For the Sake of Elena (35 page)

“Georgina Higgins-Hart.” The weasel-faced constable squinted at his notebook, the cover of which bore a stain that looked suspiciously like pizza sauce. “A member of Hare and Hounds. Working on an M.Phil. in Renaissance Literature. Newcastle girl.” He snapped the notebook closed. “President of the College and the senior tutor had no trouble identifying the body, Inspector. They’ve both known her since she came up to Cambridge three years back.”

The constable stood posted outside the closed door of the girl’s bed-sitting room. He was positioned like a guard, legs spread and arms folded across his chest, and his expression—flickering indecisively between smug judgement and outright derision—indicated the degree to which he considered the inadequacies of New Scotland Yard CID responsible for this latest Cambridge killing.

Lynley said only, “Do you have the key, Constable?” and took it from the man’s palm when he handed it over.

Georgina, he saw, had been a devotee of Woody Allen, and most of the bed-sit’s limited wall space was given over to posters celebrating his films. Bookshelves took up the rest of the space, and on them sat an eclectic display of the girl’s possessions, everything from a collection of ancient Raggedy Ann dolls to a seriously extensive selection of wine. She had lined up what few books she owned onto the mantel of the bricked-in fireplace. They were held in place on either end by a dispirited-looking miniature palm.

With the constable outside and the door closed upon him, Lynley sat on the edge of the single bed. A pink duvet covered it, with a large bouquet of yellow paeonies embroidered into its centre. His fingers traced the pattern of flowers and leaves as his mind traced the pattern of the two killings.

The outline comprised the most obvious details: a second runner from Hare and Hounds; a second girl; a second victim who was tall and lithe and long-haired and engaged—in the darkness—in an early morning’s workout. Those were the superficial similarities. But if the killings were connected, there had to be others.

And there were, of course. The most immediately apparent was the fact that Georgina Higgins-Hart, like Elena Weaver, had a relationship with the English Faculty. Although she was a postgraduate, Lynley could not overlook the fact that, in her fourth year at the University, she would have known many of the professors, most of the lecturers, and everyone associated with her own field of Renaissance Literature, those writings—both European and British—of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. He knew what Havers was going to make of this information when she learned of it, and he couldn’t deny the connection it suggested.

But he also couldn’t ignore the fact that Georgina Higgins-Hart was a member of Queens’ College. Nor could he deny the additional connection that Queens’ College implied.

He got to his feet and went to the desk which was tucked into an alcove whose walls were hung with a collection of framed stills from
Sleeper, Bananas
, and
Take the Money and Run
. He was reading the opening paragraph of an essay on
The Winter’s Tale
when the door opened and Sergeant Havers came into the room.

She joined him at the desk. “Well?”

“Georgina Higgins-Hart,” he said. “Renaissance Literature.” He could sense her smile as she matched the period of time with its most significant author.

“I knew it. I
knew
it. We need to get back to his house and have a go at finding that shotgun, Inspector. I say we get some of Sheehan’s blokes to tear the place apart.”

“You can hardly think that a man of Thorsson’s intelligence would blast a young girl into oblivion and then simply replace the gun among his belongings. He knows he’s under suspicion, Sergeant. He isn’t a fool.”

“He doesn’t need to be a fool,” she said. “He just needs to be desperate.”

“Beyond that, as Sheehan pointed out, we’re standing on the threshold of the pheasant season. Shotguns abound. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the University itself has an outdoor society devoted to hunting. If there’s a student handbook on the mantel, you can check on that yourself.”

She didn’t move. “You can’t mean to suggest that these killings aren’t related.”

“I don’t mean to suggest that. I think they are. But not necessarily in the most obvious fashion.”

