Good Girls Don't Die (19 page)

Ivo was bored with the game now. Of course he didn’t have to stay. If he wanted to join the awkward squad, he could walk out any time he liked. But – Keith’s doing, he was sure – he’d been specifically told that it would be DS Fisher who’d be coming down to go over the statement he’d given late last night, and he had no objection to trading questions for half an hour alone in an interview room with the Ice Maiden. All the same, he’d now been kicking his heels in here for over an hour, time in which his competitors were out and about looking busy.

He’d had almost no sleep but managed to convince himself he felt alert and vigorous as long as he kept at arm’s length the memory of Roxanne’s prone young body in the dark, dewy grass. If he let that slip through his defences, then he felt about a thousand years old, like he’d definitely overstayed his welcome on this earth.

He looked again at his watch and wearily supposed he had to expect some kind of payback in response to the front-page hammering he’d given the SIO and his team over
a second killing happening while they were looking the wrong way. And of course, in their eyes, the accompanying photograph of the body, appropriately Photoshopped in the name of decency and in accord with the embargo placed on the precise deployment of the wine bottle, would pretty much put him on a par with the kind of paparazzi scum who frequented Paris road tunnels.

Still, there was some consolation to be had from the fact that by the time word of the murder had reached his fellow cowboys it had been too late for them to update their final editions. This morning’s
Courier
had been the only paper to carry any kind of story about it, and Ivo’s editor had called personally to congratulate him on his considerable presence of mind at the scene. Ivo knew he ought to pat himself on the back, but frankly he felt sick that he’d got a medal pinned on him because of that sweet kid’s death. And when Keith was doubtless at this very moment facing a firing squad upstairs courtesy of
his
lords and masters. Oh well, Ivo reckoned Keith was man enough to understand that, given the situation Ivo had found himself in, he could hardly have pulled his punches.

Brothers in arms, that’s how he’d always thought of his relationships with various senior detectives over the years; though he had a more than sneaking suspicion it wasn’t how they regarded him. And last night, he’d been vouchsafed his first unassailable insight into why that might be. Sure, he’d been shown his fair share of gruesome crime scene photos and had sat through weeks of harrowing evidence while covering the trials of some of the country’s
most notorious serial killers, but he’d always pictured himself and the police as opposing teams gleefully chasing the same ball. Last night had proved to him that a life extinguished was no sporting matter, and he’d finally grasped what lay behind Keith’s occasional flash of contempt. In fact, he now found it incredible that Keith managed to show him any forbearance at all. He wouldn’t give himself the time of day, frankly.

The door opened and DS Fisher came in, disappointingly followed by Hilary Burnett. The Ice Maiden’s frosty gaze informed him that her opinion of the man who had stood over a woman’s body while he filed his story was, like his own, less than charitable. Nevertheless, his reaction to her disdain surprised him: it wasn’t often he actually gave a toss what other people thought of him.

‘You must think I’m a cold-hearted bastard,’ he told her. ‘And you’d be right. But I was fond of your friend.’

She blinked, as if taken aback by his soppy sentimentality. ‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘You know Ms Burnett?’

‘Indeed.’ He took his seat, giving himself a stern mental shake: pull yourself together, man!

‘We have the statement you made to my colleagues last night,’ she said. ‘What we want to cover now is the nature of the victim’s professional enquiries.’ She consulted the sheaf of papers she’d brought with her. ‘You said you never spoke to Ms Carson at the vigil last night?’

‘Roxanne? No. I think she was avoiding me, to be honest.’

‘Why?’

Ivo smiled to himself at how easily she’d let herself be
ensnared. ‘She’d mastered my first rule of journalism: you don’t share,’ he explained.

Did the Ice Maiden give the ghost of a smile, or was that wishful thinking on his part?

‘So you don’t know who she talked to last night?’ she asked.

‘So far as I could see, she was just working the crowd. Maybe there were a few people she’d already hooked up with through social media. But I daresay you’ll have checked that out already.’

‘Yes. Do you know if she was pursuing a particular angle on Polly’s disappearance?’

Ivo considered. DS Fisher was not exactly giving it away for free, so maybe he had to be the first to roll over. ‘I don’t know for sure,’ he told her, lowering his voice to sound more sincere. ‘But the way she’d clammed up on me suggests she was on to something she figured would be worth keeping to herself.’ Ivo deliberately acknowledged Hilary before shifting his gaze back to Grace Fisher and raising a questioning eyebrow. ‘Or someone?’

But she looked back at him steadily: if DS Fisher
was
Roxanne’s source, then she clearly didn’t intend to let herself be spooked by any threat to reveal her identity. Good for her!

‘Was she on to something in connection with Polly Sinclair?’ she asked. ‘Or with Rachel Moston’s murder? Do you know?’

