by Sibel Hodge
‘Can you hear me?’ I leaned over her, watching her chest to see if I could detect a rise and fall. She was breathing, but it was shallow. ‘Marcelina?’ I ignored the crowd gathering around the road and took her wrist, feeling for a pulse. It was faint but still there. My head whipped up, searching the faces of the onlookers. ‘Did anyone call an ambulance?’
‘Yeah, I did,’ someone called back.
I took Marcelina’s bloody hand in mine and stroked it, staring down at her with tears in my eyes. ‘It’s okay. They’re coming. You just hang on. Hang on, okay? You’ll be fine.’
Marcelina’s eyelids fluttered half open. Someone in the crowd sobbed loudly. The driver of the 4x4 shouted something about not seeing her. Marcelina’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her over the noise.
I leaned in closer. ‘The ambulance will be here soon. Don’t worry, you’ll be in good hands.’
Marcelina blinked rapidly. ‘They… they made me.’ Her voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
‘Who did?’
‘Watching me… in the… shadows. He’s there. Shadow… man.’ Her eyes rolled up into their sockets, and her lids closed again.
‘Stay with me, Marcelina. Don’t go to sleep. Can you hear me? I’m right here.’
I stroked her hand until the ambulance arrived, but she didn’t regain consciousness. I stepped away, my heart racing, adrenaline flowing, as a paramedic placed his equipment bag next to her and kneeled in the space I’d just vacated. I told him her name and age so they’d be able to access her medical records. I picked up Marcelina’s big handbag lying in the road a metre from her body, wanting to take it for safekeeping. The paramedic shouted instructions to another crew member, who wheeled a stretcher out from the back of the ambulance.
A police car arrived as Marcelina was being fitted with a neck brace. A young female officer got out of the patrol car, along with an older male colleague, and they made their way through the crowd.
‘We’re taking her to Watford General,’ the paramedic called out to the female officer as Marcelina was carefully placed on the stretcher and loaded into the ambulance.
I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself. Some of the crowd dispersed around me, the nightmare scene over for them. They’d talk about it for a while to their friends and family then forget about it as they went on with their everyday lives. For me, it was just the beginning.
Chapter 10
Detective Becky Harris
I had fifteen minutes to kill before the LGBTQ club started their daily coffee meet in one of the function rooms in the student union building. Ajay had lived in a rental house a couple of miles from the campus with several people he’d met in that group. They’d given statements to the coroner’s officer and described themselves as close friends of his. I was hoping they’d be able to give me more insight into his life and whether setting himself and the shared house on fire was a desperate act of someone mentally suffering or something else entirely.
I pushed my now-empty plate away and glanced through my welcome pack until I found a list of uni clubs for students to join. There were hundreds. Many were cultural or religious, covering various ethnic groups—the Arab Society, the Catholic Society, the Pagan Society, the Canadian Society, and every country or religion from A to B. Then there were a multitude of fitness groups like the Cycling Club, Dance Society, Rowing Club, and various self-defence disciplines. Self-help groups galore—art therapy, dance therapy, yoga, meditation, mindfulness… The list was endless. The Book Club, Innovation and Tech Society, Law Club, Creative Writing Society, Economics Club. Music societies with different genres, including the Ukelele Society. Every interest was catered for—even obscure ones like a Game of Thrones Club, Peaky Blinders Appreciation Society, a Starbucks Society, a Nintendo Society, and the Boozy Bus Society. It seemed there was a group for everything one could possibly think of. Even with a whole team of officers to check them all out, it would take months to find and talk to every member. Jess and Millie didn’t think Natalie had joined any clubs or societies. Vicky didn’t appear to have belonged to any, either. And Ajay seemed to have been involved with only one. But if they’d been recruited into some club with hazing rituals that had gone wrong or if a cult was involved, would their friends even know, when cults operated in such a secretive way?
From the material Sutherby had given me, no sudden cash withdrawals had been made from Vicky’s, Natalie’s, or Ajay’s bank accounts. No suspicious payments had gone to any organisation. In fact, both Vicky and Ajay had recently paid some money into their bank accounts. The month before she jumped from the stairway, Vicky had deposited two and a half grand. And Ajay had paid in three grand a few weeks before the fire. Just over two thousand pounds in cash had been found in Natalie’s room under her mattress after she was arrested. All three of them had student loans and were pretty frugal with their money, so where had the cash come from?
