Splinter the Silence (Tony Hill)

by Val McDermid

  There wasn’t much to say to that, so Alvin didn’t waste time saying it. He’d barely finished the call when the man he assumed to be his contact pulled up in a Ford Focus with the blue and yellow Battenburg livery that was as subtle as a half-brick. The uniformed officer who emerged was, to put it politely, burly. With a stab vest stretched over his gut, he looked like a black gobstopper with legs. He crossed to meet Alvin with a gait that had to roll to accommodate his thick thighs. Alvin considered himself on the bulky side, but this guy must have a major struggle to pass his annual medicals. His head was round as a football, a fringe of short black hair curling from ear to ear, leaving the top of his head exposed and bare. It was hard to guess his age; the flesh padded out any wrinkles round the wintry blue eyes. There was nothing jolly about this fat man. ‘You DS Ambrose, then?’ he said, looking Alvin up and down.

  ‘That’s me. Alvin, call me Alvin.’ He thought about extending his hand but he wasn’t convinced Westmacott would appreciate the gesture.

  ‘Right, then. Let’s go and get some grub inside us,’ Westmacott said, heading for the café, a charmless between-the-wars roadhouse pub that had been painted pink in a vain attempt to make it look like a country cottage. Inside was a distinct improvement. There were a couple of dozen tables, all with smart white tablecloths and an assortment of vintage china plates, cups and saucers. About half of the tables were occupied, the customers an odd mixture of older couples in walking gear and middle-aged women huddled over teapots and gossip. Westmacott led them to the furthest corner table and plonked himself down on a dainty wooden chair that creaked slightly.

  Alvin perched gingerly on the chair opposite and picked up the menu. ‘Don’t know why I’m even looking. I know what I want. A couple of scones with jam and cream and a big pot of strong tea.’

  The shadow of a smile flickered on Westmacott’s face. ‘Proper copper choice, that is.’

  A skinny blonde waitress with an overload of eye make-up pitched up alongside them. ‘Hello, Paul, the usual for you?’ she said, her accent straight from the Baltic.

  He nodded. ‘Twice over, Elena. My colleague here’s having the same.’

  She gave Alvin a brilliant smile. ‘You’ll love it, I promise. Are you Devon or Cornwall?’

  ‘I’m not from round here. I’m from the Midlands.’

  Westmacott chuckled. ‘She doesn’t mean where are you from. She means, do you put the jam on first or the cream? In Cornwall, they do it arse about face and put the jam on first, but up here, we cream up first then pile the jam on. Stands to reason, that way you get more cream.’

  Who knew? Alvin smiled and Elena took off, weaving swiftly between the tables, making sure she didn’t catch the eye of anyone she didn’t want to hear from. ‘This your regular watering hole, then?’ Trying to build bridges on shaky foundations, but you had to try.

  ‘I like to keep my ear to the ground.’

  Alvin tried to erase that image from his mind and failed. If that was what diplomacy bought you, he was done with it. ‘So, what can you tell me about Jasmine Burton?’

  ‘Why are you so interested in her? I know you said she had connections to another investigation you’re working, but I don’t see how you coming down here adds anything. This is an open-and-shut suicide.’

  ‘You know what it’s like when your boss gets a bee in her bonnet,’ Alvin said, aiming for camaraderie.

  ‘Huh. She probably thinks we’ve all got straw in our hair down here. Hell, you probably think that.’

  ‘It’s not like that. Nobody’s saying you didn’t cover all the bases.’

  ‘Whatever. But I’m telling you straight. There’s no question about it. She had the right water in her lungs, she had her pockets full of stones. OK, she was bashed about a bit, but you always get that with bodies that go in the water. The pathologist said her injuries were post-mortem.’ He gave a casual shrug. ‘Like I said, open and shut.’

  Alvin smiled and nodded. ‘I get that. It’s a bit odd that she didn’t leave a note or anything for her family, though.’

  Westmacott screwed his upper lip into en expression of distaste. ‘They don’t always do that. I reckon I’ve seen a fair few in my time that’ve topped themselves, and about half of them don’t bother with a note. I reckon they’re only thinking about themselves at that point. They’re not bothered about the poor sods left behind to clear up their mess.’

