Eye Contact (19 page)

Hidden behind the brick piling, he knelt beside his victim and carefully went through his pockets. Coins, wallet, house keys . . . there was very little to work with. But then, from the depths of the man’s inside jacket pocket, he drew out a mobile phone.

Naysmith smiled. He pulled the silver MP3 player out of the white envelope. Placing it in the man’s jacket, he took the phone and slipped it into the envelope.

The noise of an approaching car made him freeze, and he flattened himself on the ground beside the corpse. Headlights raked through the trees, lighting up the rain as the vehicle passed, but it didn’t slow. Nobody had seen anything.

Naysmith raised himself up slowly. Jamming the envelope into his pocket, he tipped the body so that it rolled over into the river, mercifully face down in the dark water. He collapsed the umbrella and threw it in too, before retrieving the wrench. With a final check to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, he leapt across the river and strode up the sloping side of the railway embankment.

And
now
he allowed himself to feel it, to bask in it – the uncontrollable excitement inside that made him want to scream out and punch the air. He stalked on through the storm, no longer aware of the wind or the rain, laughter echoing as he passed under the arched bridge and disappeared into the darkness.

Harland stepped off the uneven pavement and looked up at the trees. There was no sound except the gentle rustling of the leaves above him as he stood, lost in thought, on the quiet country lane. The scent of grass came to him on the warm air and he closed his eyes, enjoying the moment of peace.

They had been due a bit of luck. Days had stretched into weeks with nothing to show for their efforts, just one dead end after another. But this was more than just luck – this was a proper, old-fashioned hunch that had paid off. It had been Mendel who first asked the question: if Vicky regularly went out running, wasn’t there a chance that she might have had an iPod, or something, to listen to music?

‘Spend a lot of time watching young women jogging?’ Pope had teased, and they’d all laughed, seizing any opportunity to lighten the mood that could otherwise become unbearable. But Mendel’s idea was a good one. They’d gone back through the list of names, spoken to her family and friends and discreetly poked around.

Yes, poor Vicky loved her music, and come to think of it she had got herself one of those new MP3 players, a little silver one. No, nobody knew where it was now.

It hadn’t seemed like much, but it was a new lead to follow. There was a chance that Vicky had been wearing her music player when she met her killer, and a chance that the killer had taken it. But it might just as easily have been swept away by the tides, if it had ever been there at all.

‘It’s a possibility,’ Blake had shrugged when Harland told him. ‘But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you, Graham. This business is shaping up to be a lot worse than we first imagined. We mustn’t allow ourselves to get distracted from the evidence we already have, and we need to be sure that the other forces are all pulling their weight.’

Harland had been angry when he left the Superintendent’s office. Stalking out into the corridor, he’d stood there, shaking, struggling to shrug off the rage that gripped him. The man was a fool. He’d made his way down the stairs and out of the building to stand in a sheltered corner, his phone already in his hand. Drawing heavily on a cigarette, he’d called Mendel and told him to pull up any mentions of silver MP3 players on the database. Blake could go to hell.

It had taken Mendel some time. Searching for a commonplace item was never easy, and in this case there was still some uncertainty over the exact make and colour of the device. With so many unrelated pieces of evidence obscuring the one they were hoping to find, there was no guarantee that they’d turn up anything.

But Mendel had been smiling when he put his head round Harland’s door.

‘Got a minute?’ he asked.

Harland beckoned him in.

‘You look cheerful,’ he said. ‘What’s brought that on?’

‘I found something I think you’re going to like.’ Mendel eased himself into a chair and gazed across the desk at Harland. ‘Vicky Sutherland’s missing MP3 player – it was a small, silver one, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there are over a thousand possible matches for that on the database, but I had a bit of a think.’ He leaned forward. ‘We’re looking for something that’s turned up in the weeks since she was killed, and that narrowed it down quite a bit.’

‘What did you find?’ Harland asked.

‘I found a guy called Morris Eddings,’ Mendel said. ‘He’s a sixty-one-year-old university lecturer, killed near his home in some picture-postcard Hampshire village. Guess what he had in his jacket pocket.’

