Guilty Conscious

by Oliver Davies

  “Sir,” Mills said slowly, reaching up to rake his fingers through his hair. “Their friends would be likely to know what time they meet. Know when Freya usually gets the bus home.”

  “Yes?”

  “Including Billie,” he said in a sad, dark tone.

  I stopped my pacing and turned to face his grim expression, swearing in a sigh under my breath. He was right. She’d have remembered that, surely. Knew that Freya didn’t live on campus, for sure.

  “Let’s take a look into the local bus routes,” I said. “See if we can get a more accurate time for Freya’s comings and goings and see if there’s one that would have suited Billie. Although,” I had to point out, “how she got all the way back to the café without being seen in time for the takeaway she ordered is a puzzle.”

  I ran through the timing in my head. It was plausible, perfectly plausible, but it was the probability of it that I struggled with. Again, on paper, Billie was our ideal suspect, and yet something snagged in the back of my mind at the thought of it. The thought of her standing over Edward like that and battering him; it just didn’t fit.

  “We should call in on security too, see if they have those feeds for us,” Mills said. I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t see Billie as our killer, but also the look in his eye said one of us had to act as though we did. “Maybe we can get a definite time for Edward and Freya both getting here.”

  I nodded, knowing that it would be a waste of hope to think we’d spot our killer in the footage, but at least some clearer times might help to untangle some of these knots.

  Fourteen

  Thatcher

  We made a stop by the security office, where we were met by the security officer we had spoken to on the night of the murder itself. He recognised us immediately and waved us through to where he sat behind an old computer that wheezed tiredly as it loaded files. It sounded rather like an aeroplane engine raring to take off, and I imagined that Wasco would want to put the sorry thing out of its misery. He hopped to his feet as I neared, offering me his hand. I shook it, and Mills and I looked down at the screen.

  “How goes in the investigation?” he asked us, resting his thumbs through his belt loops.

  “Ups and downs,” I told him, checking the nametag on his chest. “We were hoping you’d be able to give a hand, Mr Grayson.”

  He puffed up slightly and gave men an authoritative nod. “Certainly can. I have the camera footage you asked for and was sorting it out to send your way, but your welcome to look through it all here.”

  “That’s kind of you,” I answered as he made room for me to sit at the desk, Mills by my shoulder.

  There were four squares of video footage from the cameras around the courtyard and another from the building Professor Altman’s office was in.

  “I thought it might be useful to have eyes there as well,” Grayson told us, and I thanked him earnestly before he strolled off to the sofa tucked into the corner of the room, leaving us to it.

  Mills leant over my shoulder as I sped us through the day up to just before six, then hit play. We watched the camera outside the building. As the hour rolled over, Edward Vinson appeared from the building. The image was blurry, but he was the only person outside, and his stark blonde hair showed up white on the screen. I zoomed in, watching as he dug his phone out, thumbs typing, then held the phone up to his ear. As he spoke, he walked a bit, but never very far, and ended up by the tree I had stopped by when he put his phone away, kicking the tree trunk angrily.

  “I don’t think he wanted to go to that dinner party,” Mills muttered by my ear. I huffed a laugh, my eyes following Edward as we walked along the same route we had, vanishing from the camera’s view. I looked to the courtyard then, and a few minutes later, he came into view, strolling along the path, shoulders hunched, staring down at his shoes. He dug through his pockets for his key and let himself into the building. I paused it there.

  “Time?” I asked Mills, who bent down to the tiny clock in the corner of the frame.

  “Six twenty-two,” he read.

  I nodded and hit play again. A few students walked through the courtyard, none of them looking hurried or frantic. I frowned, resting my elbows on the desk and my chin on my fists as the hour trickled by with no sign of anyone else. And then seven hits and Freya came through the gates, walking hurriedly to the building, looking around herself as she sped along.

  “She looks like she was rushing,” Mills observed. She vanished into the building and came out a few minutes later, throwing up in the bin before collapsing on the pavement with her phone against her face. It wasn’t long for our people to turn up on the scene, and I paused the video, swearing.

  “Nobody seen coming or out,” I muttered, turning around to look at Grayson. “Are there any other ways into the building?”

  “None that the students are aware of, sir. There’s one door, out the back, from back when the place was first built. Far as I’m aware, it hasn’t been opened for over twenty years.”

  As far as he was aware, I thought to myself. Someone must know it’s there.

  “Why didn’t we see it when we looked around?” Mills wondered aloud.

  “It’s down the basement,” Grayson told us. “Where the laundry stuff is.”

  We didn’t check the laundry. I kicked myself mentally. There was half an hour there between Edward returning to his room and Freya arriving where someone else had been there. Someone who had gotten in and out without being seen. I remembered Sharp’s jibe last night about old school policing and stood up from the chair.

  “Mind if we take a look?” I asked Grayson.

  He nodded and opened a key cupboard on the wall, passing me a small ring. “Big one’s for the front door. The other one should take you downstairs.”

  I nodded gratefully and strode away from the desk, coat flying out behind me. I heard Mills jog to catch up with me as I walked out from the building, heading back over to the courtyard.