As I thought of how cults cleverly recruited members, I watched an attractive guy walking around the outside picnic tables, chatting to people and handing out flyers before winding his way in my direction. Recruiters often gathered information about potential new members by pretending to have similar interests or values to create an initial bond. Or they made innocent invitations to go for coffee, dinner, free talks, or seminars, using a topic that the potential victim was interested in. If students were being recruited here, then the organisation would want to entice them with a nice-looking person, someone friendly, caring, and fun, before they got their claws into them.
The guy got closer to me, bouncing with energy, and I watched him interacting with the other students, laughing, smiling, and joking around with them.
‘Hi.’ I waved at him. ‘I’ll take one.’
‘Hi.’ He grinned, revealing perfect white teeth. He was mixed-race, wearing shorts and a red T-shirt that showed off amazingly ripped muscles. His greenish-hazel eyes were accentuated by the cinnamon colour of his skin. He was gorgeous, in fact.
He headed over, handed me a flyer, and sat down in the seat Millie had vacated.
I glanced down at the page. It was a timetable for fitness classes.
‘This is the active student classes for this term,’ he said. ‘We’ve got volleyball, Zumba, hip-hop dance, badminton, yoga…’ He ticked off the different activities on his fingers. ‘Football, roller-skating. And loads more. Check it out.’ He pointed to the flyer. ‘It’s all about having fun, keeping active, and making new friends. And it’s all totally free. Just find something you want to do and turn up at the venue with your student ID card. There’s stuff going on every day.’ He gushed with enthusiasm.
‘Thanks. Will do.’
‘No problem. Hope to see you at something soon.’ His phone rang in his pocket then. He answered, his face morphing from a warm smile to worried frown. ‘What? Now?’ he asked before he hung up. ‘Sorry, gotta go,’ he said to me before jogging away.
When he’d disappeared, I read through the leaflet, wondering if this was something that might help me. Still, I doubted classes organised by the university, with vast groups of students expecting the same thing when they arrived, would be suspicious—apart from pickleball and maybe futsal, whatever the hell they even were. Overall, the offerings appeared to be pretty standard sports. Or were they a breeding ground for something more sinister? I didn’t have enough time to spend on possibilities, though. I had to concentrate on what I knew for certain and go from there.
I folded up the leaflet and tucked it into my backpack. It was time for a coffee.
Chapter 11
Detective Becky Harris
The meeting rooms in the union were past the food court and shops. There was a note on the closed door of number nine announcing ‘LGBTQ SOCIETY. Coffee Hour Every Day 12.30 p.m. to 1.30 p.m.!’
Inside, I found ten people. Six were slouched on beanbag chairs in the corner of the room, but they weren’t watching the film playing on a flat-screen TV in front of them. They were all typing on their pho
nes. A group of two guys and two girls chatted by a coffee urn set up on a table along one wall. I recognised them from the photos I’d studied as Ajay’s housemates—Toby, Jaxon, Phoebe, and Ivy.
Toby was lanky, with long hair pulled off his face with a black zigzag hair band. He turned my way. ‘Looks like we have a new arrival!’
‘Hi.’ I waved, doing my practiced awkward smile.
‘Hi. I’m Toby.’ He gave me a welcoming smile as he walked towards me with his palm held up in a greeting. The three others with him watched on with interest.
‘Becky.’
‘First time? I haven’t seen you here before.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m an LGBTQ virgin.’ I laughed.
Phoebe, who had a Mohican haircut and a lip ring, laughed, too. ‘Ooh, I like your humour already. I’m Phoebe.’
‘Welcome to the LGBTQ Society.’ Toby swung around to the others. ‘This is Jaxon.’ He pointed to a black guy with short dreadlocks. ‘And Ivy.’ His finger swung around to a girl with auburn hair and lots of freckles.
‘Thanks. Nice to meet you all.’
