Watching from the Dark

by Gytha Lodge

  The Zoo turned out to be a wine bar on the waterfront side of the harborside Ocean Village, a modern creation of flat blocks with a series of bars and restaurants set into the ground floor. All of them had views over the moorings for smaller vessels, and this one had fairy lights and low jazz music spilling out. It was definitely not the kind of place to get seriously drunk before dinnertime.

  She made her way in and saw Angeline immediately. She was slumped against the bar on a high wooden stool and was not, in fact, alone. Sitting right up close next to her was a stranger.

  Zoe felt immediately uneasy, a feeling strong enough to cut through the tight little ball of pain she was carrying. It wasn’t just that she didn’t know this guy. It was the way he was sitting with his arm slung possessively around Angeline, his fingers grazing her upper thigh. He was probably a few years older than Zoe, but it was hard to tell with the half beard he was sporting. And he was a pretty big guy, which made Angeline seem all the smaller and more fragile.

  He picked up a full cocktail glass and whispered in Angeline’s ear. She giggled, and sat up for a moment to tip the bright-pink liquid into her mouth.

  “Angeline,” Zoe said loudly.

  Her friend faltered and spilled part of the drink down herself. She tried to wipe her mouth, with what looked to Zoe like a guilty expression.

  “Zoe, what…are you doing here?” Her whole body waved as she said it, and her eyes were clearly failing to focus properly on Zoe’s face.

  “You asked me to come,” Zoe said with a pretend smile. She moved forward, ignoring the guy draped around her. “It’s time to go home, remember?”

  “Why?” Angeline asked with a frown.

  “Because we have a few things to do,” Zoe said.

  “Hey, I don’t think she wants to go,” the guy said, and gave her a self-satisfied smirk. “She has her own things to do.”

  “Oh, really?” Zoe asked, raising her eyebrows. “And do you think she’s sober enough to make up her mind about that? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

  She glanced at the barman, who was emptying drip trays a few feet away. She wondered if she could count on him if things got aggressive.

  “Well, it’s interesting how you’re suddenly all concerned,” he said, withdrawing his arm from Angeline a little. “Were you that worried hours ago when she tried to call you?”

  Zoe could feel heat flooding her face. So Angeline had been telling him about her. Angeline dipped her head, her hand going out to her half-empty glass.

  “I’ve already apologized for missing the call,” Zoe said quietly. “I’m here for her now. As I am most of the time.”

  “Just not when she was being thrown out of a pub,” the guy said quietly. He lifted a half-full glass of red and held her gaze for a moment before he drank it. There was a sense of threat to it, but Zoe wasn’t in the mood to be threatened.

  “Oh, and I suppose you know all about it,” Zoe said loudly. “Having just met her. Jesus. What actually is your name? Because I don’t think either of us knows you.”

  “I’m Richie,” he said. “And Angeline knows me pretty well.”

  He gave a small smile, and to Zoe’s revulsion Angeline leaned in toward him and put her head on his shoulder.

  Zoe took Angeline’s hand. “Let’s head home. I’ll make you some tea and we can snuggle on the sofa.”

  This clearly didn’t seem like fun to Richie, but Angeline, who loved to feel looked after above everything else, gave her a small smile. “That sounds nice,” she said. She sat up straight and jumped down from the stool, still holding Zoe’s hand.

  “Aren’t you going to finish your drink?” Richie asked her with clear displeasure.

  “I think she’s had enough,” Zoe said. Her smile was cold.

  “All right,” Richie said with a shrug. “I’ll see you soon, Angeline.”

  “Come on,” Zoe said, and slid her arm around Angeline below her armpits. It was a good thing she was light.

  “Bye, Richie,” Angeline called.

  “I’ll come and see you,” he called back, and Zoe’s insides felt cold as she looked back at him. She really hoped Angeline hadn’t been stupid enough to give him her address.

  The end of everything started here.

