Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin

by Alice Clark-Platts

  ‘Do you remember anything more about this boy, Mr and Mrs Brabents?’ Jones asked. ‘It’s very important we know all the people that Emily was associating with. Can you recall anything about him at all?’

  Rebecca looked again at her husband, who continued to stare at his knees. ‘We didn’t ask. Did we, Michael?’

  Brabents ran his hands over his face then, mumbling. ‘We should have done. Oh God,’ he said in anguish, looking round the room as if realizing where he was. ‘Why didn’t we ask?’

  ‘Please don’t beat yourselves up,’ Martin said quietly. ‘I know this is very hard for you. Details can be hard to remember after time’s passed.’

  Rebecca nodded, wiping at her eyes again. ‘At Easter, though, you’re right. She was, um – she was subdued, I suppose you’d call it. Distant. We went to France for a week, and she was quiet. She read a lot. We took walks. I thought, you know, perhaps she’d had a fight with someone. But when I asked her, she wouldn’t say. She said it didn’t matter, that everything was fine. We – I – just let her be. So stupid of us.’

  Martin shook her head. ‘No, Mrs Brabents, it’s not stupid.’ She paused. ‘Did Emily ever mention any problems she might have been having online? On the internet?’

  The Brabents looked baffled. ‘What do you mean?’ Michael Brabents asked. ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘It seems as though – and this is somewhat delicate …’ Martin shifted in her chair. ‘Emily had been in some kind of a relationship. And the boy she was seeing had taken photographs of her. Posted them online.’

  ‘What boy?’ Rebecca said. ‘We told you, she didn’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Well, it may not have been a formal relationship,’ Jones said. ‘Someone she saw on a casual basis.’

  ‘No,’ Michael shook his head firmly. ‘Emily wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t dream of it. She must have been forced into it.’

  ‘Sometimes children do things that we aren’t always aware of,’ Martin said. ‘Things we might not even agree with.’

  ‘Do you have children?’ Rebecca asked sharply.

  ‘No,’ Martin acknowledged.

  Rebecca turned her palms to the sky, a pearl of a tear in the corner of her eye. Martin felt her judgement as a sharp edge, a woman with no kids investigating the murder of a child. She pushed the paranoia down, ignored it with an effort.

  ‘These photos,’ Michael asked roughly. ‘Are they still online? Can anyone see them?’ His eyes moved rapidly between Martin and Jones. ‘Where are they? Bloody Facebook, I expect.’ He looked at Rebecca in disgust. ‘Vile thing that it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Martin said. ‘Some of the photos are on Emily’s Facebook page.’

  ‘You’re on it enough. Why didn’t you see anything?’ Michael spat at his wife, his mouth curling down dangerously. He turned to the policewomen. ‘She’s on it every bloody minute of every bloody day. Tap, tap, tap. You can barely get her to look you in the face.’

  ‘And of course it’s not the same when you’re on your BlackBerry, is it?’ Rebecca’s voice was cutting. ‘No, of course not. Because that’s work, isn’t it? Highly important of course. God forbid you should be dragged away from it and forced to participate in your own family’s life.’

  ‘Did you see anything on Emily’s Facebook page, Mrs Brabents?’ Martin asked, her hackles rising at this interchange. Clearly all was not well in the Brabents’ household.

  ‘No, nothing,’ she shook her head. ‘But, contrary to what my dear husband says, I’m not on it all the time. I just go on it when he’s away. He runs events –parties – down in London. When he’s gone, it’s lonely, you know?’ She looked at them with miserable eyes. ‘Especially now the children aren’t at home.’

  ‘What kind of events, Mr Brabents?’

  ‘I run a PR agency,’ he answered. ‘Often we have launches of various products.’

  ‘You get skinny models prancing around for no good reason, you mean.’ Rebecca’s voice and accompanying smile were bitter.

  ‘This isn’t relevant, Becca,’ Michael said brusquely. ‘The point is, are these vile photos still online?’

  ‘We’ve shut down the pages,’ Jones answered. ‘They can’t be seen by the public, but obviously we’re scrutinizing them as part of the investigation.’

