Deadly Reprisal (Detective Zoe Finch Book 5)

by Rachel McLean

  She sprang off the bed. She needed to puke.

  She crashed towards the bathroom, just catching Jenson’s sigh of irritation as she flew out of the door.

  Chapter Ten

  DC Connie Williams couldn’t decide if she hated being left on her own in the office, or secretly loved it.

  She stared into her computer screen, numbers and information washing through her mind, and allowed herself to relax. She knew this was the way the boss felt when she sifted through documentary evidence. For Connie, it was computer files and databases: running through the digital world, she was able to achieve a zen-like calm that let her make connections and spot things others might not.

  Her little brother, Zaf, had laughed at her when she’d told him about this. She’d made damn sure not to share it with anyone else since. Not even the DI, who she expected would be sympathetic.

  Rhodri had gone off to the university. He liked chatting to people, it was his happy place, his moment of zen. If Rhodri could ever be accused of anything approaching zen. Mo was with the boss, a state of affairs that made Connie want to hug herself with relief. She’d hated DS Ian Osman. From the moment he’d walked into the team room, the two of them had rubbed each other up the wrong way. He’d ordered her to go home in the middle of the investigation into Zaf’s abduction, and he’d treated her like an inferior member of the team, someone of less value because she was happier dealing with data and not witnesses.

  It wasn’t like she couldn’t deal with witnesses, too. Amelia Dowd, the nice old lady who lived next door to one of the victims in the Digbeth Ripper case: she’d loved Connie. OK, so she’d loved Rhodri even more. But still.

  But the best thing about being shot of Ian was losing the constant nagging feeling that she should be watching him, making sure he didn’t get up to no good. She didn’t want to be associated with a bent copper and she sure as hell didn’t want to be managed by one.

  She trawled through HOLMES, checking for any records relating to Laurence Thomms. There was nothing. No arrests, no cautions, no crimes reported against him. The guy was clean as a bell.

  He was a student. It wasn’t that long since Connie had been a student herself. She hadn’t had the privilege of living in halls of residence like Thomms and the girls who’d found him. Her mum had wanted her at home, so she’d gone to Wolverhampton University, travelling back and forth every day and trying her best not to resent Anabelle for it.

  When you were a student, the campus security guys were a bigger deal than the police. They were the people who fined you when you parked in the wrong spot or stayed too long. They were the ones who bundled people home after a few too many beers, the threat of informing a tutor hanging in the air. If you so much as stole a library book, they could tell the admin department and withhold your degree.

  If Laurence Thomms had any kind of record, or if he’d reported harassment or an attack, then it would be campus security he’d dealt with, and not the police.

  She flicked onto the university website. Security files would be protected, and if she tried to hack into them she’d be traced.

  She picked up her phone. “Hey, Rhonda.”

  “Connie Williams! How’s my favourite girl in blue?”

  She laughed. Rhonda was an old school friend. She worked for the university, in an administrative role.

  “I’m hoping you can help me out with something, Rho.”

  “Go on.” Rhonda was a tall, heavy-set woman who commanded respect because of the way she had of looking at people like she was their mum.

  “Can you get some info on a student for me?”

  “Depends what kind of info you mean.”

  “Not sure. But his name’s Laurence Thomms.”

  “OK. What’s he studying?”

  “Er…” Connie checked her notes. “Chemistry. First year. Lived at Boulton Hall.”

  “Lived? Shit, Con, is this the one they found dead in his room?”

  News travels fast, Connie thought. “It is.”

  “Why aren’t you asking the authorities?”

  “You know how long that takes. Red tape, and all that.”

  “I’m not sure I should…”

  “Just one little look. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “You and me know you’re way too busy for that, with your fancy job.”

  “Promise.”

  “You didn’t get it from me, right?”

  “Right.” Connie mimed zipping her lips, then remembered Rhonda couldn’t see her.

  “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.”

