The Scribe

by A A Chaudhuri

  But Maddy Kramer had given him something meaty to sink his teeth into. He turned to Drake. ‘Ring the Bloomsbury Academy of Law and get hold of a list of Sarah Morrell’s classmates for both academic years she attended, 2009 to 2011. Also her tutors. Then arrange a time for us to go in and speak to Professor Stirling. Keep it low-key. Whatever you do, don’t make it seem like he’s a suspect. Just say we’re pursuing all lines of enquiry, trying to paint a picture of Sarah’s life before Channings, and would appreciate a moment of his time.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you think he’s a suspect?’

  ‘Too early to say, Drake. Right now, all we have is hearsay. But he definitely has a lot of explaining to do.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Hi, girls, sorry I’m late, my interview pushed me behind schedule.’

  Having fought her way through the hot, heaving bar, chock-a-block with stressed City suits celebrating the weekend by knocking back booze like it was going out of fashion, Maddy had finally spotted Paige and Cara perched on a couple of stools at a table in the corner. They’d opened a bottle of red, and no sooner had she spied the empty glass reserved for her than she’d poured herself a large measure before she’d even sat down. It was Halloween and the bar had entered into the spirit of things. Flawlessly carved freaky-eyed pumpkins were dotted around the room, along with thin, whispery cobwebs clinging to the ceiling, and rubbery bats hanging from the walls. Thankfully, the music was chilled-out soul, rather than cheesy ghoulish tunes. Maddy was in no mood for the latter and would probably have walked out in protest.

  ‘Tough day?’ Cara – an elfin ash-blonde with an eternally sunny disposition – asked.

  ‘You could say that.’ Maddy threw back her wine. She felt herself relax a little as the velvety Merlot trickled down her throat and entered her bloodstream. Her nerves were shot. She’d found the interview gruelling – worse than any of her job interviews and they’d been bad enough – and she had a strong hunch her part in Carver’s investigation wasn’t over yet, just as he’d intimated. Even in death, Sarah was going to make her life difficult.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ Paige said, shaking her head. ‘I mean, I didn’t much like Sarah, but no one deserves to die like that.’

  ‘Do you know if the police have any leads yet?’ Cara asked.

  Never off duty, Maddy sensed the cogs in Cara’s journalist brain turning at breakneck speed.

  ‘No,’ she lied, not wanting to reveal her conversation with Carver about Stirling. Maddy loved Cara to bits, but she was a journalist, and like any journalist, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut when it came to a potential scoop. The fact was she knew people, and people talked. She also suspected Paige still harboured feelings for Stirling, despite having a boyfriend. She didn’t want her warning Stirling that he might be in trouble before the police had a chance to question him. Although he hadn’t said as much, and it wasn’t the same as the strict rule of privilege between lawyers and their clients, Maddy didn’t think Carver would take kindly to her revealing intimate details of their conversation to her friends. The last thing she wanted was to get into his bad books.

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’ Paige asked.

  Maddy shrugged. ‘That’s the million-dollar question. Sarah wasn’t popular. It could have been anyone.’

  ‘Anyone we know? I mean, from the academy?’

  Maybe she’s thinking about Stirling even if she doesn’t say it out loud.

  Maddy deliberately kept her answer vague. ‘I don’t think we can rule it out.’

  ‘The fact that the killer wrote “Contract” across her chest would suggest it’s someone connected with law, don’t you think?’ Paige said.

  ‘Why? Anyone can read up on the basic elements of law from a text book. I don’t need to be a doctor to know that all aspiring medics must study “anatomy”. People make contracts all the time, in all areas of life. I mean, you hand over money to a cashier in a supermarket in exchange for a loaf of bread and you’ve made a contract. Anyone acquainted with Sarah would have known what she did for a living, what her job roughly entailed.’

  ‘Maybe she’d made a contract with the killer?’ Paige suggested. ‘Some sort of deal she didn’t keep to?’

  ‘It’s possible. I should point that out to Carver.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ Cara asked, her eyes twinkling.

