Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Read on for an extract from Daisy in Chains
About the Author
Also by Sharon Bolton
Copyright
HAVE YOU READ THEM ALL?
THE LACEY FLINT THRILLERS
NOW YOU SEE ME
A savage murder on London’s streets, 120 years to the day since Jack the Ripper began his reign of terror. Lacey Flint hunts a psychopath whose infamous role model has never been found . . .
‘Probably the best thriller that you’ll read all year’ Choice Magazine
DEAD SCARED
A spate of suicides at a prestigious university, each more horrific than the last. The only way to find the killer is to send someone undercover: Lacey Flint becomes the bait . . .
‘Sharon Bolton is hot property in crime fiction right now’ Stylist
IF SNOW HADN’T FALLEN (A SHORT STORY)
Tensions come to the boil when a young Muslim man is brutally murdered by a masked gang. There’s just one witness: DC Lacey Flint.
‘Bolton knows precisely how to ratchet up the tension and tell a cracking story’ Guardian
LIKE THIS, FOR EVER
Twelve-year-old Barney Roberts is obsessed with a series of local murders. His neighbour DC Lacey Flint joins the hunt for the killer . . .
‘Spine-tingling’ Lisa Gardner
A DARK AND TWISTED TIDE
Police Constable Lacey Flint thinks she’s safe. Living on the river, working on the river, swimming in the river, she’s never been happier. It can’t last . . .
‘Bolton’s latest gripper. Suffused with menace’ The Times
HERE BE DRAGONS (A SHORT STORY)
Mark Joesbury is risking everything to stop a deadly attack on the capital. But it’s not just London he’s fighting to save: the terrorists have also got the woman he loves, DC Lacey Flint . . .
‘Bolton rules the world of the psychological thriller’ Huffington Post
THE STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
SACRIFICE
Tora Hamilton, a newcomer to the remote island of Shetland, discovers a woman’s body preserved in the mud of her field. Who is she, and why is Tora so unwelcome here?
‘If she carries on like this she will have worshippers in their millions’ The Times
AWAKENING
A series of unnatural events are occurring in Clara Benning’s village. The reclusive vet discovers a connection to an abandoned house, and a fifty-year-old tragedy the villagers would rather forget . . .
‘This book writhes and glides and slithers its way into the reader’s psyche’ Guardian
BLOOD HARVEST
Harry, the new vicar in town, is subjected to a series of menacing events. What secret is his parish hiding from him, and who is the young girl lingering in the graveyard?
‘Well-crafted, original and spooky’ Daily Mail
LITTLE BLACK LIES
Living in a small, island community, Catrin can’t escape the woman who destroyed her life. How long before revenge becomes irresistible?
‘Creeps under your skin and doesn’t let you go’ Paula Hawkins
DAISY IN CHAINS
Hamish Wolfe is handsome, charismatic – and a convicted murderer. He wants bestselling true-crime writer Maggie Rose to prove his innocence. But will she be able to resist his charms?
‘Utterly suspenseful. A terrific, twisted read’ Paula Daly
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Sharon Bolton 2012
Extract from Daisy in Chains © Sharon Bolton 2016
Sharon Bolton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409030676
ISBN 9780593064153
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
When a Cambridge student dramatically attempts to take her own life, DI Mark Joesbury realizes that the university has developed an unhealthy record of young people committing suicide in extraordinary ways.
Despite huge personal misgivings, Joesbury sends young policewoman DC Lacey Flint to Cambridge with a brief to work undercover, posing as a vulnerable, depression-prone student.
Psychiatrist Evi Oliver is the only person in Cambridge who knows who Lacey really is – or so they both hope. But as the two women dig deeper into the darker side of university life, they discover a terrifying trend . . .
And when Lacey starts experiencing the same disturbing nightmares reported by the dead girls, she knows that she is next.
In memory of Peter Inglis Smith:
kind neighbour, great writer, good friend.
What are fears but voices airy?
Whispering harm where harm is not,
And deluding the unwary
Till the fatal bolt is shot!
William Wordsworth
Tuesday 22 January (a few minutes before midnight)
WHEN A LARGE object falls from a great height, the speed at which it travels accelerates until the upward force of air resistance becomes equal to the downward propulsion of gravity. At that point, whatever is falling reaches what is known as terminal velocity, a constant speed that will be maintained until it encounters a more powerful force, most commonly the ground.
Terminal velocity of the average human body is thought to be around 120 miles per hour. Typically this speed is reached fifteen or sixteen seconds into the fall, after a distance of between five hundred and six hundred metres.
A commonly held misconception is that people falling from considerable heights die before impact. Only rarely is this true. Whilst the shock of the experience could cause a fatal heart attack, most falls simply don’t last long enough for this to happen. Also, in theory, a body could freeze in sub-zero temperatures, or become unconscious due to oxygen deprivation, but both these scenarios rely upon the faller’s leaping from a plane at significant altitude and, other than the more intrepid skydivers, people rarely do that.
Most people who fall or jump from great heights die upon impact when their bones shatter and cause extensive damage to the surrounding tissue. Death is instantaneous. Usually.
