Good Girls Don't Die (21 page)

Ivo wasn’t himself, and he didn’t like it one bit. It had got so bad last night that he’d had to get out of bed and empty all the alcoholic drinks in the hotel minibar down the toilet. Though that had raised the spectre of another far more dreadful night when he’d done the same thing, only to regret his action, take the scuffed plastic toothbrush mug from the mean little shelf above the hotel basin and scoop as much as he could of the diluted liquid back up. Mercifully the flashback had ended at the point when he’d lifted the mug, smelling of stale toothpaste, to his lips. As he’d done so, he’d known for sure that, over the long preceding hours of steady drinking, there was no way he’d have bothered to flush. He’d never been able to stomach the smell of toothpaste since.

Last night he’d flushed the toilet twice just to be on the safe side. He’d come a long way since then, he knew he had. He was supposed to look at the glass half full, not half empty – a handy metaphor for an alcoholic if ever there was one. But sometimes the shame of those days – who was he kidding? Those
years
– caught up with him and sent him
reeling. The quacks had told him he must have the constitution of an ox, or he’d be long since dead from sclerosis of the liver. On the other hand, the absence of hangovers meant that it had taken him a whole lot longer than everyone else to accept he had a problem. All those lightweights who’d sloped off home when his own personal party was just getting started, those wimps moaning and crawling around the next morning in the office when he’d been fresh as a daisy – they’d had the luck to learn their limitations. He never had any limits. None at all.

Only one thread of life had remained throughout it all – work. Words, headlines, type, reels of newsprint, rolling presses; the ceaseless cycle of production had given him a pulse, kept his heart beating, stopped him ever quite drinking himself to death.

When he’d first started, the industry was still unionised, and he’d had to do his indentures on a local paper up in Yorkshire where they used hot metal to print the paper. If some upstart reporter upset the temperamental and highly paid nabobs of the compositing room, they’d discover their story covered the next day in a rash of especially embarrassing typos. By the time Ivo collected his union card, he’d progressed from flower shows and Women’s Institute meetings to the coroners’ and magistrates’ courts. And, when he made it south to Fleet Street, his first encounter with the rumbling, heavily laden lorries setting off into the cold, dark night and leaving behind the sharp scent of ink and the aroma of warm paper had been the most romantic of his life.

He’d been sent once by his then editor to see some swanky hypnotist in Harley Street who ‘addressed addiction issues’ (so that if his liver packed up he couldn’t later sue his employers for failing to address his ‘problem’) and the guy had asked him to go in his imagination to a place where he’d feel totally relaxed and content. Immediately he was standing in the yawning mouth of a delivery bay at one in the morning as the last load of newspapers went out, and some gaffer wearing an old coat and fingerless mittens, no doubt knitted by his old lady back in Southend, cut the string on a damaged bale to hand young Ivo a copy of next day’s news. He thought then he’d been inducted into the most glamorous and seductive club in the world. And he had. Not even a Maxwell or a Murdoch had since stained the purity of his love.

And now here he was, on a Thursday morning, sitting on a red plush and fake gilt ballroom chair, crammed in beside the crack troops of the world’s media, waiting for Chief Constable Irene Brown, no less, to take to the stage. Now there was a second body it was standing room only, and he’d arrived well over half an hour ago to make sure he bagged a place near the front. A seat in the middle of the front row had been reserved for the editor of the
Mercury
. Their headline this morning had been
KILLED FOR DOING HER JOB
, and no doubt Sullivan was now making a killing out of syndication rights. Ivo himself, having scooped everyone yesterday with his own first-hand report of discovering the body, had been under some considerable pressure to maintain momentum. In the end, while
everyone else was kindly setting the scene for him by extolling the virtues of the cream of the nation’s young womanhood, praising the three girls’ youth, beauty and accomplishments, and demanding greater protection for all students in the face of still-nameless danger, Ivo had found a way to set the
Courier
up as their champion.

Nothing the readers liked better when facing a slaughter of the innocents than a healthy dose of outrage. Blaming a university for poor security, as the
Mercury
had done, was by now a bit limp, so Ivo had been thrilled to come across some hideously misogynistic messages and tweets amongst the tributes to ‘our’ Polly, ‘tragic’ Rachel and ‘brave’ Roxanne. Talk about disrespecting the dead! His editor had lapped it up, and it made the perfect smokescreen for the absence of any actual news.

