Good Girls Don't Die (18 page)

Keith looked like he’d had even less sleep than Grace. In fact, thought Grace, right now he looked like a man you ought to worry about: her dad’s skin had gone that same pasty grey in the days before his heart attack. She watched the SIO’s expression become even grimmer as he handed Duncan a large brown envelope.

‘Roxanne Carson, age thirty-one,’ he began, as Duncan added the post-mortem photographs to the board. ‘Cause of death was ligature strangulation. Time of death estimated at less than an hour before she was found. No reason to think she was killed elsewhere. No indication of a violent struggle, nor of recent sexual activity except that an empty white wine bottle had been inserted into her vagina, probably after death.’

A ripple of voracious interest passed through the packed MIT office: this was the first time the rest of the ever-increasing team had been permitted to learn the full significance of the vodka bottle they’d read about in the newspaper.

Grace was pretty sure that if Roxanne was working she wouldn’t have been drinking, but she asked anyway. ‘Was Roxanne drunk?’

‘We’re waiting on the blood alcohol level,’ replied Keith. ‘But stomach contents suggest not.’

‘It’s possible that matey may have just picked an empty wine bottle up off the ground,’ said Duncan. ‘I saw quite a few discarded bottles.’

‘There were hundreds of people there last night,’ said Keith. ‘And they left a lot of litter. Forensics are going to be a nightmare.’

‘Same as the demolition site where Rachel Moston was found,’ said Lance. ‘A deliberate choice?’

‘May well be. Which means that matey’s organised and prepared. So, as with the first murder, unlikely to have left fingerprints.’

‘We might get lucky on DNA this time,’ said Duncan.

Keith nodded. ‘Possibly. There are certainly enough points of similarity to assume that Rachel Moston and Roxanne Carson were killed by the same person.’

‘There was nothing placed under Roxanne’s head, though,’ Grace pointed out.

Keith ignored the interruption. ‘A handbag, which we’ve identified as belonging to the victim, was recovered nearby and, so far as we’re aware, nothing obvious appears to be missing from it. She was found with a pair of knickers inside her mouth, also probably placed there post-mortem. Her own weren’t recovered, and we should be able to confirm that this pair was not brought to the scene but belonged to her.’

‘So why this further elaboration?’ asked Lance. ‘He must mean something by it. It’s a kind of conversation, isn’t it? Either with himself or with us.’

‘Let’s stick to facts, shall we?’ said Keith drily.

‘When Ivo Sweatman found the body, he already knew that a vodka bottle had been found with the first victim,’ said Duncan.

‘So did everyone who read yesterday’s
Courier
,’ said Lance.

‘Yes, but do we need to rule out the idea of a copycat?’

‘Ivo told me earlier in the evening that it had been Roxanne Carson who gave him that information,’ said Keith. ‘But I don’t believe either of them knew the precise details of the positioning of the vodka bottle.’

‘All the same, she might have been getting information about Rachel’s murder directly from the killer,’ said Lance eagerly.

‘That’s certainly a possibility,’ agreed Keith, his expression bleaker than Grace thought possible. ‘In which case, we have to ask ourselves why a journalist knew more than we did.’

Keith paused as if battling to stop himself uttering the words he really wanted to say. In any case, no one in the room needed telling: this killing had happened on their watch. Everyone had seen the morning TV news bulletins and copies of today’s
Courier
had already been passed from hand to hand around the station. Below the battle cry of a single-word headline –
SLAIN
– Ivo Sweatman had excoriated the police for their failure to protect the young local reporter and demanded an official inquiry into what had
gone wrong and in particular why two separate suspects had been released by the police. It was the question they were all asking themselves.

Keith sighed heavily. ‘We don’t yet know exactly what Roxanne knew, or how or when she found it out. Whether or not she knew her killer or had arranged to meet him last night remains speculation.’

‘Do we know if she’d had any contact with Pawel Zawodny?’ asked Lance. ‘He was at the vigil.’

‘After he’d been escorted to his vehicle, officers observed him drive out of the campus car park. They then alerted the mobile surveillance unit,’ Duncan explained reluctantly. ‘But the tracking device shows that his Toyota remained stationary on the exit road for twenty-six minutes. Close enough for him to have made his way down to the murder scene and back.’

‘What happened to the surveillance?’ Keith asked sharply.

‘They had a car waiting to follow him off once he reached the main road. Their brief was not to crowd him.’

