Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller)

by Clark-Platts, Alice

  She scrolled down the six hundred or so friends that Emily had on her page. Many of them were based outside of Durham’s confines, it was going to be a hard task to go through them all. Jones debated passing the job over to one of the DCs but then steeled herself to it. She wanted to contribute to this investigation. She wanted to impress Martin.

  Jones focused first on Emily’s friends from the university. She recognized some names, certain of which popped up again and again. Most of these friends had made comments on the statuses Emily had put up on the site, although she had stopped doing this after the sexual photos had appeared. Emily had become mute on Facebook since then. Those photos had their own appalling comments and ‘likes’. Jones concentrated on the statuses before then, looking for a constant online presence. It was a punt, but it seemed likely that this mysterious friend whom Emily had seen in London would be online.

  Jones looked back to the beginning of the university year and began again, trawling through the activities Emily had thought worthy of public consumption. Many of her statuses described events at the hockey club, and she often tagged Annabel Smith in them. Those two appeared to be best buddies.

  Moving the screen down again, Jones saw a status entry at the end of October. It was a check-in, describing where Emily was at that time: Quiet drink at The Prince Bishop with Annabel Smith. Somebody called Daniel Shepherd had liked this post. Daniel Shepherd. The name rang a bell. Jones leaned back in her chair and scratched her elbow. Leaning forwards, she moved the cursor back up to the beginning of the year, when Emily had come to Durham. Now she saw why the name had triggered something. Jones scrolled down through all of Emily’s status updates. Daniel Shepherd had ‘liked’ every single one of them.

  18

  Monday 22 May, 9.45 p.m.

  Sam Butterworth sat in the dark at his desk, the only light a spot from the antique anglepoise lamp he had bought himself for his fortieth birthday. Butterworth liked to sit at his desk like this, in the dark, perhaps with a short glass of whisky at his elbow. The scenario gave him gravitas, he felt, a little Chandleresque. Tonight, however, the set-up was not having the desired effect. The Durham bigwigs had been on him since the early morning, insisting on the need for this murder to be shut down. What they meant was, it was May. Next month, the tourist season would start in earnest. And what was Butterworth doing putting Martin in charge? A copper who’d been in the city for less than a month, someone who knew nothing of its ways or, let’s be honest, Butterworth thought, its politics. Added to which, she was a woman. Assistant Chief Constable Worthing had already given him an earload this afternoon.

  Butterworth had persuaded him to give her a chance. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours since the body had been found. Worthing had been assuaged by the news of the confession; Butterworth had convinced him that everyone just needed to relax. Martin was an excellent copper, woman or not. She had proven herself beyond compare in Newcastle and she would do so again here. Butterworth sighed, pulling a paperclip apart and sticking it in his mouth. He wished he could start smoking again.

  Outside the door, Martin had her head resting against the door frame. She breathed slowly, in and out. She had to pull it together. Even though her head was pounding and she was desperate for a drink. When she opened the door at Butterworth’s call, however, she saw she might at least get the latter part of her needs met.

  Butterworth pushed a glass over to her side of the desk as she sat down. She raised it in a mock cheers and took a big gulp of whisky. She sat back, and they looked at each other for a second. Butterworth gave a short smile.

  ‘So.’

  ‘So,’ Martin replied, returning the smile.

  Butterworth shifted and sighed. ‘We have a slight problem.’

  Martin looked at him. Go on.

  ‘Rush is up at the university hospital under observation. But he’s withdrawn his confession. His father called an hour ago.’

  Martin shook her head. ‘We should never have waited for him to come up. He’s got a hold over Rush. He’s controlling him.’ She moved in her chair, exasperated. ‘Fuck! I don’t know what the Medical Examiner was playing at, saying he could be interviewed. Why didn’t he pick up on the fact he’s obviously a complete fruit loop?’

  Butterworth sat back in his chair, still playing with the paperclip. ‘Well, he’s out of custody now; at least the time pressure of detention’s off. If we get a healthy report back from the psych team, we can bring him back in then.’