“Then how? What other connection is there but the most obvious ones which, by the way, we’ve been handed on a platter? Okay, I know you’re going to argue that she was a runner so there’s another connection for us to play with. And I know she had the same general appearance as the Weaver girl. But frankly, Inspector, trying to build a case on those two facts seems a lot shakier than building a case on Thorsson.” She seemed to sense his inclination to dispute the position she was taking. She went on more insistently. “We
know
there was some truth in what Elena Weaver claimed about Thorsson. He as much as demonstrated that this morning. So if he was harassing her, why not this girl as well?”

“There’s another connection, Havers. Beyond Thorsson. Beyond running.”

“What?”

“Gareth Randolph. He’s a member of Queens’.”

She didn’t look either pleased with or intrigued by this piece of information. She said, “Right. Quite. And his motive, Inspector?”

Lynley fingered through the items on Georgina’s desk. He catalogued them mentally and considered his sergeant’s question, trying to develop a hypothetical response that would fit both murders.

“Perhaps we’re looking at a primary rejection that’s begun seeping into the rest of his life.”

“Elena Weaver brushed him off so he killed her and then finding that single killing not enough to wipe the rejection out of his memory, he’s bent on killing her again and again? Wherever he finds her?” Havers made no effort to hide her incredulity. She ran a restless hand back through her hair and grabbed onto a fistful which she tugged at impatiently. “I can’t even begin to swallow that, sir. The means are too different. The Weaver girl may have been killed in a well-planned attack, but
attack
is the watchword. There was real rage behind what happened to her, a need to hurt as well as to kill. This other—” She waved her hand over the top of the desk as if an indication of its scattering of books and papers would stand as symbol for the death of the second girl—“I think this other was the need to eliminate. Do it fast. Do it simple. But just do it.”

“Why?”

“Georgina was in Hare and Hounds. She probably knew Elena. And if that’s the case, it stands to reason that she probably also knew what Elena intended to do.”

“About Thorsson.”

“And perhaps Georgina Higgins-Hart was just the corroboration Elena needed to make that sexual harassment charge stick. Perhaps Thorsson knew it. If he went to argue with Elena about it on Thursday night, she might well have told him that she wasn’t the only one going to the authorities. And if that was the case, it wasn’t going to be her word against his any longer. It was going to be his against theirs. Those aren’t very sweet odds, are they, Inspector? And that wouldn’t have looked good to anyone.”

Lynley had to admit that Havers’ hypothesis was grounded more solidly in reality than was his. And yet unless they could come up with a viable piece of hard evidence, they were stymied. She seemed to realise this.

“We’ve got the black fibres,” she persisted. “If his clothes make a match, we’re on our way.”

“Do you really think Thorsson would have handed his things over this morning—no matter his frame of mind—had he had even the slightest concern that forensic could match them to the fibres from Elena Weaver’s body?” Lynley closed an open text on the desk. “He knows he’s clear on that, Havers. We need something else.”

“The primary weapon used on Elena.”

“Did you get St. James on the phone?”

“He’ll be up sometime round noon tomorrow. He was in the middle of messing about with some sort of a polymorphic what-have-you, mumbling about isoenzymes and getting generally bleary-eyed from having looked through his microscopes for more than a week. He’ll be glad of the diversion.”

“That’s what he said?”

“No. Actually, he said, ‘Tell Tommy he owes me,’ but that’s pretty much par for the course with you two, isn’t it?”

“Quite.” Lynley was looking at Georgina’s engagement diary. She was less active than Elena Weaver had been, but like Elena she had kept a record of her appointments. Seminars and supervisions were listed, by subject and by name of supervisor. Hare and Hounds had its places as well. But it took only a moment for him to ascertain that Lennart Thorsson’s name appeared nowhere. Nor was there anything that resembled the small fish that Elena had regularly sketched upon her calendar. Lynley riffled through all the pages of the book to find something that suggested the sort of intrigue implied by that fish, but it was completely straightforward. If Georgina Higgins-Hart had secrets, she hadn’t hidden them here.

They had little enough to go on, he realised. Mostly a series of unprovable conjectures. Until Simon Allcourt-St. James arrived in Cambridge and unless he gave them something else to work with, they would have to rely on the evidence at hand.

