Love Story, With Murders

by Harry Bingham

  ‘Naturally, it’s possible,’ says the psychologist, ‘that the killer distributed body parts in order to confuse and deflect any criminal investigation. That could be a rational behaviour under the circumstances. But there are other ways to deflect attention and of course disposing of the corpse so that it isn’t found at all might have been an even more rational course of action.’ He pauses. Most of these guys are wannabe detectives, but he’s aware he won’t be loved for trampling on our turf. He backs off.

  ‘What I would say is that the dismembering of corpses has been strongly associated in the past with offenders suffering from various personality disorders, often with possible schizoid features. Speculating further, I’d suggest it’s reasonably probable that the killer chose to retain at least one item for himself as a kind of memento. That kind of retentiveness is common in some offenders. Think of it as trophy hunting, if you will. But the obsession with preserving the corpse is a new one on me. It’s as though there’s a splash of compulsive hoarding in there. A refusal to give things up. A desire to retain control. I don’t want to pretend there’s much science I can offer here, but if you want my gut feel, I’d say we were looking for a guy who needs to hold on to things. Possibly a hoarder. At very high risk of being a repeat offender.’

  One of my colleagues asks whether the Langton killer and the Khalifi killer are likely to be the same person. The psychologist thinks maybe not, though he – and everyone else here – thinks the killings are certainly linked.

  A discussion, led by Watkins, ensues. But the energy which filled the room at the start, that bristling energy that had stalked the room like some giant beast, is pretty much dead now. Times like this show Watkins at her best and worst.

  At her worst, because she’s so taut, so devoid of humour or sympathy. She’s like an order-issuing robot – rapid, precise, disapproving, relentless.

  And at her best, for the same reason. An order-issuing robot is just what we need. There are search teams for Cyncoed, search teams for the reservoir, teams for database research and QUEST analysis, teams for the Khalifi interviews. Bam, bam, bam. She spits out instructions like something ejecting nails.

  I think about Mary Langton. A red-cheeked English girl who chased a hockey ball and found her death. When you have a dead girl’s head in your hands, a head that can’t help but stare at you with sightless eyes even as it spits its black penny out, you have a connection. Like it or not, you’re joined. While my colleagues scribble their notes, I remember Mary. The weight of her head. The slipperiness. That feel of bone.

  How did you die, Mary? I ask her. She doesn’t tell me, but it’s early days.

  Eventually, forty minutes after starting, Watkins shuts up. I have a ringing in my ears. Her voice. Those commands. That tone. I think everyone feels the same way.

  I’m on the Khalifi team, which disappoints me. I assumed I’d be on the Langton team and think about asking to be reassigned. If it were anyone but Watkins, I would ask, but because it’s her, I just walk grumpily upstairs to a smaller conference room where pink-faced DI Owen Dunwoody assembles us.

  Against the wall, there’s a table laid out with ID photos, known facts, basic bio. Born Moroccan, but a longtime British resident, here since he was a student. Born Muslim, but non-practising, nonreligious. Family in North Africa, but limited contacts with them. The intelligence databases are closed to us, but we can send in queries and have had a clean bill of health back: no known terrorist links. No hints of religious fundamentalism.

  Dunwoody’s team – me, Bev Rowland, Jon Breakell, Jim Davis, Angela Yorke, one or two others – start taking what we need: photos, fact sheets. Khalifi has a thin brown face. Forty-something. Neat dark hair. A kind of fussy precision in his suit, his narrow tie and white shirt. But there’s something else too, something that scampers away from me before I can define it. His face isn’t static. It’s in motion. Half-looking away from the camera. Mouth opening into a laugh. Or perhaps opening to say something. But there’s a disconnect between the eyes and the mouth. Like the eyes are saying one thing and the mouth is about to say another.

  I don’t know, though. The photograph eludes me. Mary Langton’s photos were as plain as toast. A cow-toothed English girl who played hockey. When I found her head, her flesh was in a pretty decayed state but the cow teeth were still there. Somewhere in her eyeless stare, you could still hear the clack of a hockey ball, the smell of riding tackle.