Keith’s jaw clenched tight. Grace could easily guess what he was thinking: by releasing Zawodny from custody on Monday, had they allowed a killer to strike a second time right under their noses?

‘Where did Zawodny’s Toyota go once it got moving again?’ Keith asked.

‘Straight back to his flat,’ answered Duncan. ‘As soon as the surveillance unit got word of the murder, they knocked him up. It wasn’t long after, but he’d already showered and put his clothes in the wash.’

Keith swore under his breath. ‘What did he say he’d been doing in those twenty-six minutes he was parked on the exit road?’

‘That he was upset at the way he’d been treated, so pulled over to calm himself down.’

‘There were still plenty of people about,’ said Keith. ‘Did anyone see him?’

‘Nothing so far,’ said Duncan. ‘We’ve still got hundreds of statements to take. But plenty of people saw him with his bouquet of flowers, so at least there’s a chance they’d remember if they’d spotted him again later on.’

‘The switchboard has been totally jammed all morning,’ said Joan. ‘We’re also working through all the social media postings. It’ll take a while, but we should be able to make a pretty accurate timeline of the victim’s movements, too.’

‘The
Mercury
’s editor was on the phone first thing,’ said Duncan. ‘He says he’ll help in any way he can.’

‘Someone’s still on our side, then?’ Keith said with heavy irony as the room fell silent. This second death was a crisis for the Essex force, and everyone was aware that urgent discussions were already going on upstairs. Discussions that were unlikely to make their jobs any easier.

‘Do we re-arrest Zawodny, boss?’ asked Duncan.

‘Not yet. I don’t want the clock ticking until we’re ready, and we’ve a long way to go before we are. But make sure you put the fear of God into the surveillance unit so they’ve got tabs on him every second.’

‘The media know his identity, know he’s still on police bail,’ said Duncan.

‘You think I don’t know that?’ snapped Keith. He ran a hand to and fro across his head, his grey hair springing vigorously back into place. ‘We’ve applied to a judge for a phone tap. But we need to get him charged, so that anything the media gets becomes
sub judice
. We need evidence, enough evidence to take to the CPS and get Zawodny off the streets and into custody.’

‘Then, boss, I still think there’s something to be got from why he’s staged this differently to the way he displayed Rachel Moston,’ Lance said stubbornly. ‘Why the knickers in her mouth?’

‘Forget the symbolism!’

Lance turned to Grace, enlisting her support. ‘We asked Zawodny if he masturbated over women’s underwear,’ he argued. ‘We humiliated him. Now he’s humiliated us. And the underwear is to shove that message home. Stuff the way we shamed him right back down our own throats.’

‘I think he’s right, boss,’ said Grace. ‘It was the only time in all the interviews that Zawodny showed any real emotion. He was very angry.’

Keith considered for a moment, then nodded. ‘It’s an attractive argument. But Roxanne Carson was a reporter. She might also have been killed simply because of what she knew.’

‘Would Roxanne’s editor know who she’d been talking to, what story she was putting together?’ Grace turned to Duncan, only too aware of the ways in which the answers to such questions might expose
her
.

‘You’d better get down there,’ ordered Keith, when
Duncan shook his head. ‘Gareth Sullivan is the editor. Ask him if we can see her notes, whatever’s on her work computer. Find out if she’d made any kind of approach to Zawodny.’

‘I’ll get you the data off her phone as well,’ said Duncan.

‘And talk to Ivo,’ Keith said to Grace. ‘See if he can add anything to the statement he made last night.’

‘Me?’ Grace instantly regretted her exclamation but, as every face turned to her, she straightened her spine and held her head high: she owed it to Roxanne.

‘Yes,’ said Keith, raising his voice slightly so that everyone heard that he wasn’t only speaking to her. ‘Let’s use the fact that you knew the victim to our advantage.’

Grace dared to glance around the office and was relieved to find that the appraising stares were not as universally hostile as she feared.

‘Is there any point talking to Sweatman?’ asked Lance, surprised. ‘After the garbage he wrote about us this morning?’

‘What Ivo writes and what Ivo says in private are two very different things,’ said Keith, although he must have seen that it was not only Lance who remained unconvinced. ‘We’re under attack,’ he told everyone. ‘And it’ll probably get a whole lot uglier before we’re finished. But that, so they tell us, is the price we pay for our uniquely vigorous press.’

