Splinter in the Blood

by Ashley Dyer

  A voice from the crowd asked, “Why has it taken so long to respond to the news of Ms. Faraday’s murder?”

  The leader of the council glanced down at his notes.

  “The Christmas holidays, and the freelance nature of her work meant that Adela, um, Ms. Faraday—ah, that nobody missed Ms. Faraday,” Hill said, fumbling his answer.

  Carver saw a definite tint of mustard yellow and bile green around the man, and he wondered if this was the color of lies for Councillor Hill.

  You should take a look in the mirror sometime, Carver, he told himself. See the colors you shine on.

  “Miss Faraday’s appointment to the council was controversial, wasn’t it, Councillor?” a local reporter asked.

  Councillor Hill fixed the young reporter with a glassy eye. “She wasn’t ‘appointed,’ she was an adviser, John,” he said. “And this isn’t the time to be making political points. For the national press: Ms. Faraday advised on investments—and in an extended period of belt tightening and government cuts, Liverpool City Council has sought innovative approaches to the challenges we’ve faced,” he went on, slipping easily into political rhetoric. “Decisions, I might add, that have brought significant benefits to the people of Liverpool and the wider Merseyside region.”

  “Do you have a message for the person who killed Ms. Faraday?” the ITV reporter asked, bringing him back to the subject.

  “Yes.” Hill seemed to prepare himself, like an actor shrugging on an overcoat to get into character. When he was ready, he looked straight into the camera. “What you did was an act of cowardice. The decent thing—the courageous thing—would be to give yourself up.” He shook his head. “But I don’t suppose you will. To others who may have noticed odd behavior in somebody close to you—a spouse or friend acting out of character, perhaps: if you have any suspicions—any information at all that might help in this investigation—come forward, take responsibility. Speak to the police.”

  The air around the council leader again seemed to swirl mustard yellow, like sulfur gas in a test tube, and Carver thought he caught a whiff of its acrid stink.

  He clicked the off switch and tossed the remote control onto the bed just as the door to his room opened, and Emma came in. She was pale, and her eyes looked a little puffy.

  He felt a thud. She knew.

  “Emma . . .”

  “Don’t.” She raised one finger. “Don’t say a word.”

  He eased himself onto the arm of his chair, ready to take whatever she had to say.

  “The police came to my home,” Emma said. “They asked did I know Adela Faraday? Well, naturally, I knew the name—she’s been all over the news since last night. But did I know that you were seeing her?” She snorted. “‘Seeing her’—nice euphemism. How could I know? How could I suspect that while you were so busy killing yourself with booze, you still found time to betray me.” Her face twisted with pain. “You lied to my face that you were working late. Month after month, you lied. You wouldn’t even touch me, while you were—”

  “No. Emma, I didn’t even meet up with Adela until after we split up.”

  “You expect me to believe that? You’ve lied and lied and lied. I don’t think you know what the truth is anymore.”

  What could he say? There comes a point when you have to stop believing anything a liar tells you, if only to protect yourself.

  Emma was speaking, now, and he made an effort to concentrate. “They think you murdered her, don’t they?” she said.

  He hesitated.

  “I know they questioned you, Greg.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Unlike you, I still have friends on the force. So tell me it isn’t true.”

  He said nothing.

  “I thought so.”

  “Do you think I did it?”

  “You don’t get to ask those questions anymore,” she said, quietly.

  He looked at her and saw hatred and cold rage in the maelstrom of color that swirled around her.

  He gritted his teeth. “Was it Ruth?”

  “You think I’d tell you?” she demanded, the colors coalescing, breaking, re-forming as she spoke. “Do you think you’re entitled to that righteous anger?”

  He looked away because the colors spinning around her hurt his eyes. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  She snuffed air through her nose. “Ruth Lake may be the one friend you have left. You might at least try to keep her on your side.”

  He closed his eyes. Too late, he thought. When he opened them again, Emma was staring at the honeymoon photograph.

  “I still love you, Emma,” he said.

  She turned her gaze on him.

  “Part of me hopes that you really mean it.” She sounded cool and in control, except for the colors that poisoned the air around her. She must have read the incredulity in his face, because she added, “No, really. Because then you would feel a tiny slice of the torture you’ve put me through.”

  “I know, and I—”

  “I’ve had it with your apologies,” she broke in. “I’m finished with you, Greg.”

  An icy chip of the disease that had racked him for the past year pricked his heart and he stood, snatched up the framed photograph, and shoved it at her.

  “You can take that with you—I don’t know why you brought it in the first place.”

  She took a step back, her hands by her sides. “You think I brought it? Don’t flatter yourself.”

  For a second longer he held the picture out to her on the palm of his hand.

  “Keep the damn thing,” she spat. “I’ve no use for it.” She walked out, closing the door after her.

  Carver held himself in check for a few seconds, then hurled the photograph at the door. In that split second it opened. The frame smashed on the leading edge of the door, and glass splintered and shattered on the floor.

  “Oh, God . . .” Carver took a step forward, staggered, and bumped his hip against the bedframe. Gripping the rail for support, he righted himself, his heart pounding. He tried again to reach the door, but his legs wouldn’t support him. “I’m sorry,” he called out. “Are you all right?”

