Cambridge Blue (16 page)

In the end, he had no idea how long he remained there, his elbows resting on his knees. He lit each new cigarette from the last but, instead of putting any of them to his mouth, he spent the time watching the ash growing in length, then falling on to the path.

He thought constantly about Lorna. He wondered how much he needed to say, and how much he’d be able to leave out, and whether he was pulling the lid on a can of worms. The Gary Goodhew he’d known from primary school had been quick-witted, logical and intuitive, in retrospect. It was a worrying combination. Bryn was realistic; he wasn’t going to be driving the conversation, but he held on to the idea that it was safest to take a ride with someone you knew.

He finally decided against lighting another cigarette as he pinched the current one dead between the tips of his forefinger and thumb. He was about to toss the butt into the bin when he looked up and, for the first time, realized he was being watched.

Gary was no more than fifteen feet away. ‘I noticed you came in twice, so I thought you might still be out here somewhere,’ he said.

Bryn nodded. ‘That figures.’ He threw the butt at the bin then, and for the first time, missed. It bounced on to the ground right in front of Gary, who retrieved it and dropped it in safely.

‘DC Kincaide is looking for you at the moment and, meanwhile, I’m supposed to be doing something else. What’s up?’

Bryn laced his fingers, then loosened them again when he realized it might look like he was praying. ‘There’s a thing . . . a coincidence, I suppose. It was at the back of my mind when I saw you yesterday, then I thought about it overnight. It’s probably nothing, but I wanted to point it out – you can check, can’t you?’

Gary glanced back at the police station, then at Bryn again. ‘Sure. But whatever you tell me, you’ll need to repeat to someone else, just to keep everything straight. It can’t be unofficial, you understand, don’t you?’

Again Bryn nodded, but Gary still looked hesitant. Finally, he sat down and also rested his elbows on his knees. Bryn realized that it was just one of those body-language mirroring techniques, designed to put him at ease, but it did make him feel more comfortable in any case. They were both now facing forward. For his part, Bryn stared at the kerb across the road; it was the most mundane focus for his attention, and he knew that was what he needed as he deliberately exposed himself to police scrutiny. Sticking his neck out like this really went against the grain, so much so that, even when he started talking, he still took the long way round.

‘I think it was back in December when I first met Lorna, maybe the end of November. Well, not long before Christmas anyway. And, like I told you last night, we went out a couple of times to the pool hall on Mill Road. I was in there one night having a game and a drink with Colin, this bloke I knew. He used to do odd jobs and he’d done a bit of cash in hand for me, a couple of services and a few bits, just helping me catch up with stuff. Well, Lorna turned up with a mate of hers, and we ended up playing doubles.’

‘Mate, as in another woman?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Lorna told me she worked with her, a girl called Victoria.’

‘Victoria Nugent?’ Gary still uttered it as a question, even though he clearly knew the answer.

‘Yes.’ Bryn then paused a beat. He should have guessed that Victoria might already be in the picture, and the thought only made him more sure that this conversation was a good idea. ‘I partnered her, Victoria, and we had a laugh. Have you met her?’

Gary shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

‘Feisty and flirty. We had quite a few to drink that night, all of us, that is, and Lorna spent as much time chatting to Colin as I did to Victoria, which was the first odd thing.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, to be honest, Colin wasn’t a nice bloke – I mean, especially from a half-sophisticated woman’s point of view; he looked bad, smelt bad and was a bit of a scrounger. But they got on fine.’

‘Unless Lorna was just put out by you flirting with her mate?’

Bryn twisted around, leaning on the back rest for the first time, and eyed Gary with what he hoped looked like mild amusement. He waited for Gary to do the body-mirroring thing before he replied. ‘Trust me, as far as her friend Victoria went, Lorna was just not the jealous type. And, as I said before, there was nothing going on between us, anyway.’

‘Well, then, what?’

‘Yeah, well, according to Colin, they met again. He even reckoned he was “on a promise”. I thought he was having me on, but he was adamant.’

‘But we’re talking some months ago, right?’

‘Yeah, January.’ Bryn could almost hear the tick-tick-tick as his bombshell counted down. ‘Colin’s dead.’

