Allowing the embrace to continue for a few moments longer, she eased him away from her but kept her hands on his shoulders. Holding him at arms' length, she tried to look him in the eye but Alex was gazing at the floor, unwilling to meet her gaze. She leaned in closer and they touched foreheads. Then she released her grip on him and he slowly raised his head, wiping both his eyes in turn with the heel of his palm. She continued to smile although now it was artificial, seeking to offer him support.
"You came back," Alex said softly, his voice cracking. She was unsure of what meaning there was behind that simple statement or how she should respond, so she merely nodded.
"I–I'm sorry it's so late. I hope I didn't wake you?"
He sniffed loudly, shaking his head. "I thought I'd imagined you again—"
"Again?"
The comment alarmed her momentarily but he waved it away, stepping back and taking her by the hand to lead her into the lobby. She followed, closing the door behind her, still unsure if she should have come. Alex turned on a light in the sitting room and she was surprised by the odour that greeted her, a mixture of stale air, sweat and junk food, judging by the tell-tale foil containers and white plastic bags on the coffee table alongside the plate. At least he'd eaten from a plate.
Alex was bobbing around the room picking up random items in an attempt to tidy up, most likely for her benefit, but it was all in vain. The house was a tip, akin to the common room in their university halls of residence where they'd first met, only worse, if that were at all possible? Up until now she would have said no. She couldn't help but see the mess and it must have been reflected in her expression, Alex appearing embarrassed.
"If–if I'd known you were coming," he said, running a hand through his hair and glancing around them, "I'd have tidied earlier. I'm sorry."
She waved the apology away.
"Alex, I was so sorry to hear about your father's passing; Gerald was a lovely man." Alex met her eye briefly, his mouth opening slowly and he took a deep breath but didn't speak, licking his lips and glancing away from her. "I feel bad for not coming back for the funeral—"
"Ah … well …"
"How have you been?" she asked, unable to keep the edge of fear from her voice. Alex was a shell of the man she knew; the man she'd loved.
He averted his eyes from hers. "I've had better times."
That must have been the largest understatement he could have uttered.
"How about work?"
His head listed from one shoulder to the other, his lips pursed. "Could always be better. Tim pushes work my way whenever he can …"
"That's good of him," she said, looking away, fearful that he would see through her. It was ridiculous. She and Alex hadn't been an item for years and what passed between her and Tim was but a flash of ill-thought desire, so why did she harbour such shame? Maybe it was having all of it unexpectedly raked over in these circumstances? "Do you see much of him?"
"Yes, quite a bit," Alex said with a shrug. "He lives in his parents’ old house near Holt, you remember?"
She smiled and nodded.
"He lives alone, much like I do, rattling around his old place with nothing but a dog for company."
He gestured for her to sit down and she looked around, unwilling to sit on the sofa in case he decided to join her. Her impulsive decision to drop by this night now felt like an error of judgement; she should have left it until tomorrow. What must Alex be thinking, particularly considering the manner in which he was living? Picking up a clutch of magazines that lay on an armchair next to the window, she perched herself on the edge. Alex had a peculiar expression on his face, watching her. It made her feel self-conscious. He snapped out of it, gathering up the mess from his takeaway and hastily dropping them into the carrier bag he'd brought them home in. She almost couldn't bring herself to mention it but she had to. Psyching herself up, the words came out more bluntly than she'd have liked.
"What do you make of this police investigation?"
Alex hesitated, a foil container poised to go into the carrier bag held in his left hand and glanced nervously at her. He shrugged, stuffing the foil container into the bag and set about the remaining items with gusto, sweeping the leftovers from his plate into another tub before adding that to the bag as well.
"Do you remember her, Tina?"
Alex ignored her, continuing with his clear-up but he was agitated, clumsily dropping a knife and fork. He swore as they bounced from the table onto the carpet. Julia got up from her seat and retrieved them for him. She leant over to put them on the plate and Alex put his free hand on the back of hers. She recoiled, snatching her hand away. Alex was shocked and surprised but said nothing. She sat back down and Alex did likewise, ignoring his task. He sat with his hands in his lap, his lips pursed.