The woman on the edge of one of the tallest towers in Cambridge probably doesn’t have to worry too much about when she might achieve terminal velocity. The tower is not quite two hundred feet tall and her body will continue to accelerate as she falls its full length. She should, on the other hand, be thinking very seriously about impact. Because when that occurs, the flint cobbles around the base of the tower will shatter her young bones like fine crystal. Right now, though, she doesn’t seem concerned about anything. She stands like a sightseer, taking in the view.
Cambridge, just before midnight, is a city of black shadows and gold light. The almost-full moon shines down like a spotlight on the wedding-cake elegance of the surrounding buildings, on the pillars pointing like stone fingers to the cloudless sky, and on the few people still out and about, who slip like phantoms in and out of pools of light.
She sways on the spot and, as if something has caught her attention, her head tilts down.
At the base of the tower the air is still. A torn page of yesterday’s Daily Mail lies undisturbed on the pavement. Up at the top, there is wind. Enough to blow the woman’s hair around her head like a flag. The woman is young, maybe a year or two either side of thirty, and would be beautiful if her face weren’t empty of all expression. If her eyes had any light behind them. This is the face of someone who believes she is already dead.
The man racing across the First Court of St John’s College, on the other hand, is very much alive, because in the human animal nothing affirms life quite like terror. Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury, of the branch of the Metropolitan Police that sends its officers into the most dangerous situations, has never been quite this scared in his life before.
Up on the tower, it’s cold. The January chill comes drifting over the Fens and wraps itself across the city like a paedophile’s hand round that of a small, unresisting child. The woman isn’t dressed for winter but seems to be unaware of the cold. She blinks and suddenly those dead eyes have tears in them.
DI Joesbury has reached the door to the chapel tower and finds it unlocked. It slams back against the stone wall and his left shoulder, which will always be the weaker of the two, registers the shock of pain. At the first corner, Joesbury spots a shoe, a narrow, low-heeled blue leather shoe, with a pointed toe and a high polish. He almost stops to pick it up and then realizes he can’t bear to. Once before he held a woman’s shoe in his hand and thought he’d lost her. He carries on, up the steps, counting them as he goes. Not because he has the faintest idea how many there are, but because he needs to be marking progress in his head. When he reaches the second flight, he hears footsteps behind him. Someone is following him up.
He feels the cold air just as he sees the door at the top. He’s out on the roof before he has any idea what he’s going to do if he’s too late and she’s already jumped. Or what the hell he’ll do if she hasn’t.
‘Lacey,’ he yells. ‘No!’
Friday 11 January (eleven days earlier)
ALL BAR ONE near Waterloo Station was busy, with nearly a hundred people shouting to make themselves heard above the music. Smoking has been banned in the UK’s public places for years but something seemed to be hovering around these folk, thickening the air, turning the scene around me into an out-of-focus photograph taken on a cheap camera.
I knew instinctively he wasn’t there.
No need to look at my watch to know I was sixteen minutes late. I’d timed it to the second. Too late would look rude, or as if I were trying to make a point; too close to the agreed time would seem eager. Calm and professional, that’s what I was going to be. A little distant. Being a bit late was part of that. Except now he was the one who was late.
At the bar, I ordered my usual drink-for-difficult-occasions and stretched up on to a vacant bar stool. Sipping the colourless liquid, I could see my reflection in the mirrors behind the bar. I’d come straight from work. Somehow, I’d resisted the temptation to leave early and spend the better part of two hours showering, blow-drying my hair, putting on make-up and choosing clothes. I’d been determined not to look nice for Mark Joesbury.
I fished my laptop out of my bag and put it down on the bar – not actually planning to work, just to make it look that way – and opened a presentation on the UK’s laws on pornography that I was due to give the following week to a group of new recruits at Hendon. I opened a slide at random – the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. The recruits would be surprised to learn, because most people were, that possession of all non-child pornography was perfectly legal in the UK until the 2008 Act outlawed extreme pornographic images. Naturally, they’d want to know what qualified as extreme. Hence the main content of the slide I was looking at.
An extreme pornographic image depicts a sexual act that:
• threatens, or appears to threaten, a person’s life.
• results in serous injury to sexual organs.
• involves a human corpse.
• involves an animal
I changed a spelling mistake in the second bullet point and added a full stop to the fourth.
Joesbury hadn’t arrived. Not that I’d looked round. I would know the minute he walked through the door.
Twenty-four hours earlier I’d had a five-minute briefing with my DI at Southwark Police Station. SCD10, still colloquially known by everyone as SO10, the special crimes directorate of the Metropolitan Police that deals with covert operations, had requested my help with a case. Not just any young female detective constable but me specifically, and the lead officer on the case, DI Mark Joesbury, would meet me the following evening. ‘What case?’ I’d asked. DI Joesbury would fill me in, I was told. My DI had been tight-lipped and grumpy, probably on account of having his staff filched without being told why.
I checked my watch again. He was twenty-three minutes late, my drink was disappearing too quickly and at half past I was going home.