17

With a heaviness of heart and a growing sense that the inevitable was fast approaching between them, Rosalyn Simpson watched as Melinda continued stuffing a mishmash of belongings into two rucksacks. She grabbed knee socks, underwear, stockings, three nightgowns from one drawer; a silk scarf, two belts, four T-shirts from another; her passport, a worn Michelin guide to France from a third. Then she went on to the wardrobe where she removed two pairs of blue jeans, a pair of sandals, and a quilted skirt. Her face was blotched from crying, and all the time she packed, she snuffled. Occasionally she withheld a fractured sob.

“Melinda.” Rosalyn tried to sound soothing. “You’re not being rational.”

“I thought it was you.” This had been her most frequent response for the last hour, an hour which had begun with her terrorised screaming, moved quickly on to wildly distraught weeping, and concluded with blind determination to leave Cambridge at once with Rosalyn in tow.

There had been no way to talk to her reasonably, and even if there had been, Rosalyn felt as if she lacked the energy to do it. She had spent a miserable night thrashing round in her bed while guilt spread like a prickly rash on the flesh of her conscience, and the last thing she wanted now was a scene of reproach, recrimination, and reassurance with Melinda. But she was wise enough not to mention any of that at the moment. Rather, she told Melinda only part of the truth: she hadn’t slept well the previous night; upon returning from a morning’s practical, she’d come to Melinda’s room with nowhere else to go to get a bit of rest when the porter had barred her from climbing her own staircase; she’d fallen asleep and hadn’t awakened until the door crashed against the wall and Melinda herself had begun screaming unaccountably. She hadn’t known that a runner had been shot that morning. The porter had said nothing, telling her only that the staircase would be closed for a while. And no word had yet gone out among the members of college about the murder, so no one was in front of the building at the time to pass on gossip or information. But if it
was
someone from her staircase who had been shot, she knew it had to be Georgina Higgins-Hart, the only other member of Hare and Hounds who lived in that part of the building.

“I thought it was you,” Melinda sobbed. “You promised you wouldn’t run alone but I thought you ran anyway to spite me because you were angry that I’d insisted you tell your parents about us so I thought it was you.”

Rosalyn realised that she
did
feel some anger. It was a bubbling bit of real resentment that promised to boil over into outright dislike. She tried to ignore it, saying, “Why would I want to spite you like that? I didn’t run alone. I didn’t run at all.”

“He’s after you, Ros. He’s after us both. He wanted you but he got her instead but he’s not done with us and we’ve got to get away.”

She’d taken a tin of money from its hiding place in a shoe carton. She’d rustled up her rucksacks from the back of one of the wardrobe shelves. She’d swept her copious supply of cosmetics into a plastic case. And now she was rolling the blue jeans into cylindrical shapes preparatory to ramming them into the canvas sack with everything else. When she was in this state, there was no real talking to her, but Rosalyn still felt the need to try.

“Melinda, this just doesn’t make sense.”

“I told you last night not to talk to anyone about it, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t listen. You’ve always got to do your precious little duty. And now look where it’s got us.”

“Where?”

“Here. Needing to clear off, and having nowhere to go. But if you’d thought a bit first…If you’d just thought for once…And now he’s waiting, Ros. He’s just biding his time. He knows where to find us. You as good as invited him to blow us both to bits. Well, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to wait round to have him come for me. And neither are you.” She took another two pullovers from a drawer. “We’re nearly the same size. You won’t need to go to your room for clothes.”

Rosalyn walked to the window. One lone senior member of the college strolled across the lawn below. The crowd of the curious had long since dispersed, as had all obvious signs of the police, making it difficult to believe that another runner had been murdered that morning, making it impossible to believe that this second killing was tied in any way to the conversation she’d had with Gareth Randolph last night.