Only Gary’s eyes showed an instant response. The pupils dilated and his stare made Bryn feel pinned down. ‘And what was Colin’s last name?’ he asked.

‘Willis.’ Bryn’s throat tightened as he spoke. No wave of relief followed; he felt no burden lifting after this revelation. But what had he expected, anyway? After all, his conscience was far from clear.

‘You’ll need to make a statement,’ Gary told him.

Bryn just nodded, as he felt himself making a nauseating slide towards centre stage. It was for Lorna, he told himself. But, as he walked towards Parkside police station, shoulder to shoulder with his old classmate, he couldn’t help wondering how deep he was about to get buried.

TWENTY

Marks still looked pissed off. But even if there was no mood change apparent to the naked eye, Goodhew was certain his boss would have mellowed during the day.

Marks repeated the essence of Goodhew’s request back at him. ‘So, you’ve left Kincaide with this O’Brien guy, and now you want to follow up this Colin Willis lead?’

‘Absolutely.’ Goodhew plonked a bulging folder on to the desk. ‘I thought it would be a good idea to go through this stuff, just as a start. If there’s a connection to Lorna Spence—’

‘What happened to her bank statements and phone bills? You’re not gallivanting off on anything else until they’re properly done.’

‘They are.’ Goodhew slid out a thin plastic wallet from inside the front flap of the larger folder. ‘And there’s not much to know. She used her bank account for paying bills and drawing cash, but for little else. Her bills were mostly on direct debit and, aside from rent, rates, heating etc., she used just one credit card and one store card. She doesn’t appear to have been the type to bother about keeping paperwork, so we don’t have a complete set of household or mobile bills.’

He eyed his boss hopefully. ‘Without the detail, there’s not much to say, but I’ve requested a full set of both, as well as all calls relating to her office extension, a list of the incoming calls on her private numbers, and copies of her credit card statements.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Not yet, no.’

Marks held out his hand. ‘Leave that with me, and you’d better hope I don’t find something you’ve missed.’ Goodhew felt sure he had spotted an encouraging gleam in Marks’ eye. ‘So, how are you proposing to look for a connection to Colin Willis?’

‘Aside from the file here? Maybe she mentioned him to someone at the Excelsior Clinic’

‘And while you’re at it, I suppose you could find out whether she ever mentioned Bryn O’Brien to them.’ Marks leant back in his chair and surveyed Goodhew through narrowed eyes. He tapped his temples as he thought. ‘And you may as well speak to Victoria Nugent, since, after all her name’s popped up a couple of times now. And if anything else does crop up, you’ll be burrowing into that while you’re there, I suppose?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Why do you think I sent you off to trawl through Lorna Spence’s paperwork?’

‘Because—’

‘Because I thought it was time you grasped the idea that I need to know where you are and exactly what you’re doing. I thought you’d be bored to death for a few hours, then you’d come back in happy enough for
me
to direct
you.
Instead of that, you bounce in here, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed like some frigging Disney bunny, then tell me you’ve got your whole day already planned out. Look at my face – doesn’t this look like a scowl to you?’

Goodhew tried to appear apologetic. ‘I assumed that was concentration, sir.’ Marks gave him a poisonous look in return. OK, so he hadn’t mellowed much after all. ‘I could promised to focus on the Colin Willis link and nothing else?’ he suggested hopefully.

Marks leant forward again and splayed his hands out in front of him on the desk. Maybe to stop his fingers from tapping with irritation. Or maybe this time he really was concentrating. ‘All right,’ he sighed, ‘but I still want regular communication, and don’t decide to go running off at obscure tangents without checking with me first.’

TWENTY-ONE

Old habits die hard, or so they say. Goodhew’s favourite quiet spot at Parkside police station had always been the spare desk on the third floor, in the corner nearest his home. In the days when file servers and hubs had looked like extras from sci-fi sets, the original layout of the building had been modified to accommodate an air-conditioned IT room, thus eating into the open-plan office space and leaving an almost useless little cul-de-sac where a redundant desk had been shunted, out of the way.

Rather than pulling up a chair, Goodhew sat on the desk itself. He leant his back against the wall and faced the window.

It was ten to two.

