A Murderous Mind

by Jane A. Adams

  After a while, Ginny straightened up and released herself from Sam’s embrace. She wiped at her eyes and sniffed and then busied herself finding a tissue in her bag.

  Sam was clearly looking for a distraction because he asked Daniel, ‘Did you get your essay in on time?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Yeah. I think it’s crap, though.’

  ‘You always say that and it never is.’

  Ginny wiped her eyes. ‘Did you go to the lecture?’ she asked Hank.

  He nodded. ‘You can use my notes if you like, and she’s posting a summary on Blackboard with some links. There was hardly anyone there.’

  Ginny looked relieved, Patrick thought, to be talking about something ordinary. ‘It was about the Bauhaus stuff again,’ Hank added.

  ‘Ah, right. I think I might do my assignment on that.’

  ‘Really?’ Patrick couldn’t think of anything more tedious.

  ‘Yeah, it’s kind of straightforward. I mean there are clear theories and those theories were applied practically and there’s all the historical context stuff.’

  He nodded, now she put it like that it seemed like a better idea.

  The conversation stumbled on for a while and Patrick could see that Ginny, at least, was feeling better for it. But they couldn’t escape for long from the weight of grief and horror and, Patrick realized, the sense of responsibility.

  ‘The police keep asking us if we saw anyone hanging about,’ Sam said. ‘If Leanne was worried about anyone.’

  Hank laughed. ‘Leanne never worried about anything,’ he said. ‘She would chat to anyone, she was just like that.’

  Silence fell for a while and then Sam said, ‘Her parents came to see us this morning. I can understand why they wanted to, but it was horrible. It was just—’

  ‘I felt so guilty,’ Ginny said. ‘Like I could have done something. We were there. We should have known. We should have heard something. Leanne’s mum couldn’t understand why we hadn’t heard anything.’

  ‘But we didn’t,’ Sam said. ‘We just slept through it all. Our friend was murdered and … and cut up and in pain and we didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘She had to have been unconscious or something,’ Patrick said. ‘If she’d been in pain she’d have screamed out.’ He wasn’t sure if that was true, but he felt he had to say something comforting, something to relieve the horror, just a little bit.

  Ginny pounced on it. ‘You think so? Sam, Patrick’s right, she’d have screamed or shouted for help or something. Wouldn’t she?’

  Patrick could see that Sam didn’t believe it, but he nodded anyway. It was a little shred of comfort, a small hope in amongst all of the devastation. ‘I hope so,’ he whispered, but Patrick knew that his friend was imagining every wound, every moment Leanne might have suffered. Every last second of pain and it was eating him up from the inside.

  Ginny’s parents appeared just after that and told her that her gran was on the phone and really needed ‘to hear her voice’. Ginny apologized and followed them back upstairs. Sam watched her go and then looked back at his friends. ‘The police say they’ll be clearing all our stuff out of the flat,’ he said, ‘and the university has been talking about offering new accommodation. Ginny says she doesn’t want to come back.’

  ‘And what do you want to do?’ Hank asked.

  Sam shrugged. ‘I don’t want to go back home,’ he said. ‘I came all the way up here so I didn’t have to live at home. I’m stopping. Dad’s already gone back and Mum will be leaving in the morning. She wants me to go with her and we had a big row because she can’t understand how I’d rather be here after what happened. She says it’s stupid and … perverse.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘She likes the word perverse, uses it for anything that doesn’t fit with what she thinks.’

  Patrick, Hank and Daniel laughed awkwardly, and Patrick knew that Hank was probably wondering what he’d choose to do. Daniel just looked puzzled and Patrick figured he was undecided. Daniel often was, seemingly, undecided. For Patrick it would have been easy. He’d chosen this university precisely because it meant he could live at home. Patrick knew he was far from ready to leave the safe place he had with his dad and he thought, not for the first time, how lucky that made him. He and his dad got along just fine most of the time. He counted Harry as a friend. But then, they had been through such a lot together and bonds had been forged that didn’t usually happen between fathers and sons.

  ‘Where are they going to move you to?’ he asked.

