“This job of yours. Always this job. What about your family, huh? What about your life? Have you told them you need time off to visit us?” And on and on it went, a song so familiar that Mina could have sung it without her mother’s aid.
Little point in arguing. It had always been this way. Mothers and daughters, so very complicated. The problem, Mina supposed, was that the life she wanted, the life she had chosen, had turned out to be very different from that of her mother. The fact that she had not wanted a marriage or children, when those were the very foundations on which her mother’s life was built. Mina would have struggled to insult her mother more.
Mina turned in the darkness, allowing the flashlight to skitter across the front of the house, sweeping it in an arc toward the road, and tried not to allow the guilt traction. It’s an opportunity. A chance to make my mark somewhere new. But that had been a lie, hadn’t it? Mina had run from her world, had run to Northumberland, had made good her escape.
“Did you do a house-to-house?” Detective Superintendent Bell leaned forward in his chair, his fingers steepled together, Solomon preparing to give judgment. His forehead had creased into a frown.
“Yes, sir.” Mina looked down again. “I secured the scene and went door-to-door within the immediate vicinity. I knocked on your door, sir.” Three doors down from Victoria Prew, a double-fronted cottage with a rose-covered trellis and two expensive cars in the drive. “There was no answer,” she added unnecessarily.
The superintendent pursed his lips, nodded slowly.
“The next-door neighbor, Mr. . . .”
“Lewisham.”
“Lewisham,” Mina agreed. “He said that he had seen someone inside the house earlier in the day.” She glanced down at her notes. “His estimation was that it would have been between two and two thirty. He didn’t think much of it. Assumed it was a boyfriend, someone staying with her. Mr. Lewisham explained that he’d never actually had a conversation with Victoria Prew, that he spoke to her once to tell her that she needed to keep her bins on her side of the property line, but other than that . . .”
There was no reaction from Eric Bell other than an empty stare. Mina felt color flush her cheeks.
“Anyway,” she continued, “yes, so we can confirm from the footprint, the missing locket, and Mr. Lewisham’s statement that the intruder was inside the property around two o’clock yesterday. No one else saw anything. Most people were out at work at that time.”
The superintendent had picked up a pen, was batting it gently against the edge of the desk. “The coroner has indicated a time of death somewhere between seven p.m. and ten p.m. Where were you when Ms. Prew was being murdered?”
Mina shifted, the tone setting her teeth on edge. “I . . . I left Ms. Prew at approximately seven o’clock. I did the house-to-house until . . . nine? Maybe a little later.”
“You didn’t return to the Prew house?”
It was an innocent enough question. And yet Mina felt a prickle up her spine. “Sir, no. I understood Ms. Prew to be safely on her way to her mother’s, and I knew the house to be secured . . .”
“So you didn’t bother?”
Mina opened her mouth, closed it again. Eric Bell was studying her, and for a brief moment, she wondered if he was trying to get to her. She shifted.
“Well, Ms. Arian, it is a real shame, that. I mean, we have to be realistic here. In all likelihood, Ms. Prew was murdered in her own drive while you were drinking tea and eating biscuits in her neighbor’s house. Perhaps if you’d been a little more thorough . . .”
It felt like a body blow, and Mina’s gut twisted with the rank unfairness of it all.
“But there’s no use crying over spilled milk.” The superintendent turned back toward his computer, waved a hand, apparently done with her. “You can go.”
A policy of murder – Mina
Mina slipped into the bathroom, eased the door closed behind her. Nodded to the woman who stood at the sink, a quick half smile, before tucking herself into the bathroom stall, sliding the lock carefully closed. She stood, listening to the woman wash her hands. She was humming, a song that Mina couldn’t identify. The squeal of the tap turning, the gurgle of the sink. A swoosh as paper towels were pulled from the dispenser, and then the grating of the door on the linoleum. Mina waited as the sounds of the office beyond filtered through, as the door swung shut, sealing her in silence again.
Then she kicked the door of the bathroom stall. Hard.
