Keep Her Close
‘Do you have to rush off?’ he said. ‘I’m sure Mr and Mrs Daley might have some questions.’
‘Oh … sure,’ said Jo, with little enthusiasm. She followed them in. The house was immaculate inside – Amelia had hired professional cleaners to keep on top of things while they rented in central Oxford. Most of the furniture had been moved out already. There’d never really been any question of them staying here, not after what had happened just a stone’s throw from the end of the back garden. The heating was on, but Jo resisted taking off her coat. The sooner she could be on her way again, the better.
‘I’ll take you upstairs first,’ said the estate agent. ‘Save the best parts until the end!’
Jo waited in the entrance hall while the estate agent led the Daleys to the first floor. She heard various exclamations of surprise and delight as they inspected the bedrooms, the family bathroom, and as they came downstairs, both were smiling. They checked the living room, the study, and the under-stairs cupboard before going to the kitchen.
‘Oh wow!’ said the woman.
Jo drifted in behind them. From the slight tension in the estate agent’s face, Jo guessed he’d been fully briefed on the background to the marketing of The Rookery. The brutal murder of Detective Ben Coombs, not ten feet from where they all stood. The kidnapping of William Masters, her six-year-old nephew, from the upstairs bedroom by a psychopath. With a vague smile pasted across her features, Jo found her eyes drifting to the island, wondering if the cleaners had missed even the tiniest spot of blood. Dylan had plunged the broken bottle right through Ben’s carotid. The coroner said he’d probably lost consciousness in a matter of seconds. He’d have known that was it, thought Jo, and it brought the sudden threat of tears to her eyes, which she surreptitiously blinked away.
The Daleys, though, were oblivious. ‘The light in here is amazing!’ said the man, gazing up at the glass panes of the orangerie-style extension.
‘And those bi-folds open right onto the garden,’ said the woman. She touched her stomach as she said it, and Jo wondered if she was pregnant, imagining her children gambolling in and out of the kitchen in a scene of domestic bliss. Or maybe they already had kids. A house this size didn’t make sense for a couple.
Jo looked briefly out of the back herself. The branches of the trees at the bottom of the garden were bare, giving a view out towards the fields. Sally Carruthers’ barn, where she and her husband had kept Dylan Jones for three decades, had been levelled, leaving a bare patch of earth. She looked at her watch. An hour until her shift started.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really must be going.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Mrs Daley. ‘I think we might do another circuit.’ She looked to her husband, who nodded happily.
‘Shall I draw up the paperwork now then?’ asked the agent, with a cocky smile. ‘Only kidding … take some time to think about it.’
‘Have you had many other viewings?’ asked the young man.
The briefest pause. ‘A few, yes. But I happen to know the vendors would entertain any offers, even if under the guide price.’
You bet they would, thought Jo. She wondered about the logic of not being completely honest with the potential buyers. These days, even though the survey wouldn’t explicitly say ‘Someone was murdered in the kitchen six months ago’, a perfunctory search of the address online would bring up a host of news stories laying out the gory details. She even considered telling them herself. Imagine if they moved in, then found out …
The estate agent was giving her a wary look as if he could read her discomfort. Offloading The Rookery would probably garner some serious kudos in the sales office. Three per cent well earned.
‘Nice to meet you both,’ she said.
The woman frowned. ‘Sorry, do I know you from somewhere?’ she asked.
Maybe the front pages of the Oxford Times and most of the national press? She’d been variously described as a ‘Hero Detective’, ‘Brave Policewoman’, and in one of the tabloids, ‘The Clown Killer’. Thames Valley Police had insisted on a photo shoot, much to Jo’s dismay. Another attempt to polish her up for public consumption. To ‘control the message’, as the media officer had said repeatedly.
Jo shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’ She bid the Daleys goodbye, and breathed a sigh of relief to be back at the front door. She decided then and there that she’d never visit the house again.
‘You can keep my key,’ she called to the estate agent.
She drove away, taking the longer route to avoid Sally’s bungalow.
She wondered about dropping in to see her mother at the nursing home. It had been only a couple of days since her last visit, and that hadn’t gone brilliantly. Mrs Masters had made accusations that staff had helped themselves to some money she had squirrelled away at the back of a drawer. She had insisted that Jo find the culprit, which left her with the unenviable task of mediating between the staff and her mother. In the end a compromise had been reached. From then on, all of Jo’s mum’s petty cash would be documented, and stored in the home’s safe.
