The Start of Everything (12 page)

“Do you know what she wanted to say?”

“No. No, I told her there’s no one working or studying here by that name. But she was quite determined. I hated to disappoint her. It’s terrible what she’s been through.”

“Her father?” I prompt, remembering what Robinson had said of his recent death. I never used to trust myself without reference to my notes, but since I’ve been unable to write things down I risk on my memory more. It gives me an almost giddy feeling, worrying and exhilarating at the same time. I throw out another question: “And what about her mother?” I ready myself to catch the answer and keep it, using only my head.

“Her mother died years ago. Her father’s memorial service was this afternoon. She’s quite alone in the world. Is—is she all right?” he asks, with a surge of realisation. “I thought this was about someone called Katja?” He looks me full in the face. I lie right at him that we’re only gathering information, and that I’d love to ask Mathilde about Katja.

“I haven’t seen her today. I’d hoped she would have attended the memorial, but … I suppose I didn’t really expect her to.”

“When and where was this?”

“The service started at half-three at Great St. Mary’s.”

She was hit at 3:50, in the middle of the service. But I had to be
thorough—the pews of that memorial would have been full of dark suits. “Would you do something for me, Louis? Would you write down for me who was there?”

That is my new tactic. Sometimes it’s not appropriate, but it’s funny how differently people think when writing instead of dictating. They guess less, I’ve noticed, and sometimes reveal something interesting in the way they organise the information or circle a name. “Would there have been a Katja there?” I add. “Or a Stephen?”

The door slams open so hard it whacks into the counter and bounces back onto the hand of an anxious young man. “It’s her. I found her. I told you she was here,” he announces. His hair is wild and his jacket askew.

Louis leans across and whispers, “Perhaps you should give him a badge and a hat. Apparently he’s found Katja for you.”

The young man walks us around the corner and prods his finger against glass. “There,” he says triumphantly, pointing at a portrait taken of Corpus College’s May Ball last year. In it, the students who made it all the way through to breakfast are propping one another up, tipsy, haggard, and grinning. Ties are loose, high heels discarded, bright dresses garish in the morning light. I remember once being so young that I could pull off that kind of night and still smile.

It’s the window of a photography studio displaying graduation portraits, team photos, and the like. His finger touches a tiny image of a dark-haired woman in a shiny dress. Our dead girl, as far as we know, had been fair-haired. At least, the hairs on her sweater were fair.

Louis pulls glasses out of his pocket and peers. “You’re mistaken, young man,” he chides as he straightens up. “Her name isn’t Katja. That’s Grace Rhys.”

“No,” the young man protests.

Sometimes women lie about names to get rid of a man, but he doesn’t seem angry or insulted. He wags his head gently, baffled by Louis’s pronouncement but certain of his own. “That’s Katja.”

“Katja who?” I ask.

He shoots me a sideways look. This changes something in him.

“We can solve this,” I say. “Louis, is Grace in college right now?”

“She’s not with us any longer.”

That phrase chills me. I immediately jump to assuming he means death.

“She graduated?”

Oh, dear, the boy is like a puppy, so eager and hopeful.

“She degraded,” the porter admits. Her decomposing remains come to mind. I shake my head. “Degraded” is an academic term. It means she temporarily dropped out. “Maths is a difficult subject,” the porter adds kindly. “It was a difficult term for her.”

“When did she leave?” I ask.

“This past November.”

A difficult term. That could mean a lot of things. Academically difficult? Socially difficult? Family problems?

Louis answers without my having to ask: “She’s a young person, and did what young persons do. Some handle it better than others. I often noticed her head out for the evening. She was rarely back before we locked up.”

That’s not that late, honestly. Eleven, perhaps? “Do you know that she always did come back? Did she have a boyfriend? Or girlfriend?”

“I wouldn’t care to speculate. She had friends.”

We’re back at the college gate.

The young man’s face lights with realisation. “If she wasn’t here, she never got my letters, did she? She couldn’t have done, could she?”

Well, that’s a kind of lemonade, I suppose. “How is it that you got her name wrong, do you think?” That’s a whopper.
If it was a one-night stand, did he call her that in bed?

But he ignores me. He’s happy again. He’s come chasing a woman who apparently ignored him, and it turns out he actually hadn’t yet entered the game.

We follow Louis back into the porters’ lodge. “Can I have her address?” he pounces as soon as Louis is behind the counter again. “No, no, of course you wouldn’t. But would you send her
my
address? You can do that, can’t you?”

“Slow down,” I interrupt.

He comes to a complete halt and finally notices that I’m not with the college. “Who are you, anyway?” We make a mirror, he and I, both in our dark suits and suspicious expressions. Well, he’s wearing a dark
blazer over jeans. Not quite a suit, but it’s close enough to mistake in a crowd.

Louis commands with a glance before he even speaks. “That’s the police, young man, so you’d best do whatever he says.”

“Police? Is she all right?”

“Do you mean Katja?” I ask. “Or Grace?”

He presses his lips together. “I knew her as Katja,” he insists sourly. “She had a holiday job over Christmas, up near Peterborough.”

Peterborough. That’s the closest city to where we found the body.

“And what’s your name, sir?” I have a feeling I already know.

“Stephen Casey,” he says.

Stephen
. Of course.