There were tears building up behind her eyes, just waiting for her to give in to them. It was . . . unfair. That was what it was. She had done all that she could do. She had dotted the i’s, had crossed the t’s, and so for Bell to blame her, to tell her that had she done more . . . No. Mina brushed at her eyes with her hands. No. This was bullshit. This was shoveling the responsibility onto her. She had done everything she could.
Had she?
Mina sank onto the closed toilet seat, her head in her hands. She heard a sound, like an exhalation of breath. That damned scent dispenser filling the room with the throat-clutching smell of violets. She hated violets.
Was he right? Could she have done more? If she had gone back to the house again, if she had turned left instead of right, or right instead of left, would Victoria Prew be alive now?
Nausea threaded itself through that god-awful artificial smell, and for a moment Mina felt her stomach dip and brought her hand to her mouth. What if she had actually driven Victoria to her mother’s? What if she hadn’t left her alone?
What was it Mina’s mother had said? That she was good at running away, leaving people to deal with their problems alone. And it was hardly a lie, was it? Wasn’t that what she had done with her own family, after all? Escaped north, sought out a place where she could be herself, where she could breathe.
Eric Bell’s words raced around inside her skull. Perhaps if you’d been a little more thorough . . .
Mina put her head in her hands. Stop. Think. She thought of Victoria hefting her suitcase into the trunk of the car, and of her smile. No, thought Mina. He’s wrong. There had been no reason to believe that Victoria was in imminent danger. She had never reported being followed or seeing anyone anywhere other than at the house. And she was leaving the house. Mina knew that; she waited, watched her go, the brake lights growing dimmer and dimmer in the pouring rain. Mina had secured the house. She had asked the questions.
I could not have seen this coming.
She let out a breath, allowing her head to bounce gently against her hands, as if that way the words would enmesh themselves with her thoughts. I could not have seen this coming. This was not my fault.
She thought of the super and sighed, running her hands through her hair. He was angry; that much was clear. The McGowan case, that was his finest hour, the foundation on which his career had been built. This, the murder of Victoria Prew, would have the effect of an earthquake rattling that foundation. Perhaps it seemed to the superintendent that his mythical early work was being questioned now, found wanting.
Mina shook herself, stretched out her arms against the narrow reaches of the stall. Pull it together now. She turned in a tight circle and released the catch on the door. It was fine. She was fine. She had done all she could.
She studied herself in the mirror. There were dark circles under her eyes that no amount of concealer would cover. Her fingertips pulled at the lines that had begun to form in the corners, across her forehead, and she felt more tired still. Mina looked at her watch and sighed—10:00 p.m. and no sign of the day ending yet. She breathed out slowly, squared her shoulders, and let herself back out into the melee.
The incident room thrummed with the trill of voices, the odd burst of laughter. They twisted around in their seats, enjoying the freedom away from a teacher. There were perhaps forty of them in all. Tomorrow there would be more. More still the day after that. But today there were only forty. They had divided themselves into two distinct groups. The young ones, those too new to remember the f
irst time. They were the ones with the light faces, voices high with excitement, whose fingers danced with adrenaline, who were bursting to get out there to catch themselves a serial killer. Then there were the old-timers. Mina counted three, four of them, the ones who sat, head down, arms folded, as if at a funeral. They knew what was coming.
She sought out Cain Aiken. He had positioned himself off to one side, had pulled away from the others. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers interlocked as if in prayer. But then, Mina allowed, he had lost one brother, had almost lost a second. Perhaps he was praying.
Mina slid into an empty seat positioned between the two camps. She was new. She was young, or youngish at the very least. And yet a woman she had spoken to yesterday was now dead, and so, she thought, that aged her, separated her from the pack. She looked up as Owen took a seat beside her.
“You see this?” he asked, gesturing at the television screens.