A growl of anger and dissatisfaction rolled around the room, barely quelled by Keith’s roving gaze seeking out any final comments or questions. ‘OK, let’s keep the
information flowing,’ he said. ‘I appreciate how hard you’ve been working, and I want to thank you, all of you. But now you have to double it. Then double it again. The next arrest we make has to stick.’

The SIO disappeared into his own office and as everyone else dispersed Grace found herself beside Lance. He smiled encouragingly just as her phone vibrated in her pocket. He waited as she read the text:
Hope you’re OK. She was your friend, wasn’t she? Hope you know you’re not alone. Love Trev xx.

Gareth Sullivan, the editor of the
Mercury
, had a neatly trimmed gingery beard and silver-rimmed glasses. He looked shocked and distracted as he led Grace and Lance through the main open space where his staff were hunched intently over keyboards. ‘This is terrible,’ he said. ‘I ought to send people home but instead they’re all working overtime putting together tomorrow’s special tribute edition.’

Sullivan showed them into his partitioned office. ‘No one can take it in,’ he continued. ‘Colchester only ever has a couple of murders a year at most, and they’re generally drug-related. Well, I don’t have to tell you that. Please,’ he gestured to a couple of faded, utilitarian chairs. ‘Sit down.’

He took a seat behind his desk, leaving the detectives to address him through a canyon of newspapers piled up on either side of its cluttered surface. ‘So what can you tell me? Do you know yet what happened, who is responsible?’

‘We’re here to ascertain Ms Carson’s movements last night,’ Lance replied. ‘Was she following any particular angle or story?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Just general coverage of the event.’

‘But she was at the vigil on behalf of the paper?’

‘Yes, absolutely. We had a photographer there, as well.’

‘Great. It would be really helpful if we could have access to everything he shot.’

Sullivan shook his head. ‘I’ll gladly help as much as I can. I hope that’s obvious. But I hope that you also understand that it’s impossible for me simply to hand over unpublished journalistic material.’

‘We’re hunting a killer, Mr Sullivan,’ said Lance.

‘I think we’re all aware of that here.’

Grace bit back the impulse to tell him she’d been at uni with Roxanne: clear boundaries were important right now.

‘She may very possibly have been killed because she knew or suspected the identity of Rachel Moston’s murderer,’ explained Lance.

‘Which is why disclosing any journalist’s sources is such a sensitive matter. The betrayal of a reporter’s sources puts every journalist at risk.’

‘I’m all for a free press, but you may be suppressing vital evidence.’ Lance spoke politely but made no attempt to hide his irritation.

‘My reporters speak off the record to a wide range of people, from criminals to whistleblowers. If those people believe I’m simply going to hand their names straight over to the police whenever I’m asked to do so, we wouldn’t have a free press.’

‘What if your reporter was talking to an active paedophile, for instance? Would you still protect a source then?’

‘The police would be able to go before a judge and ask for a production order.’

‘We need to take whoever murdered Roxanne Carson off the streets as soon as possible!’

‘Are you saying there’s an immediate and demonstrable direct threat to public safety?’ Sullivan asked heatedly, as Lance glared back, infuriated.

Grace decided swiftly that boundaries should be fudged after all. ‘Mr Sullivan,’ she said gently, ‘I was at university with Roxanne. We were old friends.’

Sullivan nodded, accepting the offer of appeasement. Grace had the impression she’d told him something he already knew and was struck by the acutely uncomfortable thought that maybe her own name was amongst those he was fighting to protect.

‘I’m sure she’d applaud your defence of journalistic principle, but I’m even more certain that she’d damn well want us to catch her killer,’ Grace told him robustly. ‘And she’d expect us to make sure no one else comes to harm. So are you really sure there’s no way you can help us without compromising confidential material?’

She was relieved to see Sullivan soften. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to be obstructive. And I’m not going down the
Courier
’s road of blaming the police. But we’re all of us here to –’ He broke off and stared out of the window at his featureless view of the neighbouring office block. ‘She had so much energy,’ he said at last. ‘Always wanted more out of life.’

He took off his spectacles and made as if to rub some grit
out of his eyes, but she could see he was wiping away the pricking of tears. ‘If you’re in contact with her family, please let them know we’ve set up a Facebook page. She was very popular with readers. Her family may like to see that.’

Grace waited for him to replace his glasses. ‘So might you be able to help us?’ she asked again. ‘If you can’t let us take away her notebooks, or whatever shots your photographer took, perhaps you could at least let us look at the material here, under your supervision?’

