An Early Grave (5 page)

Tiring of his theory, she felt the need to bring their meeting to a definite close.

‘I’m sorry, Callum. I appreciate your frustration, really I do, but I don’t understand why you’re telling me this. There’s nothing I can do to help you. Even if what you say is true, these deaths happened down south. I don’t have the authority to start an investigation off my patch.’ She noticed the despair in his eyes. Wearily, he dropped into the armchair. ‘I don’t see any connection between the death of your wife, a murder in Canterbury three years later and the disappearance of a student in Austria ten years ago. Did you know Peter Ramsey or Justin Kingsley?

‘We were students together: Tilly, Peter, Justin and me.’

‘And that’s the only link?’

‘Like I said, I don’t think he’s finished yet. He could kill again.’

She noted his factual tone, a man with growing confidence in his theory.

‘Who would he kill?’

‘I think he has something against us, against the others.’

She thought of Murray and Wilson’s remarks that Armour was a conspiracy theorist. He’d told her nothing about the killing of the young girl, and now she had trouble believing in his murder mystery stories.

‘Look, Callum, if you have something specific, some hard evidence that this Kingsley guy is intent on doing harm, I will pass it on to the relevant authorities for you. Aside from that I don’t see how I can help you any further.’

She edged her way around a stack of books to reach the hall.

‘They were making movies in the house,’ he said.

‘Which house?’ She spun around to face him.

‘Where you found the girl. Pornographic movies.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I watched them going in with video cameras. I saw the lights, late at night, in the bedroom. Not ordinary lights, bright, like a floodlight or a spotlight.’

‘Who?’

He shrugged; not so much because he didn’t know but instead had decided he wasn’t telling anymore. Tara guessed his motive.

‘Who, Callum. Men? Women? How many?’

‘A few. I don’t remember exactly.’ Tara knew there was more, but she knew him well enough already to see that he had a calculating and stubborn streak. She would have to be patient.

‘Please try. Call me if you think of anything else.’

‘We were students at Latimer College, Oxford. Tilly, Peter, Justin and me.’

Tara’s eyes widened. Nerves floated across her stomach. She looked Callum in the face; saw the dazzle of conceit in his dark eyes. At last a smile, though hardly welcome, stretched across his mouth.

‘I helped you; now you have to help me.’

‘Why, Callum? Why ask for my help?’

He went back to the living room, returning moments later holding a magazine. He opened it at the penultimate page and handed it to her. Immediately, she recognised the photograph of herself in police uniform. She didn’t have to read the short paragraph beneath.

‘You were also a student at Latimer,’ he said.

Without a word, she closed the page and returned his copy of the Oxford Alumni magazine.

CHAPTER 6

‘Where have you been? And look at the state of you.’

‘Really sorry girls. Something came up, and I couldn’t get away.’

‘And are these your work clothes?’ said Aisling, looking her up and down, a derogatory smirk clouding her usually stunning pout. Foolishly, Tara thought she might have got away by letting her hair down, giving it a good brushing and putting on some eye-liner and lipstick in the station washroom. No chance. Aisling could spot dull, inexpensive trouser suits at fifty yards. And flat heels? Should have known it wouldn’t work.

Kate looked different from the last time they’d gone out, having spent the afternoon at the hairdressers and now sporting her new colour. In the subdued light of
Mal
Maison
it appeared orange, which meant in daylight it must be a shocking orange. Fortunately, Kate wore her hair quite short, and tonight it was a tidy orange bob. She kept it short, she claimed, because it saved her from tying it in a bun or a pony-tail to work on the heart ward at The Royal. Tara hoped that tomorrow the sight of Kate didn’t trigger any cardiac arrests among patients.

‘First night out in months,’ said Kate, ‘And you dress for a wake?’

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Aisling. ‘She’s only dressed as a waitress for a wake.’

Aisling was the expert among them on dressing up. Always turned out well, because, as she often said, ‘You never know when I might fall into the arms of a millionaire.’ This evening it was a short, clinging dress in navy, well-tanned legs and dizzily high heels. She looked great, perched on a stool, legs crossed, copious black ringlets tumbling off her shoulders, large startled-looking brown eyes always on the hunt for talent. Tara and Kate were both in awe of their friend, had been since third form at Upton Hall. She worked for a Liverpool promotions company at the centre of the biggest and best city events, concerts, shows and sporting occasions. Didn’t mean a huge amount financially but, as Aisling was always quick to mention, it got her close to the people who had bucket loads, and one day soon she would marry some of it. Kate was only marginally taller than Tara, a little heavier, and to compliment the orange hairdo wore a cream strap dress above the knee and embellished with sequins.