"I remember her," Julia said. "She was the …"
"Yeah. I remember her too," Alex said quietly.
"And that night? Do you remember that night?"
Alex shot her a dark look. He held it for a few seconds, then looked away, the action accompanied with a curt shrug. "I don't want to talk about it."
"I think we have to, don't you? Especially seeing as—"
"I said no!"
She was taken aback.
"I'm sorry, Alex, but the police—"
"Are you deaf?" he snapped but she could see pain in his expression rather than anger. "I can't go back there, Jules … I just can't." He shook his head, lowering it into his hands. She wanted to move alongside him, relieve his burden but she dared not. She adopted a conciliatory pose.
"The police … they asked me about what happened between us." Alex lowered his head into his hands, slowly shaking it side to side. "I couldn't lie to them, Alex. I had to say. You understand—"
He glared at her, a flash of anger that quickly dissipated as his voice quivered. "I'm scared, Jules. I'm really scared … no matter how hard I try … it just keeps coming back at me."
"What does?" She sat forward, her hands clasped in front of her and she angled her head to try to get into his eyeline but to no avail. "What keeps coming back?"
"The past," he said, his voice cracking, "mistakes I made, the things I did …" He began to cry. Julia abandoned her reservations and knelt in front of him, placing a reassuring hand on his knee. He looked at her with a tear-streaked expression, his lower lip trembling.
"That night," she said, hesitant to press, "where did you go after … after we … you didn't come back to our room?"
He maintained his gaze upon her, tears flowing but he didn't seem to notice or care. He slowly shook his head. "I–I don't know."
"But you must know or have an idea," she said, taking one of his hands in both of hers and squeezing it tightly. "They think someone … that someone hurt Tina—"
"I know!" Alex tore his hand from her grasp, wrapping his arms tightly around his midriff and hugging himself as he began gently rocking back and forth. "I was drunk … and angry. I was so very angry." He shook his head. "I walked and walked – it was hot and sticky – I don't know where, I just wandered around I guess, but I don't remember." He gazed into her eyes, imploring her to say something but she just waited patiently, returning her hand to his leg and gently rubbing it as one would a distressed child. "I remember waking – I was in a field – to find the ground hard beneath my feet," he cast his eyes to the ceiling, he was no longer crying, "but my boots were damp and muddy. It was so strange. How on earth did I end up there?"
"Do you remember anything else?"
He glanced at her and away again, absently rubbing at his neck as if it were sore.
"My hands …"
"What about them?"
"The backs of them were all bloody and scratched, and across my forearms as well," he said, looking at his arm and running a hand up the length of it for emphasis. "The sun was up … I was hot and felt sick but not from the alcohol, not physically sick … more lost."
"And?"
He turned the corners of his mouth dow
n, shaking his head and offering her a shrug. "I don't remember. It was like," he looked into her eyes despairingly, "like those times when I …"
"When you used to scare me?" she whispered.
He nodded, fighting back more tears.
"You know, some nights I still walk out to Beeston …"
His tone turned icy, distant, and it filled her with dread as she saw the vacant expression he'd greeted her with descend upon him once more.
"You mustn't think like—"
"Maybe it would be for the best—?"
"Alex, you mustn't!" She forced him to allow her to take his hands in hers and insisted he look her in the eye. "You mustn't think that, ever. Do you understand?"
He stared at her, his eyes cold and numb to her words.
"Please, Alex …" She shook his hands, making him acknowledge her. He managed a feeble smile but it vanished as quickly as it came. "Please, promise me that you won't go back there!"
He closed his eyes and tears fell.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tom found Cassie hunched over her desk when he walked into the ops room. Eric hadn't arrived yet. Usually he was the first one through the door and Tom took it for granted that he would be at his desk but recently it wasn't the case.
