‘I’m sorry, DI Huss, there’s nothing usable on this memory stick.’
Evan Collins from Systems Support ruefully handed Huss the bagged memory stick. There had been three files on it and when Huss had clicked on them to open them nothing had happened other than an error message.
So she’d gone in search of help.
Evan’s presence at the police station was somewhat mysterious. It certainly wasn’t to do with lack of ability. Far from it. He had a degree in IT from Warwick, nobody could fathom why he had elected to work for Thames Valley CID instead of in the City. He seemed overqualified to be doing what he was doing. He was still on his first three months but already people were frightened in case he decided to leave. They could all remember his irritatingly incompetent predecessor. Huss personally put his presence there down to laziness and maybe a heavy weed intake. Some people like doing a job they can do blindfold, no stress, regular pay, pleasant working conditions. Nobody breathing down their necks anxious to supplant them. Certainly Evan looked a little zonked out some mornings, but then again, so did many of the police, although that was mainly alcohol rather than drug related.
‘Nothing at all?’ She was puzzled. Marcus Hinds had gone to considerable trouble to get this to her.
‘No, there was something, there were files there, but they’ve been corrupted.’
‘Accidentally or deliberately?’ asked Huss looking at Evan’s serious face. He looked exactly as one would imagine a systems support guy to look, nerdy, indoorsy, intelligent, habitually dressed in T-shirt and jeans. Today he had a retro Led Zeppelin sweatshirt on.
‘Oh, deliberately, I would say. Without a doubt. But you can take it from me they’re unusable.’
‘Oh, well, thanks, Evan.’ Huss took the useless memory stick. She might as well chuck it in the bin. She went back upstairs and sat behind her desk, staring into space. She would have to do a run-through on security with the Rosemount, she decided. She added it to her mental to-do list. At least she’d get to see one of England’s most exclusive hotels, that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
She walked along to DCI Templeman’s office and knocked on the door.
‘Do you have a moment?’
Twenty minutes later she returned to her desk even more full of gloom. The case against Hinds’s was looking increasingly black.
Templeman had happily shared his preliminary notes with her. Georgie Adams, his girlfriend and a PhD student at St Anne’s College doing her doctorate in Eastern European Political Thought, had stated that Hinds’s behaviour had been increasingly erratic lately, maybe due to heavy drug and alcohol abuse. He had been smoking worrying amounts of high strength skunk and she thought it was leading to cannabis psychosis. He had been violent and verbally abusive and had accused her and her friends several times of being in league with Islamic extremists.
‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet about them,’ she said.
Huss frowned. She could believe Adams about the drugs, but she found it hard to imagine Hinds as violent towards women.
Adams went on to say that he was unhinged.
‘I’m pro free speech and pro rights for the individual,’ she had said, ‘but in his mind to be a Muslim was to be a jihadi. I kept saying there are millions of British Muslims and just a few IS sympathizers. He was having none of it.’
That morning, he had started drinking early and smoking skunk (Templeman said a plastic container of weed had been found in his flat. As well as that there was an ashtray with a half-smoked joint in and roach ends were in the bin in the kitchen). She’d been frightened by his behaviour, ‘muttering to himself, paranoid,’ and had texted a friend to come round.
‘He doesn’t like me going to Russia either. I say to him, look, I’m doing a doctorate in Post Communist Political Thought, where else would I go, Surrey? Chechens, he says, Tajiks, Muslim fanatics.’
Two of her friends had come to give her moral and, if necessary, physical support and it was these two, Mark Spencer and James Kettering, the man who had subsequently died, that Hinds had attacked on the stairwell.
The knife was being analysed for prints. Door-to-door enquiries had established only that two of the flats in the block had heard noises but nobody had actually seen anything. There hadn’t been that many people to interview. At that time of day the block had been virtually empty.
A warrant had been issued for Hinds’s arrest on suspicion of murder and Serious Crimes alerted in the Met. It was assumed that Hinds, a Londoner, would hide out there with friends and family.
‘There’s still no sign of Hinds,’ said Templeman, ‘he’s still on the loose. Hardly the actions of an innocent man.’
Or maybe, thought Huss, the actions of a very frightened man. A man on the run from a violent criminal organization. ‘Why the interest, Melinda?’ asked Templeman. Huss had decided that her previous relationship with Hinds, brief as it was, was of no concern to the police. She hadn’t mentioned the reason for Elsa’s visit or the memory stick to anyone.
‘I suppose that I’m just keyed up over this Schneider visit, sir. I had heard some rumour that this Georgie Adams was a member of an anarchist group called Eleuthera. They can cause quite a lot of trouble, I believe.’
Templeman looked baffled. ‘Who told you that?’
‘The master of St Wulfstan’s.’ Huss decided not to mention it was her own belief that Adams was a member of Eleuthera. Eleuthera were not actively banned in the UK but Huss guessed that their activities would be of interest to the security services. Adams had merely said that she was ‘left-wing, libertarian’.
Huss continued, ‘He’s organizing Schneider’s visit. He arranged for the debate at the Oxford Union.’ Just to underline Smithfield’s importance, she added, ‘He knows the chief constable.’
Templeman said, in a tone that cut down any chance of debate, ‘Georgina Adams seems a very respectable young lady and she has no criminal record. Her political views are her own concern, not ours. Marcus Hinds, on the other hand, has a conviction for drug possession and I gather his family appear to be well known to the police in London. His dad did time, as did his brother. His uncle’s a nutter, seemingly. And, from the injuries inflicted upon the deceased, even if we discard the fatal final knife wound, Hinds has inherited his propensity for extreme violence.’
‘Well, I can probably discount that rumour then, sir.’ Huss hid her disappointment. Templeman was not going to allow her to see Adams. It rather looked as if he had decided that Hinds was guilty.
Then Templeman asked, ‘How are the arrangements for Schneider’s trip going?’
‘Fine, sir.’ She sketched out the arrangements she’d put in place for security for his speech at the Oxford Union. Templeman seemed happy.
‘And this assassination threat? I don’t want him dead here in Oxford. Not in this current hysterical Middle East atmosphere. That’s all we need.’
‘I’ve been liaising with Protection Command, sir,’ said Huss. ‘They are taking it very seriously indeed. I’d like to go up to London just to run through some protocol with them, check out their arrangements with the Rosemount, since it’s on our patch.’
‘The Rosemount, very nice. Schneider must have a lot of money. By all means, Melinda, go up to London, and, oh, if you could, I’d like you to meet Georgina Adams.’
Huss looked startled. The DCI went on, ‘She needs to go back to Hinds’s flat, pick up some of her stuff. Obviously with him on the loose she needs someone with her to babysit her. Can you do that? I’d also like your opinion of her. If you’re not too busy?’
Yesss! thought Huss.
‘That’d be fine, sir. If you give me her number I could do that this lunchtime.’
‘Sure.’ He took his notebook out and jotted down a number and gave it to her.
Huss went back to her desk and called the number. She spoke to the well-bred, educated voice on the other end of the phone with its genteel, modulated Edinburgh vowels and they agreed to meet at Georgie’s college.
‘I’ll pick you up at twelve,’ said Huss. She put her phone back in her pocket.
She thought of Marcus Hinds. Was he the innocent boy she remembered coming to her for help, or had he really gone off the deep end as Georgie Adams claimed? She guessed that both were possible. Look at Elsa, brilliant don and bag lady/street drinker co-existing in one body, co-existing in one mind.
She was looking forward to seeing Adams. She smiled grimly to herself, I could always introduce myself as his ex.