“Come look upstairs,” I said.
She raised her eyes to the ceiling with a dubious expression. “Is it safe?”
“Yes.” I snatched her hand and dragged her to her feet, pulling her along to the stairs. We headed up them, running as we used to do when we were children, and images of the place flooded my mind. Me and Sally on a summer’s day, running along the corridor, hands tracing the patterns on the wallpaper, sliding down the bannister. And in the winter, when the house was closed, and the windows were covered in frosts, blanket forts in the attic, sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags. Elsie was always in those memories, somewhere, laughing away. Elinor and Paul too, Sally’s baby brother running after us. My grandparents, watching fondly. And mother, usually sliding down the stairs with us, her laughter filling up the entire house.
We went up to the attic, the only room that I had finished, and Sally skidded to a halt, looking around.
“Wow,” she said softly.
It was not exactly clean, but it was decent. The beams were no longer caked in dust, the floorboards had been fixed, replaced where needed, the walls replastered, and I’d found a green wallpaper that reminded me of my mother, one with plants and vines that twisted from floor to ceiling. The lights were fully functional, and when I turned them on, Sally laughed. There was nothing else in here yet, a few pictures to be hung, a chest of drawers that I needed to get out of the way, but it looked almost like it used to. Sally drifted over to the round window, looking out at the oak tree.
“God, we had a good childhood, didn’t we?”
“All things considered,” I replied, standing next to her. It was dark enough outside that our reflections shone back in the window, her face grinning up at me. She almost looked seven again, and I grinned back before turning around to face the attic. I was proud of it, and it spurred me on to get the rest of it finished. I wanted to see it look how it used to, the old building that gave my grandparents so much pride.
“It’s amazing, Max,” Sally told me, resting her head on my shoulder. “It looks just like it used to.”
“Thanks, Sal.”
“Amazing, isn’t it? What a bit of guilt can do.” She said it as a joke, smacking my arm lightly before walking around the room, but I stayed put, her words running through my head.
Guilt. People did all sorts because of guilt. They lashed out, they shut down, they renovated bloody coaching houses with guilt fuelling them on. Billie had guilt, but she wore it on her sleeve, on her face, let us see it with every mention of her sister, her sister that she believed she had failed in some way. Fiona had guilt for not supporting her friend, for being dragged onto Edward’s side. The wrong side, perhaps. Maybe he was guilty too. Guilty enough to confront Stella in the park that day, guilty enough that, when Billie punched him in the face, he did nothing. Didn’t tell his friends, didn’t report it. If Charlie had known that Billie had punched him, I was sure he had told us that at the very off. But Edward had kept quiet. Out of decency, plausible, but, as Mills and I discussed earlier, not realistic. Maybe it was guilt that kept him quiet. Guilt that made him duck his head and forbid anyone from bringing up the Helman sisters.
I kept everything from my guilt, every photograph, every letter, every text from that year. Perhaps Edward did too, only not in the way we had thought to look. Not Billie’s threats, not her guilt. His own, in some way, shape, or form, a box or a bag all stuffed with something that he hated to look at but had to look at.
“Sally, you are a genius,” I told her, jogging to where she stood and kissing the top of her head.
“I know, but why?”
“I think I have an idea for what to do next,” I said, pushing her towards the stairs. I hit the lights, and we headed down to the ground floor, where I grabbed my coat and locked the place up. An idea burned all the doubt from my head as I said goodbye to Sally and jumped into my car, ready for tomorrow to roll around.
Eighteen
Thatcher
I slept well that night, whether it was sheer exhaustion from the day before or working in the coaching house, or even the fact that Sally had helped me figure out my next move, my eyes had closed the moment my head hit the pillow, and I woke up before the annoying blaring of my alarm. I’d certainly needed it, and when I rolled out of bed, my feet hitting the cold wooden floor, my mind felt clear and ready to go, a fresh surge of energy powering me through my shower, through breakfast. I shot a quick text to Mills letting him know that I’d make my own way in, filled a travel mug with coffee and climbed into my car.