Tara sat on the stool her friends had been keeping for her, while they browsed the dinner menu. Kate sipped white wine, Chardy, while Aisling, true to her Irish roots, enjoyed a pint of Guinness. A glass of tonic, ice and lemon, but minus the vodka, was ready and waiting for Tara. She was glad of it. Her throat ached from a day spent in heavy conversations, first with Tweedy, Wilson and Murray, then Callum Armour, and finishing again with Murray as he drove her from Treadwater back to the station on St Anne Street. Now, as she tried to unwind, she regretted telling him so much of what went on at Armour’s house. She had to share the details of the case with him, but wished she’d kept it till morning. Murray had a tendency to jump the gun at times. She had another strange pang of nerves rippling across her stomach.

‘Sorry I’m so late,’ she repeated.

‘We cancelled dinner,’ said Aisling.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Kate. ‘There’s still time for us to eat. I’m starving. Aisling only eats a stick of celery anyway.’

‘Tell you what, to make up for me trashing your evening, how about a sleep-over at my place on Friday? I’ll cook.’

‘Yay,’ said Kate, in the voice of a thirteen-year-old. Aisling laughed a hearty infectious laugh.

‘Do we get to bring some men?’ she said, ‘Or will you supply those as well?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘What about a couple of those nice policemen you work with?’

‘That would be novel for you,’ said Kate. ‘What do you think your Dad would say about you lying with a couple of bizees? He thinks his precious daughter’s still a virgin.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said Tara, laughing. ‘I’m a bizee now, you know?’

‘I know, luv,’ said Kate, her hand placed affectionately on Tara’s arm, ‘But we’ve forgiven you for that.’

‘Hey,’ cried Aisling, ‘What the hell do you mean? Me lying with a couple of bizees. What do you think I am?’

‘I said two, because I thought maybe you were cutting back,’ Kate replied.

Tara nearly choked on a lemon pip.

‘Cheeky cow.’ Aisling mocked a snub of Kate and turned to Tara. ‘Well, any men, bizees or otherwise on the sniff?’

‘Not a one,’ Tara replied.

‘So that faraway look has nothing to do with a man wanting into your knickers?’

Tara was well used to this. Aisling spoke her thoughts; spoke what all of them thought with not the slightest hint of modesty or restraint.

‘Fair enough,’ said Aisling when Tara had nothing to add. ‘Just be careful, all right?’

It felt great to be having fun. Didn’t take much for the three of them to conjure a good time. Tara needed more of this. She wouldn’t cope with the pains of her job if she didn’t have these girls and these times to enjoy, even if they were becoming less frequent. Strange though, tonight she was unable to squeeze from her mind the picture of one man. And Aisling had sussed it. How surreal it felt when he pulled the Alumni magazine from a bundle in that bizarre armchair and showed her a picture of herself in uniform.
Tara
Grogan
, the caption read,
graduate
of
Latimer
College
,
now
a
Detective
Inspector
with
the
Merseyside
Police
. She wondered how Callum Armour spent his evenings.

CHAPTER 7

Dr Zhou Jian breathed easy. Despite his nerves his presentation had gone well, although his shirt clung to his back from sweating in the heat of the auditorium. Conference delegates had received his paper ‘
Recent
Advances
in
the
Detection
of
Adulterated
Food
in
China
,’ with interest. Quite a few questions were asked and several requests made for reprints of the paper. He was pleased. It was the culmination of two years’ work, investigating cases of food contamination and the development of analytical methods for detection of the contaminants. Kudos for him and his department at Yanshan University. Not such good news for those arrested and charged with deliberate adulteration of food. The ring leaders faced the death penalty, some had already been executed. That’s the kind of justice they administered in his homeland. No one would care; the actions of a few unscrupulous business men had caused the deaths of more than thirty people, mostly children. All done to make money by defrauding their customers and ultimately harming the consumer. He’d detected such chemicals as melamine, commonly used in manufacturing plastics but added illegally to powdered milk to increase the nitrogen concentration, used as a measure of the protein content in food. He’d uncovered instances where food processors had deliberately used horsemeat and pork in beef products, and where low grade chicken meat was passed off as organic produce. Drugs such as nitrofuran antibiotics, banned for use in rearing food-producing animals because they are carcinogens, and azo dyes, also carcinogens, used to kill parasites in fish: he detected all of them. Jian had investigated the companies involved and performed thousands of tests to detect the substances in food products to prevent them from reaching the shops and supermarkets. Consequently, he’d received a number of threats. Samples he’d collected were stolen from his lab, his wife verbally abused by strangers in the street, acid thrown on his car and his tyres slashed. He was simply doing his job and never imagined that his life could be at risk. He worked for his university and his government, and he expected that same government to protect him.

