Trick of the Dark (45 page)

'Why? What have I said?'

'It's what you didn't say. It's the implication. We can't get her for the crimes in the past. If we want to nail her, we have to wait till she does it again.' Her voice shook and tears spilled from her eyes. 'Can't you see? It's just an interesting variation on Bill bloody Hopton.'

9

C
harlie sat on the same hard chair she'd occupied twenty years before. Back then, she'd been waiting for her first tutorial with Corinna Newsam. Now she was waiting for some other undergraduate to finish her business so Charlie could find a way to divert Corinna from a disastrous course. For the duration of the train journey from London to Oxford, she'd been trying to figure out what to say.

This was one occasion when the truth wasn't an option. It didn't matter that Charlie actually agreed with Corinna. In fact, that was the most dangerous position for her to adopt in any conversation with her former tutor. While Charlie couldn't quite believe that Corinna was capable of killing Jay, there were some things you couldn't take a chance on. Either Charlie had to present Corinna with enough evidence to go to the police - which she didn't have - or else she had to make the case for Jay's innocence. Since there wasn't enough evidence, Charlie had no choice. She would have to protect Jay. And that meant lies.

By the time Corinna had finished teaching, Charlie was as rehearsed as she was ever going to be. She took the chair opposite her former tutor, noticing that Corinna seemed to have lost weight in the nine days since she'd seen her last. Fear for your child would do that to a woman, Charlie thought.

There was no time wasted in small talk. Corinna came straight to the point. 'You've news for me?'

Charlie nodded. 'I've covered a lot of ground in the last week. Talked to a lot of people and found out a lot of things. It's been an interesting experience.'

'I'm sure it has. I suspect you have a gift for finding the interesting, Charlie. But have you managed to find enough evidence to convince Magda?' Corinna leaned forward in her seat, hands clasped tight in her lap. The last person Charlie had seen that tightly wound was a paedophile priest waiting for the heavens to fall on his head.

'All the evidence I have points firmly in one direction. You're not going to like this, Corinna. Jay Macallan Stewart is not a serial killer.'

Corinna touched one side of her face, as though she wasn't convinced she could trust her hearing. 'You're mistaken,' she said. 'You can't have checked properly. Death follows her around like a pet dog. It defies logic to suggest that every time someone stands between Jay Stewart and what she wants, they simply happen to die.' Her voice was firm, her attitude the one that Charlie remembered from her student days - the teacher who had a solid grasp of her subject, who would welcome argument but seldom concede her point. Charlie knew her only recourse was coherent and substantial argument.

'I know,' she said. 'But that's how it is. Sometimes the world runs counter-intuitive. Look, I'm not asking you just to take my word for it. For a start, I've not been working alone. A friend of mine who is a detective with the Met has been helping me with information that it's hard for a civilian to access. He's also got the skills I lack. He's been able to suggest how I should proceed when I've not known what to do for the best.'

'Very enterprising of you,' Corinna said crisply. 'And I do appreciate it. I was right in thinking you were the person for the job. The sort of woman who has resources.'

'And I'm also a scientist. That means I believe what the evidence tells me even when it runs against my theory of what was the case. Let me run through the deaths you told me about. First, Jess Edwards. Now, you say you saw Jay in the meadow very early on the morning of Jess's death. You were convinced at the time, even though it was still dark and she was some distance away.' Corinna made to speak but Charlie held up her hand. 'Please, Corinna, let me finish.'
Let me lie to you and see if I can get you to fall for it.
'I tracked down Jay's girlfriend at the time, Louise Proctor.'

'How did you manage that? The alumnae office has no current records for her. She severed all her ties with the college after she left. And no wonder. A vulnerable girl preyed on by Jay Stewart, preyed on to the extent that she tried to kill herself. '

Charlie was pretty sure that hadn't been quite the way it was, but she was on pretty shaky ground since she knew next to nothing about Jay's early love life. 'That's the advantage of having a policeman in your corner. Law-abiding people aren't that hard to trace when you have access to official records. So, I spoke to Louise. She doesn't have any loyalty towards Jay. As you suggest, she holds Jay responsible for one of the more miserable episodes of her life. So there's no reason why she should lie for her. Agreed?'

