by Danuta Reah
Had Gemma wanted to check her analysis of DI Jordan’s tape against another speaker from – she skimmed Gemma’s report – from north-east Siberia? That seemed logical, and it might account for Gemma’s remaining uncertainty about the tape. What was it she had said? ‘It’s just…There was something I wanted to…’ Had Gemma managed to get access to the material she wanted? Roz read through the report. Gemma’s conclusions seemed firm – there were very few ‘possiblys’ or ‘maybes’ in there. The report looked complete. But it wasn’t. Gemma had said so. She frowned, thinking back. Gemma had come to her room to complain about being sent to Manchester at short notice, but more, to ask advice about the report. She’d said…It’s just…There was something I wanted to…What?
She looked at the transcript and noticed that Gemma had written something across the top. First, in blue ink, the word ‘cats’, underlined and queried. Cats This was surrounded by doodles, and scribbled dates and times as though Gemma had been making notes as she talked to someone. And then underneath, in different ink: Check! 25, 127, 204. And then a pencilled scrawl: YO!! Check? She looked at it for a while, thinking. The numbers referred to the lines that were marked with an asterisk – clearly the lines that were the source of the problem. But what that problem was…She shook her head. It meant nothing to her.
She made a copy of the transcript on her fax, copied the files on to a back-up disk, and made another copy to be on the safe side. Then she went to the phone and rang the number DS Anderson had given her to contact that morning. She assumed that they would be aware of the missing files by now. She needed to let them know that a few, at least, had turned up.
Hull, Tuesday evening
It was almost midnight and Roy Farnham was still at Lynne’s flat. They had eaten early in the evening, shortly after he’d arrived, and sat at the table talking through the cases and the possible links. He was still trying to find the hotel cleaner, the woman who had, apparently, found the body then vanished. He wanted to know if Lynne had made any progress.
‘Nothing yet,’ she said. ‘I’m looking. But these cases – do you still think they’re linked?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know. Gemma Wishart – whoever did it beat her half to death then strangled her. It’s a bad business. John Gage –’ he caught Lynne’s inquiring glance – ‘the pathologist who worked this case, said that the ligature was tightened and released several times. He must have half strangled her and brought her round. Probably more than once.’ Sexual sadism. Lynne thought about the kind of mind that would take pleasure in such a slow killing, such a slow death. Farnham hadn’t finished. ‘There were a lot of post-mortem injuries. He went on beating her after she was dead. That looks personal to me – real, lost-it rage. Which looks like the boyfriend.’
Lynne poured out more wine. ‘Did he have sex with her?’
He nodded. ‘Positives from all the swabs. He’s a secretor, so we’ve got a blood group.’
‘Rape?’ If it had been an encounter between a prostitute and client, they might have had sex before the violence started, but if the post-mortem had found semen on oral, anal and vaginal swabs…
Farnham looked evasive. ‘Gage thinks so.’
‘And?’ He hadn’t told her everything. She hoped he wasn’t holding out on her.
He shrugged in a you-asked-me way. ‘Gage says it looks as though he had sex with her after he’d killed her, or while he was killing her. Something went on after she was dead.’
Lynne felt the contaminating touch of madness. Which kind of madness? That of someone who could kill a woman while he was having sex with her, maybe enjoy the process of fear, panic, and finally death with all its attendant…Or the madness of someone who would rape a dead woman. She needed to know, but she didn’t want to know. She made a faint grimace of distaste. ‘What do you make of the boyfriend?’
Farnham frowned. ‘He’s hard to read. Very cool. I cautioned him and he took it in his stride. Anderson said that he didn’t seem surprised when they told him Wishart was dead – more resigned. He said he reported her missing because he didn’t believe she’d sent the e-mail – which she hadn’t – but then he thought she must have planned to go, after the letter arrived. He said she always intended to go back to…Some unpronounceable place in Russia. Claimed she had a boyfriend over there.’
‘What about the escort work?’ Hagan’s story sounded unlikely to Lynne, and she could see that Farnham wasn’t impressed.