Jo took the bypass out towards Wheatley. The issue with the money was a minor awkwardness, because otherwise, reconnection with her mum had been an unexpected joy. In her lucid moments, they talked about Dad and happier times. Madeleine Masters had no idea of the ordeal her family had undergone that year. It wasn’t even a conscious decision not to tell her, more a tacit understanding that the news would unlikely penetrate the thick fog of dementia anyway. There’d been some worry that Will himself might bring it up – after all, he was only six, and could hardly be expected to maintain the family subterfuge – but so far he hadn’t. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t keen to relive any of that night. Even with his trauma therapist, he was apparently silent on the subject, preferring to focus discussions on his latest passion: astronauts.
Jo reached the home – Evergreen Lodge – and pulled in along the tree-lined drive. She normally brought flowers or chocolates, but she didn’t think her mum would care. Most the sweets went in a cupboard, to be dished out to staff anyway, and the flowers always wilted in the overheated atmosphere of the residents’ rooms. At the door, she was about to press the buzzer when her phone rang. It was St Aldates station.
‘What’s up?’ she answered.
‘You busy?’ said DI Andy Carrick.
Jo looked through the reinforced glass panel. Mrs Deekins was sitting in her normal spot in the corridor, staring at the opposite wall. She could almost smell the place already. Overcooked food, disinfectant, sadness. Radiators cranked to max.
‘Not especially.’
‘Head over to Oriel College,’ said Carrick.
‘What is it?’ asked Jo.
‘Missing person,’ said Carrick. ‘Signs of a struggle. A student called …’ he paused, and Jo guessed he was checking his notes, ‘Malin Sigurdsson.’
‘You there already?’
‘Division meeting,’ sighed Carrick. ‘Pryce is on his way though.’
‘Course he is,’ said Jo with a smile. ‘I’ll be about fifteen minutes.’
She returned to the car, wondering what awaited at Oriel. Missing people were reported several times a week. Most showed up within forty-eight hours, and unless it was a minor, the police rarely got involved. But indications of violence escalated the case to another level.
She appreciated Carrick giving her the call. Despite being the toast of the town in the summer, she’d sensed the Detective Chief Inspector, Phil Stratton, keeping her at arm’s length for the last few months. There’d been a couple of murders, one a straightforward domestic, the second drug-related, but she’d been sidelined on both cases in favour of Dimitriou and the new kid taking over from the mother-to-be Heidi Tan, Detective Constable Jack Pryce. Sure, they were both competent investigators, but Jo knew she was being treated with kid gloves. Indeed, when she’d asked for a quiet word with Stratton, he’d said as much, though he’d used words like ‘operational sensitivity’ and ‘workplace welfare’. The simple fact was, no one higher up seemed to understand what was going on in Jo’s head. How had she been affected by what had happened? Was she a liability? Perhaps Dr Forster could give an answer in her report. What had she meant that she’d ‘support’ more sessions, anyway – that Jo was still fucked up in the head somehow?
Jo only had herself to blame. She’d rushed back to work a few days after Ben’s funeral, too soon even by her own admission. It was before she’d started seeing Lucas properly, and she’d felt more alone and isolated than ever, drinking too much and missing sleep. She wasn’t really sure what had happened, but Heidi had found her in the toilets at the St Aldates station, mirror smashed and knuckles bleeding. The scary thing was, Jo didn’t really remember actually lashing out. Heidi had done her best to keep it a secret, but the lacerations had bled enough to need proper medical attention, and the mirror came out of the departmental budget. No one bought Jo’s explanation that it was an accident.
She flexed her knuckles now across the steering wheel – there were still a few scars. After that, Jo had agreed to the counselling, and then to medication. She told herself it was just to keep Stratton of her back, but she knew she was scared too. She’d seen plenty of PTSD in her career already – officers attendant on scenes of terror attacks particularly, or disturbing child cases – and it wasn’t a road she wanted to follow.