But now he’d have to find a story to top that, and unless the police were about to set a new agenda, finding a fresh angle was going to be a struggle. These press conferences were fast turning into a variety show as compère Hilary Burnett attempted to ring the changes with the same few tired acts, and Ivo wondered what juggling, dancing dogs she’d roll out for them today.

As the communications director led the way punctually onto the stage, Ivo was pleased at least to see that DS Fisher was back in the line-up; she’d been absent yesterday, no doubt out of respect to her friend. He’d thought about her quite a bit since their meeting yesterday morning. If truth be told, she was probably responsible for the desperation that had had him pouring good money down the khazi in
the wee small hours – there was no way he’d be able to wing that tab onto expenses. If he tried it, they’d probably send him back to the hypnotist, and he’d rather slit his wrists. Still, never mind: he had a blank sheet of paper called a front page to fill and nothing as yet to put on it. The same went for every bum on every seat in here. With two murder victims, a young woman now missing for twelve days, and at least two known suspects walking around free, Hilary had better bloody well throw a decent bone to this hungry pack of wolves before she had a massacre on her hands.

Grace was exhausted. She had come under increasing pressure from Hilary to be at today’s media conference before her absence itself became a story. And she’d had to spend twenty minutes with Hilary and the chief con beforehand, rehearsing how best to answer the inevitable questions from the
Courier
’s chief crime reporter about her friendship with the murder victim. In the event, most of the questions had come not from Ivo Sweatman but from the
Mercury
’s acting news editor, a sign that the local paper was eager to retain ownership of the personal angle for as long as it could. But the
Mercury
opened the door to the rest of the world, and although Irene Brown fielded many of the questions, Grace had been bombarded by reporters from TV stations she’d never even heard of. At the end, once the chief con had congratulated her and been escorted away, Hilary had insisted Grace remain behind to record individual segments to camera so that every news programme had their own unique package. As a result, Hilary was ecstatic, but Grace just wanted to get
back to the office and find out what was happening with Matt Beeston.

As Hilary finally allowed Grace to escape, Colin Pitman materialised beside them outside the conference room. ‘So you knew Roxanne Carson?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Grace replied wearily. A display of sympathy and concern from Colin was the last thing she needed right now.

‘She acquitted herself well, didn’t she?’ Hilary appealed happily to Colin. ‘It’s not easy, managing to sound so authentic in front of such a mass of people and cameras, but you’re a natural,’ she told Grace. ‘The chief constable will be delighted with all the positive coverage.’

‘Brilliant,’ Colin said, with an ironic glance at Grace that she was almost too tired to resist. It had been easy once to like this man. And it was pointless to waste energy fending off every meaningless encounter.

‘Well done,’ said Hilary, squeezing her arm affectionately. ‘And thank you.’

As Hilary tapped off along the corridor on her high heels, Grace sighed in relief, letting her shoulders drop. ‘That was all a bit much,’ she admitted.

‘Hilary’s right, though. You did do well.’ Colin came an inch closer. ‘I’m so glad the move here was the right decision. I knew it would be.’

Grace bit back the angry words; what was the point?

‘You’ll make it back up to DI in no time. And I’d be happy to put in a good word for you with Superintendent Stalgood, if you’d like.’

Colin assumed her assent, so she didn’t bother answering and merely stared at him. He, however, took her incredulity for pain, and shook his head in sorrow. ‘I wish I’d seen what was coming with Trev. We all do. I blame myself, I really do.’

She almost laughed in his face. So far as she knew, Jeff, Margie and no doubt Colin, too, were still best pals with Trev.

‘Thanks.’ She managed to keep a straight face: maybe her twenty minutes of media training was paying off. But Colin continued to hold her gaze.

‘I know what you went through,’ he said, clearly striving to sound wise. ‘But look, it’s over now. Fresh start. I couldn’t have been more sorry to let you go, except I knew it was the best thing for you.’

She realised that he’d convinced himself to believe this tosh. She’d seen such delusion many times when interviewing suspects, or with the parents or partners of perpetrators who’d committed monstrous acts. People had an uncanny ability in the face of unbearable truth to weave their own narrative and stick to it through thick and thin, she thought. She saw now how Colin, since her departure, had told himself this story to escape his own cowardice, and could now without a glimmer of irony pat himself on the back for his foresight and compassion. It was impossible to imagine anything she could say that would pierce the cloak of fiction he’d wrapped around himself. So she let it go.