But I didn’t go to the station. It was early, the streets practically empty. Only early morning risers there to open shops and cafes milled about, flipping the signs in the doors, placing signs, chairs and tables outside in the weak autumn sunshine. It was even too early for the school rush, no children being towed along by bleary-eyed parents, no lollypop ladies patrolling the crossings. It was quite nice actually, and on days like these, I remembered what, other than the job, had brought me down to the city in the first place. The pale grey sky, the dim sunshine bouncing off the sandstone building, the river a slow, steady current. The foreboding shadow of the Minster in the distance and the wide cobbled streets that I only ever appreciated when there wasn’t anyone else on them. It was easier to, quite frankly.
I made my way instead to the university, where I got the keys to the building and let myself into Edward’s room, shutting the door and opening the curtains to let the light fill the space. The blood had been cleared, but an unpleasant scent lingered, a mix of stinging metal and chemicals that would probably upset Mills’s sensitive nostrils. I slipped the keys into my pocket and had a slow look around at the streams of sunlight on the thin layer of dust and the cobweb in the corner above the wardrobe. Pulling on a pair of gloves, I sat myself down at the desk and opened the first drawer.
It appeared that Edward used it for stationary, a couple of empty half-filled notebooks, several pens rolling around at the bottom, a packet of ink cartridges for a fancy brand of fountain pen. I wondered where the pen itself was since I had no recollection of seeing it in Edward’s bag. I pulled out the notebooks that had writing in them and gave them a quick flick through. One had a handful of notes from a psychology lecture, a few back-and-forth scribblings between Edward and somebody else as they grew bored with their professor. They arranged to get coffee afterwards, but there was no indication as to who the other writer was. The next was one and the same. This time, it was a sociology notebook, with slightly more notes than the last, and again, a passing of notes between Edward and another person. I looked back at the last notebook and realised that the handwriting was the same. I also looked at the date written in the corner of one of the pages. It was dated from last year, last September.
I frowned, wondering why he had held onto them unless he just needed the paper. I took them out and set them on the desk, anyway, shut the drawer and opened the next one.
The second, deeper drawer, was a tangled nest of headphones wires, two phone chargers and a few memory sticks. I fished those out, happy to take them along to Wasco, and had another scoot through the mess of wires, finding nothing else of particular interest.
I reached down to the third and final drawer that got stuck as I pulled it open. I had to jerk it side to side until it decided to obey, and then I nearly wrenched the entire thing out. But I got it open and frowned down at the contents.
It was another notebook, this time not a school one. It was an old fashioned, leather-bound type of thing, and when I picked it up, several sheets fell out and fluttered freely to the ground. I bent down and scooped them up, placing them on the desk as I unwound the leather strap and opened the journal up. It was full of drawings, sketches, of faces and figures. Slotted in were postcards, more of the kind from a museum or gallery gift shop, and I realised what it was.
Edward was an artist of a sort, and the journal was filled with his sketches, copies of pieces he’d gone and looked at. I, of course, didn’t rec
ognise a single one, but I knew someone who might, so I closed up the journal, winding the strap back around before picking up the sheets that had fallen loose.
They were more conversations, like texts, the exact same handwriting on all but one. Nothing happened in them; they were bored students teasing and bantering with each other to wile away the time until they were let out of the stuffy lecture hall. Only one had a date, and again, it was from last year. Why Edward had kept a hold of these, had tucked them into his journal, I did not know.
I folded them up and placed them back in, adding the journal to my stack of notebooks and memory sticks. Then I looked over the top of the desk, with a pen pot, empty glass and random toiletries of deodorant and hair gel, and stood up, turning to the wardrobe.