‘I thought you might.’

She ignored his clumsy innuendo. ‘You printed a story
about Pawel Zawodny,’ she said. ‘It contained information we hadn’t released. How did you obtain it?’

He noticed Hilary shift nervously on her chair. And did he after all detect a flicker of apprehension in the Ice Maiden’s eyes? ‘Remind me,’ he urged.

‘You knew he had a cabin cruiser and that we were looking at it. You knew we had a vodka bottle in evidence.’

He nodded, watching her carefully. ‘Roxanne tipped me off that the police were asking questions about a boat and about a vodka bottle.’ He’d already admitted that to Keith, so he wasn’t giving her anything new.

‘A vodka bottle? No more than that? Please think, it’s important.’

He nodded, trying not to recall the photo he’d taken of the wine bottle between Roxanne’s thighs. ‘I put the rest together myself.’ He hesitated, then decided to let this be his good deed for the day – for the bloody decade, let’s face it. ‘The
Courier
’s research department found out the brand for me, and that it was recovered from the scene.’

‘Your research department?’

Ivo shrugged. ‘Some necromancer in the basement with a scrying mirror, for all I know. I don’t ask, and they don’t tell.’

‘But you were told the bottle came from the scene, not the body?’

‘That’s all I had. Until last night.’

She leaned forward. ‘Roxanne said
we
were asking questions. Did she say who we’d been talking to?’

He shook his head. DS Fisher’s eagerness surely confirmed it couldn’t have been her who’d fed Roxanne those details: that ambitious little minx must have sniffed out some other clandestine informant. And not let on to him. But the Ice Maiden’s lustrous grey eyes weren’t getting any more out of him; whatever ideas Ivo might have concerning the identity of Roxanne’s informant he’d keep to himself, thank you very much.

‘We never mentioned those things to anyone,’ she told him. ‘Only a handful of people knew about the vodka bottle, including, of course, Rachel Moston’s killer. Which is why it’s so important that we find out who told Roxanne. And why the media respect the embargo.’

‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid.’ He gave her his best candid look, inviting her to work harder, dig deeper. You could often learn far more from the questions people asked than from their answers.

‘You’re sure you didn’t see Roxanne last night with anyone who might have been her source?’

He thought back: he’d seen Roxanne chatting with lots of people, but no one he recognised, no one who’d stood out as significant. He shrugged. ‘I want that story every bit as much as you do.’

‘Did you see her anywhere near Pawel Zawodny?’

‘Definitely not. And if I had, I wouldn’t have waited for an invitation to crash that particular party.’

‘Mr Sweatman, I don’t think you realise what you were meddling with.’ She fixed those eyes on him again. ‘Roxanne may have been killed because of what she knew.’ Her
voice faltered. ‘It may have been you publishing your
research
that placed her in danger.’

Ivo’s sharp mental picture of Roxanne flitting about the grass in her gypsyish skirt and denim jacket had the effect of snapping some small cog or flywheel inside him, sending his internal machinery into reverse and forcing his blood to flow backwards through the valves of his heart. He focused on this other lovely young woman who sat before him, her beauty different to Roxanne’s but equally fresh and alive. ‘I
was
fond her, you know,’ he blurted out. Fuck! What was happening to him? ‘Youth.’ He turned to Hilary, trying to recover himself. ‘Wasted on the young.’

‘It’s why we need to work together,’ said the communications director. ‘Not risk losing another young life.’

‘I should do a piece about you,’ he told DS Fisher impetuously. ‘Roxanne’s old buddy from student days working her butt off to track down her killer.’

‘How did you know we were friends?’ she asked sharply. As the obvious answer occurred to her, she seemed to deflate. ‘Roxanne told you.’

Ivo nodded, leaning forward eagerly. ‘A friend’s personal appeal for help. That would stir a few hearts.’

Hilary turned to the younger woman, put a hand on her arm. ‘It’s a good idea,’ she enthused. ‘It would jog people’s memories. Draw a good response.’

‘Give the police a human face, too,’ said Ivo winningly. ‘Make up for lost ground.’

‘Lost ground?’ Ivo saw a flash of anger in Grace’s eyes as she bit back whatever else she had evidently been going to
say. Instead, she shook her head firmly. ‘I’d be glad of your help, Mr Sweatman,’ she replied. ‘But let’s keep it official.’

‘OK,’ he said. Suddenly he wanted to be out of here. It was all getting a bit much. DS Fisher was cool-headed and smart-thinking, yet not at all the Ice Maiden he’d imagined. Perhaps the impression of aloofness she gave came from being totally unconscious of her own loveliness. He had taken it for haughtiness, but she was far from that: she was warm and quick and he liked her. Her thug of a husband was not merely a thug but must also be a fool if he was stupid enough to have thrown away such a prize.