I couldn’t even remember what he looked like, I realized. Oh, I had a vague idea of height, build and colouring, and I remembered those turquoise eyes, but I couldn’t conjure up a picture of his face. Which was odd, really, given that he was never out of my head for a second.
‘Lacey Flint, as I live and breathe,’ said a voice directly behind me.
I took a deep breath and turned round slowly, to see Mark Joesbury, maybe just a fraction over six feet tall, strongly built, suntanned skin even in January, bright turquoise eyes. Wearing a thick, untidy, ginger wig.
‘I’m undercover,’ he said. And then he winked at me.
THE DISABLED PARKING space outside Dr Evi Oliver’s house was empty for a change. Even with the prominent Private Parking sign on the old brick wall it wasn’t unusual, especially at weekends, for Evi to arrive home and find that a tourist with a bad leg had claimed it for his own. Tonight she was in luck.
She steeled herself to the inevitable pain and got out of the car. She was thirty minutes overdue with her medication and it just wasn’t handling the pain the way it used to. Unfolding the stick, she tucked it under her left arm and, a little steadier now, found her briefcase. As usual, the effort left her slightly out of breath. As usual, being alone in the dark didn’t help.
Wanting to get inside as soon as she could, Evi made herself take a moment to look round and listen. The house where she’d lived for the last five and a half months was at the end of a cul de sac and surrounded by walled college gardens and the river Cam. It was probably one of the quietest streets in Cambridge.
There was no one in sight, and nothing to hear but traffic in the next street and the wind in the nearby trees.
It was late. Nine o’clock on a Friday evening and it simply hadn’t been possible to stay at work any longer. Her new colleagues had already written her off as a sad, semi-crippled spinster, old before her time, with no life of her own outside work. They wouldn’t exactly be wrong about that. But what really kept Evi at her desk until security closed down the building wasn’t the emptiness of the rest of her life. It was fear.
I WAS AWARE of sniggers around us, a few curious glances. I half heard Joesbury tell the bloke behind the bar that he’d have a pint of IPA and the lady would have a refill. When I finally got my breath and had wiped my eyes, Joesbury was looking puzzled.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh before,’ he said. Shaking his head softly, as though it was me who was nuts, he was watching the barman pour my drink. Bombay Sapphire over lots of ice in a tall glass. He slid it to me, eyebrows high.
‘You drink neat gin?’ he asked me.
‘No. I drink it with ice and lemon,’ I replied, as I realized the man at the bar, and several others near by, were watching us. What the hell was Joesbury playing at?
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ I asked him. ‘Are you planning on wearing that thing all night?’
‘Nah, it makes my head itch.’ He pulled the wig off, dropped it on to the bar and picked up his glass. The discarded hairpiece lay in front of him like roadkill as he scratched behind his left ear. ‘I can put it back on later, though,’ he said. ‘If you want.’
His hair had grown since I’d last seen him, just touching his collar at the back. It was darker brown than I remembered, with just the faintest kink in it. The longer style suited him, softening the lines of his skull and lengthening his cheekbones, making him infinitely better-looking. The soft light of the bar made the scar around his right eye barely visible. The muscles in my jaw were aching. All this time I’d been grinning at him.
‘And again I ask, what are you playing at?’ If I sounded grumpy, he might not realize how ridiculously pleased I was to see him. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be low-profile man?’
‘I thought it might break the ice,’ he replied, wiping beer foam off his upper lip. ‘Things were a bit tense last time I saw you.’
Last time I’d seen Joesbury, he’d been minutes away from bleeding to death. So had I, come to that. I guess ‘a bit tense’ just about covered it.
‘How are you?’ I asked him, although I already had a pretty good idea. For the last couple of months I’d shamelessly begged updates from mutual acquaintances. I knew the gunshot he’d taken that night had torn a good chunk of lung tissue that surgeons, and time, had managed to repair. I knew he’d spent four weeks in hospital, that he would be on light duties for another three months, but fine to return to full duties after that.
‘I might give the London marathon a miss this year,’ he said, stretching out one hand and taking hold of mine, causing tightly stretched guitar strings to start twanging in my stomach. ‘Otherwise fine.’ He turned my wrist to see its underside and looked for a second at the heavy-duty plaster I still wore, more because I didn’t like looking at the scar beneath than because it needed to be covered. Three months on, it had healed as much as it ever would. Which would never be enough.
‘I thought you might come and see me,’ he went on. ‘Those hospital-issue pyjamas were quite fetching.’
‘I sent a teddy,’ I replied. ‘I expect it got lost in the post.’
We both knew I was lying. What I’d never tell him was that I’d spent nearly an hour gazing at pictures on the Steiff of Germany website, picking out the exact teddy I would have sent, if such a thing were possible. The one I’d finally settled on was similar to the one he’d once given me, just bigger and cheekier. Last time I checked the site it had been marked unavailable. Couldn’t have put it better myself. He was looking at my face now, specifically at my newly modelled nose. It had been reset a month ago following a break and the post-op bruising had just about disappeared.
