[Kitt Hartley 04] - Death Awaits in Durham

by Helen Cox

  ‘What circumstances were those?’ said Kitt, pausing her note-taking and staring hard at Patrick.

  ‘The day she disappeared, Jodie was in a right state.’

  ‘How come?’ asked Grace.

  ‘She had a place at the academy on a scholarship programme. The morning she disappeared she received a letter from our dean, Regina Berkeley, saying her scholarship had been revoked and that she was being expelled.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Kitt.

  ‘The story was that a random locker search had turned up a sizeable bag of pot in Jodie’s locker.’

  ‘Who conducted the search?’ said Kitt, her pen poised.

  ‘It’s academy policy to carry them out sporadically. It will have been someone who works here, somebody in a custodial role more than likely, but we never got a name. The whole thing was hush-hush. Berkeley swore us to secrecy about the drugs situation. She was paranoid about the press finding out. Claimed she was trying to protect Jodie’s memory but it was obvious she was more concerned with how it reflected on the academy. That said, I didn’t want to drag her name through the mud – the media will take any excuse to imply the victim had it coming and the idea of Jodie being mixed up in drugs after just a few weeks here was upsetting to her parents, to say the least.’

  ‘You’re not wrong about the media,’ said Kitt. ‘But the drugs found in Jodie’s locker, they alone were grounds for expulsion?’

  ‘I take it Grace has filled you in on how the funding here works?’

  ‘I used to study here myself, actually,’ said Kitt. ‘So I’m familiar with it anyway. They don’t accept students with government loans so you have to have a decent pot of money or, in a somewhat Dickensian manner, rely on a wealthy benefactor.’

  ‘Well, like I say, Jodie had a scholarship place. When it comes to what they found in her locker, someone with rich parents, who wasn’t on a scholarship, probably would have got a slap on the wrist for something like that and then it would be buried to maintain the academy’s impeccable reputation.’

  ‘But someone like Jodie, who was here on scholarship funds, wasn’t granted the same leniency?’ Kitt said, bristling.

  Patrick shook his head.

  ‘In the recording, Jodie made some reference to “the way things are at Venerable Bede’s”,’ said Grace. ‘Is this what she was talking about? The double standards?’

  ‘That, and the atmosphere here had become . . . oppressive is a strong word but let’s just say Berkeley runs a tight ship and suffers no fools,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Sounds increasingly like Regina Berkeley is the first person I need to speak to about all this,’ said Kitt.

  ‘It’s worth a go, though whether she’ll tell you anything, I don’t know. Jodie was livid about the accusations Berkeley made against her.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Kitt. ‘You were engaged, is that right?’

  ‘Yeah. Let me guess: you think we were too young to get married,’ Patrick said with a knowing smile.

  ‘It is quite unusual for people to get married so young these days,’ Kitt conceded.

  ‘I know. We got that a lot,’ said Patrick. ‘But we had been together for a good few years by the time I got around to proposing.’

  ‘How long?’ asked Grace, wondering, given how young they were, if he was about to tell some story in which he and Jodie had got married on the playground when they were seven and decided to make it official once they were old enough.

  ‘I started dating Jodie during my GCSE years. We both grew up in Chester-le-Street and went to the same school. Her family inherited a house in the area but weren’t in the same income threshold as the rest of the school’s students. One day I defended her from some idiot bullies who were getting at her for being poor and within about a week we were going out.’

  ‘Very gallant,’ Grace said with a smile.

  Patrick shrugged. ‘I was just trying to do the right thing but it did work out quite well. I was in the year above. We stayed together during sixth form and when it came to choosing a place to study community justice, I decided to study in Durham to stay close to her. We kept the relationship together for the first year I was here before she got a scholarship place. In all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her use drugs. She could drink as well as the rest of us – actually, better than me sometimes – but she used to joke that she was too hard up to indulge a drug habit.’