Falling into step together, they made their way slowly
upstairs. When they reached the MIT office, Colin held open the door, letting her go first, an instinctive courtesy that she used to think was quite sweet and now would have preferred to flatly reject.

They sensed the electricity in the room immediately. Duncan, nearest the door, swung around in his chair. ‘Matt Beeston was on campus on Tuesday night! A couple of his former students who were at the vigil reported seeing him. We’re checking back with them now.’

Keith came out of his office. ‘Lance. Grace. Go pick him up.’

It did not take them long to reach Matt’s town-centre flat. When he opened the door to them, he looked even worse than the last time Grace had seen him. He’d cut his hair short and dyed it blonde, a cheap yellowish shade that didn’t suit his skin and certainly didn’t enhance either his stubble or the dark rings under his eyes.

‘Bit of a disguise,’ he mumbled when they failed to hide their reactions to his altered appearance. ‘So I can buy some milk without being papped. Probably a mistake, in retrospect.’

His flat seemed orderly enough – his cleaner must still be doing her stuff – but there was a pile of pizza boxes on the floor that wouldn’t fit in the over-crammed kitchen bin and Grace caught a distinct aroma of stale takeaway curry.

‘What is it you want?’ he asked.

‘We are arresting you on suspicion of sending by means of a public electronic communications network a message
or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character,’ Lance told him. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence –’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Matt interrupted.

‘– if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

‘OK. So what happens now?’

‘We need to take every electronic device you have here.’

Matt pointed to his laptop. ‘Help yourself.’

He sat listlessly in the back of the car on the short journey to the police station, staring silently out of the window. His passivity continued as he was booked in and taken to an interview room. When asked, he waived his right to a lawyer, saying that it would only mean a bigger bill for his parents to pay. ‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ he said, as soon as they had finished the formal preliminaries. Even when they reminded him that he was still under caution for suspected murder and suspected rape, he just shrugged. ‘You do what you gotta do.’

‘This isn’t a game, Dr Beeston,’ Grace reminded him sharply. His attitude was more than unhelpful: she’d read of cases where such fatalism had led to false confessions.

‘I’m not stupid,’ he retaliated. ‘I’ve been waiting for the knock on the door. I realised after it was too late that you’d track everything back to me eventually.’

She was itching to say a sarcastic ‘Poor you’ but stopped herself in time. However provoking his air of victimhood, she must curb her desire to give him a good hard slap. He
was like a toddler pushing his limit to get attention, however negative the consequences.

Grace’s temper wasn’t improved by Lance reading aloud the stream of violent abuse and threats of sexual mutilation that Matt had spewed out into cyberspace, though she was glad to see that even Matt seemed cowed by the sheer nastiness of what he’d written.

‘Did you send these electronic messages?’ asked Lance.

‘Yes.’

‘And would you agree that they are grossly offensive, given that all of them relate to young women who are either dead or missing?’

‘If that’s what you need me to say.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why did you do it?’

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was rat-arsed. And very pissed off.’

‘What were you angry about?’

‘It seemed like everything was their fault.’

‘Whose fault? How?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

‘For the tape,’ Lance replied.

Matt shook his head in misery. ‘Why don’t you go out and arrest the cretins who sent me their turds, or the middle-aged ladies who wrote on Basildon Bond notepaper with second-class stamps to tell me they ought to bring back hanging? They’re the ones who gave me the idea in the first place.’

Lance ignored Matt’s self-pity. ‘Did you go to the candlelit vigil on campus on Tuesday evening?’

Matt voice rose in indignation. ‘Yeah. So what? I didn’t murder anyone!’

‘But you are suspended from your job at the university.’

‘So? Doesn’t give them the right to tell me where I can and can’t go.’

‘Everyone at the vigil wanted to pay their respects to Polly and Rachel.’ Grace took over, speaking softly, testing to see if his anger would still encompass the real victims in the case. ‘You knew both Polly and Rachel, knew them better than the majority of people there. Is that why you went?’

‘No.’ He stared at her with a mixture of contempt and distress.

‘So why were you there?’

He looked away again, his jaw working as if he were grinding his teeth. ‘They ruined my life. If nothing had happened to them, if they hadn’t got themselves killed, I’d still have job, a future.’ He muttered another word under his breath, but Grace couldn’t catch it. She looked at Lance, but he shook his head.

‘What did you say?’ she asked.

Matt raised his head and looked at her full in the face. ‘All those fucking bitches,’ he said again, loudly and clearly.