‘Nice work,’ he said. ‘Tiny bit longer than it was?’
‘I thought it made me look intellectual.’
He was still holding my wrist and I’d made no attempt to pull away. ‘I hear they’ve got you working on porn,’ he said. ‘Enjoying it?’
‘They’ve got me doing research and briefings,’ I snapped, because I never like to hear men even half joking about porn. ‘They seem to think I’m good at detail.’
Joesbury let go of me and I could see his mood changing. He turned away and his eyes settled on a table by the window.
‘Well, if we’ve got the social pleasantries out of the way, we should sit down,’ he said. Without waiting for me to agree, he tucked the wig under his arm, picked up both drinks and made his way through the bar. I followed, telling myself I had no right to be disappointed. This wasn’t a date.
Joesbury had been carrying a rucksack. He pulled a slim brown case file out of it and put it down, unopened, on the table between us.
‘I’ve got clearance from your guvnors at Southwark to request your help on a case,’ he said, and he might have been any senior officer briefing any junior one. ‘We need a woman. One who can pass for early twenties at most. There’s no one in the division available. I thought of you.’
‘I’m touched,’ I said, playing for time. Cases referred to SO10 involved officers being sent undercover into difficult and dangerous situations. I wasn’t sure I was ready for another of those.
‘Do well and it’ll look good on your record,’ he said.
‘The opposite, of course, also being the case.’
Joesbury smiled. ‘I’m under orders to tell you that the decision is entirely yours,’ he said. ‘I’m further instructed by Dana to inform you that I’m an irresponsible fool, that it’s far too soon after the Ripper business to even think about putting you on a case like this and that you should tell me to go to hell.’
‘Tell her I said hi,’ I replied. Dana was DI Dana Tulloch, who headed up the Major Investigation Team that I’d worked with last autumn. She was also Joesbury’s best mate. I liked Dana, but couldn’t help resenting her closeness to Joesbury.
‘On the other hand,’ he was saying, ‘the case largely came to our attention through Dana. She was contacted on an informal basis by an old university friend of hers, now head of student counselling at Cambridge University.’
‘What’s the case?’ I asked.
Joesbury opened the file. ‘That stomach of yours still pretty strong?’ I nodded, although it hadn’t exactly been put to the test much lately. He took out a small stack of photographs and slid them along the table towards me. I looked briefly at the one on the top and had to close my eyes for a second. There are some things that it really is better never to see.
EVI RAN HER eyes along the brick wall that surrounded her garden, around the nearby buildings, into dark areas under trees, wondering if fear was going to overshadow the rest of her life.
Fear of being alone. Fear of shadows that became substance. Of whispers that came scurrying out of the darkness. Of a beautiful face that was nothing more than a mask. Fear of the few short steps between the safety of her car and her house.
Had to be done sometime. She locked the car and set off towards her front gate. The wrought ironwork was old but had been resprung so that a light touch would send it swinging open.
The easterly wind coming off the Fens was strong tonight and the leaves on the two bay trees rustled together like old paper. Even the tiny leaves of the box hedging were dancing little jigs. Lavender bushes flanked each side of the path. In June the scent would welcome her home like the smile on a loved one’s face. For now, the unclipped stalks were bare.
The Queen Anne house, built nearly three hundred years ago for the master of one of the older Cambridge colleges, was the last place Evi had expected to be offered as living accommodation when she’d accepted her new job. A large house of soft warm brickwork, with blond limestone detailing, it was one of the most prestigious homes in the university’s gift. Its previous occupant, an internationally renowned professor of physics who’d narrowly missed the Nobel Prize twice, had lived in it for nearly thirty years. After meningitis robbed him of his lower limbs, the university had converted the house into disabled-living accommodation.
The professor had died nine months ago and when Evi was offered the post of head of student counselling, with part-time teaching and tutoring responsibilities, the university had seen a chance to recoup some of its investment.
The flagstone path was short. Just five yards through the centre of the knot garden and she’d be at the elaborate front porch. Carriage-style lanterns either side of the door lit the full length of the path. Usually she was glad of them. Tonight she wasn’t so sure.
Because without them, she probably wouldn’t have seen the trail of fir cones leading from the gate to the door.
‘YOU’RE LOOKING AT Bryony Carter,’ Joesbury told me. ‘Nineteen years old. First-year medical student.’
‘What happened?’
‘She set fire to herself,’ he replied. ‘On the night of her college Christmas ball a few weeks ago. Maybe she was pissed off not to be invited, but dinner was just coming to an end when she staggered in like a human torch.’
I risked a glance at the figure enveloped in flames. ‘Grim,’ I said, which didn’t seem enough. Choosing to die at your own hand was one thing. To do it by fire was another entirely. ‘And people saw this happen?’
Joesbury gave a single, short nod. ‘Not only did they see it, several took photographs on their iPhones. I ask you, kids!’
I started to look through the rest of the photographs. The burning girl had thrown her head back and it wasn’t possible to see her face. One thing to be grateful for. More of a problem were small, vague shapes visible through the flames that looked like chunks of flesh melting away from her body. And her left hand, outstretched towards the camera, had turned black. It looked more like a chicken’s claw than anything you might see on a human body.