  ‘Kingston House,’ they said. ‘Down near the canal.’

  ‘It’s nice there,’ Hank said. ‘Sam, you have to do what feels best. I think I’d be running for the hills. And then I’d probably feel bad about it,’ he added. ‘I’d feel like I was letting Leanne down.’

  The bar doors opened again and Sam looked up, hoping, Patrick thought, to see Ginny return. A man came in, bundled up against the cold and damp of the day. He went over to the bar and ordered a coffee then wandered over to a seat beside the window.

  Patrick frowned. There was something familiar about him.

  The man glanced around as he undid his coat and dropped it on a spare chair, meeting Patrick’s gaze for an instant before turning his attention to the barman who’d just come over with his drink.

  Patrick filed that sense of familiarity away in the back of his brain and turned his attention back to his friends. The memory would either surface or it wouldn’t.

  They left soon after that. Daniel had an afternoon of lectures and Patrick was heading over to Bob’s and had to pick up his car. He had surprised everyone – including himself, by passing his test the first time. The insurance had cost an arm and a leg and part of what Patrick earned from assisting Bob went towards that each month, Harry taking up the slack on the rest.

  He thought about Sam and Ginny as he drove down the wet country roads towards Bob and Annie’s place. How they must be feeling, how long it would take them to get over what they had witnessed and he knew that Ginny, once she had left would not return and had the feeling that she would slowly but surely break contact with them all too, hope that distance and denial might help her to recover and forget.

  Patrick knew that she was wrong.

  SIXTEEN

  DCI Field had arrived along with a team of five and what looked to Tess like a van load of filing boxes. Just behind him was the Internal Affairs team and Field introduced former DI Trinder who had ‘agreed to come out of retirement to advise’.

  No further explanation was given and Field did not elaborate about the kind of advice he might be offering either.

  Field set out his belongings on a desk that had been cleared for him and anyone capable of carrying a box set to work carrying files into a small office that had been requisitioned for the purpose.

  ‘In there.’ Field pointed to the office. ‘A team will undertake a case review. That team will comprise Inspector Fuller, Sergeant Dattani, Sergeant Briggs, who was responsible for alerting us to the earlier offence, and DS Natalie Cooper from DI Trinder’s team.’

  Tess bristled, but said nothing. She knew this was an important job, but still resented being side-lined from the current investigation.

  ‘DI Fuller will also be responsible for liaising with those officers who have now left the force, but who were involved in the Rebecca Arnold killing. DS Cooper and Sergeant Briggs will have particular responsibility for assessing the late DI Jackson’s role in the investigation.’

  There were two women in Trinder’s team of six, Tess noted and wondered which was Cooper. She noticed Alfie Briggs standing guiltily by the door like a child caught listening in to an adult conversation. She dragged her attention back to what Field was saying. He was clearly taking charge, and so far the mysterious Trinder had spoken to no one outside of his own team. Tess was uncertain if that was a good sign or not. Field, she noted, was doing what he had done the last time she had worked with him and seeking to integrate the disparate teams, listing those of her colleagues and those
from his team and from Trinder’s who would be working together. No one looked particularly happy at the prospect, but Tess respected Field’s wisdom. This way integration and communication might not be easy or welcome, but it would at least happen and being imposed from above and from outside meant that everyone could grouse about it with impunity.

  ‘Any questions,’ Field asked.

  There were a few, mainly dealing with practicalities of computers and desks and the availability of bacon sandwiches and then Field suggested they all get acquainted with their new colleagues, and Tess caught Vin’s eye and then headed towards the cramped space of their allocated office. She looked despairingly at the amount of material they would have to work through, stacked on desks, on shelves, on the floor in no discernible order.

  ‘Wow,’ Vin said. ‘Where to start.’

  ‘By sorting them into date order, I guess.’

  Tess turned towards the unfamiliar voice. ‘DI Cooper?’

  ‘Natalie. Nat.’ She held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  Automatically, Tess shook her hand and introduced Vin and Alfie who had now slipped sheepishly through the door and stood uncertainly beside one of the desks. Tess had never seen him look so uneasy or out of place.