  “What are the odds of someone like Mark Helman knowing about that door?” I muttered, ducking under the police tape and sticking the key in the door.

  “Slim,” Mills replied. “Billie, on the other hand…” He trailed off, and I irritably shouldered the door open, flicking the lights on, and storming along to the little kitchen. There was a small door to one side that we hadn’t seen, an ironing board leaning against it, and I shoved it aside, unlocking the door and feeling the wall inside for another switch. My fingers found their mark, and the lights fluttered on, leading us down to the dingy basement where a few old washing machines sat, the smell of detergent lingering on the brick walls, some slightly rusty drying racks stacked in the corner.

  “Here,” Mills said, leaning behind a stack of two tumble dryers.

  I joined him, peering round to where the metal door was bedded into the wall. It was a narrow squeeze for someone to get down, so together, we hauled the machines back, wide enough for me to look down. A dark mark stained the bricks, smudged against the wall around hand level. I frowned and stepped closer to the door, avoiding touching the mark.

  The door was an old, solid thing that looked like it had been put in during the war, rusty hinges and dust hanging over it. Except, I noted, on the handle. I pulled a pair of gloves from my back pocket and yanked them on, reaching for the handle and pushing down. It creaked but gave way, and the door pushed outwards from the room.

  I peered out, finding us on a lower floor, in a small sort of yard. I stepped out, aware of Mills taking a few pictures behind me, and looked at the towering stone walls around us, a set of metal stairs going up to street level. They were chained off at the top, and as I walked up, I realised the whole thing was hidden by large bushes that camouflaged the pit. A few cigarette buts were left on the floor, some spray paint on one of the walls, and I had to guess that Grayson was wrong. There were probably plenty of people who knew about this place. Maybe not the door and its access into the building, as from the outside it was barely visibl
e, the only handle was on the inside. A brick was tucked into the corner where it might be propped open to let the heat from the laundry room outside.

  “A way out,” I said aloud after we looked around in silence for a while. “But how did they get in?”

  “Maybe it was already open,” Mills suggested. He squatted down by the door, looking it over from the outside. There was the other side of the handle, and he tapped it with a finger. “We have one like this in my parents’ house, in the bathroom. Always jams, and when someone got stuck in, my dad would use a coin to turn the lock.”

  I walked over, fishing my wallet from my pocket, and handed him a coin. He carefully held it in the ridge and twisted, the handle on the other side flipping as he did. I gave him a pat on the back, almost knocking him from his haunch.

  “Good old-fashioned policing,” I muttered. “So, we’ve got a way in and a way out. Let’s call forensics in, see if there’s anything for them to find.”

  “That mark on the wall in there looks fairly suspect.”

  “I know,” I agreed with a grimace, pulling my phone out. Mills pocketed the coin with a grin, and I sent him back up to inform Grayson of the situation as I rang for forensics to come down.

  Once they were on route, I propped the door open with the brick and climbed up the metal stairs again, peering out over the hedges. The path was one random, long trail that the students would hurry along buildings every day, and other paths forked from it to get to specific areas or out towards the main exit. It probably looped around to the courtyard, too, I realised, the thought staying with me as I hopped down. Mills stuck his head outside.

  “Campus security is doing their thing; I’ll wait outside for the team.”

  I nodded and waved him on, happy to stand out here for a while. I decided to call Elinor as I waited to see if she had any news. She wouldn’t call during the day, never did unless it was an emergency. As usual, she answered straight away.

  “Hiya, Max.”

  “Hiya, Elinor. How are you?”

  “I’m alright, love. Tired, but alright. What about you? Did you get home okay?” Her voice was slightly muffled, and I could hear her rustling around. She’d put me on speaker, I realised, likely as she pottered around the kitchen.

  “I did, ta. Any news?”

  “Yes,” she replied. There was a pause, and then when she spoke again, her voice was clearer. “They’re saying it looks like arrhythmia, and they’re putting her on medication. She should be fine,” Elinor was quick to assure me. “The doctors don’t seem too worried.”

  “It’s their job not to look worried, Elinor.”

  She scoffed down the phone at me. “I saw her this morning when she woke up.”

  “What did she say?”

  “To tell you not to, and I quote here Max, to get your sorry knickers in a twist over her.”

  I laughed, “of course she did.”

  “I’m popping over there late when visitors are allowed. Will you be able to come?”

  I looked around the little hole I was in. “Not today,” I answered bleakly, and she caught onto my tone.

  “How goes the investigation?”

  I sighed deeply. “Not an easy one, this one.”

  “They have to give you the difficult ones,” she told me plainly. “No one else can do ‘em.”

  “I’ll be sure to let my co-workers know how much faith you have in them, El.”

  “By all means, I’m allowed to be biased from time to time.”

  I smiled down at the phone. “I’ll visit as soon as I can. Give her my love for me, though.”

  “Of course, my love. Don’t work yourself too hard, and I’ll let you know how it goes today.”

  “Be sure to write down any insults she has for me,” I reminded her.

  Elinor chuckled. “Bye-bye, Max.”

