by Clare Chase
It might be interesting to see what the students got up to – though whether they could afford the time on a case like this was another matter.
‘Thank you.’ Max didn’t commit them, one way or the other. ‘Just for the record, sir, could I ask you each to confirm your whereabouts on Saturday evening and overnight?’
Tara saw a look of anger cross Veronica Lockwood’s face.
‘It’s just procedure,’ Tara said. ‘If we’re thorough now there’s less chance of us having to bother you again.’
Sir Alistair held up a hand. ‘Of course. I drove down to London on Saturday afternoon on college business. I had a dinner date with Lord Westerly. I’m hoping to get a significant donation out of him to build a new library here at St Oswald’s. We ended up making a night of it, so I stayed at the pied-à-terre I mentioned, in Notting Hill.’
‘Can anyone vouch for you?’
The master’s smile didn’t dim, though Veronica’s face was like granite.
‘I’m afraid not. I walked back to the flat – I don’t remember much about the journey, to be frank – and slept it off. I drove home at lunchtime on Sunday and the first person I saw was Veronica.’
Max turned to the man’s wife.
‘I stayed behind. Drinking into the night isn’t my forte. I’m leaving for a concert tour in a couple of days, so I spent my time practising. I doubt anyone heard me. The grounds here are so spacious. I find it hard to sleep before I go away, so I went to bed early and took a pill. I went to buy a newspaper on Trumpington Street on Sunday morning and came home to wait for Alistair to return.’
Max turned to Douglas. ‘Sir?’
Douglas almost jumped. ‘You want mine too?’
Tara could see what was behind Max’s question. Julie had tried to cause trouble for the firm. And why had she been digging around in the Lockwoods’ private quarters?
‘Just for the record.’ Max echoed his earlier words.
‘I was at our house on Brookside.’ He gave them the address. ‘My wife, Selina, was with me. She’s here in the house now, so she can confirm.’
The woman in the upstairs sitting room?
He called out her name. A moment later, the eyes Tara had twice met, peering through the sitting room door, locked onto hers once again.
‘We’re just confirming where we were on Saturday night,’ Douglas said. ‘“For the record”.’ His distaste was plain.
Selina looked nervous. ‘Douglas was at home with me,’ she said. ‘We live just over the road. You’ve said?’ She looked at her husband.
Douglas nodded. ‘I’ve said.’
They prepared to leave. As they reached the doorway of the study, Tara looked over her shoulder to find Selina’s eyes were still on her. And she still looked scared.
What was it they weren’t being told?
Twenty-One
Bella knew the police would come to see her. They were bound to – she hadn’t followed their instructions and reported Stuart when he’d knocked on her door the night before. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to. He wasn’t quite as upset as she’d anticipated – shaken, yes, but not wracked with tears like she was. She’d been holding it together, but on seeing his face she’d crumpled. It had taken her all day to get him there. How could she report him to the police when he finally arrived? She’d been so desperate for company. To have him there, to speak to him about Julie, simply to block out endless hours on her own – was just too desirable to give up. What difference did it make that his talk with the detectives had been postponed?
But now that the officers were here, she could see they thought differently. As she sat on the edge of her bed, glancing up at the fierce-looking guy with the unruly dark hair and angry eyes, she realised her hands were shaking. The woman who’d come with the man was sitting in Bella’s desk chair, whereas the male detective was pacing up and down in front of her. It felt as though the woman was only there to make sure the guy didn’t thump her.
They’d told her their names, but she’d gone blank. The woman might be Megan something? She must have been trying to seem approachable by mentioning her first name, but it hadn’t worked. Bella blinked away her tears now. They’d never understand. She’d spent so much of her time with Julie, doing everything she’d done, pretty much ignoring the other people in their year. And now there was just a blank. A feeling of emptiness.
‘I’m going to ask you again, Bella,’ the guy said. ‘Why didn’t you call us when Stuart arrived?’
‘He’s lost his ex-girlfriend! When he showed up at my door it just seemed… inhumane. I knew he’d talk to you this morning.’
‘Did you ask him to do that?’
‘I told him you needed to speak to him urgently.’
‘Yet he decided it could wait.’
‘He was cut up.’ Both the guy and the woman frowned at that, but Stuart must have been – underneath it all. She wondered how he’d seemed when they’d interviewed him. Had they also been surprised at his lack of emotion? ‘It didn’t seem right to push him.’
The man sighed impatiently. ‘So, what did the two of you find to do all night?’
The female detective’s mouth twitched slightly. Bastards, the pair of them.
‘We talked, of course!’ Bella’s voice was embarrassingly uncontrolled and high-pitched. She paused a moment before continuing. ‘We’d both had a terrible few hours.’
‘You have my utmost sympathy.’ The man’s frown was deepening further now. ‘But time makes all the difference in a murder enquiry. If either of you want us to find out who killed your friend, then you might want to help instead of concentrating on your own needs.’
He wasn’t shouting. Not quite. Bella clutched her stomach. She felt sick. She and Stuart had both drunk a lot of vodka the night before. She’d thrown up three times that morning. It would be a long while before she could face any food. How could something so gut-wrenchingly appalling have happened?