  Cooper was about mid-thirties, Tess guessed. Tall and, when she slipped off her jacket and revealed bare arms, athletic-looking with short dark hair and grey eyes.

  Someone stuck their head round the door asking for coffee orders and discussing sugar and preference for hot chocolate seemed to break the tension. Surprisingly, it was Alfie who moved into action. He’d been scanning the labels on the boxes, looking at the dates and case numbers and scribbling them down into a notebook.

  ‘We look like we’ve got five different case numbers,’ he said.

  ‘Five?’ Cooper was clearly startled. ‘My god.’

  Tess decided she might actually like this stranger. ‘So, six in all,’ she reminded them.

  ‘If we take the earliest date and put them on that shelf beside the door, then work our way round?’ Alfie offered.

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Tess agreed. ‘So presumably the Leanne Bolter casefiles will be kept in the main office … OK, let’s do this.’

  For the next half-hour they worked in near silence, sorting files and allocating spaces. Coffee arrived and was drunk and finally laptops and a scatter of pens and notebooks placed on the desks made the space look occupied. It was tidy just now, Tess thought. Sparse and neat and she looked forward to the time when that would change. Personal possessions would creep in. Mugs and photographs and tiny clues to personality and interests. She found herself wondering about Cooper and asked what seemed like the obvious question.

  ‘Have you worked in IA for long? Have you worked with DI Trinder?’

  To her surprise, Nat Cooper shook her head. ‘Never met him before today,’ she said. ‘And I’m not IA, just on secondment. As of yesterday.’

  She flushed slightly as three pairs of eyes turned to look at her. ‘Secondment?’ Tess asked. ‘From where?’

  ‘Peterborough, actually.’ Nat grinned. ‘I got the call late yesterday afternoon, packed a bag, drove up here.’

  ‘And the rest of the team?’ Vin asked.

  ‘Kat Bains has worked in Internal Affairs for three years, apparently, but her specialty is fraud and computer crime. DI Trinder, well no one seems to know who he is or was, but like I said I only met him this morning. Peter Morgan, the tall black guy, he’s a DS from Brighton, got the call same as I did. DI Dan Clifton and DS Vehn are from the Met and Manchester forces. Both Internal Affairs, but different regional forces and DS Clem Boroughs, he’s the redhead, he’s from Berwick-upon-Tweed.’

  Tess frowned and exchanged a glance with Vin. But it was Alfie who nailed it. ‘Looks like they’ve gone out of their way to assemble a clean team,’ he said. ‘No links with Joe Jackson, I’m guessing, and I’ll make a bet that none of you come from anywhere these boxes refer to. Like I say, a clean team.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ Nat agreed. ‘With you, Sergeant Briggs, being the one anomaly. The one direct link back to both DI Jackson and one of the crimes.’

  ‘DS Briggs was the one who alerted us to the link.’ Tess felt the need to defend her colleague.

  ‘And the link would have been made, sooner or later. But yes, he did and I’m not suggesting anything, so keep your hair on. I’m just observing. Tess, you and Vin are in charge of liaising with ex-officers. Any reason for that?’

  Tess nodded. ‘Ex-colleagues, people I’m still in contact with, so it’ll be easy to resume. Field knows that. He’s been SIO here once before.’

  Nat looked curious, but Tess wasn’t in the mood to elaborate. Nat’s perfectly valid observations about Alfie Briggs had rattled her and Tess felt suddenly defensive.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘How do we organize ourselves.’

  ‘I think,’ Alfie said, ‘that we should all be at least passably familiar with the whole narrative.’ He gestured to take in the stacks of boxes surrounding them. ‘There are five in here. Six counting the latest one, but we’ll be briefed on that as we go. So, we assess what we’ve got, make an inventory, then look at the detail. We need to create a new book for each case. Like the man said. Fresh eyes. We feed back as we go and then—’

  ‘Deliver a seminar to the rest of the group,’ Nat said. She grinned at Alfie, softening what might have sounded like a patronizing response. ‘Sounds like a way forward.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a lot of work, however you break it down,’ Vin said.