‘I showed him the photographs. That got him wound up.’ Farnham paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘He didn’t like that. Tom Anderson gave him the “not bad if you like that sort of thing” treatment, and you could see it was getting to him. Then he kind of switched off, so I asked him about the escort work. I thought he was going to hit me.’ He grinned. ‘Pity he didn’t, really. I’d have had something to hold him on. He admitted taking the photographs.’
They were sitting together on the settee at this stage, close enough to indicate that they were both interested in more than the case, but the discussion had irretrievably changed the mood. Lynne pushed the files away from her, stood up and stretched. He checked his watch. ‘Probably time I was going.’
He paused at the door of her flat, leaning his arm against the door jamb and looking down at her. She liked his face, which was ordinary but lit up attractively when he smiled. She liked his air of laid-back competence. ‘Too much shop talk,’ he said. He kissed her lightly on the mouth. ‘Another time?’
‘Another time,’ she said, meaning it, as she let him out of the flat.
It was late, but her mind was too active for sleep. Roy Farnham thought it was likely that Hagan had killed Gemma Wishart. Lynne thought that he was probably right. When you looked at the case, the complexities vanished. Wishart’s e-mail and letter were clumsy forgeries, the e-mail sent from an internet café close to the university where Hagan worked. Data had been removed from both of her computers. In one case this had just involved the removal of document files, but the other machine had been crudely wiped. This might have suggested that her death had something to do with her work, but Hagan could easily have wiped the machines himself. He had no alibi for Thursday night. He said he had stayed late at work setting up for a meeting the next day. He had been home to see if Wishart had left a message for him, then gone out on his bike.
Except…It was like looking at one of those pictures that could at one moment be an elegant woman, the next an old crone, but somehow never both. Gemma Wishart had been looking at evidence relating to Katya’s death. And then she had died in a similar – not identical, Lynne reminded herself – in a similar way. Or in a way that had superficial similarities. If Hagan was the killer, he’d made clumsy attempts to conceal the death. He had sent an e-mail to assuage or delay concern. He had sent a letter, in the hope that the search for Gemma would end. And yet he worked in a group that specialized in identifying forgeries and faked documents. He had reported her missing to show them how concerned he was. He had wiped all the data off her computer to link everything to her work. He had been thrashing about in the deep waters of panic. That wasn’t the mark of a planned killing.
On the other hand, the killer had muddied the waters very cleverly, linking Wishart’s death with the obscure deaths of two women, deaths that weren’t even officially identified as murders and might never be. How would he have known about those deaths? Press coverage had been minimal. He had taken the dead Gemma Wishart to a hotel room in Hull and posed her body in the bath. And if that killer was Hagan, all the time the ruined face of the woman he had been close to, made love to, cared about, would have watched him in mute accusation. That was the act of a psychopath.
9
Snake Pass, Wednesday
The car had been reported on Sunday, apparently abandoned. A patrol car was sent to give it a brief check to see if there was any record of it. The missing number plates suggested that it might be more interesting than a vehicle abandoned by joyriders. Joyriders, anyway, pref
erred the city streets.
Police Constable Lee Taylor pulled his car off the road and looked the vehicle over. It had been driven well into the culvert, and was barely noticeable from the road. It interested him that someone had gone to such trouble to conceal the car from casual observation. His list of cars involved in recent crimes didn’t include a red Fiesta, but he was reluctant to write the matter off on the strength of that. A walker had reported it late Sunday. It didn’t look as though anyone had been near it since then. There had been rain the night before, but the ground around the car was undisturbed. He moved to the other side, noting the stains and splashes on the sill where the overhang protected it from the rain.
He kept away from the car as he moved round, peering in through the windows. The car was in the shadow of the rock, and he shone his torch through the windshield, trying to get a clearer view of the inside. It was empty. He gave himself a mental kick for being melodramatic, and wondered why he still wasn’t happy. He went back to the other side of the car and checked the marks on the sill again. It didn’t look to him as though the driver could have got out of the car at that side. The door was close up against the rock. And yet whatever had splashed on the sill looked as though it had splashed there when the door was open. He shone his torch through the windscreen again, and this time he thought he saw dark stains on the upholstery.
