Cambridge Blue (30 page)

The taxi hurried from Ely, past flat farmlands, and eventually into the fringes of Cambridge. There was one thing Goodhew had known earlier: he was too tired to drive.

As the cab approached his flat he realized that his attention had drifted towards Parkside station. At the last moment, he directed the driver away and, several minutes later, he arrived on the doorstep of his grandmother’s apartment.

She took what seemed an age to open the door, and when he saw her he wondered whether she’d paused to apply make-up or if she slept with it on every night. Her housecoat looked newly ironed, too, and he felt more dog-eared than ever.

He frowned and she didn’t look too happy either. ‘You look like shit,’ she said.

‘You swore.’

She held open the door for him to step inside. ‘It’s called communicating with the younger generation,’ she said drily. ‘I was making a valid point.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Besides, at 4.30 a.m. I’m entitled to swear.’ But she didn’t sound at all tired, was clearly more awake than he was. ‘What’s up? And why didn’t you use your own key?’

‘Sorry, I left it at home. Look, I can’t sleep, I need to talk.’

He slumped into his favourite chair, and she perched on the edge of the chair facing his.

‘Well, well, I never thought I’d hear that coming from you, Gary. Not that I’m surprised, since you’ve pushed yourself to the limits to make detective in record time and now, correct me if I’m wrong, you seem to pressure yourself with far too much responsibility for every serious crime you touch.’ She paused. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘No? Look, you have yet to master the art of leaving work at work – it seems to follow you round all the time as if it’s hiding in your back pocket.’

Goodhew shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, actually it’s the murder I want to talk about,’ he said.

‘Explain it to me.’

‘The case? Sure.’ He settled back in the chair, and she did the same.

She listened without interruption.

‘I feel,’ he said finally, ‘as if we just don’t know anything. It’s too random, just a fog of possibilities and no clear direction through it.’

‘Of course there will be.’

‘Go on then, infect me with optimism.’

‘Of course, you know crucial pointers already, the problem is you have hoarded too many little gems of information and you can’t distinguish the ones that matter.’ She beamed at him.

‘Case closed then,’ he muttered.

‘Gary. Just pull in the slack.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘All these little gems – perhaps they’re all actually threaded on to the same bracelet. Pull in the slack and you’ll see how they all sit together.’

‘Oh God, optimism and analogy combined. Sorry, but I really am too tired for that.’

But she was on a roll. ‘What do your instincts tell you?’

‘Nothing. That’s why I came to see you. I haven’t got a clue any more.’

She gave the chair’s armrest a decisive thump. ‘I’m putting the kettle on. If you were ten years younger, I’d say you were over-tired and send you to bed.’ His grandmother retreated and Goodhew closed his eyes until he heard the kettle start to boil, then followed her into the kitchen.

‘I thought getting it off my chest might help.’

His grandmother raised an eyebrow. ‘Does that mean you’re turning over a new leaf?’

Goodhew laughed, but without humour. ‘No, just a one-off.’

‘You know the bracelet analogy? Maybe the gems are just in the wrong order.’

‘And I suppose you already worked out what the right order is?’ He took three tea bags from the canister and dropped them into the pot.

‘No, I haven’t the foggiest.’ She pulled out a tray and he loaded it with the milk, sugar and two mugs. But she wasn’t about to drop the matter either. ‘If Lorna’s death was planned, why do it in such an open place? Even at 1 a.m., there must’ve been a good chance of someone seeing them.’

‘Someone put the GHB in Lorna’s coffee, but how quickly it took effect wasn’t entirely in the killer’s hands. Perhaps the original plan was to kill her down one of the footpaths.’

He paused, aware that his grandmother’s train of thought had started to wander down an obscure footpath of its own.

‘Was she notably promiscuous?’

‘Possibly no more so than many single people. But what I am discovering is that she was a manipulator. She pulled strings in several people’s lives, then was there to pick up the pieces. I found some post at her flat, junk mail really, but it was all addressed to people she was connected to.’

‘Who?’

He listed them: ‘Jackie, Victoria, then two I’ve just visited; Hayley Sellars and Wayne Thompson. I now wonder if the killer sent them to her as some kind of reminder. Maybe Lorna had done something to hurt all four of them.’