Corinna dipped her chin in a grudging nod. 'I suppose not.'

'According to Louise, on the morning Jess died, Jay was in bed with her until after seven o'clock. By that time, the rowers were down at the boathouse and Jess's body had been discovered. '

'That's impossible. How can she be sure? How can she remember one morning in particular so clearly?'

Charlie assembled her thoughts. This was not the time to be talking about anomalies. 'Because it was the morning Jess Edwards died. And because they'd been lying awake since just after six. Jay was raging about Jess and the JCR election. When she went down to breakfast and found out about Jess, Louise remembers thinking how awful it was that Jay had been so mean about Jess right when the poor girl was drowning. So she has an alibi.'

Corinna looked disgusted. 'How truly ironic,' she said.

'What do you mean?'

Her lip curled in contempt. 'If Jay had produced that as an alibi at the time, nobody would have believed it. They'd all have said Louise was lying for her out of love. But now Louise has every reason to hate her. And only now she comes out with it.' Corinna shook her head. 'I have to take your word for it, but it's hard to believe I was wrong. I know what I saw.'

'I don't want to seem patronising, Corinna, but eyewitness reports are notoriously inaccurate. And there's a perfectly respectable psychological mechanism behind it. Our brains look for patterns. We seek resemblances. So we overlay what we actually see with what we expect to see based on visual clues. And as time goes by, we reinforce the memory with more details that come not from what we saw but from what our brain tells us we must have seen. You saw a figure who for some reason reminded you of Jay. You saw them in an area where you might reasonably expect to see Jay herself. And your brain filled in the gaps.' Charlie spread her arms wide and shrugged. 'We all do it all the time. You've nothing to reproach yourself with.'

'I still believe my own eyes.' The stubborn set of Corinna's jaw didn't bode well for the success of Charlie's plan. But there was nothing to do but press on.

'Fine. But you have to ask yourself who Magda's going to accept - you with a figure glimpsed through the dark, or Jay with her perfect alibi. At this point, Magda has no reason to distrust Jay. But you? She knows you're violently opposed to her and Jay being together.'

Corinna's look was venomous. 'What else did you find out?' she demanded.

'I checked out the Fatal Accident Inquiry into Kathy Lipson's death. There's no question that Jay cut the rope when Kathy fell off the rock pinnacle they were climbing. But there's also nothing to contradict her version of events. Kathy was the driving force behind the trip to Skye. She'd apparently always wanted to do winter climbing in the Cuillins and you only get a couple of chances every winter. You have to grab it when you can. And sometimes the weather closes in on you, as it did on them.'

'She could have pushed her off and made it look like an accident.'

Charlie nodded. 'She could have. But there's no witnesses. And nothing in the physical evidence to contradict Jay's version. I spoke to two of the mountain rescue guys who brought her off the mountain. They were sorry for her. They understood the stigma she's suffered in climbing circles after cutting the rope. But they also totally supported what she did. It's right to cut the rope when you have the stark choice. You're both going to die unless you cut the rope, in which case one of you might live. It's hard to argue with that, Corinna.'

Corinna glared at her. 'Has she got to you? Is this some kind of lesbian solidarity?'

Charlie felt the blush of anger spread up her neck. 'That is incredibly insulting. I've just spent nine days and a chunk of change trying to prove your crazy theory. Not because I owe you a thing, but because I like your daughter and I think she needs somebody in her corner. But if you think I would cover up evidence of murder just for the sake of sisterhood, you are so far off the scale of sanity that I could probably call a colleague right now and have you sectioned.' She picked up her bag and gathered her coat around her, preparing to leave.

'Wait,' Corinna said urgently. 'Please. I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm truly sorry.' Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. 'You see how this business has thrown me off kilter?' She stood up abruptly and went to a tall mahogany cabinet. She opened it and took out a bottle of red wine. 'I do know you better than that, Charlie. Forgive me. I'm just so bitterly disappointed. Take a drink with me?'