Now that he’d given his presentation to the three hundred delegates in the Culture and Congress Centre on Europaplatz in Lucerne, he was going to enjoy the remainder of the conference on global food safety, and this evening he looked forward to the conference dinner. This was his first visit to Europe since he’d returned home to Qinhuangdao after his years at Oxford, first as an undergraduate, then a post-grad and finally two years working with his close friend Callum Armour as a post-doc. It all seemed like yesterday. He had hoped to see Callum at the conference, but a former colleague from Oxford had told him that Callum was no longer working in the field. He could understand why, after what happened to his wife, Tilly and their little daughter. It saddened him greatly. Callum had been his closest friend at Latimer College.

He fancied a walk before going to the dinner, and after a shower and a change of clothes back at his hotel, he quickly checked his emails on his lap-top, replying to a couple and sending one to his wife Lihua, who was six months pregnant. Jian took the lift down to the lobby of the Grand Hotel National and headed for the exit leading to the lakeside, where he hoped to enjoy the cool evening air as he strolled towards the old town. The lobby was busy with new guests checking in and scores of conference attendees who were staying at the hotel.

‘Jian,’ a voice called from the lounge which opened onto the lobby. He looked across, smiled and gave a cursory wave to a bright-faced man in his thirties, with untidy blonde hair and wearing a checked shirt and blue jeans.

‘Come and join us for a drink.’

He spoke in English with an accent unmistakably Dutch. Jian came over to the group of five people seated in comfortable, leather armchairs gathered around a coffee table. He smiled his polite smile, with a slight bow of his head. He was an acquaintance of them all: Doctor Koos van Leer, who had called him over and Pieter Schalke, both from a research institute in Wageningen, Dr Clarisse Junot, from Nantes, an attractive forty year-old veterinarian, Philip Weston, from York and Luca Davoli, from Rome, all workers in the field of contamination in food.

Van Leer dragged another chair across the carpeted floor to their table. Jian sat down and ordered a cool beer from a waiter. The group hadn’t yet consumed sufficient alcohol to cast off the safe inclination to discuss only work, their thoughts centred on the content of today’s conference. Soon though, Jian’s plan to go for a walk disappeared under intense discussions on the detection limits of triple-quad mass spectrometers in analysing mycotoxins in animal feeds, the various views on solid-phase dispersion for sample clean-up and the food safety issues associated with the export of prawns from Bangladesh to Europe. All present were intent upon sharing a few drinks before going directly in to the conference dinner, hosted by the hotel.

‘Doctor Zhou Jian?’

For the second time that evening Jian heard his name called across the lobby. The concierge paraded through the lounge, carrying a silver salver, scanning the room for the intended recipient of the note on the plate.

‘A message for you sir,’ he said after Jian raised a hand in the air. The young man, smartly dressed in a grey uniform with red trim on his lapels and on the seams of his trousers, bowed slightly and presented the salver.

‘Thank you,’ said Jian. He opened the small white envelope as the others continued with their conversations. No one observed Jian’s reaction to the message typed on the paper within. He got to his feet immediately, smiling weakly, looking nervous yet strangely elated.

‘Excuse me, please. I must leave you now.’ The others looked on, but only Dr Clarisse Junot appeared to notice what Jian was saying. ‘See you later at dinner,’ he said, bowing his head then squeezing his way between chairs and the table bedecked in drinks.

‘Going for that walk after all?’ said Clarisse Junot.

‘Yes, yes,’ Jian replied. He hurried across to the reception desk and asked the young girl seated by a computer for directions to the Hotel des Alps.