Harland nodded thoughtfully.

‘Can we be sure it wasn’t his own MP3 player?’ he asked.

Mendel shrugged and spread his large hands wide.

‘Too early to say anything for sure – this only just turned up and I thought I’d loop you in right away.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Seems a bit out of character though – some old duffer in the counties with a slinky little MP3 in his jacket.’

‘It does,’ Harland nodded. ‘If we can get our hands on the device, we should be able to establish the ownership one way or another.’

‘We could just check the tracks.’ Mendel grinned. ‘If it’s all R&B then it probably didn’t belong to our lecturer.’

‘Bad taste isn’t exclusive to the young,’ Harland smiled. ‘When did this one die?’

‘Last month. The Hampshire lot are still pretty warm on it, but they haven’t turned anything up yet. So far there seems to be no obvious motive. Sound familiar?’

‘Too familiar,’ Harland sighed. ‘Where did it happen again?’

‘I’ll send you the reports but it was some little village near Winchester. West Meon I think it was.’

He’d stood up and made his way to the door.

‘Picturesque little place by all accounts. Very Agatha Christie.’

And it was. The main street meandered left and right between rustic houses on a wooded slope in the Meon Valley, a charming muddle of thatched roofs and old flint walls draped with colourful bushes. There were pavements that suddenly disappeared where the road grew narrow, five-bar gates across gravel driveways, and hanging baskets everywhere. Harland had turned down a quiet lane, past the old butcher’s shop with its hand-painted sign and the tiny village Post Office. He’d parked just beyond the victim’s house and walked back along the lane. There was a small ‘For Sale’ board outside the place now – the only visible reminder of what had happened. How long would the house lie empty?

Now he stood on the narrow pavement, further along the lane, looking down at the bend in the stream where Morris Eddings had been dumped. They were still hunting down the missing MP3 player, but just being here convinced him that this was the work of the same killer. Once again, just as he’d felt in Oxford, he was struck by how good a spot this was for an attack.

There was water nearby, and the body had been left partly submerged, greatly compromising any evidence that the forensics team might otherwise have been able to retrieve. The location was secluded – a sheltered dip beside the stream would be ideal for a killer who needed time to go through his victim’s pockets. And there were plenty of different ways in and out of the place. The lane itself was an obvious choice, but Harland had seen signposts for footpaths that struck out through the trees, or the killer could simply have followed the course of the stream.

Thoughtfully, he clambered over the fence and picked his way down towards the bank. This was where it had happened. Just a few yards away – not that far to drag the body but it would have required a bit of physical strength to get the deadweight over the fence. A few moments’ respite – plenty of time to exchange souvenirs – and then just roll the remains into the water.

Harland closed his eyes. He could see the photos in his mind – the same stream that lay in front of him, only now there was a body sprawled in it, the back of a broken head gleaming wetly above the dark water . . .

His mobile was ringing.

Opening his eyes, he took the phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen. It was Mendel.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me. Can you talk?’

‘Yeah, just taking a walk in the country,’ Harland said. ‘What is it?’

‘We just had a call from Hampshire Police,’ Mendel replied. ‘They managed to track down that MP3 player – it was in a box of stuff they’d sent on to Eddings’ sister.’

Harland nodded to himself.

‘That’s good. Once we have that, we’ll know if Eddings is another link in the chain.’

‘Thought you’d like to know,’ Mendel said. ‘Anyway, sorry to bother you on your day off.’

‘It’s okay – I wasn’t doing anything.’ Harland gazed down at the stream. ‘See you tomorrow.’

He slipped the phone into his pocket again, then turned and made his way back up the slope.

Some bastard had parked in his space. Harland gripped the steering wheel angrily, revving the engine and lurching the car onward, past his house. Nowhere to park – that was all he needed right now. He eventually found a spot on the opposite side of the street and manoeuvred into the kerb behind a large white van. He switched off the engine and sat for a moment, waiting for his breathing to slow down, for the red mist to pass over. It wasn’t a big deal. Not really.