  ‘You spoke to the friends she visited. How did she seem to them?’

  There was a pause while Elena arrived with a laden tray and distributed tea and scones, a dish of jam and a bowl of cream that would adequately have fed Alvin’s entire family. And nobody in his family suffered from lack of appetite. He gazed at it and smiled contentedly. No witnesses to his greed except a man who was fatter than him. Result.

  The two men tucked in. ‘The friends?’ Alvin prompted.

  ‘They were genuinely shocked. They said she was a bit subdued but they reckoned that was because of what she’d been through with the harassment and the invasion of privacy. They didn’t think she was suicidal. They said they’d never have let her leave if they’d thought there was any possibility of her doing away with herself. Nice couple, they were very upset. Kept saying they blamed themselves, which is just stupid, really. This Jasmine was obviously good at hiding how disturbed she was.’ He rammed more loaded scone into his mouth and chewed vigorously.

  ‘And nobody saw her after she left them? Nobody’s come forward?’

  Westmacott shook his head. ‘Not a dicky bird. And with her being kind of notorious, if anybody had anything to say, they’d have come forward.’

  ‘Was there anything at the scene?

  Westmacott gave him a sideways look. Alvin waited for less than the truth. ‘We don’t know exactly where she went in. There was nothing to be seen, according to the PC who took a look. There’s a trail for cyclists and walkers down the east side of the estuary and we found her car parked in Exton near the trail. We reckon she must have gone in somewhere between Exton and Lympstone. It’s easy enough to get down to the water. Given where and when she showed up, the local lads reckon the tide was probably running quite high when she went in. But it’s rocky and it’s either a proper wooden cycleway or a hard-packed path and there was nothing to see.’

  And nobody was looking very hard because nobody was that bothered because it looked like an open-and-shut suicide. Which, let’s face it, it most likely was. Nobody’s saying she was pushed. Not at this stage. Alvin concentrated on his scone and said, ‘And as you say, it was an open-and-shut suicide. Presumably you took a look at the cottage where she was staying?’

  ‘I did that myself. Nothing out of the way at all. No diary, no letters, no nothing. Just a weekend case with a couple of changes of clothes, sponge bag, two or three magazines and her laptop. It was turned on, no password. I had a look at her recent email and there was nothing of interest. Mostly work stuff, one or two exchanges with friends. But nothing to say, “By the way, I’m popping down Devon to top myself”. Like I said, we’re not turnips down here. We didn’t miss anything significant because there wasn’t anything significant to miss.’ This was delivered in a manner that invited no argument.

  Alvin was mentally making notes. Talk to the pathologist. Where is the laptop now? How did she know where to go? What was she wearing on her feet? ‘Has the laptop been returned to her family?’

  Westmacott tightened his lips impatiently then said, ‘Along with all the rest of her possessions, yes. No need to hang on to it.’

  Alvin had stopped at the motorway services and bought a couple of maps. He pulled them out of his pocket and said, ‘To satisfy my curiosity, can you show me where exactly Jasmine’s car was found?’

  Westmacott wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a shiny stripe across one cheek. ‘You big-city boys know how to waste your time, don’t you?’ He grabbed the Ordnance Survey map and unfolded it, running down the line of the estuary with his finger. ‘There.’
>
  Alvin passed him a pen. ‘Could you mark it for me?’ He gave a conspiratorial smile. ‘Then I can show my DCI I genuinely did need to buy it for work.’

  Westmacott raised his eyebrows. ‘Gotcha.’ He turned his attention back to the map and circled a spot. ‘That’s where the car was.’

  ‘I might take a run down there. Snap off a couple of pics to keep the boss happy. She loves to get all the detail nailed down.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me what this is really all about, are you?’

  Alvin tried to look innocent. ‘Like I said, it’s nothing more than a tangent on something else. The boss doesn’t like loose ends.’

  He harrumphed. ‘Yeah, right.’ He swigged the last of his tea, gathered the few remaining crumbs on the tip of his finger and licked them. ‘The scones are on you,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Enjoy the rest of your waste of time.’ He lumbered off without a backward glance. Alvin sighed and caught Elena’s eye. At least the cream tea had been worth the trip.