‘It is in the old town, on the Rathausquai,’ the girl explained. Rising from her seat, she lifted a tourist brochure from a pile on the counter, opened it and marked on the map inside the location of the Hotel des Alps.

‘Thank you,’ said Jian. He hurried outdoors and soon found his way to the lakeside. Judging by the location of the Hotel des Alps it seemed that he would get his evening stroll after all. Now, however, he was more excited about meeting a friend he hadn’t seen since his student days.

The evening air was heavy with moisture, a mist engulfing the mountain peaks of the Riga and Stanserhorn beyond the lake. Although relaxed after a nervous day, he walked in a determined stride along the Nationalquai, towards the city centre. He wondered, as he had done so often recently, about returning to Europe, to England or Holland perhaps, securing a research post, or at least another post-doc fellowship. He wanted Lihua and his soon-to-be-born child to experience what he had seen, what he was seeing right now, to taste life away from an overcrowded city stifled by poor air and with an ever-growing presence of fear. He didn’t think he could stand for much longer having to deal with crooks in the food business and self-important government officials on the take. He hurried on, his stomach slowly regaining calmness like the waters of the lake.

Crossing the busy Schweizerhofquai close to the road bridge, he soon found the Rathausquai on his right, a quayside in the old town ushering the lake into its drain of the River Reuss. There were bars and restaurants with seating outdoors by the railings of the quay. A few people sat with glasses of wine, eating salad, or soup and bread, a prelude perhaps to their main meal of the day. Passing by the Kapellbrucke, an old covered wooden bridge stretching diagonally across the entrance to the Reuss, he soon found the Hotel des Alps, a line of tables along its frontage each with parasols folded for the night. Approaching the hotel entrance he spotted a face he remembered well from his days at Oxford. How strange, he thought, gazing at the piece of paper in his hand, the message he’d received from the concierge. It was not the person written on the note, but a surprise, nonetheless.

*

Around seven the following morning, the city stretching for the day, cafés and bars were already open and serving breakfast. Traffic flowed as smoothly on the thoroughfares as the water drained from the lake. Trains departed exactly on time from the station beside the KKL, the conference centre preparing for the final day of the International Symposium on Food Quality and Hygiene in the Global Market. Dr Zhou Jian had presented his paper the day before. Today, he would not show up for the closing address; he would not join his international associates for coffee or for breakfast at the Grand Hotel National on Haldenstrasse.

A maid working on the second floor of the Hotel Schiff gazed from a room window and spied something floating in the river. She couldn’t be certain; didn’t want to believe it.

‘Anna, come here a moment,’ she called to her much younger colleague who had been cleaning the toilet of room two-fifteen. When the teenage girl, with blonde hair raised in a bun, joined the maid by the window, she followed the line of the woman’s pointing finger. ‘Look there; what is that floating in the water?’

The girl drew a sharp breath, realising straightaway the sight before her.

‘I’ll get Nicholaus,’ she called, her slim legs already drumming their way down the stairs.

Once in the lobby she roused the concierge by the front door and the pair of them rushed onto the quay and down the terracing by the Rathaussteg to the water’s edge.

‘Where?’ Said Nicholaus, a slight young man of twenty with black greased hair and a thin nose. ‘I don’t see anything.’

Anna caught his arm at the elbow and forced him to look closely.

‘It’s a body, Nicholaus. I’m sure of it.’

Something, close to the quayside, lay entangled between the mooring rope and the hull of a small motor boat.

‘Wait here,’ he said, and sprinted to a café a few yards along the quay. Once there he grabbed a window pole from a waiter, who was lowering the awning outside his restaurant.

‘Come help me, Josef. There’s someone in the river.’

Nicholaus ran back to the steps, the waiter following but slow on his feet.

‘It is a body; I can see a hand,’ said Anna.

Nicholaus reached with the pole towards the dark object in the water. After two failed attempts, he managed to get some purchase on what seemed to be the collar of a jacket. With the waiter holding him steady by the waist, Nicholaus, stretching beyond the steps, managed to free the body from the mooring rope and haul it toward the quayside. Several bystanders ran to the aid of the concierge and the waiter. When they pulled the body of Zhou Jian onto the steps and turned him over, there was not a mark upon him. Anna cried in horror at the sight of the stone grey face, and Nicholaus put his arms around her. The Chinese scientist, it seemed, had drowned tragically in Lake Lucerne.