The problem was that even with Dylan dead, and Sally Carruthers in psychiatric care, the case hadn’t gone away for the Thames Valley Police either. The standards committee had come down hard on Stratton because of the mistakes he’d made in command. Quite rightly, Heidi had said – his eagerness to close the case at any cost had led to poor conclusions. In turn, Jo suspected, he’d decided she was to blame. And she got that, to an extent. She’d been the nexus of the case. Dylan was her childhood acquaintance, the crimes had taken place within a hundred yards of her childhood bedroom. It hadn’t helped either that the internal inquiry reported a day after she received her medal for bravery in the line of duty. Talk about a kick in the teeth for her DCI.
But maybe this misper was a way to put all that to bed. A couple of solid cases would show him and her colleagues that she was the same Jo Masters as before. Prove it to herself as well. Then she could really bury Dylan Jones for good.
Chapter 3
Oriel College was nestled in the cobbled streets between the High Street and Christ Church College. Not Jo’s natural milieu by any means, though she couldn’t help but admire the gothic architecture of the entranceway, and the resplendent, perfectly mown quadrangle of grass inside, still coated on the shaded side with the silvery remains of a lingering frost. A sign read ‘Open to visitors’ – term had ended a week or so before, so the majority of students would have left. The city itself was noticeably quieter, enjoying a brief lull before the panic of Christmas shopping really set in.
PC Andrea Williams was waiting just to one side of the quad. As ever, the constable’s height made Jo give her a second glance. She was at least six-two, possibly the tallest woman Jo had ever met in the flesh, and her dreadlocks gave her the appearance of being a couple of inches taller still. Dimitriou called her Andre the Giant, which only he found funny, and which had earned him a verbal warning when Stratton heard him say it. Dimitriou protested that Heidi had once called him George Michael’s less talented, uglier sibling, on the basis of their shared Greek heritage, and the fact that he had murdered a rendition of ‘Club Tropicana’ on a work karaoke night.
‘And I dare you to say it to Andrea’s face,’ Heidi had added. Jo would have liked to see that, because she knew that Williams had been an accomplished judoka before joining the force, only missing out on the national team through injury. She could probably have tossed Dimitriou’s gangly frame from one side of a holding cell to the other.
‘Morning, Andrea,’ said Jo.
‘Ma’am,’ said Williams. ‘Follow me.’
They proceeded under a sort of covered walkway (Williams had to stoop), into another quad surrounded by nineteenth-century terraces, then down a set of stairs into a more modern section of housing. Jo had somewhat lost her bearings – these colleges had been reconstructed so many times over the centuries, to no obvious plan, that it was easy to get lost. A set of clipped heels fell into step beside them.
‘You’re the other detective?’ said a slightly cadaverous-looking fifty-something woman in a plaid suit, holding out a hand. Jo shook it as she slowed.
‘Jo Masters,’ she said.
‘Belinda Frampton-Keys. I’m the Vice Provost. I do hope you can get to the bottom of this. Malin is such a promising member of the MCR.’
‘The MCR?’
Frampton-Keys looked confused for a moment, as if the abbreviation should be in common currency. ‘Middle Common Room. It’s how we refer to postgraduate students.’
‘Was it you who reported the disappearance?’
‘That’s right. Malin’s fellow student, a girl called Anna Mull, was supposed to meet Malin this morning for a coffee. When she didn’t show up and didn’t answer calls, Anna went to her room. Curtains were still drawn, which wasn’t like Malin, so Anna came to find a member of staff. We knocked several times, then entered using our own key. When we saw what was inside, I called the police.’
Williams led her towards a door behind police tape. Stationed beside it was Oliver Pinker. Squat, ginger-haired and affable, he was often paired with Williams, though the sight of the two together was strangely disconcerting, like a double act about to break into some mysterious dramatic display. He handed her polythene booties and gloves, and she stepped under the tape into a sterile linoleum corridor with several dorm rooms and a fire door at the end. The Vice Provost attempted to follow, but Williams placed a hand on her arm. ‘Best if you stay off the crime scene, ma’am,’ she said.
‘Crime scene?’ said Frampton-Keys. ‘Has that been established?’
Jo smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ll let you know as soon as possible.’