  My annoyance at being here instead of on the Langton team is already beginning to dissolve.

  Who are you, Mr Khalifi? And what do you have to do with Mary Langton?

  We’re about to find out.

  10

  The Engineering Faculty is a short walk from Cathays. Never been before.

  We get there at ten. Three DCs, me, and DS Jim Davis, who loves and adores me. I love and adore him too. We express our love by never talking to each other and by making sharky comments to third parties whenever we get the chance.

  We’re greeted by Gayle Thomas, the Head of School’s assistant.

  She offers three platitudes about the ‘terrible tragedy.’ Then gives us a list of Khalifi’s students. A list of his faculty colleagues. Shows us to an ‘interview space,’ an underheated room with old carpet, big windows, and some books behind glass cupboards.

  ‘Refreshments for you there,’ she says, pointing to a tray of thermoses, as though we wouldn’t be able to recognise them without assistance. ‘We’ve drawn up an interview schedule to help get things organised. Obviously if you need longer with anyone, that can be arranged. All the students have been notified and they know that it’s okay for them to skip a lecture if they have to.’

  She gives a little smile. One of those hospitality smiles. The sort which says, I’m professionally dressed in an inoffensive blue suit, I’ve put tea bags in individual sachets out on a small china saucer, I’ve made you some lists which are all neatly stapled, and look – I’m smiling. Small white efficient teeth.

  Through the glass pane in the door, I can see the first students assembling.

  It’s a well-organised setup and we do need to interview these people, but I hate the sense of being managed.

  Davis does too. He starts grumbling about the tables. Privacy issues. Hospitality Thomas holds her hands in front of her like a supplicant at some Catholic shrine. She tells Davis that she’ll arrange for some break-out rooms. He grumbles some more. She does prayer hands. He grumbles once more about the coffee, then drops it. The first students come in.

  I interview three of them.

  Three people, not all that much younger than me. Khalifi a reasonably popular lecturer. Expertise in materials science, whatever that is. Also mechanical engineering.

  The third of my students, Kerry, is a mouse-haired girl who sits opposite me wearing a long gauzy scarf and pulling at it like she’s dying to make some experiments in self-strangulation.

  She bores me.

  ‘Did he ever make a pass at you?’ I ask.

  ‘A pass? No. No.’ She looks shocked by the idea.

  ‘Did he have a fling with any of your fellow students? A one-night stand? Late night snog? Anything like that?’

  ‘No.’

  It’s bad interview technique, but I’m bored and feeling antsy. I don’t want my lovely little murder case to turn dull on me. I feel angry at these girls for being alive, when Mary Langton is dead.

  ‘Sexual relationships with other lecturers? Drugs? Global jihad? Bondage games?’

  ‘No.’

  Kerry looks at me reproachfully, as though I’m not doing my job. Which I’m not.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Could you look through these questions and note down anything that might be relevant? Thanks.’

  I leave her with pen and paper going through our list of interview questions.

  I walk out of the room and let the door bang shut behind me. I’m in a bland, official corridor. Blue carpeted. Student posters and notices tacked to the wall. The same blend of a
cademic earnestness and trying-too-hard hipness I remember from Cambridge.

  Where do you hide a leaf? In a forest. How do you conceal a secret? With openness. Prayer hands and efficient teeth.

  I start to prowl. I’m not too sure where I’m headed, but I’m not utterly surprised when I end up on the management floor. Same blue carpets, no student posters.

  I find my way to the Head of Faculty’s office. Connor McKelvey. Outside his office, moored like a motorboat and freighted with an impressive amount of office hardware, is a PA’s station, complete with a blondely fragile PA. An etched plastic plate tells me that she’s Corinne. On the wall behind her are some photos. Prize awards for some student projects. The Head of Faculty with donors and grandees. My buddy Ivor Harris, MP, among their number.

  ‘Hi Corinne.’