  Connie thanked her friend and hung up. She continued working through HOLMES, her mind elsewhere.

  The door opened and Rhodri and the sarge came in. Connie sat up straight in her chair and patted her hair down. “Sarge.”

  Rhodri gave her a wink and sat at his desk. “How’s things back at the fort?”

  “Just waiting for some—” Connie’s phone rang and she raised a finger: wait.

  “DC Williams.”

  “You don’t impress me with your fancy title.”

  “Hey, Rhonda. What you got for me?”

  “OK. So it seems he was the subject of an investigation.”

  “Campus security?”

  “Boulton Hall. The warden.”

  “What kind of investigation?”

  “One of the other students made a complaint about him. A girl called Becca MacGuire.”

  “What kind of complaint?”

  “She said he raped her.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Zoe clipped a photo of Becca MacGuire to the board behind Connie and Rhodri’s desks. The picture showed a slender, blonde nineteen-year-old wearing a bulky winter coat that made her look tiny.

  “We’ll need to find her,” she said. “It could be related.”

  “She won’t want to talk to us,” Mo said. “Why don’t we have a chat with the warden first?”

  Zoe nodded. “You go talk to the warden, find out what you can about her investigation. But I still want to talk to Becca. Connie, I want you with me for that. I know it’s a cliché, but it’ll be better with two women, especially with you being closer to her age.”

  Connie nodded at the board, her gaze on the photo. She was five years older than Becca, thought Zoe, but close enough.

  “OK,” Zoe said. “Let’s make this quick. Our witnesses are Lin Johnson and Kayla Goode. Neither of them were much help, they say they found him in his room at around half past midnight but neither of them had seen him for days.

  “Maybe weeks,” said Mo. “Kayla was a bit vague.”

  Zoe shrugged. “She wasn’t friends with him, was she?”

  “Not from what she told me.”

  “So she’d have had no reason to see him.”

  “They live in the same building,” Connie said. “Lived.”

  “So she might have known him,” Zoe said.

  “Except for him being a hermit, and that,” added Rhodri.

  “At least she ran off after finding him,” Mo said. “Means she and Lin didn’t have a chance to confer on their stories.”

  “You think there’s a reason to suspect them?” Zoe asked. “Looks to me like they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “You’re probably right.”

  “OK. Adana’s lazy colleague is doing the post-mortem this afternoon. At which point we should know if we actually have a murder to investigate at all.”

  “Could just be a drug overdose,” said Mo.

  “You reckon?” asked Connie. “With him being accused of rape and that?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t face the investigation,” Zoe said. “Took the drugs to anaesthetise himself.”

  “Or to escape,” said Rhodri.

  Zoe chewed her bottom lip. “There is the possibility of suicide.”

  Mo pointed to the close-up photo of the victim’s lips. “Someone did that to him.”

  “He might have been clumsy,” Zoe said.<
br />
  Mo shook his head. “It feels to me like there’s things people aren’t telling us.” He turned to Connie. “What sense did you get from your friend in the admin department?”

  “She didn’t know anything more than what was in the file. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about it, or overheard anything. Seems it was being dealt with in Boulton Hall and not by the main university authorities.”

  “A cover-up,” said Mo.

  “Hold your horses,” Zoe told him. “This is a student taking an overdose, not a terror attack.”

  The room went quiet at the memory of their last case.

  Mo let out a long sigh. “You want me to get back to work on Magpie?”

  Zoe shook her head. “I want you at the post-mortem. Let me know what happens, and whether we’ve actually got a job to do here. Depending on that, we can decide what to do next.”

  Connie breathed an audible sigh of relief: she’d probably been expecting to be sent to the post-mortem. Next time, thought Zoe.

  The door opened and DCI Lesley Clarke walked in. She’d lost weight since her spell in hospital after the New Street bomb, but her stride was as purposeful as ever.

  “Don’t stand up,” she said.

