HER HUSBAND’S KILLER an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Ellis avoided her eye, as all the others did, and Helen, pitying him in a way that perhaps he did not deserve, turned her attention away from the gathering at the table, to the rest of the room. Ainsley, poor David, sat diagonally opposite, hunched over his food like a dangerous animal, barely concealing his desolation. Edward had taken his scalpel to quite another part of David’s anatomy than the heart, and now, Helen knew, the entire community, and even the wider world, would get to hear about his emasculation. Did David know about this before Edward’s death? Did she know about it? If she was honest, she did. She knew about all of them. There was a stage between ignorance and suspicion, a point on the continuum, and she thought David had reached that some time ago. Would he have done anything about it? That depended very much upon what Edward had said to him on Monday morning.

  Edward had made so many people miserable, seemed to delight in it, that she had thought that his death would bring, if not happiness, then at least a kind of relief, but the fear that had become so entrenched among the biology staff remained; if anything it seemed heightened by his absence. It was as if they felt safer with Edward because they knew what he would do, and it wasn’t always the worst he could do, but Alice Chambers and the policemen who had rudely elbowed their way into the academic circle which had until now been a haven for them, these were exotic creatures, capable of objectivity, willing to judge actions and draw conclusions which might prove uncomfortable for some. Edward, on the other hand, was at least predictable in his vindictiveness, and they had known that if they had anything to offer him, then he might be prepared to haggle — though not with money: Edward’s was strictly a barter system, based on favours owed and repaid; less traceable than money, but often extremely lucrative. Some staff had appealed directly to her, misunderstanding her influence with her husband, but these individuals were few. Nevertheless, she was tainted by her association with Edward, and generally she felt her colleagues did not trust her.

  They were, all of them, aware of her, all strenuously avoiding making their awareness apparent, even to the extent of constraining their vision to parts of the dining hall where she was not. There was a pointedness to their looking away, as one avoids the eyes of a beggar or someone who is disfigured. Helen supposed that was how she must appear to them — disfigured by two tragedies, two bloody deaths.

  Blood and screaming, and later, a feverish memory, vivid, like the dreams of delirium — a tiny, lifeless form in her own small hands. Unbearably perfect.

  She shook her head, clearing her mind of the memory. Her colleagues could not know that the first loss, the lesser in their minds of the two, had left deeper scars.

  Helen returned to the other possibility: that one of these people, these seemingly gentle, unworldly academics could not bring himself to meet her gaze because he had murdered her husband. Helen considered how she felt about this prospect and decided that she bore the killer no ill-will. Her mother would call this wickedness, and of course she would be right.

  Helen sighed and she looked up. An involuntary exclamation escaped her. Isaac Smolder had seated himself a couple of tables away and was staring at her. He let his gaze drop to his plate, which was piled with plain salad, and began cutting the lettuce into thin strips, attaching it with meticulous care to his fork, chewing slowly, as if counting the number of mastications before each swallow, eating without enjoyment, as though it was a task which must be performed, tedious, but necessary. Helen studied him trying to establish some tangible reason for her abhorrence of him. A small man, Smolder did not carry a physical threat. He was neatly dressed, as always, in shirt and bow tie. His hair was carefully combed. His hands, which manipulated his knife and fork as though dissecting an interesting specimen, were clean, and the nails were evenly clipped. It was these hands, and the fastidious precision with which he used them, that Helen noticed most particularly. The polished nails and smooth, slightly yellow skin, which was barely wrinkled, even at the knuckles, so tightly was it stretched over the bones. She was struck by an overpowering sense of parsimoniousness, as if Smolder rationed out his ectodermis because he couldn’t afford to waste it and had nothing to spare.

  She looked away sharply when he caught her eye a second time. Ruth was teasing Mallory and she made an effort to listen.

  ‘It must be a bit of a drag, being booted out of your office by the filth,’ she drawled, deliberately choosing terms that Mallory would abhor.

  ‘I volunteered the use of my study,’ he answered with sniffy dignity.