‘Does that put them on your list of suspects?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ he mused. ‘The killer would hardly include themselves in the mail shot.’

‘Who knows?’ she replied. ‘They say the best place to hide is in a crowd.

‘And what’s it got to do with what was written on her palms?’

‘Lorna probably wrote the words herself, you know?

‘Maybe,’ he muttered, as he abruptly found himself heading down another stagnant backwater. ‘That’s the problem: too many pissing maybes.’ He carried the tray through to the sitting room and his grandmother followed.

‘Now
you’re
swearing,’ she observed.

He sank into the chair again, and his tiredness returned. He smiled wearily. ‘I’m entitled to, it’s a belated attempt at misspent youth.’

She changed the subject. ‘Could that man Bryn have killed her?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Why not?’ she persisted.

Goodhew shrugged. ‘Gut feeling.’

She pressed him. ‘You’re adamant?’

‘Absolutely.’

She beamed. ‘And ten minutes ago I thought you were banging on my door because you didn’t know whether you could trust your own judgement any longer.’

Goodhew smiled tiredly. ‘Touché.’

His mind wandered and she left him uninterrupted with his thoughts. Ten minutes later, his grandmother left the room, although he barely noticed. In his mind he was reading the labels of the junk mail envelopes, flicking through them one by one.

Jackie Moran.

Victoria Nugent.

Hayley Sellars.

Wayne Thompson-Stark.

He added more envelopes, one for Richard Moran, another for Alice Moran and a third for Bryn O’Brien. That made seven.

He knew the police would soon be swarming all over Hayley and Wayne’s lives, dragging up all their worst memories. Hayley’s words drifted back to him; spoken in a quiet but determined voice.
Lorna made everyone suffer.
Her words rang with such certainty. Perhaps she was wrong, but she believed it.

He flicked through the imaginary envelopes again, but now there were ten. Colin Willis had one this time, so did Kincaide, and the tenth was for Mel.

Shit, it was like a Rubik’s cube, coming neatly together on one side, only to be jumbled up on another. Jumbled and blurred.

He shut his eyes and pictured the cube gently levitating and unravelling.

In the kitchen, Goodhew’s grandmother stared into the eye-level grill where the bread lay face up like a row of sunbathers catching the afternoon rays. She loved seeing the golden tan creep across the white slices. When the toast was uniformly brown, she stacked it on a plate, before stealing a glance into the sitting room. She watched until she was sure he really was asleep, then poured his tea down the sink and took her own mug into her bedroom.

She turned on the bedside radio, just loud enough to pick out the banter from the Heart FM DJ; at 5.55 a.m. there was no chance she was going to get back to sleep.

She glanced over at her late husband’s photo, then at the photo of Gary with his sister. What did he want to prove anyway? But she knew his trouble; he had inherited a little too much of his grandfather’s conscience. He had to learn to let go of the things that he couldn’t put right.

On hearing the jingle for the start of the news, she carefully turned up the volume.

‘A woman’s body has been found in the centre of Cambridge in what looks like a shocking repeat of the recent Midsummer Common murder of Lorna Spence. A student made the grim discovery in the early hours of this morning, and early unofficial reports are are not ruling out the possibility that the deaths may be connected.’

She swung her legs back off the bed and muttered under her breath, ‘So much for your sleep, Gary.’

THIRTY-EIGHT

As Marks spoke to the coroner’s office on his mobile, he turned away from the murder scene and found himself facing the window of a gift shop. A teddy dressed as a Beefeater smiled back at him. Marks wandered out of the bear’s line of vision and instead stood at the end of Rose Crescent, his favourite street in the city. Such a shame for him that for some considerable time, he’d be picturing Victoria Nugent’s crumpled body at the end of it.

Marks hung up just as Gary Goodhew came into view. He glared, but his subordinate was too busy staring past him towards the cordon surrounding the body for his reproachful gaze to have any effect.

Marks held on to most of the dirty look and managed to sound caustic. ‘Oh, it’s you, Gary. There’s definitely a problem when I find it easier to identify murder victims than to recognize a member of my own team.’ He immediately felt a stab of guilt, knowing that Goodhew wore responsibility like a second skin. He lived with it day in, day out, and Marks doubted that he could shake it off it he tried. If Goodhew wasn’t always around, it certainly wouldn’t be because he was shirking.