  Zoe looked around. No one had shown any sign of standing, except Mo who was already on his feet.

  Lesley barked out a laugh. “What’s got into you lot? You look like someone’s given you all sleeping pills.”

  “Sorry, Ma’am,” Zoe said. “We’ve got this case, but we don’t even know if it is a case yet.”

  “Laurence Thomms.” Lesley approached the board. “Poor kid.” She leaned in and peered at the photos of his gums, then winced. “You’re thinking he OD’d, topped himself, or that someone forced the stuff into him.”

  “We’ll know after the post-mortem,” Zoe told her.

  Lesley nodded. “And you’ve still got our mysterious woman in the green headscarf to track down.” She was referring to the Magpie case and the New Street bomber, who had been caught on camera but not identified.

  “We have.”

  Lesley clapped her hands then rubbed them together. “Don’t wait for me, then. Get over to the bloody PM, Sergeant Uddin. Then we’ll know what we’ve got.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Who are you?”

  “Nice to meet you too,” Mo said. “Detective Sergeant Uddin. DI Finch sent me.”

  The pathologist gave Mo a look of disdain then went back to washing his hands. “You’re here for the Thomms kid.”

  “I am. What’s the status?”

  Dr Reynolds shook his hands out, not caring about the stray droplets landing on Mo’s jacket. He grabbed a paper towel and wiped his hands, then tossed it into a bin. “Just finished.”

  “Excellent. Can I take a look?”

  The pathologist raised an eyebrow. “I trust you have a strong stomach?”

  “I’ve been in CID for almost twenty years.”

  Reynolds looked him up and down. Mo stood very still, determined not to let this man intimidate him. He had a voice like cut crystal and the attitude to match. Behind his face mask, large brown eyes seemed to be appraising him, a gaze that spoke of confidence and privilege. Mo normally resisted making snap judgements about people, but this guy wasn’t easy to like.

  “Better get your clothes covered up, then,” Reynolds said. “Unless that’s your protective gear…”

  Mo pursed his lips. Under the pathologist’s scrubs, he imagined the man was wearing expensive suit trousers and a silk tie. None of that mattered, though. What counted was whether the man could do his job.

  Mo pulled himself up. At five feet eight inches, the same height as Zoe, he was an inch shorter than the pathologist. “Give me a minute.” He turned and left the examination room in search of an overall and boots.

  Thirty seconds later, he was back. The pathologist stood at the examining table, Laurence Thomms’s body laid out before him. The young man’s chest had been cut in the distinctive Y form, and sewn up again. Despite the scar, he looked calm in death. The skin on his back and limbs had darkened where it made contact with the bench, and his face had paled.

  “Let’s start with the mouth,” the pathologist said. Mo kept his eyes on Laurence’s face, wondering what this kid had looked like in life. People looked smaller after death, especially the young.

  Reynolds bent over to open Laurence’s mouth. “There’s bruising on the procheilon, this fleshy bit here.” He placed a finger on the victim’s upper lip. “And small cuts to the frenulum.” He lifted the young man’s lip to reveal the flesh joining it to the gum. “There’s bruising here too.”

  Mo thought of Lin Johnson, the way she’d used medical language as a shield to protect herself from the reality of what she’d seen. Or maybe it was habit.

  “Caused by what, you think?” Mo asked.

  “Give me a minute, will you?”

  Mo shifted between his feet.

  After a moment, the pathologist spoke again. “There’s scratching on the inside of the mouth, here.” He pointed but his hands were in the way and Mo couldn’t see. “Looks like it might be from fingernails.”

  “Could he have done that to himself?”

  “He could. But we can find out for sure.” Reynolds lifted an evidence bag from a side table. It contained a swab. “Once that’s been tested.” He put it down and lifted another bag. “Then there’s this.”

  Mo took the bag off him. Inside was a sliver of glass.

  “I found this in his throat, almost at the opening to the oesophagus,” the pathologist said.