She and Melinda—glowering, protesting, and arguing against it every step of the way—had walked the few blocks to DeaStu and found him in his cubicle of an office. With no one there to interpret for them, they’d used the screen of a word processor to communicate. He’d looked awful, Rosalyn recalled. His eyes were rheumy; his skin was unshaven and pinched on his skull. He looked devastated by illness. He looked exhausted and torn. But he didn’t look like a killer.

Somehow, she thought, she would have sensed it if Gareth had presented any danger to her. Certainly, there would have been an air of tension surrounding him. He would have shown signs of panic as she told him what she knew about the previous morning’s murder. But instead, he evidenced only anger and grief. And faced with that, she had known for a certainty that he had been in love with Elena Weaver.

Quite without warning, she had felt an irrational twist of jealousy. To have someone—all right, a man, she admitted it—love her so much that he would dream about her, think about her, and hope for a life together…

Looking at Gareth Randolph, watching his hands move over the keyboard as he typed his questions and responded to hers, she felt overcome by the sudden knowledge that she wanted a conventional future like everyone else. This unexpected desire brought an attendant rush of guilt. It swarmed busily round the issue of betrayal. Yet feeling the tricks and twinges of her conscience, she was roused to anger. For how could there be the slightest degree of treachery in yearning for the simplest prospect that life offered everyone?

They’d returned to her room. Melinda’s mood had been black. She’d not wanted Rosalyn to talk to anyone about Robinson Crusoe’s Island in the first place and even the compromise of talking to Gareth Randolph and not to the police had been insufficient to quell her displeasure. Rosalyn knew that only seduction would suffice to woo Melinda back to good humour once again. And she understood how the scene would evolve between them, with herself in the role of sexual supplicant and Melinda grudgingly giving reply. Her solicitous advances would eventually melt Melinda’s indifference while Melinda’s languid and largely uninterested responses would keep her in her place. It would be the delicate dance of expiation and punishment in which they’d engaged so many times. She knew how each movement would play out against the next, all of them acting as a means of proving her love in some way. But while the success of the seduction generally provided a few moments’ gratification, the entire procedure had seemed monumentally tiresome last night.

So she’d pleaded exhaustion, an essay, the need to rest and to think. And when Melinda had left her—casting a reproachful glance over her shoulder just before she closed the door—Rosalyn had experienced the most exquisite relief.

That hadn’t done much to allow her to sleep, however. The satisfaction of being alone did nothing to stop her from writhing in her bed and trying to wipe from her mind all the elements of her life that seemed to be caving in on her.

You made the choice, she told herself. You are what you are. No one and nothing can change that for you.

But how she wanted to.

“Why don’t you think about us?” Melinda was saying. “You never do, Ros. I do. All the time. But you never do. Why?”

“This goes beyond us.”

Melinda stopped packing, holding a rolled pair of socks in her hand. “How can you say that? I asked you not to talk to anyone. You said you had to talk anyway. Now someone else is dead. Another runner. A runner from your staircase. He followed her, Ros. He thought it was you.”

“That’s absurd. He has no reason to hurt me.”

“You must have told him something without even being aware of its importance. But he knew what it meant. He wanted to kill you. And since I was there as well, he wants to kill me. Well, he’s not getting the chance. If you aren’t willing to think of us, I am. We’re clearing out until they’ve nabbed him.” She zipped the rucksack and plopped it on the bed. She went to the wardrobe for her coat, scarf, and gloves. “We’ll take the train into London first. We can stay near Earl’s Court until I get the money to—”

“No.”

“Rosalyn—”

“Gareth Randolph’s not a killer. He loved Elena. You could see that on his face. He wouldn’t have hurt her.”

“That’s a pile of rubbish. People kill each other all the time over love. Then they kill once again to cover up their tracks. Which is exactly what he’s doing, no matter what you think you saw on the island.” Melinda glanced round the room as if to make sure she’d forgotten nothing. She said, “Let’s get going. Come on.”

