‘Are you ready, numpty?’ she said to Stick when she reached the squad room.
‘Ready.’
‘Let’s go then.’
‘Should I bring this with me?’ he asked, holding up the sheet of card with the pictures of eight vans on it.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know, that’s why I asked you.’
‘Is Jessica Curry here in the station?’
‘No.’
‘Is she likely to stop by on her way to chemotherapy?’
‘No.’
‘Are we likely to ask her to come into the station to look at the card?’
‘Possibly.’
‘The answer is still “no”, numpty.’
‘No.’
‘Are we likely to send a squad car to drag her here to look at the card?’
‘Poss . . .’
Xena shook her head.
‘No.’
‘Correct. So, what do you think now?’
‘I should bring it with me?’
‘That’s two right. You’re a star. Let’s go.’
They made their way to the car park and climbed in the car.
‘What do you think?’ Stick said passing her the card and starting the car. He keyed Ware College into the satnav and pulled out of the car park onto the A10.
‘Do you really care what I think?’
‘Of course.’
She glanced at the card. ‘It’s a piece of card with pictures of eight vans stuck on it that all look the same to me. What am I expected to think? Have they asked you to put it on display in the National Art Gallery?’
‘I’m sure they would if they saw it. Damien Hirst did that shark in formaldehyde thing, so I don’t see why not.’
‘You think your “Eight White Vans on a Card”, which is based on an original idea by DI Parish, is comparable to a Damien Hirst work of art?’
‘Poss . . .’
‘The answer is still “no”, numpty.’
‘I didn’t know there were so many types of white van. The first one is a Mercedes Sprinter, then from left to right: a Ford Transit, VW Transporter, Renault Traffic, Peugeot Boxer, Chevrolet Express, Freight Rover and a Honda Acty.’
She pulled the lever to recline the seat, stretched her legs out and closed her eyes. ‘I think I’m going to have a relapse.’
‘Do you want me to make a detour to the hospital?’
‘Will you shut the fuck up and drive?’
Ware College was located on Scotts Road, not far from the New Gauge House where water leaves the River Lea at the start of the New River on its way to Finsbury Park in London.
The Ware campus had recently been redeveloped and now boasted hair and beauty salons where people could walk in off the street and obtain a hair cut – for a fraction of the price – by students; a cafeteria full of grazers; a learning resource centre, which used to be called a library; a business centre sponsored by local businesses; and a reception full of paintings, photographs, pottery and ceramic objects d’art, plus a receptionist to answer stupid questions and direct people accordingly.
Xena showed her warrant card to the middle-aged woman wearing silver ball earrings and matching necklace behind the reception desk. ‘We’d like to speak to someone about one of your students . . .’
‘Clarice Kennedy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just one moment.’ She pressed a button on the small switchboard and spoke into the tiny microphone hooked over her ear. ‘There are two police officers here. They’d like to speak to someone about Clarice Kennedy . . . Yes, Ma’am.’ She ended the call and spoke to Xena. ‘The Vice Principal – Dr Cindy Wismer – said for you to go up.’ She pointed to the lift on the right of the reception. ‘Press for the third floor, she’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Stick said to the receptionist, as Xena headed towards the lift. ‘You could have said, “Thank you”,’ he said when he caught up with her.
‘She was doing the job she gets paid to do.’
‘Manners cost nothing.’
They stepped into the lift.
‘Since when did you become an etiquette guide and add accountancy to your skill set?’
‘No wonder people . . .’
The lift juddered to a stop and the doors opened.
Dr Cindy Wismer was in her mid-forties and black. She wore a dark blue dress, a pearl necklace and had an attractive smile.
Xena and Stick shook her hand, and then followed her along the corridor to her office where she directed them to sit in easy chairs around an oblong occasional table.
‘Tea or coffee?’
‘You don’t have lemonade, do you?’ Stick asked.
Xena nudged him. ‘No we’re fine.’