It was tidier than I had expected to find it, though maybe it was only me who refused to hang things up when I was twenty. There weren’t many clothes inside, though, with his parents and family home so close by, I doubted he ever needed to bring much here. A few jumpers, several shirts and trousers all neatly hung up, two coats, and an England rugby jersey pushed into the corner. I squatted down to the base, looking at the shoes all lined up in a row. A pair of leather boots, a pair of Converse trainers, a pair of rugby boots, all with their laces tucked out of the way, cleaned and polished. I pushed them aside and reached through, my hand fumbling along the dusty back of the wardrobe, not sure what, if anything, I would find, but determined to look anyway.
I came out with grubby fingers, but nothing else. Wiping my hand on my trousers, I stood up, checked the empty shelf above, then closed the wardrobe door and turned to my next port of call, the chest of drawers.
I didn’t particularly want to rifle through a dead lad’s underwear drawer, but it’s as good a place to hide stuff as anywhere else, so I opened the top drawer. Unsurprisingly, it was also organised, with those little compartments you could buy to separate things. He’d needed one for his drawer of wires too, but who was I to criticise?
I had a brief search through, finding nothing, and closing that drawer, I opened the next. A few tops were folded up, t-shirts and long sleeves, nothing else. The next two drawers were the same, clothes folded up that didn’t get hung up and a bottom drawer of sports clothes, but nothing else.
I stepped away, letting out a sigh, my eyes drawn to the window as the campus slowly awakened. Students were starting to emerge for their morning classes. I turned to the bookshelf and walked over, taking each book spine by spine, thinking about Sharp again and good old-fashioned police work.
Most of the books were fiction, several things that I imagined he had for his subjects, but a few made me stop and pause. I didn’t stop to hesitate or wonder why they made me pause. I just took them off the shelf, flipped the pages to see if anything fell out and slowly perused them, looking for any notes, dog-eared pages or underlined extracts. A few caught my eye, and I added them to my pile, not bothering to read each one here and now when I had Mills and the station, which was better with all this than I’d ever be.
When I had a good collection of things, I gave the walls a once over, pulled down a few handwritten quotes or extracts stuck up there, bundled everything into a bag from my coat pocket, and shut the curtains, returning the room to its dark and dusty state of mourning. I let myself out, locking Edward’s door, then the building’s door. I joined the mingling groups of students as I headed back out to the exit, dropping off the key with my new friends Greyson, and walked over to where I’d left the car. After carefully placing everything in the boot, I then peeled my gloves off with satisfaction, the cold air wiping away the sweat that had gathered on my palms, and jumped into the car, starting the engine.
My phone rang as I pulled from the stop, Mills’s name flashing up on the Bluetooth.
“Morning, Mills,” I said cheerily as I got onto the road.
“Sir,” he replied, sounding dubious. “Everything alright? You’re usually here by now. Sharp’s asking after you.”
“I’m heading in now, ten minutes. I’ve been in Edward’s room,” I told him.
There was a pause, and I could picture him standing wherever he was, the office, from the lack of noise around him, frowning for not being invited along.
“Oh?” he said eventually. “Find anything?”
“I think so. I’ll need your clever eyes with a lot of it, though. Any word from Wasco?”
“He’s in the laptop. I have it now.”
“Brill. Get the kettle on then, Mills, and I’ll see you in a jiffy.” I hung up before he had time to start questioning my sudden flip in mood and concentrated on the road. The city was buzzing now. Commuters heading here and there, children skipping on the pavement, their parents trying to wrangle them to safety, older school children waiting for the bus with their headphones in and their faces bleak. I didn’t envy them; school wasn’t the easiest for everyone.
I reached the station, parked quickly and grabbed my bag from the boot, whistling as I strode inside, nodding to a surprised looking desk sergeant and jogged up the stairs. Mills was waiting, two mugs in his hands, a bewildered look on his face.
“You’d tell me if you were on drugs, wouldn’t you?” he asked as I pried a mug of tea from his hand. “You’d let me get you help.”
“I would,” I answered, “so you can believe me when I say I’m not.”