  ‘So, where did the drugs come from if they weren’t Jodie’s?’ asked Grace.

  ‘That, I don’t know. The day she disappeared, we met in the morning. She told me about the letter and said the drugs weren’t hers, that they’d been planted there. She said she had an idea what had happened and was going to look into it. I offered to help but for some reason she wasn’t having it. We . . . argued . . .’ Again, tears rose in Patrick’s eyes. Again, he blinked them back. ‘We didn’t part on the best terms that morning. I was angry at her for not letting me help. I didn’t see why she wouldn’t just let me do what I could to sort it out. But she was adamant. She could be so stubborn,’ he said. ‘Ironically, that was one of the qualities I loved most about her.’

  Grace and Kitt offered Patrick a small smile apiece.

  ‘In the end, we agreed she’d come round to mine that evening to let me know what she’d found. Next thing I know, I’m woken up by the police barging into my house at five a.m. I realize Jodie isn’t there and then the police told me about what had happened. It was only then that I found out she went to the radio station with whatever she’d found when she couldn’t wake me.’

  ‘Why do you think she went to the radio station?’ said Grace.

  ‘I wish I knew. The police weren’t giving much away right after Jodie disappeared so I was reliant on Bertrand for information, and he wasn’t much use either.’

  ‘Ber— Oh, Randy? Randy Hobbs?’ Grace said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what he calls himself on air. And he insists you call him that if you dial into the show but nobody who knows him can bring themselves to call him that off mic.’

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ said Kitt. ‘What did he have to say for himself when you approached him? About Jodie calling in to him?’

  ‘He didn’t have any answers,’ Patrick said, running a hand through his hair. ‘All he could tell me is that Jodie had uncovered a secret about somebody senior at the academy and that she’d called just after three o’clock begging him to let her on the show as soon as possible. It had the makings of a major scoop so he didn’t need too much persuading. As soon as he’d played the music he had queued for the next twenty minutes, he called her back so they could do the reveal live and, well, you know the rest.’

  ‘Why did she choose Randy’s show?’ said Kitt. ‘Surely revealing a big secret is going to have a bigger impact on prime time?’

  ‘From what Bertrand told me, there wasn’t any real planning behind it. She called into the show at the last minute to try and get on air. She was probably hoping she’d be able to come to me about it and when she couldn’t reach me, felt she had to go public for some reason. If anything happened to her after that, even if not many people had heard the show, there would be a recording of whatever she’d uncovered. But, as you know, she didn’t get that far.’

  ‘Whatever she was uncovering couldn’t have been of national importance though,’ said Grace. ‘Otherwise she could have just gone to one of the big media outlets that run news twenty-four seven. It must have been something at a local level – something that largely affected the community at Venerable Bede’s.’

  ‘And Randy didn’t know what the secret was or who it involved?’ said Kitt.

  ‘He said he tried to get Jodie to tell him before she uncovered it on air,’ Patrick said. ‘But she wouldn’t give anything away. The whole thing is just weird and totally out of character for her.’

  ‘Well, it’s too early to draw any conclusions just yet about what was really going on with her,’ said Kitt. ‘Like Grace says, given the way Jodie handled it
I can’t see this being of national importance. But Jodie’s been missing for more than a year and nobody’s seen her since that night. The last thing she was trying to do was reveal a secret about somebody in this community. I’m sorry to say that, for now, you need to prepare yourself for the worst. By the sound of things, the secret she uncovered might not have meant much to the world at large but it seems to have been big enough that somebody here could have thought it worth killing for.’

  Three

  A silence fell over Patrick, Grace and Kitt and for a moment all of them avoided eye contact. Grace tried to make the avoidance look natural by gazing out over the city below. From this vantage point she could see how leafy Durham was. The trees dazzled in rich shades of red and gold. Between this and the ornate historic buildings the place seemed nothing short of idyllic. It was hard to believe that such tragedy had struck in the sacred resting place of not one but two saints.