  ‘DCI Carver?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Cara’s sudden change in topic caught Maddy by surprise. The full-bodied wine on an empty stomach had already made her feel a little heady. She gave an impish smile. ‘Quite fit actually.’ She thought about his earlier questioning; the rich tone of his voice, the scar on his chin. She liked them like that. Perfectly imperfect. Maybe because she hadn’t had the perfect upbringing. She was afraid of perfection. Perfection didn’t exist. Perfection scared her.

  ‘Really?’ both girls said in unison, leaning in closer.

  ‘Forget the murder investigation; this is far more interesting,’ Cara grinned.

  ‘More information, please,’ Paige demanded.

  ‘Well, he must be in his early to mid-forties, but he’s got this rough-and-tough look and manner about him. Comes across as a bit arrogant, but also the sort you can rely on to cut the crap.’

  ‘Exactly Ms Kramer’s type then,’ Cara tittered. ‘You were never into the soft, smooth-talking Romeos, were you? Even at uni, you always went for the straight-talking guys. Greg was like that. And yet you dumped him, poor bloke.’

  ‘I ended things with Greg because he wanted more than I was prepared to give. I was too young to be tied down; I still am. As for the smooth-talkers, yes, you’re right. I don’t like all the show, the buttering up. I like what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Unlike Ms Summers here, who’s a sucker for a charming Casanova.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Paige retorted. ‘I like a man to open doors, pay the bill, and treat me like the lady I am. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Does Ben do that?’ Cara asked.

  ‘Not as much as I’d like,’ Paige sighed. ‘In fact, I’m not sure I want to carry on seeing him. It’s all become very dull, very predictable.’

  ‘But he’s such a nice guy,’ Maddy said.

  ‘That’s partly the problem. Too nice. Boring, some might say. Right now, he’s in Frankfurt on business, and I can’t say I miss him.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Cara said, giving Maddy a nudge. ‘It’s that professor bloke, isn’t it? You never got over him, that’s the problem.’

  Paige was lucky the wine and warmth of the bar had already caused her cheeks to colour. Even so, she betrayed her embarrassment by fidgeting in her seat. ‘I … I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Cara turned to Maddy. ‘What was his name? Didn’t all the girls like him? In fact, didn’t Sarah have a bit of a fling with him? And there was that Lisa friend of yours, wasn’t there?’

  Having just started to relax, Maddy felt her body tense. Cara’s memory was second to none.

  ‘Er,’ she replied, picking up her glass, ‘you mean Professor Stirling?’ She noticed Paige lower her eyes to the floor.

  ‘Yes, that’s the one.’

  ‘Yeah, there were rumours that he and Sarah had an affair. He was a flirt, for sure.’ She glanced at Paige, wondering if this was the moment when she’d finally reveal whether there’d ever been anything between her and Stirling. But she kept her head down, which kind of said it all.

  Maddy took it as a sign not to probe further. Before Cara could say another word, she downed the rest of her wine, then raised her empty glass. ‘Another bottle?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask.’ Paige finally looked up and smiled.

  ‘Great, my round.’ Maddy got down from her stool and practically sprinted to the bar.

  ***

  Paige chaotically fished around in her bag for her umbrella as she stumbled right down a quiet side alley in Paternoster Square towards St Paul’s Churchyard. The bar had thinned out early,
and no sooner had she stepped outside than she realised why. Not only was it belting with rain, it was bloody freezing. She could barely feel her toes in her sheer tights as she teetered along. She felt smashed after nearly a bottle of red on a few measly bar snacks. She cursed the crap British weather for being so bloody inconsiderate.

  At times like this, she wished she lived east like Cara and Maddy. But when she awoke in her Sloane Square flat in the sober light of day, she knew she’d feel differently. She’d always been a south-west London girl – inherited wealth had secured Paige her own flat off the King’s Road – and she knew she’d never feel comfortable, or safe for that matter, slumming it in the East End.