  Aidan was standing alongside the train he’d meant to get onto, readying himself to tell Greta that he was going to be late tonight. He’d rehearsed a dozen different fabricated stories, but in the end he’d realized that this might drag on. That he would have to tell some version of the truth.

  As the call rang, he imagined Greta sitting at the kitchen table and answering brusquely, listening to him in cold silence while he tried to explain everything. And then she was suddenly speaking clearly and warmly in his ear.

  “Hey!” she said, elongating the word, a slight laugh to her voice. “How’s it going?”

  He felt all his rehearsed speeches crumble. He’d been expecting coldness and immediate suspicion. That light laughter caught him off balance. He felt, as he’d felt before at times, that he’d gotten his wife wrong somehow. That he was misremembering her each time he left her presence.

  And when it came to it, he just couldn’t bear to burst that happy mood of hers. He’d done enough harm to Greta already in the last year and a half.

  “It’s going irritatingly,” he said as lightly as possible, after what was probably too long a gap. “I’m going to be late back. Unfortunately I have to head to the police station. I saw an attack yesterday while I was in town, and the police want me to come and give a statement. It’s a total ball-ache.”

  * * *

  —

  JONAH CALLED MCCULLOUGH through the Mondeo’s Bluetooth as they drove toward the station, hoping that they might have some fingerprint results back. But McCullough gave him a snort of derision as she turned down the loud Rachmaninoff that was playing in the background.

  “Print comparisons being run on a Friday evening? You’ll be lucky,” she said. “They all buggered off to the pub at four. They did Zoe’s before they went but everything else will be Monday. Though you can have my summary of the prints we found, if you like.”

  Jonah sighed. “That would be better than nothing.”

  He heard a riffling of paper, and then she spoke again. “We have four distinct, probably male sets around the house. I’m not going to say absolutely that they’re all male. There are women whose finger sizes fall within the range for two of them. Outliers, but there.”

  “OK. Where are those?”

  “Male one, the most distinct, is on the main door, inside and out, plus on one of the two glasses we collected and a light switch. Nothing on the bathroom door.” She paused, and then went on, “Male two is vaguer, and quite spread around the flat, including the bathroom door and various other spots. Overlaid in some cases. So a frequent visitor but unlikely to have been there on the night.”

  “Thanks,” Jonah said. “The other two?”

  “Male three is interesting,” McCullough said. “He appears only on the lock to the bathroom door. We’ve not found him anywhere else. And those are quite definite and don’t look to be overlaid.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Jonah said. “If that door was locked by the killer, then unlocked, that would produce that result, yes?”

  “Yes, although I would note that if people have tended not to lock the door, they may not be quite as recent as they look,” McCullough added. “There aren’t a lot of Zoe’s prints on there, for example.”

  “Fair point,” Jonah agreed. “And male four?”

  “Largely just on the front door and a lightbulb,” McCullough confirmed. “Could be a workman.”

  “OK. What about the girls?”

  “We have three,” McCullough said. He could hear her turning a page. “One is Zoe. The other two are spread around fairly extensively, parti
cularly in the kitchen.”

  Jonah pondered for a minute. “No prints from others in the bedroom?”

  “No complete ones,” McCullough said. “Some much overlaid partials but I’m going to suggest those are most likely to have been a previous tenant.”

  “That’s great, thanks,” he said.

  “I did look at the stuff swabbed from around her mouth,” McCullough went on, grudgingly. Jonah smiled. He’d been sure she’d get it done today.

  “And?”

  “Desflurane. Shaw was on the money.”

  Jonah nodded to himself. It was satisfying to hear, in part because the odor Shaw had noticed would only have been present for a short while. If Jonah hadn’t followed up the report and searched for Zoe, it might have been several days before she had been found. There would have been no scent of any chemical left. And on top of that, if nobody had ever linked that errant crime report with the body’s discovery, the whole scene would have been treated as a suicide.