  Patrick was the first to break the silence.

  ‘I understand what you’re saying. For the last year, every day, I’ve half expected to see Jodie every time there’s a knock at the door. Or to hear her voice whenever I pick up the phone – even if my caller ID says it’s not her. I’ve been trying to keep my hopes up that she’d find a way to get in touch with me. But you said it yourself, it’s been just over a year since she disappeared and I’ve heard nothing. If she was alive, and wanted to get in touch with me, by now I’m sure she would have found a way. Much as I hate to admit it, I know you’re right. And I’ve got to start preparing for the fact that Jodie’s really gone for good.’

  Kitt took in a deep breath and rested her pen on her notebook.

  Not really knowing quite what else to do to show how sorry she was about the whole thing, Grace reached her hand across the table and gave Patrick’s hand a quick squeeze. She coupled this with a sympathetic smile. He was, understandably, unable to smile in return but his eyes shone with gratitude.

  Clearing her throat, Kitt picked up her pen again. ‘Just like the police, we’ll need to keep our minds open when it comes to any circumstances surrounding Jodie’s disappearance. I know you said Jodie didn’t take drugs herself but you also said the bag found in her locker was sizeable.’

  ‘That’s the way it was described in the letter Jodie received. In the words of Dean Regina Berkeley,’ said Patrick.

  ‘I know it’s not a pleasant thought but is there a chance Jodie was dealing drugs? If she didn’t have much money, maybe she resorted to that to get by?’

  Patrick frowned, thinking for a moment, but then shook his head. ‘She just wouldn’t be involved in something like that. Frankly, I don’t think she’d have time. She was one of few female mechanics students and had to work like fury to prove herself just as good as any of the lads she worked with. We had plenty of fun nights out while she was here but during the day she was focused on her studies.’

  ‘And she definitely was hitting the books all the times she said she was studying?’

  ‘I . . . well, I didn’t check her homework or anything but her tutors did some initial assessments in the first couple of weeks of term and she did really well in them so I assume so. And besides that, we’d been together nearly five years by that point. We were going to get married. I’ve got plenty of money and she knew I would always sub her. She’d come to me before she did anything shady, or worse.’

  ‘I know you’d like to think that,’ said Kitt. ‘But if she was ashamed of something she might not have come to someone she loved about it. I know when something happens to someone we care about we only want to think the best of them but are you sure there’s nothing Jodie might have been hiding? Was there any odd behaviour, anything at all?’

  ‘The police asked the same question,’ said Patrick. ‘Especially after the drugs came to light. They thought, if she really had been attacked or taken, that she might have been up to something on a bigger scale that had had much worse consequences than being expelled. Like maybe she’d got on the bad side of a local drug lord or something. But the weirdest thing about her disappearance is probably that it came out of nowhere. Until the day she disappeared, she wasn’t acting any differently than she had been all the time we were together at school and sixth form. She was just the same old Jo.’ Patrick opened his mouth as if he was going to add something but Kitt interrupted him with yet another question.

  ‘Can you think of anyone that might have wanted to hurt Jodie? Or anyone she wasn’t on good terms with before she disappeared?’

  ‘Nobody springs to mind. But then, she hadn’t been at the academy very long and, to be honest, Jodie was a bit of an introvert. She was pretty particular about who she let into her inner circle. She was just starting to make some new friends here but it was all very early days.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Kitt. ‘There is one more thing I need from you and I’m sorry to ask you this, Patrick, but I have to. You said you were at home asleep on the night of the disappearance. Can anyone verify this?’

  ‘No, it’s just typical of my luck. Studying community justice, I know that suspicion is bound to fall on me in a case like this. And the night Jodie disappeared there was nobody to verify my whereabouts. I do share a house but my housemates were out at a gig at the student union that night. They didn’t get home until five a.m., which is why they didn’t hear Jodie either when she came knocking in the early hours. There are cameras here and there between our house and where Jodie was found. I wasn’t caught on any of them but the police informed me there are routes I could have taken to avoid them so, by my own admission, my alibi isn’t exactly what you’d call airtight.’