  ‘And did the university know about it?’ Michael asked, his disbelief audible.

  ‘We don’t know yet, I’m sorry,’ Martin answered. She watched them closely as they retreated from anger back into their grief. Michael Brabents began to rake his fingers up and down his legs as if digging the ground, searching for answers.

  ‘We can never second-guess the extent of evil,’ Martin found herself saying, wanting to reach out to them. Jones looked over at her in surprise. Too much, Martin thought, annoyed with herself. She coughed and resumed. ‘I don’t suppose you have any photos of your family home, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure we do. Why?’

  ‘Sorry to ask. It just helps me build up a picture. Helps me try and understand what’s happened.’

  Michael Brabents calmed the motion of his fingers and found his voice. ‘We’ll do anything we can to help, of course. I’ll have someone from the office email something over.’

  Martin stood. ‘Many thanks then. We’ll be in touch. I gather you’ll be staying at Joyce College?’ She looked over at Jones, who nodded.

  ‘But when?’ The words burst out of Rebecca Brabents’ mouth. ‘When can we have Emily back?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Martin shifted on her feet. ‘I’m afraid we need to keep Emily here until our investigation is concluded.’ How could she say it? That Emily’s body was the only evidence they had at the moment? That they needed to keep her to ensure they could form a case against her killer? ‘I’m very sorry. I know you’ll be wanting to organize the funeral.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Rebecca began sobbing freely now, the sound of it spilling out from her hands, which covered her face.

  ‘Perhaps something could be organized in the meantime?’ Jones suggested gently. ‘A memorial … or … ?’

  Martin stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do. ‘Our deepest condolences,’ she said again eventually. They stood and exited the room, Martin exhaling the tension as she leaned back against the door. To her left, though, she saw Mason lurking in the corridor, where he had been waiting outside. ‘One question, Principal Mason, if you don’t mind,’ Martin said, turning to face him. ‘Does the university or Joyce College have any kind of counsellor on campus? Anyone who the students can see if they’re struggling with things?’

  Mason gave a short cough, twisting his lips into an odd shape. ‘Yes indeed. We have a comprehensive moral outreach programme at the university. Our guidance counsellor, Stephanie Suleiman, is particularly excellent in her dealings with the students.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you could check if Emily was seeing Ms Suleiman. If she was, we’ll need to see her right away.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mason adopted a pose of agreeable fatherly compassion before moving to re-enter the room where the Brabents remained. It made Martin shudder for some reason.

  ‘Someone walk over your grave?’ Jones asked, getting the car keys out of her handbag as they exited the building and reached the car outside.

  ‘Hmm,’ Martin answered. ‘What do we think about Mason?’

  ‘I had a very odd conversation with him while you were with the parents,’ Jones said. ‘He seems very concerned about Rush’s well-being. A bit too concerned, if you know what I mean.’

  Martin gestured for Jones to throw her the car keys. Catching them, she got into the car and turned her head to reverse out of the parking space. ‘Yep, something’s odd.’ She turned the steering wheel. ‘And who is the friend of Emily’s down in London I wonder?’

  ‘Rush?’ Jones answered.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe someone else. How’s the cross-referencing of the trolling, the social media, going by the way?’ Martin said, glancing in the rear-view mirror as the car
made its way through the streets of Durham.

  Jones gave a wry grin. ‘I’m going to see Annabel Smith and then I’m on it as soon as we get back. Why did you ask for a photo of their home?’ she asked, after a while.

  Martin sighed and tapped the wheel as she pulled up before a red light. ‘I’m not sure in all honesty,’ she said. ‘I just feel like something could have happened there which might give us … something …’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered the feeling she had had in Emily’s room. Something tugged at the back of her brain, as yet undeciphered. ‘Emily Brabents, what did you think of all these people in your life?’ she murmured as the car pulled forwards into the building traffic.