“What are you then?” he asked, following me through the desks and discarded chairs into our office. I held up the bag.
“On to something.”
I shouldered my way through the door and plopped the bag on Mills’s desk beside Edward’s laptop, put my mug down, and shrugged my coat off, draping it over the back of my chair. Mills walked in, cradling his mug and eyeing me warily. I picked up my mug, slurped the tea, and nodded to the bag.
“Sally said something to me last night, in the coaching house,” I decided to offer him some explanation before he called in Crowe to give me an examination. “About guilt and the strange things people do because of it.”
Mills gave me an understanding nod. He didn’t know the extent of my attachment to the coaching house or to the guilt I alluded to, but he’d seen the place and understood well enough.
“Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt,” he recited.
“Who’s that then?”
“Plautus, I think,” he murmured, setting his mug down and taking everything out of the bag, picking up one of the well-read books and raising an eyebrow. “Atonement.”
“I think Sally made me watch the film once,” I said, sitting on the side of my desk. “I remember World War II and a green dress.”
“It’s about a girl who makes a mistake, gets someone blamed for a crime they didn’t do, and the years that follow,” he told me. “Put simply, the title’s a big clue.”
“Feeling sorry for doing something that hurt someone,” I said.
“Or being accused of something you didn’t do,” Mills countered for the sake of argument. He sat down, flicking through to see the pages that had been dog-eared over time, bits underlined with pencil, little notes in the margin.
“How guilt refined the methods of self-torture,” he read aloud, trailing off as he flipped the pages this way and that, looking up at me beneath his brows. He put the book down and pulled out another, but I stopped him, handing the journal,
“Take a look,” I said. I pulled my chair over to his desk, sitting in front of him with my tea, watching him scan a few of the images.
“I know this one,” he said, leaning forward and showing me. Edward had tried to copy one of the faces, but it was the postcard that Mills tapped.
“By Artemisia Gentileschi, one of my mum’s favourites. An Italian Baroque painter, very accomplished, in fact—”
“Mills,” I interrupted.
“Sorry. Anyway, this is one of her most famous paintings. Judith Slaying Holofernes. I don’t know the full story; I think it’s Biblical. But a lot of historians say that the man is actually an
other artist, Tassi, who raped Artemisia. This was her revenge after he walked free.” Mills reached up and scratched his neck, grimacing at the impressive yet graphic painting.
“And that’s what Edward chooses to draw?” I asked. “The man being killed?”
Mills leant back in his chair, blowing out a long breath. “I don’t know many others and this,” he tapped some of the other books, “I don’t know much about this.”
“I thought you liked philosophy.”
“I know a bit and pieces, but for really studying it, we’d need an expert.”
I hummed, thinking for a while. “How about an expert that also knew Edward?”
Mills looked up. “Professor Altman?”
“He might have encouraged some of this reading,” I pointed out. “We can see what he might have to say about it. About the parts that Edward seemed particularly fixated on.”
Mills nodded and rose to his feet. “Though if all we learn is that Edward felt guilty over what happened with Stella, that doesn’t help us find our killer.”
“It does if he wasn’t the only one feeling bad about it,” I countered, emptying my mug a few big gulps and grabbed my coat. “Fiona might not have been the only one on the fence. There might have been other people on Edward’s side who then realised they backed the wrong side. And with Stella’s death weighing on them…” I shrugged. “Worth looking into.”
“Lead the way then, sir,” Mills replied, pulling his coat on.
Nineteen
Thatcher
We got in touch with the university before we left, making sure that Altman wouldn’t be mid way through a lecture or tutorial when we arrived and leant that he had two hours open this morning that we decided to make use of. It was slightly annoying to be heading back to the university after only just leaving it, and I wondered if I should have had had Mills meet me here in the first place. But it was done now, and as I drove us through the streets to the campus, Mills had another quick scour through the materials I had gathered. I glanced over once to see him reading through the exchanged notes with the unnamed classmate.
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