  “That’s really great,” he said to McCullough warmly. “So no question of suicide.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Thanks, Linda. Are you off home now?”

  “Is that a subtly coded request for me to hang around in case I’m needed?” McCullough asked dryly.

  Jonah laughed at that. “No, for once, that was just an attempt at social conversation. I’ve got one more interview, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything more for you until prints and bloods are back.”

  “Well, that’s a turn-up,” McCullough said. “I’m going to get out of here before something happens. Enjoy.”

  Hanson turned to him once they were done. “That third male is still interesting, I think,” she said. “I’d like to know whose prints those were.”

  “As would I,” Jonah said. “But it looks like we’ll be waiting until Monday for that little mystery to be solved, assuming we manage to get whoever it is printed before then. But being able to pin it down as murder is a good first step.”

  There was a brief silence, and then Hanson asked, “I wonder about her dad. He hardly says anything, and his expression is so haunted. Part of me wonders if it’s guilt.”

  “Yes, I’ve wondered that, too,” Jonah agreed. “It wouldn’t have been right to ask about alibis today, but I will tomorrow.” He let out a sigh. “I did work on a case a few years ago where a father did his daughter in during a fit of rage. He looked…destroyed.”

  “People can be so screwed up,” Hanson muttered. “Guess I lucked out with a crappy cheat for a dad instead.”

  Jonah thought of his own abusive father and gave a small smile. “I guess you did.”

  * * *

  —

  “SO,” SHEENS SAID, once he had greeted Aidan Poole with excessive and deliberate formality. “You failed to mention, in your last interview, that your relationship with Zoe Swardadine was not simple girlfriend and boyfriend.”

  “Yes,” Aidan said in a low voice. He seemed, if anything, a little more together than he had been when he left the station earlier. Less zoned out, Hanson thought. Despite the worse situation he now found himself in.

  “Why exactly did you feel the need to conceal that you have a wife who lives with you in Alton?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He gave the DCI a slightly beseeching look. “I know I should have mentioned it. I was just so afraid of it getting back to Greta. It wasn’t even…Look, if I’d been thinking more rationally, I would have realized that it made no difference. But I suppose I imagined you asking to see her, and it all coming out. And…now that Zoe’s gone, the idea of losing her as well is just…”

  “If you cared about Zoe, then surely you want us to find out who did this,” Jonah replied.

  “Yes,” Aidan said, sitting up a little. “Yes, of course I do. I just thought…I suppose if I thought at all, I was assuming that my marriage had nothing to do with it.”

  “You don’t think it’s relevant?” Sheens asked. He glanced down at the handwritten notes he’d made after their earlier interview, not yet typed up and on the system. “When you mentioned her friend Victor, who was angry about it. You don’t think the fact that you were married might have increased his feelings of resentment?”

  Aidan looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t think about it like that, no.”

  “What was your wife doing last night?”

  Aidan was clearly caught off guard by the change in tack. “What? Greta?”

  “You’ll have to tell me if she’s called Greta,” the DCI said. “Having heard very little about her before now, I’m not on first-name terms.” The comment was dripping with sarcasm, and Hanson felt slightly sorry for Aidan Poole. It didn’t look like he was in for an easy time of it.

  “She’s called Greta,” Aidan said after a breath, “and she’s forty years old. We’ve been married for seventeen years.”

  “And last night?” Sheens repeated. “I assume she wasn’t in the house while you were engaged in a covert chat with your girlfriend, or did you wait till she’d gone to bed?”

  Aidan shook his head. Hanson could see his jaw tightening in an attempt at self-control. The DCI could get to most people when he wanted.

  “She was out at an awards dinner,” he eventually said. “She’s a science writer for a lot of the big newspapers. She was presenting an award.”

  “And where was this?” The DCI was now looking at his notebook, where he had begun making notes. Somehow he managed to make the mere action of writing intimidating.

  “London. It was…some hotel.”

  “If you can’t be more specific, the name of the organization running the event would be useful,” Sheens said.