  ‘Of course,’ Ruth said, pursing her lips, ‘It’s going to hamper your preparations for the written submission—’

  Mallory looked at each of his allies, but each, in turn, looked away. He focused on his soup bowl. ‘It’s all in hand,’ he said, stirring the sludgy brownish liquid.

  She smirked and muttered, ‘Whose?’ Then, in mock sympathy she added, ‘Even so, the thought of nasty, brutish coppers polluting your air with all those dropped aitches and glottal stops . . .’ The smile broadened to a grin, but Mallory, who refused to meet her eye, did not see it. Then, as if a sudden thought had occurred to her: ‘Perhaps the Senate will give you an extension, since you’re unable to gain access to your notes—’

  Mallory flung down his spoon violently and spat into his napkin. ‘I bloody knew it!’ he shouted, spluttering, red in the face. ‘There’s ham in this vegetable soup.’ He picked up his bowl and stalked off to the cook who stared blandly at him as he blustered and raged. Heads turned.

  ‘That was uncalled for.’ John Ellis, the postgraduate student, who had left the meeting so hurriedly the previous day, had spoken. ‘I mean, wasn’t it?’ he added, suddenly appalled at his own audacity in speaking so plainly.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Ruth, leaning on one hand, and using a slightly flaccid chip as a pointer. ‘Since he can’t do any useful work on his own submission until the police have finished with his room, and since he has such a breadth of experience in these matters and would really like to help you out, and anyway, he’s your supervisor and there simply hasn’t been enough time to talk through exactly what it is you’ve been doing for the past six months, Dr Mallory thought today might be a good time to go through your thesis with you, right?’

  Ellis blushed.

  ‘Trust me. Mallory wouldn’t give a shit if you couldn’t tell a littoral zone from an erogenous zone.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say—’

  Ruth smiled slowly and leaned in to whisper, ‘I’ll give you a clue: the latter gives far more pleasure than the former.’

  The flush spread from Ellis’s face, down his neck and up to the roots of his hair.

  Ruth jerked back in her chair and took a bite out of the chip, grinning. ‘But of course, marine biology isn’t your thing, is it John? Drosophila melanogaster is more your line. And what exactly have you been doing? I mean we’ve all heard the hoo-ha about your theory, if you can call that.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s rather like calling Gaia a hypothesis. Earth as superorganism is a pretty concept, comforting, even. But isn’t it more an analogy? A metaphor? And analogies aren’t testable; metaphors, no matter how beguiling, are, by definition, literally false.’

  ‘There’s a growing body of evidence for co-evolution,’ Ellis began, but he was not a natural orator and did not have sufficient knowledge of his subject to provide a confident rebuttal to the counterarguments.

  ‘Co-evolution — that’s where the Earth is supposed to be evolving to keep us snug in our little niches, isn’t it? Well what about global warming, mass extinction, holes in the ozone layer, the depletion of oceanic fish stocks? Are we supposed to let the great god Gaia sort it all out for us? She doesn’t seem to be getting very far — that’s the trouble with Gaia — no sense of urgency.’

  Feeney, apparently caught between sympathy for Ellis and exasperation at his inability to argue his case, chipped in with, ‘The Gaian theorists have a lot in common with conventional science. Their ideas and ours do converge
at certain points.’

  ‘There you go again — calling it a theory,’ Ruth said, clearly enjoying the debate.

  Helen was aware from the general hush from the tables around them that they were drawing an audience.

  ‘The convergence you talk about can be explained in terms of good, old-fashioned, testable science — biological and physiological feedback, physical and chemical fact,’ Ruth went on. ‘Of course organisms have an enormous impact on the abiotic environment — climate, soil conditions, recycling of minerals — and, yes, there are homeostatic features in the system, but it is not new, Feeney. Gaian protagonists are just tearing off bits of the old ideas that fit their models and Pritt-sticking them to their — their cause. I’m afraid I can’t call it a theory.’

  ‘Lovelock’s models—’

  Ruth threw back her head and laughed. ‘Models!’

  Ellis muttered something about the models giving the right answers, and Ruth went on more kindly: ‘Look, it’s not that I’m against models — they’re useful in their place, and I have to say your mathematical model is elegant, John, but does it mean anything? In terms of actual biological systems, that is.’