‘You have to consider your own safety too, Bella.’ The woman looked at her from under glossy brown curls. ‘Julie’s attacker is out there and more often than not, victims know their killer. You spent a lot of time together. You might know them too.’
Bella swallowed. The nausea was getting worse. Did they reckon Stuart had done this? She thought back to the way he and Julie had interacted. They’d seemed devoted at first, but they each had their own, very firm, agendas. They were driven in a way she’d never been. Bella tried to look at the situation through the eyes of the police and shivered. Perhaps that was what they thought. Stuart could be an unnerving person. He’d got violent at times, when he’d been protesting, and he’d made her uneasy on occasion. She wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, but, given all his principles, he’d never stoop to murder. Besides, he was too canny to let things get out of hand.
‘I understand,’ she said at last, to the female detective. ‘I hadn’t thought it through.’
The woman nodded and turned to the man, whose shoulders went down a little. He paused with his pacing.
‘So, you and Stuart talked. What else?’
‘Got drunk and passed out.’
‘That’s all?’ His brown eyes looked deep into hers. It was a disconcerting feeling.
‘That’s all. Knowing Julie was dead didn’t leave either of us feeling sexy.’ She regretted the words as soon as they were out. She sounded bitter. He’d think he’d got to her now – and probably that she fancied Stuart.
‘We understand Julie and Stuart broke up because Julie thought you and he were seeing each other behind her back.’ The woman spoke gently.
She had to take a moment before answering. Guilt gnawed at her insides. She felt the truth was lit up above her head in neon, and that they would read her mind. ‘She was wrong. We weren’t.’
‘Bella, we also have evidence that you followed Stuart and Julie on at least one occasion, when they were still together.’ Even the guy sounded more sympathetic now. He was weirdly good-looking w
hen his face relaxed – rough around the edges though, despite his smart suit. For a second, she imagined pouring her heart out to him.
She took a deep breath. How to explain it? ‘I— Well, I felt a bit left out, to be honest. I knew Julie before she got together with Stuart and we used to chat a lot. And then suddenly they were living in each other’s pockets. Spending all their time planning protests or… well, you know.’ She wasn’t going to mention sex again. ‘I sometimes went off into town when I knew they had. Not because I wanted to see them or make them feel guilty. It was just because I’d got nothing to do. Cambridge is a small place and I realised they’d seen me once.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘I was embarrassed.’
‘Were you jealous of Julie?’ the woman asked.
‘No. I didn’t – don’t – fancy Stuart.’
‘Did you fancy Julie?’ The man’s voice was even gentler now.
‘No. Honestly. I found her fascinating – inspiring. That’s all.’ The tears came again but surely they’d expect that. She’d be crying over Julie’s death for a long time yet, and what she’d told the officers was true – all true. Except the bit about not fancying Stuart.
‘Bella – for the record, we need to ask you where you were on Saturday evening, and overnight.’
She’d already told the other detectives that she’d seen Julie leave the house on Chesterton Road from her bedroom window. Presumably that wasn’t enough. ‘I was in my room at the house where I lodged over the summer.’
‘Can anyone vouch for you?’
She shook her head. ‘Most of us who stayed there didn’t know each other well. I bumped into another of the students, Martina, early on Sunday morning when I went to make a coffee in the kitchen, but not before then.’
The woman wrote it all down in her notebook. ‘Do you drive, Bella?’ she asked after a moment.
‘No. I took a couple of lessons in the summer vacation after my first year but then I broke my wrist. I haven’t gone back to it yet.’
The woman nodded.
‘And as DS Maloney said,’ the man went on, ‘there’s a chance you might know Julie’s killer. Is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to harm her?’
She paused a while before she answered, reviewing the names she might mention but then mentally crossing them off, one by one. ‘No.’
The man had picked up on her expression. ‘If you’re worried about getting someone into trouble, Bella, please don’t be. If you confide in us, we can investigate discreetly. And you’ll be helping your friend.’
She remembered him looming over her when he’d first come in, looking as though he wanted to punch something. ‘No, honestly. There’s no one.’
There was a long pause but at last the guy sighed again. ‘Last question then. Can you tell us about John?’
She felt a small shiver run through her and clasped her hands together. ‘John who?’ She tried to meet his eye, but as before, his look made her uncomfortable.
‘John who Julie was… involved with – a little while back.’ It sounded as though the detective was feeling his way.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bella said, ‘but I can’t help you.’
Twenty-Two
Blake had called the team together. Tara, Jez, Max and Megan were already gathered round a table in the incident room, huddled over steaming mugs of coffee. The heating at the station hadn’t caught up with the sudden drop in temperature outside.
As he walked over to join the others he glanced out of the window. The trees lining the expansive green of Parker’s Piece were just starting to turn, the edges of their leaves tinged with gold – the summer’s growth breaking down and dying. That day, the Piece was occupied by student clubs and societies, showing off what they had to offer to the incoming cohort. In the area just opposite the station a group were doing folk dancing, watched by a gaggle of faintly embarrassed-looking youths he took to be freshers. In one corner of the green there was even a glider. He wondered how much it cost to join that club. The mist was lifting, displaced by the rising wind which made the trees twist and turn. Blake didn’t like autumn. It was the season where he felt change most keenly, and after several years of the sand shifting uneasily beneath his feet, he didn’t like the sense of uncertainty it brought.