  13

  And then came the university Christmas Ball. This was an extravagant affair held in Conzie Castle, owned by some mortgaged-to-the-hilt aristocratic family who flogged time shares in their ancestral home for the readies needed to pay the utilities bills. It was a thirty-minute drive out of the city, and buses had been laid on to transport us party-goers to and from it. It will astonish you, no doubt, to hear that I was actually attending this auspicious event. Zack had taken pity on me and invited me along with his physics pals. Knowing that Emily would also be in attendance, I swallowed my dismay at the cost of a ticket and decided to throw caution to the winter wind.

  On the night itself, the buses pulled up a distance away from the castle entrance, so we had to walk the last bit, up a path where flaming torches burned either side of the entrance doors set in the middle of its sandstone walls. A bagpiper stood at the entry, piercing the winter night with his wails.

  The sky was heavy with snow, casting that frozen, faraway blueish light over everything, emphasizing the dark outline of the castle against it. I couldn’t help myself, I was impressed. Zack had told me where to rent my dinner jacket. and I didn’t think I looked out of place. I resolved to make the most of the evening and, I promised myself, I would not spend the majority of it looking around the room for Emily.

  I walked in with Zack and a mate of his named Jay. The physics group had all shortened their names in a hopeful expression of cool, hiding the true geekiness of the Zachariahs and Justins that they had actually been christened. If I’d have been part of their group, no doubt I would have called myself Dan. As it was, we entered the large hall where the ball was to be held to a particularly penetrating strain of the bagpipes. It was enough of an assault on the senses to ensure a number of people looked over in our direction as we came over the threshold.

  I saw Emily straight away. We caught eyes, and she gave me a half-smile, before turning towards Nick and his ever-present acolyte, another hockey player called Shorty. She looked exquisite in a floor-length midnight-blue velvet dress. She walks in beauty, like the night, of cloudless climes, and starry skies. But I put Byron out of my mind and deliberately moved in the opposite direction and made my way to the makeshift bar by the floor-to-ceiling windows shrouded in deep red curtains.

  The overhead lights were dim, yielding attention to the garish disco lights dancing across the parquet floor. I ordered a bottle of lager and stationed myself by a selection of green baize tables proclaiming to be a casino and a bored-looking guy who appeared to be permitted to paste body-art tattoos on to giggling girls’ arms. The music was anachronistic, the stuff we had listened to as children; now, here we were, pretending to be so adult that we even knew how to feel nostalgia. We danced in a sort of mockery of ourselves, so cool that even as we were dancing we took the piss before anyone else could do it to us. The unspoken agreement was that no one would actually dance seriously or with any kind of true passion.

  Passion doesn’t exist in places like Durham. It has been replaced by a knowingness, an all-seeing self-irony. I blame the American teen television series of the 1990s personally. Since them, we have become so emotionally articulate that the expression of any sentiment has actually become pointless; such is our ‘me too’ culture that the only way you can really draw attention to yourself is if you can successfully ridicule anything you are genuinely feeling. There’s a weird sagaciousness to this when you think about it: through ridicule you can control what you’re feeling and it won’t scare you. It means ultimately, though, that everything has become banal. We are being subsumed by our banality. I thought about this as I stood watching my peers, pogoing in a whirl of postmodern irony around the dance floor. I finished my lager and got another one.

  There was a buffet table in another room, and I wandered through to have a look at it. I was quite hungry by this time. I remained unconvinced by the battered prawns and chicken satay, however, so took some bread and cheese on a paper plate and went to stand, again at the side of the festivities, to eat and observe. I smiled at a chap I thought I recognized from Nightingale standing not too far away from me, wondering if he felt just as out of place as I did. He nodded back, and I turned an inch towards him to offer a friendlier greeting when a girl appeared out of the shadows and took his arm, leading him on to the dance floor. I covered up my mistake by shifting a bit more on my feet before realizing that this might look as if I were dancing on my own. I stopped moving immediately, stock-still with awkwardness.

  There I was, as Annabel came in with Shorty and I think her housemate Cat. They were drunk, heads together. I nodded at her, but she ignored me as usual, whispering something instead to Shorty, who laughed at her answer, and I felt a flush on my cheeks, as if all the spotlights in the room had spun around to illuminate me: the one on his own. I put my plate down and walked off, pretending to look for the gents. I left the main ballroom and found myself in a corridor near the cloakrooms where the girls at the ball had all left their coats. Boys weren’t supposed to wear coats; we were hard men, inured to the biting wind and snow.