The second internal door was open, and Pryce emerged, on the phone, wearing gloves too. Almost as tall as Andrea Williams, with doe-like dark eyes and floppy, black hair, he’d turned a few heads when he’d first arrived at St Aldates three months ago. Even Jo, normally immune to such things, hadn’t failed to notice. The most disconcerting thing was the more than passing resemblance he bore to Ben. If you took away all the anger, passion, and the hint of danger from her former boyfriend, Pryce was a fair approximation of what might remain. His background was in computer forensics, and he’d been fast-tracked into investigative work from the private sector without ever serving time on the beat – a new kind of professional rather than vocational police officer. He remained essentially naïve, in an almost endearing way, but he proved himself more than able to pull his weight, arriving early and leaving late but without ever drawing attention to the fact. Indeed, Heidi had had to convince him to accurately record his overtime. His paperwork, as Stratton never ceased to extol, was exemplary. He nodded to Jo as he spoke.
‘… very sorry I can’t give you more specifics over the phone. If you could relay this to Mr Cranleigh as a matter of urgency. They can reach me on this number, or through the Thames Valley switchboard … Pryce. Jack Pryce … Of course … Goodbye.’ He hung up, and flashed his gaze back to Jo. ‘Boss,’ he said, nodding. ‘Just chatting to the father’s office. He’s in a meeting.’
‘We can notify Mr Cranleigh,’ called Frampton-Keys from outside. ‘He’s a close friend.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ said Jo. ‘Let us handle it, please.’
‘Want to look?’ said Pryce, gesturing to the door.
He let her enter first. Once over the threshold, Jo was immediately back at her own student digs in Brighton, twenty years before. The single bed, utility shelves loaded with books, 2-star hotel curtains, office chair, scuff-marks on the walls. The college might have looked glamorous on the postcards, but student rooms were the same everywhere. Malin Sigurdsson had tried to improve it – there were pot-plants, and some rather fetching black-and-white photos of seascapes on the walls. A musical instrument case stood beside a music stand. Jo guessed a flute. But she was confused. ‘Carrick said there were signs of a struggle.’
‘In the bathroom,’ said Pryce.
He moved aside, and Jo realised his body had been obscuring another door. She pushed it open.
Blood. Not a lot, but a patch on the wall above the bath, a smeared handprint across the sink, and a few drops on the floor. Like someone had hit their head, then stumbled around. There were several bottles of expensive cosmetics scattered around the sink, a few had rolled off.
‘Anyone in the other rooms?’
Pryce shook his head. ‘Not according to the Vice Provost. Most students have gone home, even the postgrads. Malin’s the last resident in this dorm block.’
‘Sorry, you said the father was called Cranleigh?’
‘Sigurdsson is the mother’s name.’
‘So they’re separated?
‘Yep. Dad’s in Parliament. MP for Witney. Using the mother’s name could just be a security thing, I suppose.’
Jo’s mind went automatically to kidnap, but she checked herself. Until a ransom demand came through, there was no point in jumping to conclusions.
‘Been in touch with the hospitals?’
‘Nothing yet,’ said Pryce. ‘Her description is circulating.’
‘Vehicle?’
‘She doesn’t even hold a licence.’
They backed out again into the bedroom. Jo went to look at the photos above the desk. There were several of mixed-sex groups in various happy poses. But one picture in particular caught Jo’s eye – a striking teenage girl with her arms around the neck of what must have been her mother – the resemblance was undeniable. They both had perfect high cheekbones, piercing green intelligent eyes with more than a hint of defiance, almost imperceptible cleft in the tip of the nose. The older woman’s hair hung straight and tended to silver, though she still wore it long. The younger’s was a natural blonde. If the Scandinavian surname didn’t give their heritage away, the looks would. Perhaps the photographer was particularly talented, but to Jo the pair looked almost otherworldly – their beauty made her think of a race of elves. Jo’s eyes passed back over the other pictures, and there was the same girl in most of them nestled among her friends. In some she looked slightly less ethereal, but in all she was quite stunning. One showed an orchestra, including Malin with a clarinet.
‘That’s our girl then,’ said Jo. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘That she is,’ said Pryce, his pale cheeks reddening as if he’d said something inappropriate.
Jo pretended not to notice. ‘Have you called forensics?’
‘Didn’t want to until you got here, ma’am – strictly it’s the lead investigator’s role to designate and delegate resources.’
Always by the book, thought Jo. Dimitriou said he once saw Pryce raise his hand to go to the toilet, but she was sure it was a joke. Fact was, since Pryce had joined them, he had proved himself diligent and thorough – almost exactly the opposite of George Dimitriou.