‘Well,’ he said, pushing himself to his feet, ‘if we’re finished, I’ve got work to do.’ Seeing Hilary purse her lips, he laughed. ‘Yup, another hard day’s muckraking and scandalmongering!’ He turned to Grace; he must be going soft in the head, but he said it anyway. ‘If you ever want my help, DS Fisher, it’s yours.’ He wasn’t about to hand anything to anyone on a plate, but he’d be tickled pink if she ever came to him and asked.

Grace was relieved to accept Hilary’s offer to escort Ivo Sweatman out of the building: she was angry and wanted to see the back of him. This man and his dubiously obtained story had treated her to an unwelcome interview with the chief con and nearly derailed the investigation; far worse, he’d inveigled Roxanne into unwitting danger and then stood over her lifeless body in order to steal an image shocking enough to sell a few extra hundred thousand newspapers. And yet, while Grace knew him by his deeds to be utterly loathsome, if she was honest, she’d also been unwillingly drawn to some kind of warts-and-all humanity in him.

She hoped that her reluctant whisper of liking was not merely because what he’d said had given her additional reason to hope she hadn’t said a word to Roxanne about the vodka bottle: for if she’d put away too much tequila that night to keep her mouth shut, surely she’d have divulged everything, including the intimate part it had played in the posing of Rachel Moston’s body? Yet Roxanne had clearly
not even known what brand it was – Ivo’s paper had somehow managed to blag that. CSIs weren’t paid a great deal –perhaps not enough, anyway, to resist the temptation of an envelope stuffed with red-top cash – but only the crime scene manager and the photographer had been inside the tent and seen the body in situ. No one else at the scene knew that the bottle had been placed in the victim’s vagina.

It was a relief. But a more intense relief was that Roxanne herself had been absolved. Only now could Grace fully admit the horrible fear that had been eating away at her: that her friend had sold her down the river in exchange for a few coveted shifts on a London daily. Ivo would never know it, but he’d finally freed her to think well of the dead.

All the same, that still left the burning question of who
had
told Roxanne about the bottle? How? When? Why? Grace considered Pawel Zawodny too clever and controlled to slip up like that. Unless he had deliberately chosen to feed Roxanne that morsel of information. But why? For what possible reason?

Grace tried to recall what it was Lance had said to her the morning Rachel Moston’s body was found, about the bottle of Fire’n’Ice being a message for the police, a way for the killer to engage his pursuers in some game. Lance also reckoned that Roxanne’s murder had been a kind of challenge. Was her killer’s decision to reveal to a journalist a secret so far known only to himself and the police a move in some game he imagined he was playing?

If so, what was the game about? Control and domination? Or, as Lance had said, being the centre of attention? What
was he trying to communicate? And at what point would he decide he’d won? Grace’s brain was too tired from lack of sleep to do more than go around and around in circles, but it all kept coming back to one simple question: who was their opponent? Who had Roxanne been speaking to? Was it Pawel Zawodny?

Reaching the main MIT office, Grace asked Duncan if they had a transcript yet of the shorthand notebook they’d found in Roxanne’s handbag.

He shook his head. ‘She’d adapted her own style of shorthand. One of the PAs upstairs was able to make out the odd word, but most of it’s indecipherable.’

‘Shit!’

‘We can’t hang on to it much longer, either. The boss had a call from the
Mercury
’s lawyers demanding we return all unpublished journalistic material. We’ve no choice but to comply.’

‘Yes, I know. Any names at least?’

‘Some girls’ names, a few initials. No PZ.’

‘Maybe Gareth Sullivan will be able to translate it,’ she said. ‘What about her phone?’

Duncan brightened up. ‘She received a call from the payphone at Colchester Town railway station at six-fifteen on Monday.’

Grace prayed that Duncan would assume she’d flushed not from guilt but with pleasure at such a promising lead.

‘Why would anyone use a payphone except to hide their identity?’ Duncan asked eagerly. ‘Someone’s down there now retrieving all available CCTV.’

‘That was the day the
Courier
published its story about the bottle, wasn’t it?’ asked Grace. The fear gripping her vocal chords made her voice sound unnaturally shrill.

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s the boss?’ she asked, swallowing hard. ‘Is he here?’

Duncan looked towards heaven. ‘Upstairs. Big pow-wow. The university vice chancellor’s not at all happy about a fatality right in their backyard and is out for blood. I’d give Keith a wide berth when he comes back down if I were you.’

‘And Lance?’

‘Over at Roxanne’s flat.’ Duncan gave her a kindly smile. ‘Thought we’d spare you that.’