  Silence.

  A second later a hand appeared, waving a paper tissue. A woman’s face followed a moment later. “Is it safe?” she asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Come in. I’m harmless.”

  “And I’m Laura Pendinning,” she said solemnly, though there was a twinkle of humor in her eye. “How d’you do?”

  She was in her midthirties, small, which made her seem younger; dark and pretty, though she wore no makeup and her hair was pulled back from her face in a rather severe ponytail.

  “Was I expecting you?” he said, with a spurt of anxiety that he’d forgotten something.

  “About three days ago. I’m afraid I got sidetracked.” He frowned and she added, “I’m a clinical psychologist—your neurosurgeon asked me to drop by?”

  Carver remembered having a conversation with a gray-haired man in a suit, something about the weird hallucinations he’d been experiencing, but he couldn’t recall the name of the surgeon, or when they’d spoken. He nodded, trying not to look too clueless.

  The psychologist smiled. “Sorry it’s taken a while.”

  “Cutbacks,” Carver said.

  She tilted her head. “Something like that.” She remained in the corridor, peering into the room from beyond the doorframe. “Can we talk?”

  The rush of adrenaline from his row with Emma had sent cold chills through Carver’s limbs, leaving him feeling shaky and weak.

  “It’s not the best time,” Carver said.

  “Really?” The woman looked drolly at the shattered glass at her feet. “I don’t think I could have come at a more auspicious moment.”

  A nurse appeared behind the doctor. “It’s all right,” Pendinning said.

  “That needs to be cleared up before someone gets hurt,” the nurse said.

  “It’ll wait.” Pendinning sounded fir
m. “We’re just going to have a brief chat first.”

  The nurse retreated, and Carver found himself under the scrutiny of the psychologist.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to be rude, but . . .”

  She chuckled. “Oh, I think we’re way past polite exchanges.” She crouched to extract the photo from what was left of its frame.

  “Be careful,” Carver said.

  She carried on, gently shaking glass from the paper onto the floor.

  “I don’t want it. It doesn’t matter,” Carver said of the honeymoon photograph that had stood on the dresser in their shared flat, then in their family home, and more recently on his bedside table in the apartment he’d taken after Emma threw him out. For fifteen years, wherever he set up home, he kept that picture close by, as a reminder of what they had been to each other, and a warning of what he stood to lose. Had lost.

  The psychologist offered him the photo, and he couldn’t stop himself making the comparison: Emma on their honeymoon; Kara, dead. Kara Grogan, the victim who looked just like Emma.

  Dr. Pendinning quietly placed the photo at the foot of his bed, then ran her hands over her skirt, straightening it. “Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of what matters to us,” she said, as if she’d read his mind. “Even if it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Even if it causes us pain.”

  Chapter 31

  “Hi, Tom.”

  DC Tom Ivey jumped like a cat, spinning to face Ruth Lake.

  “Where the hell did you spring from?”

  “My mother’s loins,” she said, just to see him blush.

  “Look, Sarge . . .” He glanced over her shoulder.

  “We do work in the same building,” she added in mitigation.

  Ivey had just parked his car at HQ, and in truth she’d been inside the rear entrance, waiting to pounce. She had seen the news, and there was something very off in Councillor Hill’s responses. Carver had lied—to Emma, to her, to Jansen—but as angry as she was with him, she was certain that he’d been telling the truth about having no memory of leaving Adela Faraday’s hotel room, and her mind kept going back to that broken mirror.

  “So how did it go last night?” she asked.

  “I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” he hissed.

  “Come on . . . it was a good call at the hotel, wasn’t it?”

  He shuffled a bit, and she saw the slight shoulder lift that said it was more than merely “good.”

  “DCI Jansen appreciative, was he?”

  DC Ivey gave a reluctant nod, still looking past her. “And suspicious.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s his nature.”

  “Sarge, I’ve got to go.”

  “I know—DCI Jansen called you in to attend Adela’s PM with him. You’re practically his protégé.” He was still avoiding her gaze, and she shifted her stance to make that impossible. “Quid pro quo, Tom.”

  He closed his eyes for a second, then his shoulders sagged, and she knew he’d tell her what she needed to know as long as she didn’t push him too hard. So she gave him a moment, and finally he sighed.

  “Okay . . .” he said. “Carver’s still hiding behind the amnesia.”

  “Your opinion, or Jansen’s?”

  His face hardened. “I can think for myself. And I know when a man is lying.”

  “Really? I don’t—not always.” She could have added, Certainly not where Carver is concerned.

  He scowled, shoving his hands in his coat pockets, and she added, “But if there’s evidence one way or the other . . .”

  She waited, looking patiently into the young detective’s face. He clenched his teeth, every muscle in his neck and shoulders tense, and she realized it was up to her to break the impasse.

  “Let me help you,” she said. “The CSIs working on Adela Faraday’s apartment discovered a second phone—unregistered, pay-as-you-go. It has three numbers on it, and one of them is Carver’s.”