There were three in all, each tuned to a different news channel. Each one of them showing stone cottages and rolling hills, a wide-reaching moor and Hadrian’s Wall. And there, a pimple on a perfect face, the forensic tent. The sound had been turned down low, so the words were lost in the tumult of the room, and yet you could feel it in the perfectly appointed frowns of the reporters, the horror of it, the tragedy. And something else, in the movements that were a little too quick, the eyes that sparkled a little too much—the message that this, right here, was a really good story.
“The place is crawling with them,” muttered Owen. “Apparently, they’re knocking on every door in Briganton, trying to get quotes. Not just local papers either. All the nationals are here. There’s a bunch of them camped downstairs. I had to use the back door when I came in.”
“Great,” said Mina. “That should make life easier, then.” She shook her head. “I never did ask . . . How was your date the other night?”
Owen’s thin cheeks colored. “She canceled. Said she had gastroenteritis.”
Mina looked at him, sympathetic. “Well, people get stomach bugs.”
He snorted. “Yeah. They don’t usually go clubbing with their friends then.” A glance at her. “Facebook is a terrible thing for liars.”
Mina smiled, patted him distantly on the arm. “Never mind. I’m sure love will find a way.”
The voices sputtered into silence as the door to the major incident room opened, admitting Superintendent Bell, followed closely by his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Byron Clee, a short man built like a bulldog, coming up hard on fifty and looking more like a criminal than a man charged with catching them.
Forty heads turned to watch them march across the room, Eric Bell limping ever so slightly, a struggle he did his best to hide. Bell looked up at the television screens and scowled.
“Right then,” he said, taking up position at the front of the room. “Listen up, please.” He waved behind him to a picture that had been tacked to the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Victoria Prew. She was thirty-nine years old, an accountant with Whitney-Stone in Carlisle. Originally from Edinburgh.”
Mina studied the photograph. The woman it depicted looked different from the woman she had met, her face fuller, eyes brighter, caught in a laugh. It must, she thought, have been taken before the divorce. Before her world fell apart.
“Next of kin, her mother, has been informed and is currently being supported by an FLO,” continued Bell. “She informs us that Ms. Prew was going through a rather nasty divorce.”
Victoria had said that her ex-husband was angry with her, that she was ruining his plans for a new life. Mina’s gaze shifted to the other picture, which had been placed beside the first, that of the dead body of Victoria Prew, her gaze vacant, skin ashen. And in among the rhythm of the superintendent’s words, something scratched at her. The ex was angry. Mina forced herself to stare at the dead body. The question, though, was whether this was a murder committed by an angry man.
“A team of officers is currently out in Edinburgh, looking for the ex-husband. So far they have been unsuccessful.”
Victoria’s death, the strangulation itself, it would have taken, what? Three, four minutes? It was the result of a determined, concentrated effort. Mina squinted, bringing into focus the bruise of fingermarks on her neck. But angry? There had been no beating, no stabbing, little of the physicality that might have provided a vent for the fury of a ruined life. In essence, the murder of Victoria Prew was clean. Businesslike.
“I cannot emphasize enough,” said Superintendent Bell, “how important it is that Mr. Prew is located in a timely manner.”
And what about the display? The positioning of the body on the wall? Was that the behavior of an angry man?
Mina looked back at the television nearest her, now showing the face of Heath McGowan. The scrolling feed at the bottom of the screen read Another body in the killer on the wall case? And that was it, wasn’t it? Little matter that the deaths were separated by twenty years. Little matter that the murderer was behind bars. Little matter that the case of the killer on the wall was closed.
She stared at the picture of Heath McGowan.
“Now, given the proximity of the two events . . .” Superintendent Bell’s voice came back into focus. “It is, of course, of primary interest to us to locate the individual who broke into Ms. Prew’s house and who, we believe, has been stalking her. I also need to point out that, given Briganton’s history, there is likely to be a substantial amount of concern from the public. We want to get this thing resolved as quickly as possible, with as little drama as possible. To be clear, my policy for this investigation is that the matter should be treated as entirely independent of the original Heath McGowan case. While I recognize that there are similarities in the body placement, it is my opinion that this has been done in order to throw off investigators. This case is therefore to be treated as a stand-alone, rather than to be considered in any way related to the original murder series.”