‘I’m sure we could acquire some lemonade . . .’
‘No, that’s all right,’ Xena said. ‘We’re not here to drink lemonade.’
‘But you are here about Clarice Kennedy?’
‘Yes.’
‘A terrible business. We were all shocked to learn that she’d been found dead.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘What course was she doing?’
‘She had signed up for the Dance & Drama course taught by Mr Neil Cowan.’
‘We’d like to talk to him.’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you know that she was also a student at the Rhythm Stick Dance Studio in Widford?’
‘I didn’t really know Clarice, but I’m sure Mr Cowan would have known. Would you like me to ask Mr Cowan to come up here?’
‘We’ll talk to him in his classroom if that’s all right with you?’
‘That’s fine. I’ll arrange for a student to escort you.’ She stood up, stuck her head round the door, and asked her PA to obtain an available student.
‘One other thing,’ Xena said.
‘Yes.’
‘Could we have a staff list?’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘No.’
‘Oh! All right then. I presume you’d like every member of staff to be on the list – part-time, peripatetic, agency, seasonal and so on?’
‘Anybody who works or has worked on the campus and might have come into contact with Clarice.’
‘You don’t think . . . ?‘
‘No, we don’t. We’re simply making sure that we do a thorough job, so that the Police Complaints Commission focus their gaze somewhere other than at us.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. Teaching isn’t much better . . . if better is the right word to use. If something goes wrong they want someone to blame. Before, there were places to hide, you could move sideways quietly, retire anonymously with enough to live on. Now, they want to hang, draw and quarter you in public. It’s like they’ve brought back public flogging and executions. Justice must not only be done, but seen to be done. You can pick the list up from reception when you’ve finished speaking to Mr Cowan.’
‘Thank you,’ Xena said.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come.’
Xena and Stick stood up.
A boy with braces on his teeth, a silver ring through his nose, trousers half-way down his buttocks, and a t-shirt that stated he was a:
JUNIOR GYNAECOLOGIST
AT YOUR CERVIX
‘Ah, Bradley. Please be so kind as to show these two police officers to Mr Cowan’s classroom.’
‘Police officers?’ He looked down at the floor, stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and began shuffling his feet.
‘Yes, show them to Mr Cowan’s classroom, please.’
Xena took a step forward and began sniffing.
Bradley backed up and said, ‘It was only one.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘One what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘One nothing?’ She turned to Stick. ‘Do you smell one nothing?’
Stick leaned forward and sniffed. ‘Yes, I’d say that was one nothing of the highest calibre.’
Xena looked at the Vice Principal and said, ‘Thank you for your time. Right Mr Bradley, lead the way.’
They followed the student out of Dr Wismer’s office, along the corridor and down the stairs.
‘Bradley is my first name, by the way.’
‘As if I’m going to believe a word you say,’ Xena said. ‘You’re lucky I have more important things to do, otherwise I’d have called the drug squad by now. I’m sure they’d be very interested in your stash of nothings.’
‘It was one spliff.’
They reached the landing between the second and third floor. Xena grabbed the boy, spun him round and pinned him up against the wall. ‘You don’t seem to understand that you’re an amoeba at the bottom of the illegal drug supply cess pit. Where there’s one spliff there are a thousand other spliffs, bags of ecstasy tablets, mountains of cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and any number of other Class A drugs. Above you, there’s a drug dealer, a supplier, an importer, a whole drug cartel . . . In fact, your one spliff has turned into a worldwide humanitarian problem.’
‘You’re crazy. It was one spliff.’
‘And you’re a fucking addict in the making.’
Bradley looked at Stick. ‘Will you tell her to let me go?’
Stick pulled a face and slowly shook his head. ‘Let you go? No, I don’t think so. We’re going to arrest you for drug possession with intent to supply.’
‘I haven’t got any drugs.’
‘I’m sure we can find some from somewhere.’
‘You cops are all the same.’