  His hands came out of his pockets. “That’s confidential to the inquiry, how did you—?”

  “I will never tell. Which is why you can be sure that whatever you tell me now is safe with me. Now I’m guessing that Carver says he doesn’t know anything about the burner phone, either.”

  He hesitated, but only for a second, then he began, talking softly, barely opening his mouth to get the words out. “DCI Jansen requested a DNA sample but Carver refused. He said he has no memory of that night, so if he gave a sample, and we found something that incriminated him, he wouldn’t be able to explain it—and he won’t leave himself wide open in that way.” He paused. “Seems a weird response from an innocent man, don’t you think?”

  “It does,” Ruth said. “But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s to keep an open mind. So you’re trying to trace the other two numbers in the phone?”

  He looked over her shoulder again. “Mm.”

  “And Adela? She’s quite the woman of mystery, isn’t she?”

  “What do you know?” he demanded.

  She let her mouth curl into the ghost of a smile. “What do you know?”

  He sucked his teeth. “Where’s your car?”

  She lifted her chin, indicating a section of the car park off to the right. “Behind one of the Matrix vans.”

  He glanced toward the checkered, bumblebee-yellow battle buses of the city’s Serious and Organized Crime Squad.

  “I’ll follow you.”

  She went ahead, sliding behind the wheel, thirty seconds before he opened the passenger door and sat beside her.

  “She was megarich.”

  “Riverfront apartment,” Ruth said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

  “Not just the apartment—she had millions in assets: bonds, stocks, commercial and residential properties. If she kept paper records, we haven’t found them, and her computer’s encrypted, so we’re having to go via her bank accounts. There could be a hell of a lot more.”

  “Who stands to inherit?”

  “We haven’t found a will, yet. We’re looking for any family she might have. Thing is, she was secretive. She went freelance seven months before she died, moved from a five-bed house in Calderstones to the dockside apartment, but it was one of thirty in her residential property portfolio. It was listed with the concierge as empty and she didn’t even have the landline connected.”

  “Mobile phone?” Ruth said. “The official one, that is.”

  “There’s masses of contacts on it, but they all seem legit: rich business clients mostly, but a few key names on the Liverpool City Council.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” he said.

  “Well, you must have interviewed them . . .”

  He stared at her. “You just never stop, do you?”

  “It’s one of my more endearing qualities, when you get to know me.”

  His mouth twitched as he fought the impulse to smile.

  “Ms. Faraday had a reputation for risk-taking,” he said. “But she was clever—‘brilliant,’ according to them—always bang on the money when it came to investment opportunities.”

  “Hm,” Ruth said. “I stopped believing in investors with the Midas touch in 2008.”

  “We’ll be looking into the possibility of dodgy deals as soon as we get access to her financial records.”

  She nodded. “Well, I shouldn’t hold you up, Tom. Thanks.”

  “Not so fast,” he said. “Quid pro quo, remember? Now it’s your turn.”

  She really was beginning to like Tom Ivey. “When Carver was admitted, did they find particles of glass in his hair?”

  “That’s your quid pro quo—another question?”

  “Check with the A&E doctors, and the surgeon who operated on him,” she said.

  “Because . . . ?”

  “The head injury.”

  “What about it?”

  “Nobody seems to know how or when it happened. But when you walk back through the timeline . . .” She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to get it, and he stared through the wind
screen at the car parked in the next row.

  “The broken mirror in Adela’s room?” he said at last.

  “It’s possible, isn’t it? The medical staff haven’t found any other explanation for Greg’s concussion.”

  He frowned. “So . . . Adela assaulted Carver?”

  “Or he fell, or someone else shoved him. But we’re speculating before the evidence.”

  “I’ll talk to the medics.” He opened the car door and got out.

  “And Tom?”

  He ducked to keep her in his line of sight.

  “You should talk to your friend on the reception desk at the Old Bank, too—ask for times and dates Adela booked a room over the past month, then haul in the street CCTV. If she met other men, you might just catch them like we caught Greg.”

  “What makes you think she was seeing other men?”

  “Three numbers on her throwaway, only one of them belonging to Greg Carver.”

  He tapped the roof of the car with his free hand. “He told you something, didn’t he?”

  “Let’s say I get the feeling Adela wasn’t a one-man kind of gal,” she said.

  Chapter 32

  Sitting at her desk with office buzz going on around her, Ruth Lake reflected on the frustrations of the morning briefing. The house-to-house inquiries were a bust. The Sefton Park canvass hadn’t brought in even a scrap of new intel. She couldn’t present Dr. Gaines’s theory on the significance of the tattoos because he hadn’t delivered his report. Maybe she should have been more conciliatory, but sleepless nights and the daily graft involved in presenting an armor-plated front to the alpha males who would have her job given the chance wearied her beyond exhaustion.

  As their most recent victim, Kara was still their closest known connection to the Thorn Killer. If they knew what she had been doing in the evenings immediately prior to her disappearance, it might just lead them to TK’s door. But the young actress had covered her tracks well. She was single-minded and determined, had shucked off her old friends like clothing she had outgrown. That thought seemed to muffle the office chatter for a second.