  I stood at a loss in this hallway. I walked this way and that, debating: should I go back in and find Zack? At least there was another body to which I could attach myself. I felt sick in all honesty, a fake and a fraud. I should never have come to this disaster of a social occasion. I decided to abandon it, to walk down to the nearest road and try to get a cab back to college. Maybe I could even persuade one of the bus drivers to give me a lift for some cash. As I made up my mind, I heard soft giggling coming from the rack of coats.

  I recognized Emily’s voice immediately.

  ‘Sssssh!’ she whispered, a laugh in her throat. ‘Someone will hear us!’

  There was a pause, a fumbling.

  ‘Come on,’ I heard Nick’s voice. ‘Just a little bit. It’ll be nice.’

  ‘Nick …’ Emily’s pleading sounded tenuous, a pit-stop on the way to submission. ‘We shouldn’t. Let’s go back in.’

  He moaned gently. ‘What are you doing to me, Emily? Look, feel this …’

  I banged through the nearest exit doors I could find into the fresh, cold air. I inhaled oxygen as if I’d soared from the plunging depths of a suffocating free-dive. I held on to a stone pillar and continued to breathe. I shuddered, sick to my stomach, turning back to look through the glass doors from which I’d stumbled. As I did, I noticed a flash, a spurt of white light shoot through the hallway where I had been standing. It didn’t really impinge on my thoughts then, although it would later. All I could think was that I had been a voyeur. I was disgusted: with myself but more than that, with Emily. I expected no more of Nick, this was his stomping ground, and he frolicked in it with all the subtlety of a water buffalo in mating season. I had thought more of Emily, though, to be so public with her – sexing. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, wanted to spit it out, this foul taste I had now.

  I lurched away, my back to the castle. I managed to find the buses and one of the drivers took pity on my shaken demeanour. He drove me back to Nightingale. When I got into bed, I looked at my watch. It was only nine p.m.

  14

  Monday 22 May, 5.12 p.m.

  Stephanie Suleiman woke up with a start. She had fallen asleep at her desk again, and now a silvery trail of dribble had pooled from the corner of her
mouth on to a letter from a student’s parents requesting that they Skype her on Wednesday for a conversation regarding his recreational drug use. Stephanie wondered about the term ‘recreational’ drug use. What did it mean? That you could separate forms of drug-taking? Ah yes, you might say: I use marijuana in my work, but when I snort coke on a weekend, that’s just a hobby.

  Stephanie wiped one hand across her mouth, removing the spittle, and looked at her watch on the other hand. She really needed to go home. She swivelled around in her chair and opened up a filing cabinet behind her desk. Stephanie put the Brabents file in front of her and opened it at the same time as picking up a half-eaten Daim bar and finishing it off. Emily Brabents. A sweet girl who reminded Stephanie of her own daughter in many ways. Rosena was as naive, possibly as sexually precocious – although Stephanie would never say this out loud to her husband – and had an essence of Emily, a quality which had the effect of ensuring other girls hated her.

  Stephanie sighed: why was it that girls turned on each other in this way? It never happened with boys. They could eke out their frustrations on a football or in a boxing ring. Girls found solace in coming top of the pile, it seemed. Rosena had had to be homeschooled for a time, the bullying had been so bad. And then there was Emily. Stephanie swung around in her chair, thinking about the last time she had seen her. They had been having regular sessions for the whole of the Epiphany term. Emily had come to her distraught one afternoon after a hockey match. She had been sitting outside Stephanie’s office door, quietly weeping, and had told her carefully and with no malice in her voice, merely a bewildered self-pity, that her life had become a living nightmare.

  The last time they had seen each other had been only two weeks ago. Stephanie had felt confident that the cutting had waned, if not stopped entirely. Emily had told her about the self-harming just before the Easter holidays. She had been wearing a shirt with long sleeves but had reached up to push her hair off her face, and Stephanie had noticed the marks, raw and red down by her wrists.