Someone could have been hurt in that car. He looked around him at the bleak landscape. It was a bad place to be injured and in need of help. The occasional car passed on the road, almost out of sight. The hills rose behind him, massive blocks of millstone grit, their harsh edges camouflaged by the sparse, thin grasses of the dark peaks. The wind was getting up, carrying an edge of ice as though it was blowing from the Siberian plains. The sky was ominous and dark. He looked across the valley to Kinder Scout, and behind him to Bleaklow. Who knew what the peat bogs and the heathers concealed? People came in their thousands in the summer to admire the beauty of these hills and moorlands, to walk, to tame the wilderness with cars and ice-cream vans and picnics. But Taylor thought that now, when the eyes of their public were turned away, when the trappings of summer were gone, the hills showed their true face, and that face was dark and threatening.
Sheffield, Wednesday morning
Roz walked along the corridor towards Joanna’s room, trying to pretend that she had spent the morning doing something useful. For two hours she’d been sitting at her desk, trying to focus her mind on the next stage of the research program she had been working on, but she kept thinking about Luke. It had said on the news this morning that the police had released a man who had been ‘helping them with their inquiries’, but Luke hadn’t been in to work, nor had he replied when she phoned. His answering machine took the call, and she left a brief message, but he hadn’t made contact.
She couldn’t concentrate. She was just marking time, and Joanna’s summons, when it came, was a welcome distraction. Joanna was at her desk with spreadsheets, charts and work plans laid out in front of her. ‘We’ve got to get these research proposals moving,’ she greeted Roz. ‘I know’ – this was in response to Roz’s half-articulated protest – ‘it seems callous. But these have to be done.’
Roz nodded, turning over the forms that Joanna had pushed towards her. ‘Have you heard anything?’ she said. ‘Is there any…’
Joanna cut her off firmly. ‘It’s in the hands of the police. I don’t think there’s anything more we can do. I’ve sent a letter to Gemma’s mother.’
‘I’m worried about Luke,’ Roz said.
‘I wouldn’t be,’ Joanna said frostily. ‘He seemed fine this morning.’
This morning! ‘Has he been in touch?’
‘He was in when I got here,’ Joanna said. Roz felt relieved and puzzled. He was back, and hadn’t bothered to contact her. Joanna was talking again. ‘I wasn’t happy about…He’s working from home at the moment.’ She silenced Roz’s attempt to ask questions. ‘Not now, we’ve got some decisions to make. It’s up to us to keep the group going – no one else is doing anything. I want you to find a good post-grad to take Gemma’s classes for the rest of the semester. Can you deliver her lectures?’ This was Joanna’s way of coping, burying herself and everyone else under mountains of work that left no time for thought or reflection.
The two women spent the next hour going over research plans and figures that would direct the group through the next year. ‘We’ll need to get those advertisements out as soon as possible,’ Joanna said. She checked her watch. ‘I already have the go-ahead for the new research assistants. I’ll hire them before any minds get changed.’ That meant Peter Cauldwell. Roz wondered if their erstwhile Head of Department would try to close the group down before Joanna moved beyond his power base and beyond his control. ‘We’ll need to think of someone who can move in on the software side,’ Joanna went on.
Roz wouldn’t – couldn’t – let that one past. She remembered the charming, and no doubt extremely talented, young man at Joanna’s party. ‘We have Luke for the software side,’ she said.
‘Well…’ Joanna said after a pause, ‘I was going to leave this for the moment. You’ve got enough to think about. But Luke’s suspended as of this morning.’
Shock silenced Roz. Luke had always said that Joanna wouldn’t miss a chance to get rid of him, but this…‘Why?’ Her voice sounded sharp in her own ears. ‘Luke hasn’t been charged with anything,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even. She didn’t want to think about Luke being charged with anything. ‘He wasn’t arrested. They just wanted to talk to him.’