‘Want a coffee?’ Toby asked.
‘Yeah, sure.’ I stepped towards the group as Toby grabbed a paper cup from the table. ‘How do you take it?’
‘White, no sugar, thanks.’
‘Toby runs the group,’ Phoebe said. ‘It’s a friendly place to come and chat with each other or just hang out.’
‘Yeah, and we also have workshops, film screenings, club nights, and other social events,’ Jaxon added.
‘Sounds great.’ I took the proffered coffee from Toby’s hand. ‘It was a friend of mine who recommended I join. Well, not really a friend. We got chatting one day, and he told me about this place. Ajay. Do you know him?’ I glanced at each one in turn, feeling awful for bringing it up to his friends, but I had a job to do.
Four pairs of sad eyes looked back at me.
‘You haven’t heard?’ Ivy asked.
‘Heard what?’
She rested her hand on my arm. ‘Sorry to tell you this but… he died.’
I gasped. ‘Oh, my God, that’s awful.’
‘Yeah.’ Toby nodded solemnly. ‘He… um… killed himself.’
‘Wow.’ I stared down at the ground and shook my head. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’ I looked up again, the sympathy I felt for them completely genuine.
‘It was a massive shock.’ Phoebe ran a hand over one shaved side of her head. ‘You’d never have known he was feeling that bad. I mean, he was pretty quiet when he first joined, but he came out of his shell a lot with us, didn’t he?’ She looked around the group.
Jaxon nodded. ‘Yeah. He was a genuinely nice guy. He’d do anything for anyone.’
‘So you all knew him really well?’
They nodded.
‘When we started uni, we all lived on campus at first,’ Ivy said with a slight lisp. ‘But this club is a really close-knit group, and you can make some really good friends here. We all decided to move in together. And it was there that… well…’ Tears glistened in her eyes, and she couldn’t continue.
‘He set fire to his room,’ Toby said quietly. ‘With himself in it.’
‘That’s tragic,’ I said, eyes wide, thinking of the dreadful photos of Ajay’s body, parts of it burnt down to just the skeleton.
‘All of us were out at the time. In town,’ Jaxon said. ‘Ajay was supposed to meet up with us for lunch, but he didn’t show. When we got back to the house, we saw the fire engines and stuff. He’d…’ He scrunched up his face with horror, eyes glistening. ‘He’d poured petrol on himself and in his room and set himself on fire. The doors were all locked from the inside.’
‘That’s awful.’ I didn’t need to fake the sadness on my face. It was a truly terrible way to die. ‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’
An awkward silence descended over us then. I left it a respectful few moments before launching into the story I’d prepared to hopefully get them to talk more about it. ‘I know how you must be feeling. I had a friend who killed herself when we were at school. It was horrible. I never even knew what she was going through. She must’ve been hiding her depression really well, because I never guessed what she’d do.’
‘Exactly.’ Phoebe nodded vigorously. ‘It was the same with Ajay. We had no idea he’d do anything so… tragic. It just came completely out of the blue. But I know what you mean; we all feel really guilty. Like, could we have done more to stop it?’ She fiddled with her lip ring.
‘Although… he was acting a bit odd before it happened,’ Jaxon added. ‘But you kind of don’t pick up on things until afterwards, you know?’
I nodded knowingly. I was turning out to be a pretty good liar. ‘I agree. Afterwards, I noticed signs—little things that had happened with her, or things that she’d said—that just never clicked at the time. Then the guilt poured in. Like, if maybe I’d suggested she got some help…’ I trailed off, hoping they’d pick up from there.
‘That’s right,’ Phoebe dived in. ‘It started a few weeks before he did it. He kind of distanced himself from us a bit. He didn’t want to hang out as much. Kept disappearing places and not telling us where he was going. Then one night, when he did come out with us, we were in the Terrace Bar, and this guy bumped into Ajay as he walked past and spilled his drink over him. Usually, Ajay was the most chilled-out guy you’d ever meet. Really sweet, you know? But Ajay went mental and—’
‘It was so out of character,’ Ivy butted in. ‘Ajay stormed across the room to where the guy was and started punching him!’
