CHAPTER 33

 

Dudley Grose screwed the cap back onto his fountain pen and leaned back in his chair. The words just wouldn’t come. No matter how he tried he couldn’t form a coherent sentence. He’d never believed in writer’s block and always thought it an excuse for laziness, but for the first time in his life he understood what it involved. His mind simply wouldn’t focus, and the more he tried to concentrate the more other thoughts intruded. He kept thinking about Jenny, her soft, supple body, her smooth skin, her wet mouth. He’d phoned her half a dozen times but her cell phone was off. He’d left two messages, knowing that to leave more would make him appear too needy. When he wasn’t thinking about Jenny he was thinking about Slater and his infernal book. He couldn’t understand why the police hadn’t simply arrested him.

Grose groaned. He stood up, massaging the back of his neck, and walked over to the window. His back was hurting, and the pain had grown worse over the past three days. He’d taken painkillers but they hadn’t even taken the edge off the pain and now the discomfort was constant. His wife was busy in the garden, down on her knees and working a trowel into the soil at the base of a spreading bush. Maybe it was time to leave her. Maybe he should just walk out and move into Jenny’s apartment. Maybe that would help kick start his writing again. To hell with the university, to hell with everybody.

His cell phone rang and he hurried over to his desk. His face fell when he saw that it wasn’t Jenny. It was Detective Lumley, he’d stored the number last time she called.

“Dr Grose, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” she said.

“About Slater?”

“About Jenny Cameron. I’m afraid it looks as if she might have been attacked. We haven’t found her body but there’s a lot of blood in her apartment.”

Grose began to shake. He sat down heavily as the room swam around him.

“Dr Grose?”

“Yes, I heard you,” said Grose. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m sorry, I’m… I can’t…”

“I understand, Dr Grose. As I said, we’re not a hundred per cent sure what has happened but we can’t locate Miss Cameron and at the moment we’re working on the assumption that she has been murdered.”

“By Adrian Slater, right? Have you arrested him?”

“We don’t have any evidence yet,” said Lumley.

“You’ve got his book,” said Grose. “He admitted that he followed her home. What more do you need?”

“We need physical evidence,” said Lumley. “We need proof. Or a confession.”

“His whole book is a confession. The bastard went and confessed before he killed her.”

“Mr Grose, you can rest assured that we will get Slater. He’s not going to get away with this.”

“I wish I believed that,” said Grose.

“There is something you can do to help us, Dr Grose. We’ve dusted her apartment for fingerprints and we’ll be running a comparison with Slater’s prints. But we need a list of anyone else who might have visited her apartment. Friends, fellow students. Could you give us a list of anyone you think has been there so that we can get their prints?”

“Of course,” said Grose. “Let me ask around when I get to the university tomorrow.”

Lumley ended the call and Grose put down his cell phone. He felt suddenly light headed and he took slow, deep breaths. Jenny was dead? JENNY WAS DEAD? How could it have happened? He’d told the Head of Faculty what Slater had planned, he’d told the Dean, he’d told the cops. How could she be dead? He felt his eyes fill with tears. “Oh God, Jenny,” he whispered. He put his head in his hands and began to cry.