  Having said goodbye outside the bar, Maddy and Cara had headed straight for St Paul’s underground to jump on the Central Line. Although they’d offered to accompany Paige to Mansion House Tube, where the District or Circle line would take her straight to Sloane Square, she’d told them not to worry. She didn’t want to put them out on such a horrendous night, and she was more than capable of managing the short walk alone. She’d also wanted to avoid Cara asking her more uncomfortable questions. Cara was a good friend, but she was so bloody nosy! Paige had never divulged her feelings for Professor Stirling out loud, and she wasn’t about to start now – four years after their brief affair.

  Even now she still thought about him, wondered how he was doing. She knew he couldn’t be trusted. That he had seduced her, like he had seduced so many others before, and no doubt continued to do so. She hated the thought of him being with other women, despite knowing he could never be hers.

  And it had been her pathetic clinginess, begging him not to see other girls, asking him to leave his wife, that had made him lose interest. She’d been shocked when he’d grabbed her by the wrists, and then by the neck, telling her to get out. That if she didn’t stop bothering him, he’d see to it that she never got a pupillage.

  So, she’d backed off, done as he’d commanded. Unlike Sarah, she wasn’t the type to fight back, to make counter-threats. She still recalled the mad look in his eyes as he’d hauled her to the door like she was dirt. He’d been so charming, so tender, initially. His switch from Jekyll to Hyde had shocked her.

  But there was still something about him – his film star looks, his intellect, the way he’d made love to her – that had lit a fire inside her that no man before or since had managed to achieve. And her inability to get over him continued to hinder her chances of ever making a proper go of it with another man. Including Ben, who she knew, deep down, she was lucky to have.

  When sober, Paige knew the quickest, safest route to Mansion House underground like the back of her hand: straight through Paternoster Square towards New Change, turn right and follow the main road around the edge of St Paul’s Churchyard towards the Tube. But she wasn’t thinking clearly. No sooner had she staggered left out of the bar, she’d stumbled right, hitting St Paul’s Churchyard, and the left flank of Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece.

  If she hadn’t been so plastered, she might have felt a little nervous veering off the main street, tottering left into the empty, dark churchyard; more aware of her solitariness, her vulnerability, the darkness encasing her. Especially tonight, Halloween. But the alcohol had warped her usually cautious temperament.

  She wobbled her way through the ebony spike-topped gates of the north-east churchyard, the cathedral’s vast waxen columns to her immediate right seeming larger and more daunting through her glazed eyes. She carried on walking, across a wide paved area leading onto a narrower pathway, edged on either side by sodden grass and lofty trees, naked and bereft of colour, their sprawling, gnarled branches resembling thin, withered fingers.

  She swerved her way around the imposing column mounted with a gilded statue of St Paul, and right onto a paved area decorated with a plaque marking the location of St Paul’s Cross, lined on either side with several drenched wooden benches.

  It was a spot which, in the height of summer, would be buzzing with activity.

  But not tonight. Tonight, there was no one about, despite it being an iconic spot and relatively early by Friday night London standards. Paige wasn’t surprised. It was sheeting down with rain. Rebounding off the ground with unforgiving brutality. Why would anyone be out walking in such horrendous weather?

  But there was someone there. Footsteps approaching from behind … just about audible under the hammering rain … gaining time on her sluggish, more erratic pace, her gait slowed not only by her intoxication, but by the four-inch stilettos she’d been wearing all day in court.

  Her senses suddenly more alert, sobered up by the knowledge that she had unexpected company, Paige tried to quicken her pace. At the same time, she reached inside her bag for her mobile phone, an exercise made more difficult by the fact that she was still holding her umbrella with her other hand. The wind had picked up. Any minute her brolly was going to turn inside out. It was no use. She stopped for a second to close it. But just as she did, a gloved hand grabbed her neck from behind. Fear impaled her, like a poisoned arrow rendering her muscles numb, her voice mute.

  She should have taken up Cara and Maddy’s offer to escort her to the station. Why the hell hadn’t she?

  She couldn’t speak, both from terror and because her attacker’s hand was wrapped so tightly around her neck. Whoever it was, was strong, and Paige was no match. Her eyes frantically darted all around for a friendlier human presence, but she was very much alone. The trees and the shadows were no friend to her. They were the allies of her attacker. Rain lashed down on her, blinding her vision, saturating her hair, her face, her skin, through her wringing wet clothes.