The fifth photograph in the stack showed the girl on the floor. A long-haired man wearing a dinner jacket and a shocked expression was standing closest to her, a fire extinguisher in his arms. An upturned ice bucket lay nearby. A girl in a blue dress had a water jug in one hand.
‘She was pretty high on some new-fangled hallucinogenic drug at the time,’ said Joesbury. ‘You have to hope she didn’t know too much about what was going on.’
‘What has it got to do with SO10?’ I asked.
‘First question I asked,’ he replied. ‘Local CID aren’t unduly concerned. They’ve done the classic three-tick-box check to determine a suicide and found nothing to suggest anything sinister.’
I took a moment to wonder how many acts would be considered more sinister than setting fire to yourself. ‘I’m not familiar with that,’ I said. ‘What you just said about tick-boxes.’
‘Means, Motive, Intent,’ said Joesbury. ‘First thing to check with a possible suicide is whether the means of death was readily to hand. Pistol close by the shooting hand, noose round the neck and something to stand on, that sort of thing. In Bryony’s case, the petrol can was found outside the dining hall. And the investigating officer found a receipt for it in her room. He also found traces of the drug she’d been using for Dutch courage.’
Someone leaned over to put an empty glass on the table and caught sight of the photograph. Without looking up, I slid the pictures under the file.
‘Next box is motive,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Bryony had been depressed for some time. She was a bright girl but she was struggling to keep up with the coursework. Complained about never being able to sleep.’
‘What about intent?’ I asked.
Joesbury nodded. ‘She left a note to her mother. Short and very sad, I’m told. The report prepared by the first officer on the scene and the SOCs report on the state of her room are in the file,’ he went on. ‘No evidence of staging that they could see.’
Staging refers to tricks sometimes used by killers to make a murder look like suicide. Placing a gun near to a victim’s hand would be a classic example. The absence of the victim’s fingerprints on the gun would indicate staging.
‘And a couple of hundred people saw her do it,’ I said.
‘They certainly saw her in flames,’ said Joesbury. ‘And it’s the third suicide at the university this academic year. Does the name Jackie King ring any bells?’
I thought for a moment and shook my head.
‘Killed herself in November. Made a few of the national papers.’
‘I must have missed it.’ Since the case we’d both worked on last autumn, I’d made a point of avoiding the papers and the national news. I would never be comfortable seeing my own name in the spotlight, and constant reminders of what the team had been through were not, as the therapists would say, going to help the healing process.
‘I still don’t get it,’ I went on. ‘Why are SO10 interested in a college suicide?’
Joesbury pulled another file out of his bag. Asking him not to open it didn’t really seem like an option so I sat and waited while he pulled out another set of photographs. Not that multiples were strictly necessary. I got the idea clearly enough from the one on the top. A girl, obviously dead, with wet hair and clothes. And a rope tied tight around her ankles.
‘This was a suicide?’ I asked.
‘Apparently so,’ he replied. ‘Certainly no obvious evidence otherwise. This was Jackie in her better days.’
Joesbury had pulled the last of the photographs to the top of the pile. Jackie King looked the outdoor type. She was wearing a sailing-style sweatshirt, her hair was long, fair, shiny and straight. Young, healthy, bright and attractive, surely she’d had everything to live for?
‘Poor girl,’ I said, and waited for him to go on.
‘Three suicides this year, three last, four the year before,’ he said. ‘Cambridge is developing a very unhealthy record when it comes to young people taking their own lives.’
EVI STOPPED, WILLING the wind to soften so that she could hear the snigger, the scuffle of feet that would tell her someone was watching. Because someone had to be watching. There was no way these cones had blown on to the path. There were twelve in all, one in the exact centre of each flagstone, forming a straight line right up to the front door.
Three nights in a row this had happened. Last night and the night before it had been possible to explain away. The cones had been scattered the first time she’d seen them, as though blown by the wind. Last night, there’d been a pile of them just inside the gate. This was much more deliberate.
Who could possibly know how much she hated fir cones?
She turned on the spot, using the stick for balance. Too much noise from the wind to hear anything. Too many shadows to be sure she was alone. She should get indoors. Walking as quickly up the path as she was able, she reached the front door and stepped inside.
Another cone, larger than the rest, lay on the mat.
Evi kept her indoor wheelchair to one side of the front door. Without taking her eyes off the cone, she pushed the door shut and sat down in it. She was in the grip of an old, irrational fear, one she acknowledged but was powerless to do anything about, dating back to when, as a chubby, inquisitive four-year-old, she’d picked up a large fir cone from beneath a tree.
She’d been on holiday in the north of Italy with her family. The pine trees in the forest had been massive, stretching up to the heavens, or so it had seemed to the tiny girl. The cone was huge too, easily dwarfing her little plump hands. She’d picked it up, turned to her mother in delight and felt a tickle on her left wrist.