He opened Colin Willis’ file and glanced at the first few documents, hoping to find the one that would suck him easily into this unfamiliar case. He already knew the bare facts: partially decomposed body dragged from the Cam, no missing person report, ligature still around throat, victim’s car abandoned, death suspected to be debt or drugs related. No leads. No further progress.

His gaze wandered back to the window and was drawn towards the Avery, the pub on the far side of Parker’s Piece.

That’s when he admitted that old habits die hard. Mel was standing there, indistinguishable and Lowry-like in the distance, but he knew her. She was with Toby. Even from that distance he could tell that their body language wasn’t good.

Get over it, he told himself, and looked back down to the file, flicking through it until he felt the gloss of photographic paper. With renewed interest, he slid out a clutch of prints. The first showed the water and the puffed-up clothes covering the torso. It looked like a Guy overstuffed and ready for a bonfire on 5th November.

He glanced through the window again. They were closer to him now. Mel was heading back to work, or trying to, but Toby stood in her path. Goodhew saw her speak, she pointed to her watch, then attempted to side-step him. He blocked her. She stopped and spoke again. Toby reacted instantly, the flats of his hands flew up, connecting with her shoulders so she involuntarily took a couple of quick steps back.

Goodhew found himself on his feet, the photographs making a cracking noise as one edge of the pile hit the floor.

Mel pushed past Toby and, although he reached towards her, he made no attempt to grab her. He appeared to be shouting. He stood facing the police station, And Goodhew was ready to move if Toby did, but in the end it was Mel who hurried back alone.

Toby continued to shout something, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She was about to cross the road directly in front of the station when she looked up at Goodhew. He had to be standing three or four feet back from the glass, yet he
knew
she could see him. Her stare was defiant, like she was demanding that he back off, telling him to interfere at his peril. He didn’t move for the first seconds, fixed to the spot by increasing discomfort. She glanced to her left, checking for traffic.

He stared down at the splay of photographs, now lying at his feet, and fixed his attention on the least pleasant shot of Colin Willis’ unnaturally pale skin stretched across his bloated corpse. The last body Goodhew had seen recovered from water had been dead for over a year, deliberately weighed down and wedged beneath an abandoned jetty on the Ouse. Flesh kept under water for that length of time reacts to form a soapy substance called adipocere. It stinks, worse than any normal decaying matter. Willis had been nowhere near that far gone, but Goodhew let memories of the stench of the other corpse seep back into his mind.

It was more than enough to jar him to action.

He bent on one knee to gather up the photos, and once he had them back on the desk he started again.

The cause of Willis’ death had been strangulation: a dog’s chrome choke chain, still lodged around the throat, had exerted sufficient pressure on the windpipe to crush it. No one seemed to have missed Willis, and therefore identification might have taken longer if Mill Road’s community beat officer, PC McKendrick, hadn’t recognized him from one of the morgue shots.

On the scale of parasites and predators, Willis had been somewhere between house mites and head lice: a persistent but manageable irritation. He’d been a dabbler; he’d dabbled with handling stolen goods and with selling cannabis, and when money became short he’d even dabbled with work. Once or twice, he’d tested the water by offering the police tip-offs but, despite his bold talk, Willis knew very little, and was taken into people’s confidence even less.

An exact date of death had never been determined but, according to the pathologist, the body had been left submerged for several weeks. Willis’ landlord hadn’t received rent for all of February, not in itself unusual, but he’d stuck to his routine of weekly visits to every tenant who owed him money and had not seen Willis since the first Friday in February.

On the 21st of that month, the residents of Fen Ditton had reported an abandoned vehicle, and on the 26th, the untaxed and inaccurately registered van had been impounded. It was only proved to be Willis’ after his DNA was matched to the DNA found in the pick-your-own snot collection Willis had been accumulating in the driver’s side door pocket. This narrowed the time of Willis’ disappearance and death down to weeks two and three of February.

Goodhew searched the file for any connection to Lorna Spence, or even any mention of Bryn O’Brien, but, much like the investigation itself, he drew a blank. The popular theory among the investigating team was that Willis had pissed someone off badly. Amazing the results a couple of centuries of police expertise can produce.