Xena let the boy go. ‘Yes, we are. We try to help people. We’re going to give you this one chance. If I hear you’ve been using drugs – of any sort – again, it’ll be like an alien invasion. The drug squad will arrive at your house, here and anywhere else you go. They’ll strip everything clean like locusts, arrest you and everybody you’re connected with. If you want to be a drug user we’ll make it easy for you. We’ll destroy your life by giving you a criminal record and making it impossible for you to get a job. You’ll be eating rotting food from supermarket bins, sleeping in doorways with a mongrel dog called Toby. Is what I’m saying making any impression on you, Mr Bradley?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good. Now, get going before I change my mind.’
They reached Mr Cowan’s classroom, which was more like a landfill site than a place of learning.
‘Can I go now?’ Bradley asked.
‘Don’t squander your last chance, Mr Bradley.’
As he started off along the corridor he threw over his shoulder, ‘It was one spliff.’
‘You’re wasting your time with Bradley McNulty,’ Mr Cowan said, as he ushered them in. ‘He’s a train wreck looking for a place to happen.’
Xena looked around at the battered chairs and tables, the graffiti and the other pieces of broken and battered furniture. ‘I think the train wreck happened in here.’
Cowan gave a laugh. ‘It’s called free expression.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Dr Wismer warned me you were on your way.’ He pointed to two chairs still in one piece in front of his desk. ‘I have a free period now. She said you wanted to talk about Clarice Kennedy?’
‘Yes.’
‘One of my best students. She was beautiful, talented and destined for greater things.’
‘Any enemies?’
He shook his head. ‘Everybody loved her.’
‘Maybe that was the problem,’ Xena said. ‘Did anything unusual happen in the weeks prior to her disappearance.’
‘No. The students had done their exams, we were winding down for the year and preparing a show for the awards evening. Everything was . . . well, normal. Clarice was in the thick of things as usual . . . until she went missing of course, and then there was a hole in our lives that seemed impossible to fill.’
‘Did she have any close friends?’
‘Alicia Love.’
‘Do you know if she’s about today?’
He looked at his watch. ‘You’ll probably catch her in the cafeteria at this time. I’ll come with you and point her out. I could do with something to eat anyway.’
‘One last thing. Do you have any students called Carl?’
He opened up the attendance record on his desk and skimmed through the names of the students in each of his classes. ‘No – no Carl.’
‘Is there anybody called Carl at the college?’
‘Students?’
‘Anybody?’
‘Well, I don’t know the names of all the students, but there’s a member of the teaching staff called Carl Jansen – he teaches Art & Design.’
‘Would Clarice have come into contact with him?’
‘Officially she hadn’t signed up for Art & Design, but she wanted to enhance her portfolio. I remember, she’d been so excited when she realised that there was a lot more to dance and drama than merely dance and drama. She’d gone along to a couple of his classes to learn about puppetry, masks, face art, backdrops, pantomime, mime, costumes and so on. ’
Xena glanced at Stick. ‘Did she now?’
‘Yes, and there’s also Carl Stoichkov – he’s one of our three caretakers. Came from Bulgaria about four months ago. His English isn’t up to much, but it’s enough to get by.’
‘Would he have known Clarice?’
‘I would say so. When we’re running a production, the caretakers help with the heavy lifting, setting up the chairs, the props, the hall and so on. Clarice always got involved. Not just as a cast member, but in all the other aspects of the production as well – planning and preparation, auditions, advertising, song choice, music . . . you name it, she wanted to get involved – I miss her. She made my job that much more worthwhile. Sometimes, a teacher finds that one student . . .’
‘I’m sure. I’d be grateful if you could keep this conversation to yourself.’
‘Of course.’
They followed Neil Cowan to the cafeteria, which had been designed like an American diner. He pointed out Alicia Love and then left them to it.
‘Alicia?’ Xena said, standing at the end of the booth she was sitting in with four of her friends.
‘Yes.’