When she looked down, her hands and the lower parts of her arms were covered in crawling insects. She remembered howling and one of her parents brushing the insects away. But some had got inside her clothes and they’d had to undress her in the forest. Years later, the memory of delight turning to revulsion still had the power to disturb her.
No one could know that. Even her parents hadn’t mentioned the incident in decades. A weird joke, nothing more, probably nothing to do with her. Maybe a child had been playing here earlier, had left a trail of cones and popped one through her letter box. Evi wheeled herself towards the kitchen. She got as far as the doorway.
Heaped on the kitchen table, which several hours ago she’d left completely clear, was a pile of large fir cones.
‘YOUNG PEOPLE COMMITTING suicide is hardly uncommon, though,’ I said, thinking as I spoke. ‘The suicide rate is higher among the student body than the rest of the population, isn’t it? Wasn’t there a case in Wales a few years ago?’
‘You’re thinking about Bridgend,’ said Joesbury. ‘Although technically, that didn’t involve a university. Cluster suicides do happen. But they’re rare. And Dana’s mate isn’t the only one who’s worried. The media attention is getting the governing body very edgy too. Outlandish public suicides don’t look good for one of the world’s leading academic institutions.’
‘But no suggestion of foul play?’ I asked.
‘On the contrary. Both Bryony and Jackie had a psychiatric history,’ said Joesbury. ‘Jackie in the past, Bryony more recently.’
‘Bryony was receiving counselling?’
‘She was,’ said Joesbury. ‘Not by Dana’s friend herself, what’s her name …’ He pulled a stack of paper from the file and flicked through it. ‘Oliver,’ he said, after a moment, ‘Dr Evi Oliver … not with her but with one of her colleagues. There’s a team of counsellors dedicated to the university and Dr Oliver heads it up.’
‘What about the other girl?’ I said.
Joesbury nodded. ‘Jackie had her problems too, according to her friends,’ he said. ‘So did the young lad who hanged himself in his third week.’ Joesbury glanced down at his notes. ‘Jake Hammond. Nineteen-year-old English student.’
‘How many cases are we talking about?’
‘Nineteen in five years, including Bryony Carter,’ said Joesbury.
‘Well, I can see why the authorities are worried,’ I said. ‘But I don’t get why SO10 are involved.’
Joesbury leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He looked thinner than I remembered. He’d lost muscle definition from his chest and shoulders. ‘Old girls’ network,’ he said. ‘Dr Oliver contacts her old Cambridge buddy Dana, who in turn gets in touch with her old mentor on the force, another Cambridge alumna.’
‘Who is?’
‘Sonia Hammond.’
Joesbury waited for the name to register. It didn’t.
‘Commander Sonia Hammond,’ he prompted. ‘Currently head of the covert operations directorate at Scotland Yard.’
I’d got it. ‘Your boss,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you reported to a woman.’
Joesbury raised one eyebrow. I’d forgotten he could do that. ‘Story of my life,’ he said. ‘Commander Hammond has a daughter at Cambridge, so she has an added interest.’
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘What on earth do they think an undercover operation in the city of dreaming spires will achieve?’
‘I think the city of dreaming spires is Oxford,’ said Joesbury. ‘Dr Oliver has this theory that the suicides aren’t coincidence. She thinks there is something decidedly sinister going on.’
AFTER EVI HAD thanked the young WPC, she locked and bolted the front door, still more shaken than she wanted to admit. The policewoman had been polite, searching the house thoroughly and stressing that Evi should call immediately if anything else happened. Otherwise, though, she clearly wasn’t planning any action other than a report. There had been no evidence of a break-in, she’d explained, and fir cones were hardly threatening.
The woman had a point, of course. Evi wasn’t even the only one with keys to her house. Her cleaning company let themselves in every Tuesday. The building was owned by the university and it wasn’t impossible that there’d been some unscheduled, emergency visit by maintenance. Why fir cones should have been brought into the house by a maintenance team was another matter, but not one the young officer was going to spend any time worrying about.
Evi crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle. She’d just switched it on when something scraped along the kitchen window. She jumped so high in the air she almost fell over.
‘Just the tree,’ she told herself, realizing she still hadn’t taken her painkillers. ‘Just that blessed tree again.’
Evi’s kitchen overlooked the rear walled garden, which led down to the river bank. A massive cedar tree grew just beyond the house and its lower branches had a habit of scratching against the ground-floor windows when the wind was strong.
Evi took her painkillers, waited a few minutes for the effect to kick in and then ate as much as she could manage. She cleared the plates and pushed herself through to the bedroom, only stopping to pick up the fir cone from the mat. She pushed it back through the letter box without so much as a shudder. The ones from her kitchen table were outside in the rubbish bin.
She turned on the bathroom taps and started to undress. On her bedside table was an opened letter. It had arrived a few days ago in a thick padded envelope. She’d shaken it over the bed and watched shells, pebbles, dried seaweed and, finally, a snapshot of a family fall out. The photograph lay face up on the table. Mum, dad, young children. They’d been patients of hers the previous year and had turned into friends. They’d just bought a semi-derelict bungalow on the coast road of Lytham St Annes in Lancashire and come the spring, the mother had written, planned to demolish the house and build their new dream home. It would be their second attempt; their first hadn’t worked out too well. Evi was welcome, the letter insisted, to visit any time. There had been no mention of Harry.