  Ellis pulled himself together enough to say with pompous self-importance, ‘I’ll be publishing an interim report in Nature, next month, you’ll have to read that.’

  ‘Oh, well!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘Mallory will be impressed. Or should I say relieved?’ She leaned in again and Ellis looked somewhat alarmed. Lowering her voice to a stage whisper, Ruth went on: ‘You know they’ll want to see some actual stats, a bit of field data, dope, facts and figures — lab work — that sort of thing. Boring details, but even geniuses have to justify their theories.’

  ‘I’ve got the data,’ Ellis said, affronted. ‘Dr Mallory thinks—’

  Ruth snorted. ‘Dr Mallory thinks? — I’d be surprised,’ she said. ‘Look, I’ve got nothing against you, John. You may be shamefully naive, but that’s hardly a crime.’

  Ellis’s colour deepened and Helen wanted to rescue him: he was such a boy — inoffensive, eager to please, and rather gawky — she saw that Ruth’s comments had really shaken him. He was now blushing so hard his ears had turned red and she could almost feel the heat from him.

  ‘Ruth—’ she began, but if her friend was already talking again:

  ‘Look, we’ve all been there,’ Ruth said. ‘We know all about supervisors who couldn’t give a shit about you, who couldn’t even tell you the title of your dissertation or thesis, but they want their name right up there on any published material.’

  She looked around the table for acknowledgement, but Helen wasn’t about to support her in this. Instead, she focused on the escalating row between the cook and Mallory.

  ‘I’m not incapable, you know,’ Ellis said, sounding sulky and upset.

  ‘Nobody’s saying you are,’ Ruth said. ‘All I’m suggesting is that you be circumspect in what you claim for your research. You have to get a sense of proportion — you have to adopt a realistic perspective. There’s nothing worse than being routed by academics. I know. It’s happened to me more than once.’

  Helen switched her attention back to the group at her table, relieved that Ruth had moderated her tone. Ellis was looking at her friend as though seeing her for the first time. Some of the colour had begun to fade from his face and he was listening intently. The others around the table had fallen silent and were listening too, and Helen realized that in letting Ruth Marks go, the university was losing not only a brilliant academic, but a galvanising force the faculty.

  * * *

  Perspective. Now you may have something there. I dreamed, once, of giants crossing a causeway — huge, stilt-legged monsters striding jerkily across a vast expanse of sand and silty water. Blue sky above, mud and puddles of captured sky below.

  As I awoke, I remember thinking ‘It’s all a question of perspective.’ It was one of those rare revelatory moments in which a small but significant piece of the jigsaw fits into place with a satisfying click, and it’s as if you had always possessed this little bit of wisdom.

  Just as figures on the horizon seem taller, elongated by mirage and their relative position in the landscape, my rank must seem vast, monumental to those of lower status, so Edward must have seen me, from his vantage point, as bearer of an important title, his accepted superiority magnifying his tiny intellect, fooling even Edward himself into thinking that he held monstrous power in his hands. Looking down, he considered me small, insignificant, dispensable.

  * * *

  Smolder stood up and carried his tray back to the trolley. ‘Your cynicism does you no credit,’ he told Ruth quietly, then, without allowing her chance to reply, he left the refectory.

  Feeney coughed. ‘Yes?’ Ruth waited, but Feeney fell to picking up crumbs from the Formica tabletop with the pads of his fingers and rubbing them onto his plate.

  ‘A lot of people are going to be seriously pissed off if you don’t deliver, John,’ she told Ellis. ‘Not just Mallory, not just the Dean of Faculty — there’s a whole raft of New Age potheads desperate to make your results fit their faith. Publishing contracts hang in the balance, waiting for your results before they can be signed, and advances paid. You hold entire careers in your sweaty palm.’ She eyed him thoughtfully. ‘But you already knew that, didn’t you?’

  ‘I think,’ said Ellis with stiff dignity, ‘my results will satisfy both the academic community and the Gaians.’

  Ruth laughed. ‘Naivety, I can tolerate, but pomposity,’ she shook her head, ‘that’s unforgivable.’