Stick showed his warrant card. ‘We’re police officers. We’d like to talk to you about Clarice.’
‘Okay.’
Xena eyed the other girls in the booth. ‘That means you lot can find somewhere else to sit.’
Mumbling to each other, they wriggled out of the red plastic seats and moved to a table close by.
Stick went to sit down.
‘What are you doing?’ Xena said.
‘Sitting down.’
‘I’d like a ham and cheese panini and a pot of tea.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘Do you want anything?’ she asked Alicia.
‘Coffee – Americana – large.’
She turned back to Stick. ‘Got that?’
‘I think so.’
‘And get yourself a lemonade if you want.’
‘Too kind,’ Stick said, and wandered off towards the counter.
‘Tell me about Carl?’ she said to Alicia.
‘Who?’
‘Clarice is dead, Alicia. Keeping secrets doesn’t matter anymore.’
Tears jumped into her eyes. ‘I know. I thought maybe . . . I don’t know. Maybe she’d still be alive, and . . .’
Xena reached across the table and put her hands over Alicia’s, but she didn’t say anything. What could she say? She couldn’t tell her that her best friend Clarice had been raped, sodomised and tortured over a number of weeks; that her death had been an unimaginable nightmare; that she’d been dumped in Nine Acre Wood like a piece of rubbish – no, she couldn’t tell Alicia any of that.
Stick returned with the food and drink on a tray, and passed it out like a waiter at the Ritz.
‘Just in time,’ Xena said. ‘I was about to keel over from lack of sustenance.’ She took a bite of the ham and cheese panini. ‘It’s cold.’
‘Well, they heated it up.’
‘Not very well.’ She took another bite.
‘Is the coffee okay?’ he asked Alicia.
‘Coffee’s coffee. I shouldn’t drink so much of it really, it makes me hyper.’
‘Hyper what?’
‘Hyperactive.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Take no notice of numpty. So, you were telling me about Carl?’
‘I told her she was a fool. She could have had any man she wanted. Instead, she fell for someone who was older than her.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
Xena pulled a face and sighed. ‘You were her best friend.’
‘I know, but she wouldn’t tell me. We had a massive argument about it the day before she disappeared. She’d been seeing him for three months and we were drifting apart. We both said some awful things we didn’t mean – I feel terrible.’
‘As I said before – none of that matters now. She won’t be lounging about in heaven eating Ryvita crackers with Philadelphia cheese spread and thinking about the argument you had, she’ll be really happy that she had such a good friend as you.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Positive. In the end, only the good bits mean anything.’
‘We had lots of good bits . . . before he came along.’
‘Was it someone in the college?’
‘I just don’t know. She said that if she told anybody it would ruin everything.’
‘Why?’
Alicia shrugged. ‘I tried guessing who he was, but she wouldn’t play the game with me.’
‘She gave you no clues as to his identity?’
‘I know I shouldn’t have done, and I know it’s something a best friend ought never to have done, but I was worried about her. You can understand that, can’t you?’
‘Of course, and as it turned out you had every right to be worried about her.’
‘A couple of weeks before she disappeared I followed her. We both had a double free on a Friday that ran into lunch, and we usually studied together during that time, but she said she had to go somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘She wouldn’t tell me, so I followed her. She went out of the college, but because I couldn’t stay too close to her, I soon lost her.’
‘So, you think Carl was someone outside the college?’
‘No, I’m not saying that. If she was seeing someone in the college she wouldn’t have met them here anyway. Remember, she wanted to keep him secret from everyone – including me, her best friend. I did wonder if it was someone here, but if it was, then they left separately and met somewhere else – like a flat, a hotel room or something like that.’
Xena squeezed her hand. ‘You did the right thing telling us, Alicia.’
‘There’s something else as well.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure “Carl” was his real name.’
Xena glanced at Stick. Just when they could see some light at the end of the tunnel . . . ‘What makes you say that?’