  “How did it get there?”

  “He could have swallowed it by mistake, or it could have been pushed down his throat. It didn’t go far or it would have caused more damage. I didn’t find anything else deeper down.”

  Mo peered at the glass. “What’s it from?”

  Reynolds straightened, hands on hips. “Doctor Adebayo told me that CID like us to do their job for them. She wasn’t wrong.”

  “Where is Adana?”

  “Adana? Doctor Adebayo is on leave.”

  Mo sniffed, wondering if Zoe knew her preferred pathologist was away.

  “So,” the pathologist said, “I checked my notes from the scene. His pupils were dilated and his airways constricted. But there’s no sign of long-term use of stimulants: teeth are fine, nasal cavity intact. His heart was previously in good shape, he was young and hadn’t done any damage to it. But his blood samples showed presence of stimulants, specifically methamphetamines. Concentrations twice what you’d expect from normal use, if there is such a thing.”

  “Crystal meth?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t think he was a user?”

  “I don’t.”

  “So he either overdosed the first time he took it, or…” Mo said.

  “Or someone forced it into him.”

  “What would that shard of glass have to do with it?”

  “Methamphetamines can be smoked via a glass pipe.”

  “Do you think the bruising might be consistent with that?”

  “It could be. But then you have the fingernail scratches.”

  “Can you tell from the blood concentration what form he ingested it in?” Mo asked.

  “Get you.” The pathologist smirked. “Blood concentration. Ingested.”

  Mo said nothing, but waited for an answer to his question.

  “The answer is no, I can’t. Given that it could have entered his system at any time in the previous twenty-four hours, it’s impossible to tell. If he smoked or snorted it, it would have been more recent. It builds up quicker that way. But it depends on the amount, too. Methamphetamines stay in your system for longer than many other illegal drugs. You haven’t asked me what killed him.”

  “I assumed the drugs.”

  “Yes, and no. Actual cause of death is myocardial infarction. A heart attack, in your language. There’s rupturing to the heart muscle consistent with a spike in blood pressure
. An overdose can do that to a person.”

  The pathologist raised a finger to keep Mo from asking more questions. He turned back to the body and lifted the right hand off the bench.

  “See this?” He turned the hand to reveal small reddish-brown marks on the inside of the wrist.

  “Bruising,” Mo said.

  “Finger marks. What look like thumb prints on the insides of the wrist and finger marks on the outside.” He lowered the right hand and raised the left one. “Matching marks on both wrists. The orientation suggests they weren’t self-inflicted.”

  There were four distinct bruises on one wrist and three on the other. The pathologist was right: they were arranged in the way he’d described. Mo tried grasping his left wrist with his right hand and observed the pattern of contact.

  “Look.” Reynolds peeled off his gloves. He reached out and grabbed Mo’s wrist. His fingers landed at very different angles, similar to the marks on the body.

  Mo shook his grip off and stroked his skin where the pathologist had dug into it with his fingers. “Any other marks?”

  “Nothing. I’d imagine the attacker was known to the victim. For him to have been able to grab the wrists just once and leave such neat marks… there was no run-up to this, no struggle. It would have taken the victim by surprise.”

  “You say him.”

  Reynolds shook his head. “The attacker had to be strong. But it could have been a woman, if she took him by surprise. If he wasn’t ready.”

  “So you think that the attacker grabbed Laurence by the wrists then shoved something down his throat? He’d have to have let go.”

  “Maybe there was another reason why the victim didn’t struggle.”

  Mo nodded: he’d seen plenty of crimes where the victim had been too scared to struggle, or where they thought they’d come out of it better if they didn’t.

  “Are you saying this is definitely a murder?” he asked.

  “It’s definitely an overdose. And the bruising to the wrists would indicate that someone grabbed him. Of course the clincher will be the swabs from inside his mouth. If it’s not just his DNA in there, then you might infer that someone else put the drugs that killed him in his mouth.”