He locked the car and trudged back down Stackpool Road, his eyes taking in a series of front rooms through gaps in curtains, people on sofas and the flickering glow of televisions. Next door’s garden looked bright and cheery, with colourful pink flowers neatly bordering a large red-leaved bush. The space in front of his own house was an untidy no-man’s-land of cement paving and weeds. With nobody caring for them, the little shrubs had choked and withered, but that had always been Alice’s thing. He had neither the understanding nor the inclination to restore them.

He unlocked the door and went inside, irritably tugging a sheaf of flyers from the letterbox and screwing them up in his hand. Somehow they taunted him, reminding him that the house was empty.

Except it wasn’t.

She was still here, haunting every room. Usually, he tried to distract himself, thinking of work, staying out late until he was tired, or wretchedly stoking the lustful feelings he had for other women. But her presence was everywhere, joyful and sad, eager and shy, an eternally outstretched hand that he could never hold again.

He sighed and placed his keys in the bowl, the noise of metal on porcelain stark in the silence, then walked through to the kitchen.

They told him that it would get easier, that the pain would diminish with time. But it didn’t. Yes, he had developed
coping strategies
, cheap tricks to try and push her from his mind, but he wasn’t stupid. It didn’t matter what clever names they gave their techniques – at best he was deluding himself, at worst he was betraying her.

He took a beer from the fridge and closed the door. There was a small snapshot of the two of them together that she’d stuck to the door with a magnet. He paused, staring at the image, the two faces smiling out at him from the past. They’d been in Devon when it was taken – a weekend away, walking along a quiet beach, their whole bloody lives ahead of them. He took a deep breath and stared at Alice, her long blonde hair golden in the sunlight, her lips smiling, her eyes full of mischief. And him beside her, his head leaning in against hers, laughing at something she’d said. He envied his former self, and hated who he’d become. She’d be so disappointed.

He turned away from the memories, walking over to the counter and rifling through the drawer for a bottle opener. Even here, so many little utensils that he’d never used, more of her things that had been left behind to torture him. He closed his eyes, knowing that there was no escape from it. Not tonight.

He needed some air. Wrestling with the top bolt, he unlocked the back door and took his beer out into the enclosed garden, where he sank down wearily to sit on the steps. Lighting a cigarette, he slumped against the door frame and fought back the first tears that welled up in his eyes.

Not here. Not yet. A quiet smoke and a drink first, just to calm the nerves.

He sat there, utterly alone, watching the cigarette slowly turn to ash between his fingers. In his darkest moments, he flirted with the thought that it might have been better if they’d never met. It wasn’t just that he’d have been spared the pain of loss – it was the fact that his future was suddenly stripped of hope. He’d found the person he was meant to be with, and he’d lost her. Now, the best was behind him, and all that remained was regret. Once again, an appalling sense of guilt washed over him and he pushed the idea away. Such thoughts were beneath him.

The smell of a barbecue came to him from one of the nearby gardens. He could hear voices, but they were some distance away. Sighing, he got to his feet and went indoors to cook.

There seemed little point in eating, but somehow he forced himself. A reluctant concession that he made to her memory –
what she would have wanted
. Some evenings it was a way to pass the time, to distract himself, but that wouldn’t work tonight. He settled on a simple microwave meal and switched on the TV while he waited for his food to cool down. The voices from the screen dispelled the oppressive silence, but he was under no illusions. This was going to be a bad night.

Later, when everything was neatly put away, he stood in the hallway, looking up the stairs to the dark landing. He felt so tired, but it was a weariness that sleep couldn’t touch. Reluctantly, he placed a hand on the end of the banister and made his way upstairs. The thick carpet that had once seemed so homely now muffled his footfalls, creating an unwelcome hush as he paused outside the closed bedroom door, then slowly turned the handle.

The door swung silently inward and he followed it into the stillness of their old room. Pale sun streamed in through the lacy net curtains that she’d chosen, the last light of the day glowing on one side of the bed and casting long shadows across the floor.