  At these words, Kitt eyed Patrick in a manner Grace found a little bit surprising. She understood all too well that when it came to investigative work you had to be careful who you trusted, but Patrick’s demeanour was that of a bereft fiancé. There was no mistaking it. Couldn’t Kitt just look into Patrick’s mournful brown eyes and know he wasn’t the one responsible for Jodie’s disappearance? Grace could. And Kitt was usually such a good judge of character that Grace was taken aback to find she didn’t see it too.

  ‘Well, I appreciate your forthrightness about that particular issue,’ Kitt said, her eyes still a little narrowed. ‘A true investigation has to follow every line of enquiry so you’ll have to forgive any further questions I might have to ask later.’

  ‘I understand your position and I’ve got nothing to hide. Just do what you need to do to find out what happened to Jodie and send any invoices or receipts to me here,’ Patrick said handing Kitt a card.

  ‘A business card by the age of twenty, that’s . . . efficient,’ said Kitt.

  ‘Oh, you’re not kidding. Mum insisted I had one before I left sixth form, even though I wasn’t doing anything remotely business related – unless you count watching reruns of Revenge in my pyjamas a business.’

  Kitt and Grace chuckled at that image.

  ‘Your mum sounds even pushier than mine,’ said Grace.

  Patrick adjusted his glasses. ‘She means well. The divorce settlement from my dad helped but she did make some of her own money. She ran a company that manufactured luxury furniture and it did really well so she was obsessed with me making business contacts even before I’d proved I could do anything useful.’ Patrick’s eyes lowered, just for a moment. ‘After it became clear I wasn’t going to let Jodie’s disappearance go, she suggested I get some new ones printed up so people could easily get in touch with me about the appeal to find her.’

  ‘Was she close to Jodie?’ asked Kitt.

  ‘Relatively. They saw a bit of each other when me and Jodie were at school and sixth form together, and once we got engaged they talked a lot more often. I wasn’t really the expert on chair covers and china that Jodie needed at a time like that. But on the whole I liked to have Jodie to myself, sans parental supervision.’

  Grace grimaced. ‘Yes, parents can get in the way a bit, when they want to.’

  ‘Think I’ve seen Dad a whole five tim
es since the divorce so it was just my mum but that was bad enough; sometimes it seemed like she was actually trying to ruin any romantic moments I managed to orchestrate.’

  Kitt laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sure she was just keen to check in on you and make sure everything was OK.’

  ‘She was,’ Patrick said with a grudging smile. ‘Unlike Dad, she’s always been there for me. Especially after Jodie disappeared. I . . . I lost my way a bit. Failed quite a few modules at the academy. Thought about dropping out. I think Mum just threw money at the problem in case there was someone out there who could give us some closure. Not to mention Alec and Jean – Jodie’s parents.’

  ‘Naturally, I’d very much like to be the person to offer some closure,’ said Kitt.

  ‘Me too,’ Grace chipped in.

  ‘So, if you can think of anything else that might be important, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with myself or Grace.’

  ‘There is one other thing you need to know about the day Jodie disappeared,’ said Patrick. ‘It’s going to sound a little out there but you should have all the same information I gave the police.’

  ‘Go on,’ Kitt said.

  ‘When I met Jodie in the morning near the campus lake – when she told me about the drugs and the expulsion letter – there was a guy. I think he was watching us.’

  Grace shuffled in her seat. Several of the cases Kitt had worked on in the past had taught her how often stalking and murder went hand in hand. The thought of someone watching her every move creeped her out. Had someone been keeping tabs on Jodie? And if so, why?

  ‘What did this man look like?’ asked Grace.

  ‘It’s hard to remember much from that general period in my life but he was wearing a long black coat and sunglasses.’