Knowing she shouldn’t, Evi opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a newspaper article that she’d found on an internet archive. She didn’t bother reading the words, she knew them off by heart. She just needed to look at his face.
The bath would be filling up. Just one more second to look at hair that was somewhere between strawberry blond and honey, at light brown eyes, square jaw and lips that always seemed to be curved in a smile, even when he was trying, as in the picture, to look serious. Just one more second to wonder when the good days, the ones when she could push him to the back of her mind like old memories, would outnumber the bad ones, when he was hammering at the front, so vivid she could almost smell the lime and ginger fragrance of his skin. Just one more second to wonder when the pain was going to go away.
By the time the water began to go cold, Evi was almost asleep. She pressed the button that would activate the lift and bring her out of the bath. She managed to stand unaided for long enough to dry herself and rub body lotion into her skin. You have such soft skin, he’d whispered to her once. As she left the bathroom, there were tears in her eyes and she didn’t even bother telling herself that it was just the pain, so much worse at night lately, that was making her cry.
She hadn’t seen the message on the bathroom mirror, which only the steam from the hot water had made visible.
I can see you, it said.
‘SINISTER HOW?’ I asked Joesbury.
‘Dr Oliver believes there is – and I’m reading directly from notes now – a subversive subculture of glamorizing the suicidal act,’ said Joesbury. ‘She thinks these kids, backed up by an online network, are egging each other on.’
‘People said that about Bridgend,’ I said.
‘Always very difficult to prove,’ said Joesbury. ‘But there are documented cases of suicide pacts, of people meeting, usually online, and deciding to end it all together. They give each other the courage to go through with it.’
I nodded. I’d read about such cases from time to time.
‘More disturbing,’ Joesbury went on, ‘is a trend of what I can only call bottom-feeders accessing websites and chat rooms specifically to find depressed and vulnerable people. They strike up friendships, pretend to be concerned, but all the while they’re pushing them towards topping themselves. And there are websites where suicidal people go to talk to like-minded others, discuss which methods are most effective, get a bit of courage together for when they finally take the plunge.’ Joesbury looked down at his notes again. ‘Dr Oliver calls it negative reinforcement,’ he said, ‘sometimes deliberate and malicious, of self-destructive urges.’
‘She sounds a laugh a minute,’ I said.
‘Dana tells me she’s a bit of a babe,’ said Joesbury, with a smile I could cheerfully have slapped off him.
‘So assuming I agree,’ I said, ‘what exactly will I be investigating?’
‘You won’t be investigating as such,’ said Joesbury. ‘At this stage it doesn’t merit a full investigation. Your job will be to spend some time with this Dr Oliver, let her know we’re taking her seriously.’
‘So I’m a token gesture to keep her happy?’ I interrupted.
‘Not entirely. We also need you to immerse yourself in student life and report back on anything out of the ordinary. You’ll pay particular attention to the online websites and chat rooms that fly around the Fenland ether. You’ll be our eyes on the inside.’
I was silent for a second or two.
‘We need you to be the sort of student who might be thinking about suicide,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Needy, a bit vulnerable, prone to depression. We also want you to get yourself noticed, so you need to step it up a bit with the appearance. Good-looking fruitcake. That’s what we want.’
‘So, absolutely nothing suspicious came up at Bryony’s post-mortem?’ I asked, more because I was playing for time than because I needed to know right there and then.
‘There hasn’t been one.’
I waited while Joesbury flicked through the stack of photographs, pulled one out and turned it to face me. It showed a figure lying on a hospital bed, beneath a transparent tent, grotesquely swollen and so completely enveloped in dressings it resembled an Egyptian mummy. Both arms were stretched out from her body at right angles. A spaghetti-like mass of wires and tubes seemed to be growing out of her.
‘She’s still alive?’ I said, without the faintest idea why that should be so much worse, only knowing that it was.
‘This was taken twenty-four hours after she was admitted,’ said Joesbury. ‘Nobody really expected her to survive. Three weeks on, she’s managed to fight off infection, avoid going into shock and hasn’t suffered respiratory collapse. She may even recover. How much she’ll be able to tell us though is a moot point. Her tongue was burned away.’
Not a lot you can say to that. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Read the file,’ he replied. ‘Think about it. Dana wants you to call her. She’ll be trying to talk you out of it.’
I looked up. ‘Will you be going?’ I asked. ‘To Cambridge, I mean.’
Turquoise eyes narrowed. ‘Not necessary at this stage,’ he said. ‘I’ll be popping in and out to keep an eye on you, but 90 per cent of the fieldwork will be down to you.’
It was how SO10 worked. Junior officers were sent into situations first, often for a year or more, to gather intelligence and report back. As a clearer picture emerged, the heavier guns got deployed.