  ‘And then they’ll chuck diminished responsibility at us.’

  ‘You’ve got the problem of Mason’s alibi anyway.’

  ‘I’ve got the problem?’

  Butterworth shifted in his seat. ‘We have.’

  Martin raised her eyebrows. ‘Mason fancied him. I don’t think the alibi is worth much. The confession means more.’

  ‘If he did it.’

  Martin looked at him, chewing her lip. ‘Hmmm,’ she said at last. ‘You saw the interview?’

  Butterworth nodded.

  ‘He didn’t mention strangling, and we haven’t released that to the press. So … I don’t know. He seemed as though he was on another planet, calling for his mum. She committed suicide in front of him when he was ten, so his dad says.’ Martin grimaced and took another sip of whisky. ‘I’m going to do some digging into Mason. He was interested in Rush and he talked about “the boys” tonight.’ She made the sign for inverted commas. ‘Doesn’t give a very good impression. What with that and all the stuff about Emily on the web, Joyce is not coming out of this thing well.’

  Butterworth sighed again and topped up their glasses.

  ‘You getting it in the neck?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Yup.’ He moved forwards and turned his computer screen around to face Martin. ‘This hasn’t helped.’

  Martin leaned across the desk to see the website of the local newspaper. The photograph of Emily stuck on the board in the incident room stared out at her now from the screen: ‘PURPLE PROSE’: THE SOCIAL COMMENT COLUMN BY SEAN EGAN. Martin skim-read the beginning of it before giving up in exasperation.

  ‘The main article on the actual murder is on the front page. It won’t take long before that’s picked up nationally,’ Butterworth said quietly. ‘Talks about a lack of CCTV, lighting on the bridge, police presence in the city, et cetera. But this is more dangerous. Where is he getting his information from?’

  ‘Knee-jerk journalism. For a start, they’re running with murder before they even know that’s the case.’

  Martin sighed. ‘We should take them up on that. It’ll probably only get worse.’

  ‘It talks about you,’ Butterworth said. ‘And me.’

  Martin stared at him.

  ‘Makes reference to an old romance. I’m presuming Newcastle. Whether things there …’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘They mean whether I’m up to the job. Whether I actually slept my way into this position?’ Martin asked sharply.

  Butterworth inclined his head.

  Martin sank back into her chair, her glass dangling between her fingers. ‘Top brass?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘I’ve reassured them,’ Butterworth answered. ‘But it means you don’t have much time to play with.’

  And it means my team will look at me differently now, Martin thought with frustration. ‘Fuck,’ she said again. She leaned forwards to peer at the screen, see the name of the author of the article. ‘I’m not going to be a scapegoat here, Sam. I won’t be bullied. If I rush, things will get done wrong. They’ll have to wait.’ She swallowed. ‘I’ll get them their result. You can be sure of it.’

  Butterworth was looking at her intently. ‘How’s Jim?’

  ‘Good,’ Martin lied. ‘Busy,’ she shrugged.

  ‘How’s the move been? Is he okay with it?’

  ‘Sam …’ Martin put her glass down on the desk. ‘Let’s not talk about Jim, all right?’

  They sat in silence for a while, and then the moment passed. Martin stood up. �
�I said I’d pop in for last orders with the lads, so I should go.’

  ‘Okay.’ Butterworth cleared his throat and looked down at the papers before him. ‘Don’t speak to Mason again without clearing it with me, Erica,’ Butterworth said as Martin turned to leave. ‘That’s an imperative.’

  ‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ Martin saluted as she opened the door. Butterworth didn’t look up, his head framed by the spotlight as he considered what was on his desk.

  Embarrassed, Martin closed the door behind her and leaned her head back on the doorframe. Sam Butterworth. Consummate politician and yet something in him tugged at her. He moved through the world like a basking shark, achievements coming to him as readily as plankton. But his eyes weren’t the dead black of a shark, they were warm, and a fear glinted in them, some kind of insecurity that Martin liked, she could relate to it. They had never slept together – in Newcastle or anywhere else. But that didn’t stop people acting as if they had. And Sam championed her, put her on a pedestal for some reason. Or maybe she felt the reason but wouldn’t admit it.