Rosalyn didn’t move. “I did it for you last night, Melinda. I went to DeaStu, not the police. And now Georgina’s dead.”

“
Because
you went to DeaStu. Because you talked in the first place. If you’d kept your mouth shut, nothing would have happened to anyone. Don’t you see that?”

“I’m responsible for this. Both of us are.”

Melinda’s mouth drew into a hair’s width line. “
I’m
responsible? I tried to take care of you. I wanted to protect you. I tried to stop you from putting both of us at risk. And now I’m responsible for Georgina’s death? Well, that’s rich, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you see how it is? I
let
you stop me. I should have done what I knew was right in the first place. I should always do that. But I keep getting sidetracked.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That it always comes down to a question of love with you. If I really love you, I’ll take the room under the eaves. If I really love you, we’ll have sex when you want. If I really love you, I’ll tell my parents the truth about us.”

“And that’s what all this is really about, isn’t it? That you told your parents and they didn’t approve. They didn’t fall all over themselves wishing you well. They played it for guilt instead of compassion.”

“If I really love you, I’ll always do what you want. If I really love you, I’ll have no mind of my own. If I really love you, I’ll live like a…”

“What? Finish it. Say it. Live like a what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Go on. Say it.” Melinda sounded giddy. “Live like a dyke. A dyke. A dyke. Because that’s what you are and you just can’t face it. So you turn it around and shove it on me. You think a man’s going to be the answer to your problems? You think a man can make you into something you aren’t? You’d better get wise, Ros. You’d better face the truth. The problem’s yourself.” She shouldered her rucksack and threw the other to the floor at Rosalyn’s feet. “Choose,” she said.

“I don’t want to choose.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t give me that.” Melinda waited for a moment. Somewhere on the staircase, a door opened. Quirky music swelled and a wavering, whimsical voice claimed to be u-n-c-o-u-p-l-e-d. Melinda laughed sardonically. “How appropriate,” she said.

Rosalyn reached towards her. But she didn’t pick up the rucksack. “Melinda.”

“We’re born the way we’re born. It’s a toss of the dice and no one can change it.”

“But don’t you see? I don’t know that. I’ve never even had a chance to find out.”

Melinda nodded, her face quickly becoming both shuttered and cool. “Great. So find out. Just don’t come snivelling back when you discover what’s what.” She grabbed her shoulder bag and pulled on her gloves. “I’m out of here then. Lock up when you leave. Give your key to the porter.”

“All this just because I want to see the police?” Rosalyn asked.

“All this just because you don’t want to see yourself.”

“My money’s on the pullover,” Sergeant Havers said. She picked up the squat stainless steel teapot and poured, grimacing at the pale colour of the brew with a “what is this stuff, anyway?” to the waitress who was passing their table.

“Herbal blend,” the girl said.

Blackly, Havers stirred in a teaspoon of sugar. “Grass cuttings, more likely.” She took a tentative sip and scowled. “Grass cuttings undoubtedly. Don’t they have the regular bit? P.G. Tips? Something to wear the enamel off your teeth good and proper?”

Lynley poured his own cup. “This is better for you, Sergeant. It has no caffeine.”

“It also has no flavour, or don’t we care about that?”

“Just one of the drawbacks to the healthy life.”

Havers muttered and pulled out her cigarettes.

“No smoking, miss,” the waitress said as she brought their sweets to the table, an arrangement of carob-chip biscuits and sugar-free fruit tarts.

“Oh, hell and damnation,” Havers said.

They were in the Bliss Tea Room in Market Hill, a small establishment squeezed in between a stationery shop and what appeared to be a gathering place for the local skin heads.
Heavy Mettle
had been scrawled by an obviously untutored hand in red greasepaint across the latter shop’s window, and the ear-assaulting screech of electric guitars periodically blasted out the front door. In apparent answer to the window decoration, the stationers had countered with
Waitless Cowardice
across their own glass, a joke that no doubt went unappreciated by the owners and patrons of the neighbouring business.