  Was that leather she could smell? Her legs like blancmange, her head spinning with booze and fear, she realised she’d come to the end of the line. And then her mouth was suddenly being covered with something. A cloth or rag. Distinctive, sweet-smelling.

  Before she knew it, she’d fallen unconscious.

  A blessing in disguise, although Paige would never know that.

  Because she wouldn’t have wanted to be conscious for the next stage.

  She was one of the lucky ones.

  Chapter Seven

  Saturday, 1 November 2014, 8.30 am

  ‘Christ, not another one. Not so soon.’

  Carver stood stock-still as he studied the bloody scrawl imprinted on the girl’s chest, trying to make sense of what the killer was getting at. ‘C-r-i-m-e,’ he muttered. He wasn’t surprised the killer had struck again. But the timing surprised him. A second kill just three days after the first. Was the killer trying to send a particular message, or just playing with them for the hell of it? Was he involved with law, or completely unconnected? What had these girls done to deserve such violent deaths?

  The body of Paige Summers had been spotted by an early morning jogger within a dense cluster of trees and shrubbery at the back of St Paul’s Cathedral in the north-east side of the churchyard. Sprawled across a bed of sodden leaves, her clothes had been caked with a thin layer of mud, a couple of bramble cuts to her face. But it was nothing compared to the gelatinous mess vandalising her chest like obscene graffiti.

  ‘Looks like the same killer, sir.’

  ‘Do we have an ID?’

  Drake looked down at his notepad. ‘Yes, sir, the victim’s bag was lying by her body when the jogger found her. There was a driver’s licence in her purse, along with various credit cards and her work ID. Paige Summers, twenty-five. A barrister at Inner Temple Chambers.’

  ‘Another lawyer. And the same age as the last. On the bright side, we seem to have a pattern emerging. Although she wasn’t shot like Morrell. Nor do there appear to be any signs of strangulation.’

  ‘Maybe smothered to death?’

  ‘Maybe, Drake. Or maybe she died from her injuries.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but surely the killer would have had to have incapacitated her in some way before being able to carve so neatly into her chest. I mean, it’s such a clean job. Just like with Morrel
l. As if the killer had all the time in the world. Maybe she was drugged first?’

  ‘Good point, Drake.’

  It was a good point. An obvious point he should have thought of. But Carver was distracted and feeling more pissed off with the world than usual.

  He wasn’t meant to be there. He was meant to be taking Daniel to Saturday morning football practice. But like so many times before, he’d had to bail on his little boy. Now Carl would be cheering Daniel on from the sidelines, and now Rachel would have another reason to get pissy and bitch about him to her equally bitchy friends. A poor excuse for a father. Devoted to the job more than his boy.

  He needed to make it up to him. But for now, that would have to wait.

  ‘We need to trace her last movements,’ Carver said. ‘Who was the last person to see her? Visit her chambers, find out what cases she’d been working on and where. Whether she prosecuted or defended, or both. Who she’s put away or got off in the past, and who might bear a grudge as a result. For all we know, that could be what the killer’s getting at.’

  ‘That she’s committed a crime by either helping someone go free, or putting them away, sir?’

  ‘Precisely, Drake. Just a theory, but we need to consider everything. Do all the usual background checks. Find out where she studied law – she’s about the same age as Maddy Kramer – although I realise there are a lot of law schools out there, so it’s a long shot they knew one another.’ He paused to reflect. ‘I’m guessing she was either heading home from the pub, or from work. Once Grayson’s performed the post-mortem, we’ll have a better idea of whether she’d been drinking, and how exactly she died.’

  Something in the distance, behind Carver’s shoulder, caught Drake’s eye. ‘Speak of the devil.’ Carver spun round to see Grayson coming along the path towards them. As he approached, he flashed his ID card at two officers guarding the cordon. They let him through.

  ‘So, what have we here?’ Grayson asked after they’d said their good mornings and he’d suited up.