‘Me and Jaxon and a few others had to pull him off,’ Toby said. ‘It was like he was in a daze or something.’
‘Like he was possessed.’ Phoebe leaned forward and raised her eyebrows. ‘He went crazy.’
‘We drove him back to the house, and he was like a zombie,’ Jaxon said. ‘Really not with it. Wouldn’t speak. And the next morning, he didn’t remember doing it.’
The incident was never reported to the police or the university, so the only details I had about what had happened were contained in the statements these four students had made to the coroner’s officer. What they’d just told me only reiterated those facts. I’d briefly wondered if the student Ajay had punched had wanted to get back at Ajay. Maybe the fire was a malicious prank that had gone wrong, but after reading through everything, it seemed exactly as it was—a tragic suicide.
Ajay had bought the petrol from a local garage two days before he’d struck that match to start the fire. There was CCTV evidence to prove it, which clearly showed Ajay turning up on the forecourt on foot with a plastic petrol canister, filling it with petrol from the pump, and paying for it. The footage even contained audio, and Ajay had made a comment to the man serving at the till that his car had run out of petrol, but Ajay didn’t own a car. He’d smiled, seeming chatty and amiable. Not in the least as if he planned to use it on himself. And besides, the coroner’s officer had uncovered that the student Ajay had punched was visiting his parents in Yorkshire at the time the house caught fire. And there was no evidence whatsoever suggesting someone else was at the scene.
‘Was Ajay drunk when he hit the guy?’ I asked. ‘I mean, we all do stupid things when we’re pissed.’
‘No, he’d only had one bottle of Corona. It was totally weird and really out of character,’ Ivy said.
‘Could he have been on anything else?’ I asked. ‘Some kind of drug?’
‘Nope.’ Toby gave an emphatic shake of his head.
‘Absolutely not,’ Phoebe said. ‘Ajay would never do drugs.’
‘Definitely not,’ Jaxon said. ‘We lived together. We hung out with each other all the time. We would’ve known about it if he was taking something. I mean, yeah, I’m sure you could get stuff on campus if you really wanted to look for it, but that’s not our scene.’
I took a sip of coffee and nodded.
‘But it wasn’t just that…’ Phoebe said. ‘Another time, we were all supposed to
be going shopping together, and we were getting ready and stuff, and Ajay was in his bedroom. When it was time to leave, we called up to him, and there was no answer.’
‘Yeah. That’s right,’ Ivy said. ‘We went to the shopping centre without him, and then we found him there a couple of hours later, sitting in Costa on his own, just kind of watching people out of the window with this blank look on his face. He didn’t even recognise us when we walked up to him. When we tried to talk to him, he walked off.’
‘Was it some kind of sleepwalking episode maybe?’ I frowned, thinking about Shakia’s video of Vicky and what Jess and Millie had told me about Natalie. Their spaced-out behaviour sounded similar.
Toby shrugged. ‘He was awake.’
‘Yeah, but that’s a good point.’ Jaxon tilted his head at me. ‘My schoolmate’s little sister used to sleepwalk. I stayed over at his house a few times, and she completely scared the crap out of me one night. We were asleep in bed in the early hours of the morning. I heard the door open, and she was just standing there. With the lights on behind her, eyes wide open, staring at me. It was really creepy.’ He raised his hands and waggled them in the air. ‘I asked her what she was doing, and she didn’t answer. Then she just went back to bed. Next morning, she didn’t remember a thing.’
‘He can’t have been sleepwalking. He’d already been up for hours,’ Phoebe said. ‘And in the bar when he smacked that guy, he was with us already, and he’d been awake all night.’
‘Maybe Ajay was worried about what he’d done to that other student,’ I suggested. ‘You know, worried he might be chucked out of uni for it or something. Maybe that’s why he took his own life. Sometimes stress can start out as something small and snowball.’
Ivy scrunched up her face. ‘He felt guilty about it, sure. He even apologised to the guy he hit the next day. What was his name? Billy, yeah, that was it. But Billy wasn’t going to press charges or anything. Ajay didn’t even get a warning about it, because no one reported it. It couldn’t have been that that made him do it.’