‘Who?’ Goodhew asked.

‘Victoria Nugent.’ Marks saw no surprise in Goodhew’s eyes, just a final, almost apologetic glance in the dead girl’s direction. ‘Preliminaries say between eleven thirty last night and two thirty this morning.’

Goodhew looked for a second as though he was working on some kind of mental arithmetic, but all he said was, ‘How?’

‘Beaten and strangled. Actually, it might be the other way around. The killer pummelled her face into the ground, there’s not much blood, but what there is concentrated in one spot, like she wasn’t capable of struggling by then.’

‘Bryn?’ Goodhew didn’t often dabble with one-word sentences, but he was struggling to collate his thoughts. He hadn’t expected another death, and he was kicking himself because the one thing his limited experience should have taught him, was to always expect the unexpected.

Marks looked quizzical.

Goodhew rephrased it into something more comprehensible. ‘Has anyone spoken to him?’

‘Spoken to who?’ Marks still looked puzzled.

‘Bryn O’Brien.’

‘Where the hell did you get that from?’

‘Must’ve mentioned it. He was the guy that dated Lorna Spence a while back.’

‘I know that, and he made a statement after her death, remember? I still don’t remember anything about a relationship between him and Victoria Nugent.’

Goodhew shrugged. ‘Might be worth cross-checking the semen . . . if there is any, I mean.’

‘You irritate me—’ Marks began, then broke off mid-sentence.

After a moment, Goodhew asked another question to fill the awkward silence. ‘Did the murderer leave any message?’

Marks held up a hand in protest. ‘You irritate me,’ he repeated, sounding more matter-of-fact, ‘because I need you to be available as part of the team. Instead you resort to your disappearing skills, you shoot off like a bullet once an investigation starts, ricocheting around the case until you hit a target. I only know—’ He stopped abruptly as PC Kelly Wilkes hurried over with a folded sheet of A4. ‘What’s this?’

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’ve found the dead woman’s mobile phone. It was handed in to PC Jerram, who’s working on nights, and he’s been trying to get hold of you. It appears to be registered to the dead woman, and he had a play around with it, says she was texting another mobile early this morning. He’s checked that number and it is registered to a Mr O’Brien. I said I’d ask you to ring Sheen as soon as possible.’

Marks’ eyes narrowed as they studied first the note, then Goodhew’s impenetrable expression. Finally he sighed. ‘I was going to say next that I only know where you’ve been by the sound of the ricochet.’ He held up the sheet and flicked it with his finger. It gave a sharp crack. ‘That’s today’s ricochet, isn’t it?’

THIRTY-NINE

Ignoring his boss was not a deliberate ploy, and Goodhew was well aware that Marks had a point. But even so, just as Marks was making it, Goodhew stopped listening to him. Instead, his attention focused about two hundred yards further towards the city centre, as he watched a familiar figure turn and walk away from the police cordon.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ll only be a minute,’ Goodhew said, and ran towards the cordon before Marks could order him to stop.

A couple of heads turned as he passed and he thought he heard Marks shout his name, but he was only interested in catching up with the man he’d just spotted. He made it past the barricade, and on to the market square beyond just in time to see Bryn O’Brien vanish behind the striped canvas awning of the organic fruit and veg stand.

Goodhew kept running along between the rows of stalls as Bryn headed along a parallel path of the adjoining street, along the perimeter of the market. He didn’t try to hurry, and never looked back, but when Goodhew emerged suddenly from a gap to his right, O’Brien didn’t seem surprised either.

He stopped squarely in front of Goodhew. Bryn’s smart clothes were gone now, and the scuffed boots were back, but this time teamed with jeans instead of overalls. That gave him two deep front pockets, ideal for stuffing his hands into, which was what he immediately did. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

Goodhew turned and began to walk away, only speaking when Bryn caught up with him. ‘You came to find me,’ he pointed out. ‘So what do you want?’

‘I wanted to know who’s dead.’

Goodhew kept walking, looking straight ahead, forcing Bryn to make all the effort. ‘Don’t you already know?’ he asked coolly.