  “Oh. Yes…the Press Association, I think?”

  “What time did she get home?”

  “Two…two-thirty.”

  “And you’re sure she was there at the time of Zoe’s murder?” Sheens asked.

  “Yes. For fuck’s sake,” Aidan said. “Why in the hell would Greta have anything to do with it? She’d never even heard of Zoe.”

  “So she had no knowledge of the affair?” Sheens insisted.

  “No,” Aidan said. “Do you really think she’d still want to be with me if she knew I’d been shagging a twenty-seven-year-old student?” Aidan’s voice caught, and he looked away suddenly, swallowing repeatedly.

  “So you were careful about it,” Hanson interjected, leaning forward and striving to appear like the more understanding of the two.

  “Yes,” he said. And then he lifted a hand in a gesture of resignation. “I was a total devious shit about it. I set my phone so that Zoe’s messages never gave a notification. I had all her emails auto-filtered into a work folder. And I deleted everything, without fail. That’s how it is when you’re having a bloody affair. You learn to be a constant liar.”

  “What about since last night?” Hanson asked, considering. “Did you delete your Skype call history?”

  Aidan blinked at her. “Oh. No, I didn’t. It was the only time I haven’t. I needed it.”

  “Because it’s your alibi?” the DCI asked with irony.

  “No!” Aidan answered, his frustration evident. “To prove to myself that…that it had actually happened.”

  “We would like you to show us that conversation,” Sheens said.

  “Do you have the app on your phone?” Hanson asked, glancing at the chief and then back to Aidan Poole.

  “Yes.” Aidan sat up a little straighter. “Yes, I do. It’ll show up on there.” He pulled out his phone, spent a moment or two fiddling, and then brought up a conversation with a Zoe Swardadine, whose photo was clearly that of the girl they’d seen in the bathtub and on the mortuary slab.

  Hanson glanced at the DCI for permission, then took the phone and clicked on the profile for Zoe Swardadine. The Skype ID was just Zoe’s first and
second names run together. Hanson wrote it down as Jonah described what was going on for the benefit of the tape. She then checked the call time, which had begun at 10:52 the previous night, and had then run for three hours and forty-nine minutes.

  “So you hung up at two forty-one in the end?” she asked as she handed the phone back.

  “Yes,” he said. “When Greta rolled in.”

  “She was drunk?” Hanson queried.

  “Very, as she usually is after a journalism event,” Aidan said. “And I was hugely relieved that she was, because she passed out within a minute of getting into bed and didn’t notice me getting up repeatedly.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep. I kept trying to believe that I’d got it wrong, but I knew.”

  The DCI nodded and then sat forward. “I think we can leave it there for this evening. We may well need to see you again this weekend, depending on what else emerges.”

  “All right,” Aidan said, rising and putting his phone back into his pocket. “Just let me know. I do want to help, even if I was being an idiot about the affair.”

  They showed him out through CID, which was now empty. O’Malley had been gone before the two of them returned from the morgue.

  Hanson turned to the DCI once the door shut behind Aidan Poole. “I’ll check whether that’s really Zoe’s Skype account.”

  “Sure,” Sheens said. “I’m pretty sure it will turn out to be.”

  “You don’t think he’s guilty?”

  “Oh, I think he’s guilty as hell of a lot of things,” Sheens said with a grin, “all of which are about to come tumbling out. I just don’t think any of them are the murder of a young woman.”

  “So we’re working on the assumption that he genuinely witnessed her murder,” Hanson asked, a little pointedly.

  The DCI shook his head with a smile. “We won’t work on any assumptions, as you well know. We’ll investigate him as thoroughly as the next person. But if I had to make a prediction, I’d say that as soon as he stops scrabbling around trying to protect himself, Aidan Poole is going to help us solve this thing. Because it’s ninety-nine percent certain that Zoe knew her killer, and I’d wager that Aidan Poole knew them, too.”