  I give her my own best smile. I can’t do blandly inoffensive. It’s not my style. But I give good teeth, all brushed and white and shiny.

  ‘Hello?’

  She doesn’t know who I am.

  ‘I’m Fiona Griffiths, with the police.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Corinne arranges her face in a subdued, we’re-all-very-sorry-about-this-terrible-tragedy way.

  ‘I need to see Mr McKelvey,’ I tell her, and walk, without knocking, into the office she’s guarding.

  McKelvey looks up, surprised and a tad annoyed. He looks like you’d expect him to look, half engineer, half bureaucrat. Grey suit, grey-brown curly hair. Solid looking and slabby, as though inexpensively manufactured from some durable sheet material.

  ‘Mr McKelvey, Corinne told me you were free. I’m Fiona Griffiths with the CID. I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time.’

  He doesn’t look pleased about it, but waves a hand toward the seating area in the corner. A boxy armchair, boxy sofa, glass table.

  I sit on the sofa. His normal spot. McKelvey does a momentary double take, then sits in the armchair. A red tag dangles from the arm. I reach out and read the label, which has to do with fire regulations.

  ‘Flame retardant,’ I say. ‘Nice.’

  ‘You all right downstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I don’t say anything more. He doesn’t say anything more. He’s waiting for me to start things off, which is good. I prefer it that way. I sit there saying nothing, because silence is always uncomfortable if you’re not in control of it.

  Eventually I say, ‘Why was Khalifi killed?’

  ‘Why? I have no idea.’

  I nod at that, like he’s said something sensible, and write it in my notebook, slowly.

  ‘It wasn’t the obvious things, was it?’ I say. ‘Sex. Drugs. Honour killings. None of the above.’

  ‘Isn’t that your job? To find out?’

  I nod again. Write again. I do everything slowly. I don’t know if there’s a particularly annoying way to write, but if there is, I’m doing it.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is our job. So why was your colleague, Ali el-Khalifi, murdered? In your opinion.’

  ‘I don’t have an opinion.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You think it wasn’t sex, drugs, or honour killings.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Sorry, so you think it was one of those things?’

  McKelvey sighs. ‘Look. Ali was a diligent member of the department. We certainly weren’t aware of any –’

  ‘No. I know you weren’t.’

  I pause again. Not a tactical silence this time, a real one. There’s an emptiness in the room, a withholding, that shouldn’t be there. If McKelvey really had nothing to hide, he’d be more talkative. I know I’m being a total pain in the arse, but people are inclined to talk more under those circumstances or at least to get angry. McKelvey is being too controlled. I don’t think he murdered Khalifi or even that he knows why Khalifi was killed, but there’s something that he doesn’t want me to know, which makes me want to know it twice over.

  I try the sex angle first.

  ‘Obviously, Mr Khalifi was a single man,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, and Ali liked to have fun. But look, we aren’t here to judge our staff’s private lives. What Ali did or didn’t do –’

  He continues a bit, but he relaxes as he talks. Whatever makes him come over all controlled, it isn’t this. My guess: Khalifi was a bit of a womaniser. He was too smart to risk his job by playing fast and loose with the students. The rest of Cardiff would have been a different matter, however.

  But the conversation is shifting away from whatever McKelvey is trying to guard. I want to get back to the emptiness, the withholding.

  ‘Materials science,’ I say. ‘Tell me about it.’

  McKelvey nods. This is home ground for him. ‘That was Ali’s speciality. Materials science has to do with the fundamental properties of various materials. It’s at the confluence of physics, chemistry, and engineering. Nanotechnologies as well now, of course. Ali was extremely good with various types of steels. Some polymers, high-modulus polyethylenes. Engineering plastics. That kind of thing.’

  I nod, jotting down some of the terms. As I do, he goes on talking.

  ‘You know, because we’re out here in Cardiff, not a big-name university, people tend to think of us as somehow second rate. They assume we can’t compete with the big boys. But you know, we’ve got one of the best engineering schools in the country here. And in our chosen fields, Ali’s for one, we’re as good as anyone. He’s going to be tough to replace. We’ll miss him.’