"Good morning," Tom said.
Cassie mumbled a reply without looking up. She drummed her fingers on the table and then looked round at him with surprise.
"Oh, I didn't see you come in. Morning." She sat back in her chair and stretched. "Tamara's got an early meeting with the chief super, then she'll be in."
Tom nodded, crossing to where she was sitting and putting a cup of takeaway coffee on the desk beside her. She peeled off the lid and smelled the rising steam.
"Hazelnut?"
"Almond," Tom said.
"Close enough." Cassie shrugged, lifting it and sipping. "I made some headway with that mammoth mission you set me."
"What's that, the missing persons' cases in and around our suspects?"
"The needle in a haystack search, aye," she said with a sideways grin. Tom smiled. "But, to give you richly deserved credit, I think you're onto something. Our Indiana-Jones-wannabes have crossed paths with a couple of interesting possibilities—"
"Morning!" Eric said, entering. He shook his head and offered a raised hand by way of an apology. Tom cast an eye over him; Eric looked dreadful, pained. "Sorry, Becca isn't sleeping well at the moment and," he waved the comment away, "it's not great."
"Becca not well?" Cassie asked, concerned.
"Ah, she'll be all right. What have I missed?"
"Coffee," Tom said, thrusting a cup into Eric's grateful hand. He turned back to Cassie, indicating for her to continue.
"Should we wait for the DCI?"
"No, she'll catch up," Tom said, eyeing the board that Cassie had been populating.
Cassie stood up and gathered two printouts from her desk, both had circles drawn on them in blue marker. She crossed to the board. Tom recognised one immediately but he couldn't see enough of the other one to make out where it was.
"2004," Cassie said, pinning the first to the board, "a sixteen-year-old girl goes missing from the southern Norwegian city of Kristiansand. Her body was pulled from the water of Topdalsfjorden, near a small village on the west shore called Justvik. The girl, Anette Larsen, had been attending a friend's birthday party in the city. According to friends she was drinking heavily earlier that night and left the party around ten o'clock, saying goodbye to a couple of friends before heading for home. She never made it. It was thought at the time that she may have fallen into the water, intoxicated, and drowned. The fjord runs a little over seven miles from Kristiansand up past Justvik and ends at a town I'm not even going to begin to pronounce."
"I thought you lot from Northumberland all spoke Viking?" Eric said, his mood lightening as he drank his coffee.
Cassie mock-snarled at him, turning back to Tom. "I didn't think you'd mind if I contacted the locals for more details." Tom shook his head, folding his arms across his chest and concentrating. "Well, I managed to track down an investigator who had access to the file – it's not officially closed but isn't under active investigation – and she told me that the cause of death was originally thought to be drowning but was later changed to a broken neck." Tom's gaze narrowed, potentially that was how Tina Farrow died, or at least she sustained a similar injury. "I thought you'd like that. Anyway, she sent me the autopsy file but I don't understand this particular dialect of Viking," she glanced sideways at Eric, "but Elin ran through it with me over the phone."
"Elin being …?"
"Our counterpart in Kristiansand," Cassie explained. "Now, the deceased girl, Anette, may have fallen into the water because she was drunk – it happens—“
"It does a lot in Amsterdam and Utrecht in The Netherlands," Tom said, frowning.
"Right, yeah, so they looked for signs of assault. The body was fairly well preserved having spent the time prior to discovery in the cold water but they didn't find any indications that she'd been attacked." Cassie double-checked her notes. "Other than the broken neck, which was a clean break, so unlikely from a collision with a car for example, she had no defensive wounds, no scratches or unidentified skin under her fingernails … but – and this is why they didn't close it off as accidental death – she had had sex prior to her death. The pathologist was certain."
"Boyfriend?" Tom suggested. "Someone at the earlier party, perhaps?"