Grace wanted to run away, but she managed a smile. ‘Thanks.’

She went to her own desk and hid her face in front of her computer screen, scrolling through meaningless emails. She would have to own up that she’d made that call. Even for such a narrow time frame, she couldn’t possibly allow them to waste the man-hours it would take to trawl through the CCTV footage from the railway station and perhaps miss other opportunities to catch Roxanne’s killer.

But a craven little voice whispered in her head: why rush to own up? No one would believe she hadn’t leaked details of the investigation, and she’d never be able to prove her innocence. Ivo couldn’t confirm where Roxanne had got her information, and Roxanne, the only person who could exonerate her, was dead. The chief constable had vowed to treat any unauthorised contact with the media as a serious
disciplinary offence. Given the reputation that had travelled with Grace from Kent, she’d be out on her ear by the end of the day. For good this time.

Yet what if there was no CCTV of her making the call? Why not wait to find out?

But she knew she could never forgive herself if she allowed a false lead to divert attention from what was really important. It was no good: she would have to confess to Keith and take her chances.

Grace tried to control her panicky breathing. She longed to escape, if only to the toilets for a moment’s privacy, but she didn’t trust her legs to carry her. Was her career about to end? She had a sense of a net tightening around her. She had no friends. No spare money. She’d signed a short lease on her horrible flat. With no job, no prospects, nowhere to go, what on earth was she going to do with herself?

Keith came through the door looking grimmer than she’d ever seen him and shut the door of his own office behind him. Grace got to her feet: she knew that if she delayed for a second she’d lose her nerve. When Duncan saw where she was heading, he frowned and shook his head but, ignoring him, she tapped on the door and went straight in.

‘Not now!’ Keith spoke without looking up from his desk where he was gathering papers into one big untidy bunch.

‘Sir, I need to tell you something.’

‘Not me. They’re sending in a team from the Murder Review Group.’

‘What? Why do we need an external review? Why so soon?’

‘It’s pass-the-parcel upstairs. Everyone shifting the blame.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Sorry. What did you want to tell me?’

Grace hesitated. ‘It’s going to cause more trouble.’

Keith looked at her keenly, and must have seen how shaken she was. ‘Do I need to know?’

‘I think you do. It affects an operational decision.’

He nodded. ‘Well, they’ll be glad of a final nail in my coffin. Might as well get it over with. Go on.’

Grace had no idea what to say. How could an innocuous phone call put two careers at risk when the only priority, surely, was that they were in the middle of a major inquiry? ‘Could we have done anything differently?’ she asked.

Keith sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair, his hands resting on the arms. ‘Not made the university look bad when it might negatively affect student applications for next year. Not embarrassed the chief constable when she’s a close friend of the vice-chancellor. Not allowed the
Courier
to make us look like idiots. All I want is to find Polly Sinclair and to put a killer behind bars before anyone else gets hurt. What about you?’

Keith’s stare held more than mere rhetoric, and Grace hoped that she was interpreting it correctly. ‘A call was made to Roxanne Carson’s mobile from a payphone at Colchester Town station,’ she said carefully, holding his gaze. She paused, waiting for his affirmative nod before continuing. ‘I’m suggesting we don’t need to spend too much time on it, sir.’

‘You know that for certain?’

‘One hundred per cent, sir. We were friends, if you remember.’ Grace could see him take on board what she meant and then struggle with his fury. He had every right to be angry: she’d disobeyed a direct order and now the fall-out would be serious.

He thought through his options and then let his chair bounce forward again. ‘How do we convince the incoming review team of that?’

‘That’s the trouble.’

‘Anything else that I’ll end up being sorry I didn’t know?’

‘Not in terms of the investigation.’

He nodded. ‘Right now I need to buy time.’

‘I understand. And I’m sorry, sir. I’m ready to take the consequences.’

‘Yes. And you probably will. But I’m not handing Irene Brown an opportunity to sack both of us until I absolutely have to.’

‘OK.’

‘Though if push comes to shove, DS Fisher, then you haven’t told me anything about this phone call, right? This conversation never took place.’

‘Understood, sir. And thank you.’

‘Get out.’

Grace went, almost colliding with Lance as he hurried into the main office. ‘There’s a team from the Murder Review Group downstairs.’ He leaned in to speak confidentially. ‘Any idea what’s going on?’

‘External oversight, courtesy of the chief con.’

‘Nice of her to have such confidence in us.’ Lance nodded towards the SIO’s office. ‘How’s he taking it?’

‘You know.’ She shrugged, then looked at him anxiously. ‘We are going to close this case, aren’t we?’

He smiled. ‘You bet.’

She let him propel her back to her desk, glad of the touch of his hand on her shoulder.