention having any particular troubles, no mention of having seen anyone from the party around. It was a shock,” Her professional mask slipped for a moment, “hearing about it.” A flash of guilt went over her face, and I stopped for a moment to think about just how dreadful it must be for her to have lost a patient she believed was on the mend.

  “What can you tell us about their father?” I asked gently, making her snap back into life.

  “Mark Helman. Not a particularly hands-on dad. They lost their mum when they were young,” she told us, “and Billie took on the role of parent from then, really. Even when she was at university, she still lived at home. I think it’s why she stayed in the city, I mean, with her brains, she could have gone to Cambridge or Oxford, but she wanted to stay nearby.”

  “With Stella?” I asked.

  “Indeed. Stella never really talked about him; all of her childhood stories revolved completely around Billie. After the assault,” she went on, “home got a bit trickier. From what she told me, Mark didn’t seem to think that she was telling the truth and certainly didn’t seem to care. She brightened up when the girls moved out on their own. Getting out of that house would have helped, and she only mentioned him once or twice in passing. As far as I’m aware, there wasn’t any communication between any of them.”

  I nodded at that, tucking it away for later, and told her, “Billie said that he showed up at the funeral.”

  Dr Kumar nodded. “She told me that too. Apparently, it wasn’t the smoothest conversation she’s ever had. He paid me a visit too,” she confessed.

  “He did?”

  “A little after she died, after the case got wrapped up. I’m not sure how he found me,” she added a tad suspiciously, “but he wanted to know about Stella.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that I couldn’t divulge sensitive information with him. She was a minor, under the guardianship of her sister, so unless Billie approved it, I’d stay mute.” She said as much with her chin lifted and her shoulders squared, and I couldn’t help but let out a huff of a laugh.

  “Did that go down well?” Mills asked her.

  “Not overly,” Dr Kumar noted. “I think, and this is from the very short conversation I had with the man, but I think he has a slight substance problem. Alcohol, from the look of him. He went away fairly quickly after I told him to get in touch with Billie, and he never came back, so I can only assume that she either said no, or he simply didn’t bother.”

  “I’d say the latter, from what Billie told us,” I said.

  Dr Kumar nodded, a disapproving twist to her mouth. “Regarding Stella.” She shut the folder and braced her arms on her legs. “Recovery isn’t a straight line. It goes up and down. Stella was on an up, and the down that came after might have caught her off guard. Might have just been too much for her. It’s not always the case that something triggered her. But I think you should consider it,” she added in a tight voice, as though it went against her better judgement to offer such a piece of advice.

  “We will, thank you, Dr Kumar. And we’re sorry for disturbing you.”

  She waved a hand. “For my patients, anything. I hope I’ve been a help.”

  “One last question,” I held up a hand apologetically. “You said you had a few sessions with Billie?”

  “I can’t divulge Billie’s session with you, Inspector,” she said lowly.

  “I know. But at the moment, we have to consider her a suspect for what happened to Edward Vinson,” I told her gently, trusting her not to go around letting it out. She gave me a tight nod, and I relaxed a bit. “In your professional opinion, are we right to consider her a suspect?”

  Dr Kumar breathed in and out of her nose very deeply, rocking back slightly. “I want to say no, that Billie’s not capable of such a thing. But she acted the parent for so long, and those girls were close,” she said earnestly. “Very close. I think as it was with Stella, if the downward slope caught her off guard, she might have lashed out.”

  She said it diplomatically and kept the edge in her voice that made her think, as we did, that Billie wasn’t our killer, but I took the words themselves into consideration. Highs and lows, I told myself. Billie on a high would be nothing more than a caretaker, but on a low, Edward might have found himself on the receiving end of her grief.

  “Thank you, Dr Kumar,” I stood up, offering her my hand. She shook it, and then Mills, and walked us out towards the office.

  “If anything happens with Billie,” she said, plucking a business card from her desk, “it’s not exactly the professional way of handling things, but she knows me. If I can help, let me know.” She pressed the card into my hand, and I slipped it safely into my pocket, patting it for good measure.

  “Will do. Thanks again,” I added as we walked out towards the stairs. I heard her close the door after us as we reached street level, and I squinted up at the grey sky.

  “Back to the station, sir?” Mills asked. I grimace, thinking of the onslaught of questions that Sharp might have waiting for us, but nodded. I needed another coffee before we cracked on with anything else.

  Eleven

  Thatcher

  I could join a circus telling the future, I thought to myself as we walked upstairs in the station to find Sharp waiting for us, bent over Smith’s desk, her face angled towards the entrance. She straightened up as we walked over, and I tugged my collar loose, unable to get a reading of her stoic face.

  “Ma’am,” I gave her and Smith a quick nod.

  “You found the girl’s sister?” Sharp asked, walking with us down the warm corridor.

  “Billie Helman, we did. Just came back from meeting with Dr Kumar, Stella’s therapist.”

  We walked into our office, where Sharp shut the door and turned to look at the board we’d put together, waiting for us to peel off our coats and settled down.

  “And?” She asked without looking over her shoulder at us.

  “Billie Helman has motive and means,” I told her, “but in my personal opinion, I don’t think she’s who we’re after.”

  Sharp sighed through her nose and turned around, fixing her eyes on me. “What about the father?”

  “Absent,” I told her, watching Mills slip out the office from the corner of my eye. “Billie took over after their mother died and stayed in York to look after Stella. They moved out after the assault, and he’s been out of contact since. He did show up at the funeral and tried to get in touch with Dr Kumar about Stella, but she sent him off. Billie was her primary contact.”

  “You’ll pay him a visit? He might have felt some responsibility after she died,” Sharp said, “taken it out the wrong way.”

  “We’ll look into him, see if we can track him down tomorrow.”

  She gave me an approving nod. “What else have you got?” She asked, perching on the edge of Mills’s desk.

  “Mills went and spoke to the witness again to find out what she knew about Stella and Billie.”

  “Which was?”

&nbs
p; “Not much. Believes that Edward was innocent, the same as his parents do.”

  Sharp hummed, “I take it that the sister is not of that opinion?”

  “Certainly not. She made herself a bit of a bother for Edward, but nothing blatantly dangerous. She said she just wanted him to remember what he did, but she never really pushed it. I’m wondering if we take another look through his things, maybe at his home too, we might find anything she sent.”

  Sharp nodded. “I think it will be telling,” she said, “whether or not he kept any of them.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Any word from forensics?”

  “They’ve had the go-ahead to clean up the blood, but the rest they’ll leave as is. I don’t think there’s anything you need to take from that?” I shook my head. “Good. Nothing in the way of any prints, some DNA here and there, but that could be from his friends as much as anyone else. Nothing that stands out, let’s put it that way.”

  I sat down in my chair, rubbing my hands across my face.

  “Think simply for a few hours, Max,” Sharp ordered. “Forget about Stella Helman and think about who could have gotten into that building and how. No locks busted.” She nodded to our board. “Window intact. A bit of old school policing should settle you down alright.” She smirked, sliding from Mills’s desk as he walked back in and placed a steaming mug before me. She gave him a nod as she walked out, and Mills dragged his chair round to plonk in front of the board, propping an ankle over his knee and staring at it.

  “No scolding, then?” he asked, his back to me.

  “Not today. Nice of you to run out and abandon me all the same,” I replied, walking round to sit on my desk.

  “Abandon you? I went to get coffee, sir, that’s all,” he said in mock innocence. I picked up the mug and gave him a nod when he peered around to look at me with a boyish grin.

  “Appreciated.” I sighed. “So, where are we? Let’s talk about access. Someone got in and out of that building without a problem. Only a few people have keys.”