  Chapter 8

  ‘Are you here for the night, or is this a fleeting visit?’ Sheila was standing at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes. Her tone was strained, her blond hair tousled and windblown, and she looked flushed and out of sorts.

  ‘Somewhere between the two.’ Terry Hackett knew better than to rush in.

  ‘Well, if you’ve time, you can pick Lisa up from her play rehearsal. I’ve only just got started on dinner. Your mother phoned — she said it was urgent. Thought someone was following her after she’d picked up her pension from the post office.’

  Hackett felt a sudden stab of fear. ‘I’ll fetch Lisa and call in on my way back.’

  ‘No need. I went round. I think she was just lonely.’

  Before his father’s death, six months earlier, Hackett’s mother had been an independent, bossy, argumentative, infuriating and loveable woman; now, she was lonely, depressed and anxious, a burden to her family and herself. Without Terry senior to argue with and order about, she seemed to lose interest in life, beyond a morbid taste for real-life crime programmes and a belief that, as a widow, she had become a natural target for every type of villain: burglar, confidence trickster, rapist, drug fiend (she called them this, in preference to the more vulgar expression, ‘druggy’), or mugger — it didn’t matter — she was afraid of them all.

  ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  ‘She can’t help it. But you’ll have to get something sorted, Terry. At least she could have her money paid direct into her bank account. We can’t go on like this.’ She moved her head sharply as he reached to touch her hair.

  It was unlike Sheila to be so irritable. What she meant was I can’t go on like this, since it generally was Sheila who ended up doing the looking after, the running around, the calming down and setting right.

  He moved closer and kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘It’s this bloody murder investigation, else I’d be home more.’

  She lifted her shoulder and bent her head, capturing his hand briefly and pressing it to her cheek. ‘We haven’t even had chance to talk about your new job,’ she said. ‘What’s your boss like?’

  ‘Angry.’

  Sheila smiled. Terry was fond of summing people up in a word, on short acquaintance. He wasn’t often wrong. ‘Best watch him, then.’

  ‘Eyes in the back of my head.’ He kissed her on the lips this time, and she returned it, holding her arms wide to protect his clo
thing from the potato she had been peeling.

  ‘Good-looking bloke, that professor,’ she said, gently extricating herself and continuing with the work.

  ‘The boss has taken a dislike to his wife,’ Hackett said. ‘Thinks she had a hand in it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be the first . . .’

  ‘No.’ Hackett picked up the kettle and shook it, then carried it to the sink and added enough water for a brew. ‘There’s a lad — a DC — bit of a whiz on the computer: Jem Tact. Peculiar name. Funny bloke come to think of it. But he knows his stuff, does Jem. He was sifting through the junk in Prof Wilkinson’s office and decided to check the files on his networked PC. Took a bit of doing, but the computer services department eventually came up with the right passwords and such. He started with the most recently updated files. Wilkinson had one called Apocalypse.’

  Sheila glanced over her shoulder in question.

  ‘There’s a lot of staff expected to lose their jobs in some sort of reshuffle,’ Hackett explained. ‘The file lists everyone he interviewed on the morning before he was killed.’

  ‘Religious, was he?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but it looks like he fancied himself for the god-slot. Apocalypse is the bit of the Bible where everyone gets their come-uppance, right?’

  ‘Day of Reckoning,’ Sheila agreed. ‘Four Horsemen. That sort of thing.’

  Hackett threw a couple of teabags into the pot and filled it with boiling water, then stirred the brew thoughtfully.

  ‘So, who’s for the chop?’ Sheila asked, with her usual perspicacity.

  ‘Suspiciously few,’ Hackett said dryly. ‘There are fifteen entries and it reads like a fairy tale — everyone lives happily ever after.’ Rutherford and Ainsley, whom they had already interviewed, both safe. The faithful Mrs Roberts confirmed to continue as his secretary. Mick Tuttle to have his contract renewed. Helen Wilkinson was listed as ‘query promotion’, Feeney recommended to continue until retirement in a year and a half, two lab technicians cleared for renewal of contract, ditto the departmental librarian, a group of junior lecturers and a couple of researchers.