‘All right,’ he said, calling them to attention. ‘We’ll talk about Bella Chadwick first.’ He took a deep breath, trying to batten down his feelings of frustration, then gave them a summary of that morning’s interview. He turned to Megan. ‘Is there anything you’d like to add? What were your impressions?’
The DS glanced at her notebook, even though they’d only recently left the student. He’d rather hear what was uppermost in her mind, off the cuff. But Megan would want to be precise – it was in her blood. ‘Her comments about Stuart Gilmour jarred with the impression I got of him. She said it would have been “inhumane” to call us when he turned up, because he was so upset. But at our interview he was fully in control of his emotions.’
Blake nodded. ‘I agree.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘And assuming he wasn’t bottling up his feelings when he spoke to us, then I’d guess she’s lying about his state when he arrived. Which means that’s not the real reason she failed to call us.’
‘Do you think she could be frightened of Gilmour?’ Max said.
‘It’s possible. She said something about it not feeling right to “push” him. Maybe it wasn’t out of concern, but because she was scared of his response. Then again, she didn’t try to deny that they were together in her room all night. She could have clammed up because they were both involved in Julie’s death.’
‘Is that what you think?’ It was Tara who’d spoken. He met her green-eyed gaze. ‘Gut instinct, I mean?’ she added.
He caught Megan’s look of disapproval out of the corner of his eye and wished for a moment that he could chew the case over with Tara alone, over a whisky in a pub somewhere. As for Megan and her dislike of hunches, it wasn’t as though anyone was suggesting they head out, all guns blazing, to act on his thoughts.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but I’m certain there’s something that Bella’s not telling us. And I don’t like Gilmour.’
Megan wouldn’t like that subjective judgement either – though he was sure she felt the same. ‘Did you notice Bella’s reaction when I asked about “John”?’ he said, turning to her.
‘She hesitated.’
‘Yes, and the way she asked for clarification made me think she was playing for time. When she finally said she couldn’t help she didn’t meet my eye. If she was in the habit of trailing after Julie, my bet is she knows all about him. I want to know why she’s not telling us.’
He turned to Max. ‘What have you and Tara got?’
Max filled them all in on the visit to the Lockwoods’ college residence. A lot of interesting information there – from the fact that Julie seemed to have nosed her way into rooms that were off limits, to the scared look in Douglas Lockwood’s wife’s eye, when she’d confirmed his alibi.
‘And I’ve just had the results from the tech team who’ve been looking at Julie’s laptop,’ Tara said. She glanced down at her computer. ‘Along with the kind of stuff you’d expect – essays related to her course and so on – there are various documents she was putting together for that student newspaper she worked for – Uncovered.’
Blake looked up quickly. ‘Anything on Lockwood’s?’
Tara nodded. ‘She’d been preparing an article when she died, by the look of it – last saved just the day before. But the file had been created a whole year earlier. So, it looks as though it was a long-term project.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe she was waiting for – or even expecting – something big to add to it.’
‘Could be. What about the content so far?’
‘The article’s written in a provocative way, and some of the information is quite shocking, but I’ve checked, and it’s all in the public domain already. And the scandals that she wrote about have been explained away b
y Lockwood’s PR people – sometimes with independent scientific backing. And sometimes not so much.’
Jez’s blue eyes were thoughtful. ‘She was probably waiting for new information that would put her on the map. Assuming she was planning to pursue journalism as more than just a hobby.’
‘I don’t think “putting herself on the map” would have been her goal.’ Blake’s words sounded harsher than he’d meant them to. ‘She strikes me as someone who worked on principle. Either way, I imagine her aim was to find something that would really hit Lockwood’s where it hurt.’ He turned to Tara. ‘What does her search history tell us?’
‘That Lockwood’s wasn’t the only big corporate she had in her sights – but all the same, there’s a disproportionate number of searches for the master’s firm. Of course, she wouldn’t have found anything new or secret on the net, but it looks as though she was diligent. She wanted every scrap of background information – so that she could be sure of her ground, I guess.’
‘Any oddities?’
‘Only one that I’ve found so far. Several of the searches were for Lockwood’s and a specific location. For instance, Lockwood’s and São Paulo or Lockwood’s and Mumbai. And when I cross checked, I could see there’d been some kind of legal challenge for the company – or accusations of malpractice – in each of those places. I’d guess Julie had heard about them on the grapevine and was doing some digging. But one of the searches was for Lockwood’s and Scotland – only the company doesn’t have a base there.’
‘Scotland?’ He frowned.
Tara looked up. ‘Yes, why?’
‘It might be coincidence, but Scotland was mentioned in the notes on her mobile. Just that one word, with a question mark.’
It was a small thing, but an odd one – and Blake had learnt not to ignore those.
Twenty-Three