Cassie shook her head. "They spoke to all of those who attended the party and all of her friends said she wasn't dating anyone at the time and no one recalled seeing her copping off with anyone," she saw Tom's expression change and coughed, "recalled seeing her interact with anyone that night."
"DNA?"
"The length of time in the water hampered that but they did recover usable trace evidence from her vagina. Norwegian police took samples from the partygoers … no match. Similarly no hits on their database either."
"Okay, so now you're going to tell us which of our candidates was present in Kristiansand at the time?"
Cassie's nose wrinkled. "Good news and bad on that front. Julia Rose was working on an excavation there, and she was still in a relationship with Alex Hart at that time. I checked against Hart's records and he wasn't named on that particular dig but according to flight passenger records Alex Hart did arrive in the country two weeks prior to Anette Larsen's disappearance and was still there upon discovery of the body four days later."
"Could have been visiting Julia?" Eric said. "Stands to reason."
"Okay, what's the bad news?" Tom asked.
"Not necessarily bad news but it clouds things a little. Professor Cannell was also in Norway attending a conference in Oslo; he was the closing speaker on the Friday afternoon."
Cassie handed Tom a photograph of the crime scene featuring the body of Anette Larsen and even taking into account the paleness of her skin due to her time in the water, she looked a lot like Tina Farrow.
"And how far is Oslo from Kristiansand?" he asked.
Cassie rocked her head from side to side. "Three, three and a half hours, give or take."
"What are the chances of our colleagues comparing the DNA found on Anette Larsen to that of Cannell and Hart?"
"Dicey," Cassie said. "Elin is going to ask the question but they'll need permission from further up the chain, the prosecutor's office or something. I'm not sure how it works procedurally over there but when that happens – if it happens – then there'll be no keeping a lid on it and a story like that, the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl—"
"Yeah, the press will devour it," Tom said. He pointed to the other map, still in her hand. "You've found something in The Netherlands?"
Cassie looked at him quizzically and nodded. Turning away from him, she pinned this map to the board as well.
"De Spitkeet," Cassie said, "it's in Friesland, east of Groningen, but don't ask me what—"
"Peat-House, I think," Tom said, "or Turf
-House might be better." Cassie stared hard at him. He smiled. "Friesland. It's my grandfather's old stomping ground."
"Ah … right. And you know of De Spitkeet?"
He acknowledged her with a brief incline of his head to one side. "You've got me there, no."
"It's a living museum, of sorts," Cassie said. "Charting different styles of housing throughout the past couple of centuries. Do you know some people dug holes and built up against dykes using turf and stuff for the walls and ceilings; they were like little hobbit-style places?" She looked him up and down. "Not a chance I can imagine you fitting into a place like that. Anyway, back to reality – a nineteen-year-old girl went missing nearby." She handed him another photograph. "Mila van der Berg. She was strangled and her body was dumped on the edge of an isolated park adjacent to some waste ground, and both her and her bicycle were covered with brush to shield them from passers-by. She was found before she was even reported missing. Now, this could be coincidence. The MO is different. The other two disappeared at night after partying in one form or another whereas this girl was just out for a day's cycling. Her neck wasn't broken either and she hadn't been sexually assaulted."
"Maybe her attacker was disturbed before he was able to?" Eric said. Cassie nodded her agreement. "Then he panicked and covered her over before fleeing."
"Who was there?" Tom asked with bated breath. He could feel the adrenalin because Cassie wouldn't have zeroed in on this case unless it was relevant.
She took a deep breath, crestfallen. "All of them."
Tom exhaled and grimaced, a wave of frustration passing over him. "It wouldn't be that easy, would it? Did the killer leave any trace evidence behind?"
"Still waiting to hear." Cassie perched herself on the edge of a desk. Tom sensed there was more but Cassie didn't voice it. Perhaps it was something instinctive she was holding back. He resolved to press her later. He turned to Eric, quietly nursing his coffee.
Kill Them Cold Page 18