Sullivan considered. ‘How about this?’ he offered. ‘I’ll go through everything. You tell me what you’re looking for, ask me questions, and I’ll do my best to answer.’

‘And if we need to follow up ourselves, will you give us names?’ asked Lance.

‘I’d have to get permission from whoever gave her the information.’

‘And what if that turns out to be her killer?’ demanded Lance.

‘Then I’ll have a pretty difficult decision to make, won’t I?’

‘You’re not serious!’ exclaimed Lance.

‘I’m not enjoying this any more than you are, DS Cooper,’ Sullivan responded. ‘Roxanne worked for this paper for four years. I can assure you that I care a great deal more about this appalling crime than you do.’

Grace cut in before Lance could escalate the argument. ‘Thanks for your offer, Mr Sullivan. We appreciate it. How long do you think it’ll take you to go through the material?’

The newspaper editor stared at the partition wall behind which sat a dozen people who would all endlessly be seeking his comments and approval over the next few hours. When he looked back at Grace, his eyes had a hunted expression. ‘If you can send over a list of what it is you want me to look out for, I’ll try and get back to you by the end of the day.’

Grace stood up and held out her hand. ‘Thank you. I realise how busy you are.’

Sullivan shook her hand, went to open the door, then almost immediately closed it again. ‘What about her phone?’ he asked.

‘It was recovered,’ Grace told him. ‘Along with her handbag.’

‘Then I’ll need it back,’ he said. ‘And whatever notebook she had with her.’

‘No way!’ said Lance before she could stop him.

‘The
Mercury
provides reporters with phones, so all stored data counts as unpublished journalistic material.’

‘We’ll make sure your property is returned to you, Mr Sullivan,’ Grace assured him, giving Lance a sharp jab in the ribs with her elbow. Both knew that the phone data had already been downloaded and copied, but that the half-dozen scribbled pages of shorthand in her notebook would take longer to decipher.

She thanked the editor once more and hustled Lance out of the building.

‘What the fuck does he think he’s doing?’ he fumed, as soon as they hit the pavement. ‘All this academic bullshit when he’s got a serial killer right on his doorstep!’

‘He’s got a point, Lance. They’re not here to do our job for us.’

‘I’m not handing back that phone. This isn’t
All the President’s Men
!’

‘You know we have no choice. Any evidence we get from it is protected under PACE, not to mention the European Convention. If Sullivan doesn’t want us to have it and then we use it in court, a defence barrister will tear us to shreds.’

‘Anyway, at least we’ve got the information,’ said Lance. ‘He can’t stop us exploiting it, even if we can’t produce it as evidence.’

‘So long as we’re seen to do it right,’ said Grace.’ And, with any luck, we might find enough on Roxanne’s phone to help us frame the right questions for whatever’s in her notebooks.’

Although they walked quickly, the short distance back up the hill to the police station gave Grace time to think. Her continuing uncertainty about what she had or hadn’t told Roxanne that night outside the Blue Bar left her paralysed and ashamed. And even if she’d been clear in her mind about how much she’d said, it would still cause difficulties if her name were to emerge from Roxanne’s notes. Until Gareth Sullivan had talked about press freedom, it had simply not occurred to her that a journalist’s sources would be protected, so she’d assumed that she’d be helpless to prevent the investigation exposing their contact. Now, she realised, it was entirely up to her to decide how much to reveal. More than anything, Grace wanted to bring her friend’s killer to justice. Yet wouldn’t it be reckless and
stupid to destroy her career before it became absolutely necessary to do so?

In Maidstone, it had felt easy to pick up the phone and call Crimestoppers about the dealer who was supplying Lee with steroids and amphetamines, and afterwards to tell herself it had been a clear matter of doing what was right. She’d discovered too late that doing the right thing had seemed uncomplicated only because when she made the anonymous call she had envisaged no consequences to herself – apart from the natural glow of self-congratulation.

If she
had
foreseen all that would eventually follow in the wake of that call, would she still have made it? She’d lost everything as a result – friends, job, home, husband and peace of mind. Did she really possess the guts to tell the truth now and risk losing her job and everything that went with it? Especially if the truth did not even assist the investigation. Could she really survive the potentially catastrophic consequences of her actions a second time? But equally, could she live with herself if she didn’t do what she believed to be right?

She wished she could talk to Lance, ask his advice, but it would be totally wrong to entangle him in her blunders.