  32

  The best way to follow someone was from in front. The first time he’d read that, he’d thought it made no sense. Then he’d read on and discovered what it meant. Discover a place where your target is going to be, then get there before them. Make yourself part of the furniture so they don’t even notice you. Then you can watch them without having to insinuate yourself into the picture. Because you’re already there. And if luck is on your side, you might even be able to find out where they’re going next so you can tail them a little more loosely.

  Waiting and watching had provided the discovery that Ursula Foreman spent Thursday afternoons doing her good deed for the week by helping out at the food bank. If it hadn’t been so transparent it would have made him laugh. Did she honestly think she could make up for all the trouble she caused by giving up a few hours to patronise people who couldn’t even feed their families? If it wasn’t for women like her encouraging women to abandon their families for so-called careers, there would be enough jobs to go around. What was the point, after all? Ursula and her kind were the first to whinge about glass ceilings that blocked their path. There were no glass ceilings in a family. When you took care of the people you loved, the sky was the limit.

  The food bank was in an abandoned shop in Brucehill, a bleak council estate that consisted of three tower blocks and a cluster of low-level maisonettes linked by galleries that provided a maze of escape routes for anyone chased by the local thugs or the police. According to one of the food bank volunteers he’d got chatting to, about a third of their clientele came from Micklefield, a warren of private housing arranged in closes, courts and groves just over the hill; nice, middle-class families who had hit the financial buffers and hadn’t yet encountered the government’s economic upturn.

  The demand for handouts was growing, according to the volunteer. So they were very happy to have new faces like his coming along to lend a hand. Apparently it took a lot of organisation to give stuff away. He stayed in the background, opening boxes and sorting donations. He knew instinctively that wasn’t where Ursula would be. No quiet unseen drudgery for her, oh no. She was up front, handing out whatever pitiful allotment the supplicants were being granted that day. The more he watched her, the more he thought she definitely should be next.

  There hadn’t been food banks when he’d been growing up. Even poor people had known how to feed their kids. Women knew how to make a little go a long way. They could cook. This lot thought cooking was putting a pizza in the oven or a ready meal in the microwave. That’s what feminism had given the country. A generation of women who had no idea how to put a decent meal on the table. Before she’d started spending so much time at Greenham, his mother had always put a proper dinner in front of him every night. Even when money had been tight and the protein had come from lentils rather than meat, she’d managed. She’d have been ashamed to take handouts. That was something else that had changed; she talked about visitors to the camp bringing donations of food with them, as if it was a good thing that the peace women were so dependent. He wouldn’t have minded betting that if there had been food banks back then, the Greenham women would have been first in the queue.

  And Ursula and her kind would have been egging them on. She’d have been blogging about those marvellous women who tore families apart and left children standing at their bedroom windows crying for a mum who was never coming home.

  Well, things were going to start changing soon. Ursula was just another brick in the wall. It wouldn’t be – no, it couldn’t be – long before somebody put the pieces together and started writing about this spate of suicides among women who’d seen the light, recognised the damage their proselytising was doing, understood how wrong they’d been.

  He’d become a lot more sophisticated with experience. He’d seized the chance with Kate Rawlins because it was there. He’d let the opportunity control him, not the other way around. Now, he would leave nothing to luck. He’d chosen the model for the next one. Marina Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet. Among her brilliant life choices had been to put her daughter in a state orphanage during the Moscow famine rather than take care of her herself. The girl had died of starvation, which only went to show the kind of thing that happened when women abdicated their responsibilities. In the end, Tsvetaeva had understood the only way to atone for her life was with her death and she’d hanged herself in her own home.

  He’d had a couple of candidates in mind. But increasingly, Ursula looked like the one who deserved to die next. Now all he had to do was make a connection with her. Enough so that she’d invite him in if he turned up on her doorstep when her husband was out. He’d slip the GHB in the cup of tea she’d be bound to make. In a short while, she’d be dopey and suggestible and easy to string up from the bannisters.