  “Bye,” I replied, hanging up and putting my phone away, letting a slow breath and rolling my shoulders as the weight ebbed from them. I’d have to look up just what an arrhythmia was, but I knew it was something to do with the heart. Elinor sounded alright, though, and she was usually a good gauge of concern when it came to stuff like this. She used to be a midwife, after all. I certainly wanted to visit and hoped I’d find the time soon.

  My ears pricked up as voices came down from inside, and I walked in to find Mills showing the team in. They looked around and gave me a tight nod, and I tossed the keys over the man in charge, his face just visible beneath his hood.

  “Let us know what you find,” I said, following Mills up and out of the dingy basement to the outside.

  “I spoke to Sharp,” Mills told me. “She said she’ll handle the university board again if need be, find out why nobody mentioned that door before.”

  “Still, we should have spotted it before,” I said, and he nodded slowly, pushing his hair back from his face.

  “You seem cheery,” he observed as we ducked under the tape and walked back toward the exit.

  “Word on Elsie, she was awake earlier. Doctors say she’ll be fine.”

  “You going to go to visit?” Mills asked. “I can cover for you if you like.”

  I grinned at him and clapped him on the shoulder. “I can’t abandon you twice in two days, can I? I’ve had a thought,” I told him as the thought itself gathered in my mind. It was talking to Elinor that had done it, thinking about Elsie and Sally and the rest.

  “What’s that?” Mills asked.

  “I know we want to talk to Fiona about Billie and Stella, but what about Stella herself? She’d have had her own friends. Maybe they can share some insight.”

  “Would any of them be suspects?” Mills asked doubtfully.

  “I wouldn’t put money on it, but it’d be interesting to know if Stella kept in touch, where they stood on the whole assault. There might have been things she shared with them that she didn’t share with Billie.”

  Mills nodded. “There were a few mentioned in the case file Fitzsimmons left,” he told me. “I gave it a once over last night after you left. We could try them, see if they’re willing to get in touch.”

  “Good man. Gives us something to do until forensic come back with anything interesting,” I added.

  “Wasco should be into Edward’s laptop soon, too,” Mills reminded me as we walked away from the campus and out into the city.

  That was true. I’d rather forgotten about the laptop.

  “I’m not pinning much hope on it,” I admitted to him. “I don’t think Edward was the sort to keep suspicious material on his computer. More of a peel back the floorboards kind of guy.”

  Mills laughed. “Based on what?”

  “Just a feeling,” I said with a shrug. “Though there might be some traces of Billie on there that would be worth our attention.”

  “So, head back to the station, get in touch with Stella’s friends and pester Wasco while we wait for any results,” Mills announced, strolling along with his hands in his pockets. “Solid plan.”

  “I think so too. But we need lunch first because I’m not interviewing a bunch of teenagers without sustenance.”

  Mills snickered, and I jerked my head to a café across the street, striding along as my stomach rumbled as loudly as the bus that rolled by. That was another thing I remembered.

  Bus times.

  Fifteen

  Mills

  Detective Inspector Fitzsimmons’s notes were meticulous. She made a note of everything, down to a person’s facial expression, the way they shifted in their seat, whether or not the tears they dabbed at were real. It wasn’t hard to find the list of people she’d spoken to in her investigation, but since they were all underage, it meant that we couldn’t very well speak to them alone. As I ate my sandwich, flicking through the file again, Thatcher at his desk scanning through local bus routes and timetables, I landed on a name that I had not seen last night.

  I chewed my mouthful quickly and swallowed, looking over to Thatcher. “Fiona,” I said, tapping the page. “Inspector Fitzsim
mons mentions Fiona.” Thatcher looked over at me, blinking his grey eyes a few times. He looked tired after last night, even with the good news about Elsie he heard earlier.

  “What does she say?” He asked, seemingly happy to abandon his bus routes as he propped his chin on his fist and looked at me.

  “It says she spoke to Fiona as a witness from the night, same with Charlie, Vanessa and the rest,” I told him. “But it also says that she spoke to her again a few days later, wanting to see how her opinion differed from the others.”

  “A bit like us,” Thatcher mused. “What about Stella? Are any of her friends mentioned?”

  “Fitzsimmons only spoke to three of them, and none of them was at the party, but we have their contacts. Addresses, listed as their parents.”

  Thatcher nodded. “Stella would have only been sixteen or so. Do we have a number for Fiona?”

  I looked down, scanning Fitzsimmons’s neat little list, and upon finding it, I nodded. “Want me to give her a call?”

  “Yep.” He got up and walked over to my desk, leaning over the file. “I’ll get in touch with the others, see if we can arrange a time to meet with them.” I scribbled down Fiona’s number then let Thatcher take the file back over to his desk, clearing my throat as I picked up the phone and dialled.

  It rang for long enough that I was sure her answerphone would greet me, but she picked up at the last second.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. I’m calling for Fiona Davey,” I answered pleasantly.

  “Speaking,” she said, her voice apprehensive.

  “Hi, Fiona. This is Detective Sergeant Mills, North Yorkshire Police. We met the other day?”

  “I remember. You’re finding who hurt Edward,” she said quietly, her voice slightly lowered.

  “That’s right. I was wondering if you could meet us for a chat at some point. We have a few questions we were hoping you might be able to assist us with.”