  She knew the time without looking at her watch. She knew she was due at the pub. And she knew that, despite her self-bargaining earlier in the day, she had finished the interview with Rush and still not telephoned Jim.

  ‘Daniel Shepherd is the mystery friend,’ Jones said with excitement as she stood at the bar with a bottle of Budweiser in her hand. Martin ordered a Talisker with ice. A few members of the team sat at a small table in the corner, and she and Jones joined them. ‘At least, I’m pretty sure he is,’ Jones continued. ‘He’s all over Emily’s Facebook page. He literally likes every single thing she says or does.’

  ‘Do we know anything more about him?’ Martin asked, taking a drink. No more booze after this, she was already feeling spaced from the whisky in Butterworth’s room, and her head was still pounding.

  ‘Nothing more than what’s on his social media page. Reader, Writer, Runner. Just me.’ Jones quoted. ‘And he’s a big fan of Graham Greene. And likes French films. At least, I think they’re French – Subway? Jean de something … ? Anyway, I’ll get on to Student Admin tomorrow when they open and see which college he’s at.’

  ‘Might be worth checking with Annabel Smith? She must have known him if he was such good mates with Emily.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Jones said, opening a packet of peanuts and leaning back on her stool. ‘So what do you reckon to Durham, boss? Liking it?’

  Martin nodded, turning her glass around on the tabletop. She realized that the table had grown silent, waiting for her reply. ‘It’s a good place.’ She looked at them all, staring at her. She felt she could hear their thoughts and wonderings, a garble of the judgements and opinions and labels they would be putting on her. And that was before they read what was on the newspaper’s website. She ran her hand through her hair self-consciously. It was cold from the ice in her glass and eased her head a little. She was no good at this stuff, hanging out with the other coppers. She wanted to be back in the incident room, drawing charts and making lists, organizing all those possibilities which still crowded in her head, passengers on a platform, jostling to get on the train of thought which would lead her to Emily’s killer.

  Martin was saved by her mobile vibrating and jumping on the table. She answered it, making a face of apology to the others. She walked out of the pub, tipsy enough to talk to Jim, sober enough to drive, she thought. She walked back to the station to her car, talking softly to him as she went, hoping that the fresh of the night air through the open car window would combine with the whisky to make sure she slept through the night for once.

  19

  The last chapter of the Christmas term was Eliot and The Wasteland. We were racing through it. Literature spun around me, letting me glance quickly in through narrow, swirling windows – a zoetrope of words and ideas. I liked Eliot. I liked that he wrote this majestic work while on the tipping point of a breakdown. What adventures you can have there, what things you can see when you are at rock bottom. I once tried to tell Emily this, but she just stared at me vacantly.

  Eliot was wrong about one thing, though. April is not the cruellest month. It is December. The washed-out face of Emily sank without trace into the pigeon-grey skies. She floated through the streets like a shrivelled ghost, sucked into herself. My stream of consciousness used to trail after her, through those streets, like stars. I was the Milky Way of her sadness, a twinkling mass of gathered miseries. I blew them across the cityscape, the blackened chimneys in the night, trying to disperse them for her, letting her wretchedness run through my hands like water. It didn’t work.

  It was a few weeks after the photograph had been posted online that things began to change for me. I met someone who changed things for me. I had gone to a poetry reading in a small bookshop down one of the tiny streets which sprout from the hub of Durham. I liked going there, browsing through the books. There is nothing like a book, in my view. Something tangible to hold, a key to a door. Most of my Durham peers, if they read at all, did so on electronic devices, pancakes of technology they could spin on the palm of their hand like a plate. Where was the excitement in that? Compared to the absolute joy of looking at the cover of a book and wondering, what is inside? Anyway, I had strolled along to the bookshop on yet another cold evening, my scarf over my face, thinking of those lines of Eliot. The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf, clutch and sink into the wet bank. It made me think of Emily, broken and reducing. Where had her strength gone?