  Meanwhile, he would be a well-behaved and biddable volunteer. He’d keep his head down until the right moment to make his path cross hers. And then he’d turn on the charm. She’d fall for it. They all did. Until it was too late.

  These women thought they were so in control. But the truth was, they were so easy.

  33

  The cycle path was impressive, properly constructed with timber fencing and a remarkably even surface. Alvin had never seen anything quite like it on his own patch. It was almost tempting enough to make him take up cycling. But not quite. The thought of his muscular bulk on a bike was a bit like imagining a circus act. See the bald bear balancing on two wheels! He’d settle for his own two feet, leave the bikes for the kids.

  He walked north along the cycle path, taking it all in. The tide was going out, leaving a jumbled slope of rocks, some emerging barnacled and weedy from the water. But these weren’t the stones Jasmine Burton had filled her pockets with. They were too bulky; he’d have struggled to lift most of them with two hands. And somehow he couldn’t picture her scrambling over a wooden fence to get to the water. Alvin thought the stones signalled that she wanted a peaceful death. He was no Tony Hill, but he was imaginative enough to consider that if you wanted to let go of life with serenity, you wouldn’t start by scrambling over a fence when walking a bit further would offer much easier access. Even from here, he could see the path change to beaten earth bordered by thickets of yellow reeds.

  He quickened his pace, convinced he was heading in the right direction both literally and metaphorically. As soon as the fence ended, Alvin moved close to the reeds, carefully scanning them to see whether there were any signs of them having been trampled down. It had been the best part of a week since Jasmine Burton had walked into these cold grey waters, but there might be flattened areas that hadn’t recovered.

  But there were no traces that he could see, and about half a mile on, a new fence began. Admittedly it wasn’t solid, consisting instead of a couple of cross-members between each upright. Nevertheless, Alvin thought it was probably enough of a barrier to make a psychological difference. So he turned back, and this time he walked through the reeds to the muddy margin of the estuary, glad of the well
ies he kept in the boot of his car as part of what he rather grandly called his Murder Bag. With this new assignment, he might finally be able to put it to proper use. The ground was firm enough, though every now and then it sucked at a boot heel. Peering at the surface, he doubted there would be any significant footprints now, especially since it had rained heavily at the beginning of the week. But he took his time, quartering the area, crossing back and forth, eyes attuned to any incongruity.

  Of course there was litter. Haribo bags and Walkers crisp packets, wrappers from Mars bars and Toblerones, plastic Lucozade bottles and Diet Coke cans. They captured his attention then lost it as quickly. He was almost at the end of the reeds when he saw something odd trapped in the bare branches of a scrubby, dead-looking thorn bush. A splash of purple, the colour of the wax grapes in the old-fashioned fruit bowl on his mother’s sideboard. Was it a book? Alvin approached cautiously, as if his prey was a bird that might be unnerved into flight.

  If this had been a proper investigation, if they’d had any justification for claiming as homicide this ‘rehearsal’, as Paula had called it, he would have stood still and called the scenes of crime team. But it wasn’t and they didn’t and he couldn’t. Instead, he took out his phone and started photographing the scene. Not that there was anything much to see. Regardless, he paused every couple of steps and took another shot.

  And yes, it was a book. He could see that now. Purple cover with white writing. The weather had curled the cover and made it hard to decipher from a distance. There was nothing else that he could see. No footmarks, no handy bits of cloth snagged on the thorns. Alvin pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and reached for the book.

  A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf. He dropped it in a paper evidence bag. Not poetry, like the others. But Paula had said Tony’s prediction was that there would be something by Virginia Woolf, who had apparently walked into a river with her pockets full of stones. Which thought reminded him. Rocks. He took a few steps back then cut down to the river’s edge again. The firm fluvial mud along the margin was studded with much smaller stones, milled smooth by the water. They were mostly the size and shape of avocados and mangoes, Alvin decided, knowing he was going to have to describe them later. He took more photos, setting his pen among them for scale. There was no sign that any had been removed, but it would be remarkable if there had been so long after the event, in an environment that was submerged or at least teased by the river twice a day.