Charlie sat back in the chair, but shook her head. She wanted nothing to blunt her edge for this conversation. She waited while Corinna poured herself a modest glass of wine. 'I looked at Ulf Ingemarsson's murder too. And while it's true that Jay was out of the country when it happened, my friend the detective has seen her schedule for that week. There's no room for a side trip to Spain,' she said earnestly. 'Even if she'd driven through the night, she couldn't have got to Ingemarsson's villa and back to where she was supposed to be next morning.' Another lie, but Charlie was on a roll now. Whatever her suspicions, she had no proof against Jay. The woman was entitled to the presumption of innocence; more importantly, she was entitled not to be the victim of Corinna's notion of justice.

'She could have hired someone,' Corinna said defiantly.

Charlie groaned. 'Sure, she could have hired someone. People in her line of work come across hitmen all the time.' Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. 'Would you know where to start looking for a hired killer? I've been working in the field of abnormal psychology for more than a dozen years. I spend my days with killers and rapists and paedophiles and I have no idea how to find a hitman. It's not like you can Google it.'

'She might have commissioned burglary and got murder,' Corinna insisted.

'Same argument. Where is she going to find herself a burglar for hire? Would you know where to start? It's not like you can ask one of your magistrate pals to recommend a good one, is it? And here's another thing. Speaking purely as a psychiatrist, with all I know about Jay Stewart, I cannot see her putting herself at someone else's mercy. Once you commission a crime, you're vulnerable for ever. It's just not her personality type. She likes being in control too much.'

Corinna drained her glass and put it down. 'You make a good case,' she said, voice and eyes dull. 'You always knew how to frame an argument. I'd hoped you were going to be marshalling that sharp intellect on the other side of the question. ' She sighed and stood up, walking over to the window and staring down at the college garden where Magda's wedding reception had taken place. 'It's funny,' she said. 'That day started so perfectly. I'd worried about Magda. She'd always been so focused on her job, I thought she was missing out on love and friendship and the possibility of the kind of life I've been privileged to enjoy.'

Charlie bit her tongue, thinking of the inescapable Catholic misery of being married to Henry; of juggling the demands of four children, a big house and a constant stream of students with their intellectual challenges; of those six a.m. shifts at her college desk trying to achieve the publications that would make it impossible for the college not to offer her a fellowship; of the succession of bright young undergraduates who were needy enough to be grateful to Corinna for friendship and biddable enough to be cheap and reliable babysitters. And she was glad beyond words that Magda had a different prospect ahead of her.

'But then Philip came along,' Corinna continued. 'What I liked about him was something you don't find a lot in young men. He was kind. He wasn't pushy or aggressive. You could see he was ambitious, but not ruthless. We figured he'd take good care of our girl. That morning, I felt like everything had fallen into place. Magda marrying a good man, the wedding here at my own college.'

Charlie was finding Corinna's melodramatic monologue hard to take. 'But by nightfall, it had all gone to shit,' she said drily.

Corinna winced at the language. 'It was tragedy,' she said, turning back to the room. 'If Philip had lived, you can't tell me Magda wouldn't be happily married at this moment. We wouldn't have had any of this lesbian nonsense, never mind having to worry about our daughter living with a killer.'

'Excuse me? "Lesbian nonsense"? Are you deliberately trying to be offensive?' Charlie shook her head and reached for the spare glass Corinna had brought for her. She poured herself some wine and took a deep draught. This time, she let her anger flow. 'Your daughter's a lesbian, Corinna. It's not some adolescent phase. If Philip had lived, the marriage would have collapsed when Magda couldn't go on resisting her true nature. Either that or she'd have endured a life half-lived for the sake of respectability and not upsetting you and Henry. Whatever way it had gone, she'd have been bloody miserable. So spare me the fairy-tale romance. Magda's a dyke. Get over it.'

'You don't know that,' Corinna said. 'I've come across a few cases over the years where women have gone back to men after years of lesbian affairs. What is it you call them? Has-bians? Was-bians?'

'Lobotomised,' Charlie said acidly. Seeing Corinna's expression, she added wearily, 'That was a joke, Corinna. I'm finding this all a bit hard to stomach. I haven't had a conversation like this in a dozen years. It's all a bit weird to find myself talking to someone who makes the
Daily Mail
look tolerant. Especially since you're the one who's been asking me favours.'