Joanna hesitated, looking down at the papers on the desk in front of her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But that’s not the problem.’ She looked at Roz. ‘I suspended Luke this morning because I found him downloading pornographic material from the internet. There’ll be a disciplinary hearing. I’m sorry.’
Roz felt winded. Somehow, the idea of Luke trawling porn sites on the net seemed horribly linked with the photographs she’d seen forming on her screen, something that turned him into a stranger, someone she didn’t know. And downloading stuff at work? Joanna must have got it wrong. But Luke hadn’t denied it – he’d just gone without a word to Roz, without a bust-up with Joanna.
The silence stretched uncomfortably. Roz couldn’t think of anything to say. She felt angry – angry with Joanna for suspending Luke, angry with Luke for leaving himself vulnerable, angry with the whole rigmarole of university politics. She wanted to dump the lot and go home. She couldn’t be bothered. She couldn’t, as Luke would have said, be arsed. She scooped up the papers from the desk in front of her. ‘I’ll take these to my room,’ she said. ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow.’ Joanna raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything as Roz closed the door behind her.
Her own office seemed bleak and unwelcoming, so she went to the computer room to do some work on the program she and Luke were developing. She had research notes to write up. The room was empty and silent. There was no smell of coffee brewing, no gossip, none of Luke’s speculative rambling about his current reading, which could range from popular physics to advanced maths, none of his barbed comments, no discussion of the work they were doing, Roz flying the ideas and Luke trying to shoot them down as they developed and refined the system. Luke’s absence was as compelling as his presence, and she couldn’t work with it. She picked up the phone and tried his number, but once again she got the machine. She was going to hang up, but then said on impulse, ‘Luke, it’s Roz. Please phone me. I’ve found some of Gemma’s files, on the laptop.’
The thought of her discovery gave her an idea for something she could do, something she might be able to concentrate on. She could take another look at the report that Gemma had written for DI Jordan and see if she could find that final uncertainty, solve the puzzle that had been nagging away at her mind ever since she had found the transcript tucked away in the case with Gemma’s laptop.
Hull, Wednesday afternoon
There was gunfire in the distanc
e, the intermittent sound of automatic weapons. It had become a background to their day-to-day lives, far away, but getting closer in the way people looked at each other. People who had been neighbours, friends even, for years, suddenly had the dark eyes of suspicion and fear and hate. The gunfire began again, loud, close, just outside her door and she jerked upright, grabbing for her coat, looking round for Krisha, for her mother, the cold sweat of panic breaking out over her body.
The dim light of a winter afternoon filtered through the curtains that were pulled across the window. The settee felt lumpy, the cushions pushed out of alignment as she slept. The room was cold, the Calor Gas heater switched off. The sound of the typewriter started up again in the next room. Anna closed her eyes and waited for the thumping of her heart to slow down to its natural rhythm
She sat on the edge of the seat, clutching her coat round her against the cold. She picked up the blanket from where it had fallen on the floor, and wrapped it round her shoulders. She let the past few days trickle back into her mind, and for the first time she could think without the flood of panic pushing her onwards as though her only hope of safety lay in movement. She pushed the picture of the woman in the bath out of her mind. She had too many pictures of dead people in her mind. Angel had found her, that was what she had thought. He had left the dead woman to show her what was in store for her, and he had left the card to make sure she understood. But…what had seemed clear in the moment of panic didn’t make sense any more. She wasn’t important enough for that. If Angel had found her, she would be dead by now. He wouldn’t bother with warnings.
Angel had been there, he had left his card. But maybe he didn’t know that Anna had been there too. She had been right to run away. He could have come back at any time. She thought about him waiting for her in those narrow, empty corridors, and her stomach lurched. She had been right to stay away from her room as well. Someone had broken in and stolen her passport and her visa, someone had been waiting for her. It had to be Angel. Did Mrs Fry know him? Had she told him about Anna who had run away, and had Angel come looking for her?