Mina looked at Cain Aiken, his gaze still on his fingers, his lips pursed. She could see the sideways glances from the others, hear the odd mutter. She felt her heart begin to beat faster.
“Is there some problem in the room?” asked the superintendent.
The mutters dropped away; gazes tilted downward.
“Thank you. Right, where’s my outside action team?”
A wave of hands from the far right corner, a low “Here, boss.”
“I need you to canvass the neighborhood. See if anyone in the vicinity heard anything, saw anything. Check around the village. I believe the Aubrey Arms has CCTV. See if they picked anything up on that. The church also has CCTV. They had some problems with vandals a couple of years back. Dan?” Eric Bell looked out, attempting to locate a face. “Yes, Dan, I need you to go to Whitney-Stone, talk to her colleagues. Heather? Heather, you’re with the family.”
He looked out over the array of faces. “We’re going to be putting in some long hours here. Tell your families not to expect to see much of you for a while.”
Then, to Mina’s own surprise, she felt her hand snaking its way up, heads swiveling toward her.
“Sir?”
The superintendent’s look had become hard. “Yes, DC Arian.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I . . . I was just wondering . . . So, just to be clear, you said that your policy is that this has nothing to do with the killings on the wall?”
Surrounding heads swiveled from Mina to Bell, then back again. Chief Superintendent Clee folded his arms across his chest, waiting for what would come next.
“The killer on the wall is in prison,” said Superintendent Bell.
“Yes, but given the similarities – – ”
“Let me be clear, DC Arian. All we know at this stage is that a woman is dead. Those early murders were extremely well publicized. A number of books have been written, documentaries made, in the intervening years, detailing the murders, the MO. As such, it would be no great stretch for someone with sufficie
nt motivation to replicate the body placement, the cause of death, with this particular murder in order to skew the investigation. I must emphasize that this does not mean we have a serial killer on the loose.”
“But it is true that some serial killers work with partners? I was just wondering, given what’s happened, whether we would be considering the possibility that there was an accomplice that was not found in the original investigation.” Mina felt her voice become smaller, as if it could barely believe that it was escaping her.
Superintendent Bell studied her for long moments. “No, Ms. Arian. No, we will not.”
Sunday, October 23
An exercise in death – Isla
Isla drove slowly. The narrow roads were empty of traffic, but their sides were lined with parked cars, the entire world once again descending on Briganton to look in on a murder. The rain had abated, the promise of it still heavy in the air, in the low-slung clouds, and Isla shivered, fingers moving, turning the heating up to full. Slow out of her street, down the hill, left at the corner. Past the Aubrey Arms, the smokers spilling out onto the street, their heads tucked together in gripping conversation. It didn’t take a detective to figure out what they were talking about. Isla could see it, in the tightness of their backs, the tension in their shoulders. She passed the florist, closed today, but Moira was on the doorstep, anyway, deep in conversation with Mrs. Patterson from the big house. Moira looked like she had been crying, Mrs. Patterson’s hand resting on her forearm, head dipped close.
Isla breathed out, a long, controlled breath. A right turn, as she headed toward her parents’ house, but it was the police vans she saw first, the vivid yellow tape cutting through the gray day. The house of Victoria Prew. Had Isla known who she was before yesterday? Would she have recognized her, had she passed her in the street? A forensic officer trudged across the gravel drive, hefting a case in one hand, head down, presumably so she didn’t have to look at the knotted journalists leaning across the cordon. It happened so quickly, Isla thought. Yesterday the house was a home, severe in its glass and steel. Today, a crime scene. And Victoria Prew? Who had she been before this? Although the sad truth would be that it did not really matter, not to the world at large, anyway. Because with her death, she had been reborn as something different. The victim of a murderer.
I Am Watching Page 8