I consider recording the conversation, but I’d have to ask permission and that might put him off. “Mr. Casey. Tell me about this woman. Tell me about Katja.”
Tell me about Grace
. Louis allows us to use the Head Porter’s office. I take the steady straight-legged chair, leaving Stephen to wobble and roll in the one with wheels and a loose reclining back.

“She’s …” Stephen swallows. “She worked as a nanny, for the Christmas holiday. My window overlooked the climbing frame in the garden. It was more interesting to watch her play with the children than to struggle through the chapter I was trying to write. Look—I just want to say hello to her. I’m not stalking her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why would I think that?” This feels good. This is the right thing to say.

His voice tightens up. “Because that’s your job? To be suspicious? Right?”

“I’m not suspicious. I’m curious. Do you think there’s a difference between the two, Mr. Casey?”

He’s untwisted a paper clip into a long, straight wire. He taps it, puncturing the desk blotter. “You know there is.”

“It would seem you wrote to her a number of times.”

“How do you know that?” he asks, forgetting he’s already admitted writing to her.

“It’s my job,” I quip. I smile.

The door hinges scream. Louis pops his head in. “I have the list,” he announces, referring back to the list of memorial attendees I’d asked him to write. His long arm hands it through to me. At the same time, my phone sounds. My momentum with Stephen is already interrupted, so I tell him to stay put. I take the call outside, under the college gate.

It’s Chloe. “I’ve got him,” I announce. But she’s already talking.

“The footage was near useless,” Chloe says. “Can’t tell whether she jumped or was pushed or fell. You can see a man in a dark suit jacket, like the witness said, but not his face. It was just too crowded.” I try to barge in with my own report, but she doesn’t pause. “I’m following up on the Stephens now, the ones who were on the platform and gave their names. One of them’s at home and the other one’s at a pub on King Street. He was a bear to track down, but—”

“No,” I say. Sweat bubbles up on my forehead.

“What?”

I hear laughter and cars around her. She’s probably on King Street already. “No,” I repeat. “Stephen’s
here
.”

“What?”

“He’s at Corpus. Come to Corpus. Please.”

“You should have called me,” she says icily.

“I’m perfectly capable of conducting an interview on my own.” I sound like a teenager.

“Of course you can, but perhaps you’d spare me wasting my time following up with people we don’t need to.” A driver on her end leans on his horn.

I bite back a sarcastic retort. She’s right.

She rings off.

I phone Richard again, out of habit. Ringing, ringing. After four more I’ll be offered the chance to leave a message. I know the routine off by heart.

I squeeze the phone between my ear and shoulder while I glance over the porter’s list. And there he is:
“Dr. Richard Keene, eulogy”
on the list, and, suddenly, at last, answering his mobile.

“Where were you?” I demand. I’d practised my indignation all day. “I showed up at Magdalene as we’d agreed, and the car wasn’t there.”

“I know. I’m so sorry—”

“I’ve been phoning you ever since.”

“My mobile’s been off.”

“I know your bloody phone was off. I figured that out. Did you think, when I asked you for the car, that I was asking on a whim? Because this isn’t a whim. This is my work. This is—” I almost say “my life.” I catch myself. “This is
important
.”

“It is important. I know. I know.” He and Chloe keep saying that they
know
.

I remember the list. “Did you deliver a eulogy today?”

“What? Yes. Why?”

So he hasn’t heard. I don’t tell him. “Was there anything unusual about Dr. Oliver’s death?” I ask, pacing.

“Not that I know of.”

“What do you know about his daughter?”

Someone says something in the background, on his end. He says, “It’s Morris.” She, presumably his wife, Alice, says something unintelligible.

He gets back to me. “Mathilde. She didn’t come today. I hoped she would, but she didn’t.”

“Did you know her?”

“Not well.” There’s another muted exchange in the background.

“And her mother’s dead?” I confirm.

“What?” he asks, having been listening to Alice, not me.

“Is Mathilde’s mother alive?”

“No, no. Mathilde was very young when she died.”

Suicide is seeming more and more likely. It was only the urgency of her hunt for Stephen that made it strange. And why did she have that letter at all?

He at last loses his patience with me. “Why are you asking me all these things?”

“I’m asking everyone. She’s dead.”

There isn’t even breath on his end. Nothing—except a door slamming in the background.

“How?” he asks, and then, “I have to go.”

“You promised me the car.”

There’s a long pause. Then, “I’ll ring you back.”

The dial tone is a shock. He’s not the sort of person who does that.

I need to know more about the letters. I step back into the porters’ lodge, but Louis has transformed. He’s a younger man with a massive barrel chest and a cheerful smile. “Good evening, sir,” he greets me.

“Where’s Louis?”

“Just gone off duty. Can I help?”

I shake my head and blink. How had he done that when I was on the phone right outside the lodge door?

I reach for the door to the Head Porter’s office. The new porter rounds the counter to stop me, but I’d reached with the wrong hand, anyway. It might as well have been a paw.

“I’m a DCI with the Cambridgeshire police,” I explain, reaching again for my warrant card, which, somehow, is no longer in my jacket pocket. I have the correct hand going for it but can’t find it anywhere. I pat myself until I finally find it in my trouser pocket. I hold it out in front of me, almost into Louis’s—yes, it was Louis’s—face.

“DCI Keene,” he says pleasantly, while wrapping a yellow scarf around his neck.