‘Well, let’s designate,’ said Jo. ‘Initial thoughts?’
Pryce drew himself up and threw a glance around the room.
‘I’d say it’s someone known to Malin,’ he said. ‘There’s no sign of a forced entry – door’s self-locking on a spring mechanism, with a spy-hole. Implies she let him in. Maybe they argued in the bathroom, it got physical, and Malin got hurt. He panicked and removed her body.’
‘You think she’s dead?’
‘Don’t you? There’s no shower curtain.’
Jo felt her own cheeks flush. She was surprised she’d missed that. It explained why there was no more blood outside the bathroom. Still, the way Pryce had said it, almost matter-of-factly, gave her pause. It was a feature of his personality she’d noticed before – the distance he could keep from things, almost a protective shell. In the brief few months they’d worked together, she’d never seen him lose his temper once. Given the sort of people they had to deal with, that showed some restraint.
‘It’s a good theory,’ she admitted. ‘Let’s get forensics in then.’
‘They’re over in Didcot for the next few hours.’
‘Course they are.’ Since the pooling of resources in the name of cost savings, getting a forensics team in place in a timely manner was increasingly challenging. ‘I’ll draw up a brief back at the station.’
It would all take time to process anyway, and quite possibly be useless. If Frampton-Keys had entered, with goodness knew who else, the integrity of the scene was already compromised. Still, Jo sensed, she needed to do this one by every letter of the book if she was going to keep Stratton happy.
‘And see if we can find out Malin’s recent movements,’ she added, opening the wardrobe. Inside were clothes, neatly sorted, a few nice dresses in dry-cleaning bags and a good collection of shoes. She tipped one over. Designer. Clearly Malin wasn’t short of a few quid.
She went to the desk beside the bed and pulled open the top drawer, finding a box of condoms. She turned to Pryce.
‘Anything on a boyfriend?’
‘Vice Provost said she didn’t know of one,’ said Pryce.
The drawer below had stationery, a lighter, fag papers. A roll of extra-thick foil looked distinctly out of place. She took the drawer out, then the other two, crouching down. There was a plastic bag taped to the underside of the desktop. She detached it, opened it up and sniffed the dark putty-like substance inside. Just weed. She placed the bag on the desk. ‘We should probably try and find her dealer. Small college like this, it shouldn’t be too hard to squeeze it out of someone.’
Though with the holidays, finding someone to squeeze might be tricky.
‘No sign of her phone,’ said Pryce, ‘but we’ve got a computer.’ He tapped the laptop case from the desk with a gloved hand. ‘I can take a look once it’s logged as potential evidence.’
‘See if we can find her phone number too, and talk to Stratton about accessing the phone records. The blood should be plenty enough to convince him.’
Pryce’s own phone began to ring, and he looked at the screen. ‘It’s Cranleigh’s office. You want to take it?’
‘Thanks.’ He handed her the phone. ‘Detective Sergeant Jo Masters.’
‘Something about my daughter?’ The voice was brusque, a little impatient.
‘Mr Cranleigh?’
‘That’s right. Look, if she’s done something silly …’
‘Do you know your daughter’s whereabouts?’
A pause. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Sir, Malin is missing. My colleague and I are at her college now.’
‘Well, where’s she gone?’ He seemed almost belligerent, and Jo, despite herself, was already forming a mental image of him. Tall, balding, fleshy around the face and neck, no longer the man who’d first drawn Malin’s stunning mother.
‘Mr Cranleigh, I’m afraid there are indications Malin might have been hurt.’
‘Okay, I’m coming over. Is Bel there?’
It took Jo a moment to register that he was talking about the Vice Provost.
‘We can come to you, if it’s easier. We’ll need to ask some questions.’
‘Right, fine. Call my secretary – she knows the diary.’ Another pause. ‘No one’s blabbed to the press, have they?’
Jo bit her tongue. ‘No one from my team,’ she said.
‘Let’s keep it that way, eh?’
‘Of course,’ said Jo.
Cranleigh hung up.
‘That was brief,’ said Pryce.
‘He didn’t seem all that surprised,’ said Jo. ‘Has Malin been in trouble before?’
‘Not that I know of. I can get Detective Tan to have a look for priors?’