  ‘True, and we could do with some extra bodies,’ Tess agreed, ‘but the more people in the team the greater the opportunity for slippage. At least this way we can keep it tight, make sure we all talk to one another. Everyone stays in the loop.’ Vin was right though, she thought, it was a crazy amount of work, especially as she and the others were going to be responsible for preparing their findings for the other teams.

  ‘OK,’ Nat said. ‘So how do we break this up? Alfie—’

  Suddenly Sergeant Briggs was Alfie, Tess noted. She wasn’t sure she liked this other woman being so familiar. She told herself not to be so petty.

  ‘Alfie, if you and I take the first two, see what came before the first case you know about.’

  ‘It makes sense for Tess and me to take the next two,’ Vin said. ‘See what the similarities are between those and our present case.’

  ‘Then whoever deals with theirs first, moves on to the final one,’ Nat picked up. ‘We have two pairs of eyes on each so hopefully less will be missed and we review what we’ve got say, twice a day? Lunchtime and just before the evening briefing?’

  It all sounded sensible, Tess conceded. ‘I’m going out for a couple of hours,’ she said. ‘I want to speak to Naomi and Alec Friedman before we go any further.’

  ‘And who are they?’

  ‘Naomi was one of Joe Jackson’s protégées,’ Alfie told her. ‘If anyone knows how that man thought it’ll be Naomi. And Alec worked the Rebecca Arnold case with Joe Jackson. And from what I remember, he and Joe, they couldn’t stand one another.’

  ‘Must make for some interesting marital conversations,’ Nat said.

  SEVENTEEN

  Patrick had to force himself to concentrate as he drove out to Bob Taylor’s place. The route along the country roads was winding and the turn towards the house sudden and sharp. He realized how poor his concentration really had been when he nearly missed it. All the way Patrick had been thinking about Ginny and Sam and how they would cope when events quietened down and they were left to deal with the emotional aftermath alone. He knew his father had been affected by his, Harry’s, sister’s disappearance all the years that followed. That finally being able to bury Helen, having some idea of what happened to her had eased a little of the pain but it had also replaced it with new certainty. They knew for certain now that Helen would not be coming back. Harry and Patrick’s grandmother had a vision in their minds, now based on facts and
not speculation of Helen’s last hours and of how her body had been dumped after her murder. One pain replaced by another.

  Sam and Ginny would never forget what they had seen. They would also never be able to cease from speculation of what their friend had suffered. Not be able to help themselves imagine her fear and pain, and the fact that they had been so close by would inflict guilt upon them not only that they had not helped but that they hadn’t even known that Leanne needed their help.

  There might be no logic to their pain but then, Patrick thought, since when do pain and logic share the same space?

  Annie Raven opened the door to him and told Patrick that Bob had just taken the dogs out for a walk.

  ‘He’s left your stuff set out in the studio,’ she said. ‘But he said I should make sure you’d had something to eat before you started.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Patrick said, suddenly realizing he was actually really hungry. Annie’s kitchen clock told him it was almost two thirty, more than an hour later than he’d normally arrive at Bob Taylor’s place and he felt out of kilter and off balance now his routine had been interrupted. Patrick liked routine; needed order in his life, a trait he seemed to have inherited from his father.

  The phone rang. Annie left him tucking into sandwiches and coffee. Annie and Bob’s kitchen was always a warm and welcoming place, Patrick thought, with its range cooker and old dresser decorated with blue and white pottery and a selection of glass and ceramics Bob had picked up at craft fairs and flea markets. None of it matched and all of it was used, something that appealed to Patrick. He wasn’t really one for ‘ornaments’, not unless they were paintings. Paintings were different, somehow.

  Annie returned to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. ‘That was Bob, he’s on his way back.’ She took a seat at the table and studied Patrick carefully. ‘Are you all right?’

  Then she laughed. ‘Sorry, I always promised myself I wouldn’t ask stupid questions, but what else do you say, huh?’