‘If she wanted to keep him a secret, why call him by his real name? You look at her college notebooks. There was no “C” in the initials she scribbled intertwined with hers in the little hearts.’
‘You’ve been a great help, Alicia,’ Xena said, shouldering Stick out of the booth. ‘. . . And a great friend to Clarice.’
‘I hope so, and I hope you find who killed her.’
‘We’ll do our very best.’
They collected the staff list from the woman at reception, and as they made their way across the car park Stick said, ‘Pardon me for saying so, but you were unusually empathetic in there.’
‘Are you suggesting that I’m not normally empathetic?’
‘I never would.’
***
‘Long time,’ Bronwyn said.
‘Ray told me what you did.’
‘He’s a blabbermouth.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m choking up. How are you, anyway?’
‘Much better than I was. Thanks for visiting me in the hospital.’
‘I had nothing else better to do.’
She’d tried going it alone – it hadn’t been much of a success, so she’d moved into a squat on Oakeshott Avenue in Highgate, overlooking the cemetery. She reasoned that if the bastards from the government were going to kill her anyway, then she was in the right place for them to easily dispose of her body.
With people around her, who had no axe to grind, she felt a certain comfort. There were four others in the Victorian house – Hawk, Yoda, Sushi and Poo. Like her, they were living on the edge of a society that simply didn’t give a shit, and that suited her just fine. Nobody knew her, and she didn’t know anybody else. To them she was Bronwyn, they didn’t need to know her real name, or that she now had identity documents stating that she was Jessie Gibbs – it was nobody’s business but her own.
She’d been keeping a low profile as well, except for that one time she’d gone back to Baffin Road in Epping to visit Honey Hunt-Davis at number five. It was the middle of the night and the house was empty. It appeared as though it hadn’t been lived in for some time. Honey had been one of them, and it had made her realise that she just couldn’t trust anybody.
She had her own room in the squat. The shower was separate from the bathroom, so she didn’t have to get out of the water dripping wet and naked to let people in to pee. Although, she was sure Shrek had done it on purpose so that he could get an eyeful of her.
‘I need your help,’ Jerry said.
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Have you heard of Manning Naseby?’
‘I’ve been vaguely interested in the trial.’
‘His barrister is going to get him off.’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘Well, nothing really. Except that I don’t like to see the guilty get off.’
‘If his barrister is going to get him off, then that would indicate he’s innocent, doesn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘How could you possibly know whether he’s innocent or guilty?’
‘I’m in the courtroom. I saw something in his eyes. I’m sure he killed his wife. She deserves justice.’
‘And let me guess – we’re going to get it for her?’
‘You’ll help me?’
‘You remember I don’t work for free, or come cheap, don’t you?’
‘What about pro bono?’
‘That falls under the first category. If you want the best, you have to pay for her. So, if he’s guilty, how come his barrister is going to get him off?’
‘The police have made a right pig’s ear of the case.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. So, you want me to find the evidence that the police couldn’t find?’
‘Yes, but you need to do it before the jury retire to consider what little evidence there is on Friday, which should take them all of five minutes.’
‘Let’s say I find something that proves he murdered his wife, what are you going to do with it?’
‘I’m not going to do anything with it. You have to send what you find to Martin Dryden at the Crown Prosecution Service.’
‘I must be mad.’
Jerry gave a strangled laugh. ‘Welcome to the party.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Well?’
‘What if I discover that he didn’t kill his wife?’
‘Then it won’t matter because he’s going to get off anyway.’
‘I’ll see what I can find out.’
‘Do you want the details?’
‘I think I’ll get by . . . Hey?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m glad you made it through the tunnel.’
‘Thanks.’
She ended the call.
The wonders of the world never ceased to amaze and astound her! Earlier, when she’d been reading about the case online, she was also wondering who the mystery lover was, and why no one could find him. It sounded like the beginning of the film The Fugitive, but if Naseby was Dr Richard Kimble, who the fuck was she?