‘Can you see me as an eccentric don?’ Joesbury was saying. ‘Bow tie and tweeds? Long flowing gown? Untidy wig?’
With his muscular frame and scarred face, Joesbury always reminded me of a half-tamed thug. He was smiling at me again. It was always the smile that was hardest to deal with. Better by far just not to look at it. Better to leave now. Business was done. On the table, the file had been closed, its contents hidden from view. The orange wig was a few inches away from me.
‘It’s very soft,’ said Joesbury. ‘Want to stroke it?’
I raised my eyes. ‘What are we talking about exactly?’
His grin got even wider. ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said.
Silence. Still staring at each other across the table. I really had to go.
‘Want to get some dinner?’ he asked me.
So now it could be a date.
‘Actually, I have plans.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I should get going.’
Joesbury leaned back on his chair, his grin gone. His right hand reached up and he began to rub the scar at his temple. ‘Would the plans include a trip across town to Camden, by any chance?’
When I’d first met Joesbury, Camden had been where I’d gone most Friday evenings. To meet men. I hadn’t been near the place since a certain night last October. And my plans for the evening were a Chinese takeaway and an early night with a Lee Child paperback.
‘Something like that.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’ll get back to you over the weekend.’
He watched me pick up my bag and slip the file into it. I let my eyes fall to the right side of his chest, to the exact spot that, last time I’d seen him, had been soaked in blood.
‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ I said. And left.
HALF AN HOUR later I was home, eating Singapore noodles from the takeaway carton and opening the Bryony Carter case file. The photographs I pushed firmly to one side, except the only one taken of Bryony before the fire. It showed an exceptionally pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair, pale skin and bright blue eyes.
First I read the CID report. It was dated three days after the incident and seemed thorough enough. At 9.45 p.m., just as coffee was being served in the great hall of St John’s College, a figure covered in flames had staggered in. A quick-thinking man called Scott Thornton, whom the report described as a senior member of the college, had grabbed the closest fire extinguisher. When it was empty, and Bryony was lying on the floor, he’d ordered the other guests to bring water. From jugs, bottles, ice buckets, even glasses, he’d encouraged everyone in the room to tip water over poor, prostrate Bryony while he summoned an ambulance on his mobile. Scott Thornton had almost certainly saved Bryony’s life. Whether she’d thank him for it was another matter.
After the seriously injured girl had been taken away, uniformed police had conducted a thorough search of the college and its grounds. A petrol can had been found in a shadowed area of a space called Second Court and the ground around it was soaked in petrol. Bryony’s fingerprints, and hers alone, were on the can.
Her room a few hundred yards away was neat and orderly. She’d done her laundry that day and returned several books to the library. A typewritten note to her mother was on her bedside table. The receipt for the petrol can was found amongst various other receipts in the pencil tray of her desk drawer. On her bedroom floor were the pipe, mesh screen and funnel bowl she’d used to inhale the fumes of a powerful hallucinogenic drug.
Her room-mate, a girl called Talaith Robinson, had said in interview that Bryony had been unhappy and unsettled for a while, but that she really hadn’t anticipated her taking such a drastic step. The report had been prepared by a detective sergeant and signed off by his senior officer, a DI John Castell.
It’s become customary, I learned as I read, to conduct an in-depth investigation into the state of mind of suicide victims. As Bryony’s recovery was still very much in doubt, CID had requested a psychological report be prepared in her case too. Dr Oliver, as the psychiatrist with overall responsibility for Bryony’s mental health, had produced it.
Dr Oliver’s summary note at the front told me that Bryony Carter was a young woman who felt a strong need to be loved and taken care of, who wanted to surrender responsibility for her own life to another, kinder and stronger partner – a soulmate who would take care of her. The report talked about a strained relationship with both parents. The father, who had a time-consuming job, was rarely around and the mother never seemed particularly interested in Bryony, the youngest of her four children. Bryony had grown up believing herself to be the family nuisance.
The insecure, unhappy child had grown into a passive woman, aching for love and attention. Although bright and pretty, Bryony was clingy and vulnerable in relationships, even friendships. At Cambridge, she suffered from insomnia and bad dreams. Towards the end of term, she’d been missing most of her classes. She’d been prescribed the antidepressant citalopram by her GP, a Dr Bell.
The summary was followed by several pages of notes made during individual counselling sessions. I got up, took the empty carton to the sink and poured myself another glass of wine.
I skimmed through the medical report on Bryony’s condition, mainly because most of the technical detail meant nothing to me. A brief reference to the drug that had been found in her system caught my eye. Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. I’d never heard of it but a quick Google search told me it was just about the most powerful psychedelic drug known to mankind. A class-A drug in the UK, the substance is normally inhaled and produces short but very intense experiences in which perceptions of reality can significantly alter. Users reported seeing fairies, elves, angels, even God.
The more I read, the more I couldn’t help a sense of irritation. Bryony had a family, a good education, an opportunity to study at one of the world’s most highly regarded universities. She had an awful lot more than me and I’d never been tempted to ruin a perfectly good Christmas party by getting high and setting fire to myself.