  I pushed open the bell-topped door of the shop and entered into its warm confines, unwrapping my scarf as I did so. It wasn’t very full. The local poet who was giving a reading had clearly struggled to rouse much interest. But there was a table with some mulled cider and even a pre-Christmas mince pie, so I took one of each and went to study the shelves before the reading began.

  It was then that I saw him. Simon Rush. I had noticed him several times before at the bar in Joyce – he was the president there. I had always been envious of his confidence, how louche he was, how he would dangle an arm over a pal, his easy way with those in authority. He was standing next to a bookcase filled with political biographies, his finger tracing the titles of the books about halfway down.

  My instinct was to turn and run, walk quickly out of the shop before he saw me. I don’t know why I had this reaction, it just reared up in me. I sensed something from him, that once I let him in, things would change irrevocably. Someone like him would really rule the world. His was the chuckle spread from ear to ear that I woke with a start in the night about, my heart pounding my chest like an angry baboon.

  I tried to move, to make my escape, but was hindered by my plastic cup of cider and the blasted mince pie. As I hovered, desperately trying to find a suitable place to deposit them, he lifted his head and noticed me floundering ridiculously at the end of the aisle. He smiled at me and nodded. I was mystified. Was he wanting to speak to me? By then, you see, I was so inured to my loneliness that I took persuading that anyone would. Particularly someone as – well, as attractive as him. How sad does that sound? I nodded back, feigning relaxation and sipped at my cup.

  Simon came over, gesturing to my scarf. ‘Nightingale, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, my mind racing, my words tripping over themselves in my head.

  ‘Should be good, tonight. I’ve heard he’s excellent.’ He grazed his hand against my elbow, implying I should turn around, take a seat with him. I was gobsmacked. I nodded again, desperate to find my real voice. We took a seat next to each other on two plastic folding chairs, our legs touching somewhat as the seats were very close together. He looked pleased with himself as the poet came on the small stage the shop had fashioned at the front.

  As we listened, I felt his warmth next to me. I could see the pulse spasm in his wrist. It made me realize that he was alive. Just like me. As the cider burned pleasantly in my stomach, I began to truly relax. I began to feel that maybe the winds would change, that I woul
d make more friends in this cold place. That I would no longer be alone.

  After that evening, I continued to see him. It gave me confidence with Emily. Despite the photos, she continued to moon after Nick much in the manner of an abused wife who clings to her fist-brandishing husband. I would see her in the bar as I sat, nursing my pint of Guinness, and I would remember my secret friend.

  I had begun to hate the Joyce bar. The countless times I had sat there, waiting for Emily to condescend to speak to me – occasions that were becoming more sporadic the more hooked she became on Nick. My loneliness, painted so brightly through the sky for everyone to see since the Christmas Ball, was swathed through the place as a putrid scent. Often, before I entered, I would pause a second before pushing through the swing door, relishing the silence before the assault on my senses came, of hops and yeast and stale tobacco, the clamour of voices, ringing laughter, generic music. I couldn’t think in there, couldn’t get things clear. The whole world was a war zone. And Emily was part of this. She stood in the middle of them all like a water nymph, gurgling under the violet waters in which she let herself drown.

  I rolled over in my bed, thinking all this through, that last day of the first term. And I felt I needed a break. From the Durham world and those who ruled it. Even though I dreaded the thought of it, I knew it was time to go home for a while. The taxi driver summed it up as he dropped me at the station in the dark and freezing fog of the late afternoon: ‘Best get yourself home, boy,’ he said with a wink. ‘You look like you’ve been in some tangled webs, my lad.’

  20

  Tuesday 23 May, 6.45 a.m.

  The smell of bacon woke Martin before her alarm clock. By the time she’d got out of the shower and into her suit, Jim was sitting on the bed with a bacon sandwich for them both and a pot of tea.