  I nod, wondering how to use the flow. That’s the thing about secrets, people want to talk about them. They can’t help themselves.

  ‘You’ll miss him in other ways too,’ I say, opting to stick with the positive.

  ‘Yes. I wouldn’t say he was the most, I don’t know, popular member of the faculty. I’m not saying the opposite – just, he was happy enough to work hard, he didn’t need to come to every summer barbecue. On the other hand, when it came to helping the faculty. You know, donors, tie-ups with business. Getting students into real engineering positions. Those sort of things, he was first class. Dedicated.’

  I nod again. I can’t see that I’ve got what I came for. On the other hand, I’m not sure how I can get it. Or what it is. My pencil hesitates over the page.

  ‘I’ll put that he was very helpful, shall I?’

  McKelvey smirks at me patronisingly. ‘Yes, you can put that.’ The air has cleared up now. Like the emptiness isn’t there, or is sealed off, if it is. I insist on talking a bit more, but I only do that to be annoying. I don’t think I get anything more.

  As I get up to leave, I say, ‘Donors. What kind of money are we talking about?’

  ‘This is an engineering faculty. It’s not one of the arts, where some donor agrees to host a poetry evening or a wine and cheese party.’

  I nod, encouraging more of the same.

  ‘Look, I’ve got an invoice here for a new universal electromechanical testing machine. Nothing fancy. Not one of our priciest bits of kit. But you take into account data-acquisition software, installation, everything else, and we’ll have no change from forty, forty-five thousand pounds. We don’t get kit like that on government budgets. It’s all private-sector money. Research collaborations, product development partnerships, licensing agreements. We’re going to miss Ali. He was bloody good at all that.’

  McKelvey hovers over me, shuffling me towards the door. I’m small, so I’m easily shuffled.

  I wonder if my sense of myself would be different if I were taller, bigger, stronger. I think it would.

  ‘I’ve put that he was helpful,’ I say, giving him and Corinne a final smile. ‘Very helpful.’

  And that’s that. It really is. Except that as I go downstairs from one blue-carpeted floor to another, it doesn’t feel that way at all.

  I’m on the stairs. Walking down. Face to the light of the window. Thinking a bit about McKelvey, whether I could sense anything awry in his answers. Thinking too about Jim Davis. I’ve been AWOL for the best part of half an hour and he’ll r
eport me if he can. But mostly I’m just walking down the stairs, facing the window, doing nothing very much.

  And then – I don’t know. My leg twists. Or it’s as though my ankle can’t support my weight anymore and I just start sliding sideways. I would fall, except that I’m close enough to the bannister to be able to grab it for support. And as all this happens, I’m twisted around, as though someone has come from behind and forcibly moved me.

  Indeed, that’s what I assume has happened. I assume someone has, for whatever reason, needed to move me violently, as though to protect me from some fast-moving object. Only there’s no one there. No fast-moving object. No person. Nothing. I’m on the stairs, alone.

  I sit down. I assume I’ve just experienced a bout of faintness, though I don’t get faint normally. Didn’t even when I was sick. I don’t feel giddy or sweaty.

  I do wonder about morning sickness. Surely to goodness that’s not the issue. I’m on the pill and my last bleed was completely normal. I worry about the possibility, before deciding it can’t be that. And it really can’t be, I think. Really mustn’t be, for that matter.

  So it has to be my knee or ankle. I try standing, cautiously, a hand still out on the bannister, but my legs are fine. Ankles, knees, fine.

  I’m fine. I’m a young, healthy adult and there is nothing wrong with me. I can feel my feet and hands normally – as normally as I ever can, anyway – and my breathing is a little flustered but basically okay. I stamp feeling down into my feet, clench and unclench my hands to get the senses moving there too.

  I’m a fit and healthy adult and there is nothing wrong with me.

  Walk downstairs, cautiously and with one hand on the bannister, back to Jim Davis and the team, all set for the rest of my merry little interviewing day.