Authors: Michael Robotham
A police badge is flashed.
“We’re looking for Professor O’Loughlin.”
The young receptionist is ringing my room. Charlie nudges me. “They’re asking for you.”
“I know.”
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We’re going to lunch.”
The suspense is killing her. She announces loudly, “Are you looking for my father?”
The men turn.
“He’s right here,” she says.
“Professor O’Loughlin?” asks the older man.
I look at Charlie, showing my disappointment.
“Yes,” I answer.
“We’ve come to collect you, sir. I’m DS Casey. This is my colleague Trainee Detective Constable Brindle Hughes.”
“People call me Grievous,” says the younger man, smiling awkwardly.
“We were going out,” I say, pointing to the revolving door.
Casey answers, “Our guv wants to see you, sir. He says it’s important.”
“Who’s your guv?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Drury.”
“I don’t know him.”
“He knows you.”
There is a pause. My attitude to detectives is similar to my views on priests—they do important jobs but they make me nervous. It’s not the confessional nature of their work—I have nothing to feel guilty about—it is more a sense of having done my share. I want to put a sign up saying, “I’ve given.”
“Tell your boss that I’m very sorry, but I’m unavailable. I’m looking after my daughter.”
“I don’t mind,” says Charlie, getting interested.
Casey lowers his voice. “A husband and wife are dead.”
“I can give you the names of other profilers—”
“The guv doesn’t want anyone else.”
Charlie tugs at my sleeve. “Come on, Dad, you should help them.”
“I promised you lunch.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“What about the shopping.”
“I don’t have any money, which means I’d have to guilt you into buying me something. I’d prefer to save up my guilt points for something I
really
want.”
“Guilt points?”
“You heard me.”
The detectives seem to find this conversation amusing. Charlie grins at them. She’s bored. She wants some excitement. But this isn’t the sort of adventure anyone wants. Two people are dead. It’s tragic. It’s pointless. It’s the sort of work I try to avoid.
Charlie won’t let it go. “I won’t tell Mum,” she says. “Please can we go?”
“You have to stay here.”
“No, that’s not fair. Let me come.”
Casey interrupts. “We’re only going to the station, sir.”
A police car is parked outside. Charlie slides into the back seat alongside me.
We drive in silence through the near-empty streets. Oxford looks like a ghost city trapped in a snow dome. Charlie leans forward, straining at the seat belt.
“Is this about the body in the ice?”
“How do you know about that?” asks Casey.
“We saw it from the train.”
“Different case, miss,” says Grievous. “Not one for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of motorists were stranded by the blizzard. Most likely she wandered away from her car and fell into the lake.”
Charlie shivers at the thought. “Do they know who she was?”
“Not yet.”
“Hasn’t anybody reported her missing?”
“They will.”
St. Aldates Police Station has an iron and glass canopy over the front entrance, which has collected a foot of snow. A council worker perched on a ladder is using a shovel to break up the frozen white wave, which explodes into fragments on the paving stones below.
Instead of parking at the station, the detectives carry on for another hundred yards and turn right before pulling up outside a Chinese restaurant where denuded ducks are hanging in the window.
“Why are we here?”
“Guv has invited you to lunch.”
Upstairs in a private dining room, a dozen detectives are seated around a large circular banqueting table. The food carousel is laden with steaming plates of pork, seafood, noodles and vegetables.
The man in charge has a napkin tucked into his shirt and is opening a crab claw with a silver pincer. He sucks out the flesh and picks up another claw. Even seated, he gives the impression of being large. Mid-forties. Fast-tracked through the ranks. He has a shock of dark hair and razor burns on his face. I notice his wedding ring and his unironed shirt. He hasn’t been home for a couple of days, but has managed to shower and shave.
Beyond the circular table, a series of whiteboards have been set up to display photographs and a timeline of events. The victims’ names are written across the top. The restaurant has become an incident room.
DCI Drury tugs his napkin from his collar and tosses it onto the table. It’s a signal. Waiters converge and carry away the leftovers. Pushing back from the table, Drury rises with all the grace and coordination of a deck chair.
“Professor O’Loughlin, thanks for joining us.”
“I wasn’t given a great deal of choice.”
“Good.”
He belches and pushes his arms through the sleeves of his jacket.
“Can I get you something to eat?”
I look at Charlie. She’s starving.
“Excellent,” says Drury. “Grievous, get her a menu.” He leans closer. “That’s not his real name, Miss. His initials are GBH. Do you know what they stand for?”
Charlie shakes her head.
“Grievous Bodily Harm.” The DCI laughs. “Don’t worry, he’s too wet behind the ears to be dangerous.” He turns to me. “How do you like my incident room, Professor?”
“It’s unconventional.”
“I encourage people to feel like part of a team. We drink together. We eat together. Everyone is free to give an opinion. Admit their mistakes. Express their doubts. My department has the best clean-up rate in the county.”
Your mothers must be very proud, I think, rapidly forming a negative opinion of the DCI because of his cockiness and sense of entitlement.
He picks up a toothpick and cleans his teeth. “You were recommended to me.”
“By whom?”
“A mutual friend. I was told you might not come.”
“You were well informed.”
He smiles. “My apologies if we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start again. I’m Stephen Drury.”
He shakes my hand, holding it a second longer than necessary.
“I have a double homicide, which looks like a home invasion. The husband had his skull caved in. His wife was tied to a bed, possibly raped, and set on fire.”
The words are whispered. I glance across the room to Charlie, who is spooning fried rice onto a plate.
“When?”
“Three nights ago.”
I glance at the whiteboard, which has a photograph of a whitewashed farmhouse barely touched by fire. Snow was falling when the images were taken, giving them a sepia tone. A smudge of smoke rises from the roofline, etched hard against the white sky.
“What do you want from me?”
“I have a suspect in custody. He worked for the family. We found his prints in the house and he has burns to both his hands. He denies killing the couple and says he was trying to save them.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“This particular suspect has a history of mental illness. He’s on anti-psychotic medication. Right now he’s climbing the walls, talking to himself, scratching at his arms. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he’s lying. I can only hold him for twenty-two more hours. That’s how long I have to make a case.”
“I still don’t understand—”
“How should I treat him? How hard can I push? I don’t want some smart-arse defense lawyer claiming I put words in this lad’s mouth or browbeat him into confessing.”
“A psychological assessment will take days.”
“I’m not asking for his life story, just your impressions.”
“Where are his clinical files?”
“We can’t get access to them.”
“Who is his psychiatrist?”
“Dr. Victoria Naparstek.”
The penny drops. I met Dr. Naparstek eighteen months ago at a mental health tribunal hearing that involved one of her patients. She called me an arrogant, condescending, misogynistic prick because I bullied her patient into showing his true personality. I got him to admit that he fantasized about following Dr. Naparstek home and raping her.
Did I bully him? Yes. Did I overstep the boundaries? Absolutely, but the good doctor should have thanked me. Instead, she threatened to report me to the British Psychological Society and have me disciplined.
Why would she recommend me for this case? Something doesn’t make sense.
Drury is waiting for my decision. I glance at Charlie, wishing she were home.
“OK, I’ll talk to your suspect, but first I want to see the crime scene.”
“Why?”
“Context.”
T
he Land Rover skids and fishtails through the slush, following a farm track towards a copse of skeletal trees that are guarding the ridge. The plowed fields are bathed in a strange yellow glow, as though the snow has soaked up the weak sunshine like a fluorescent watch-face before reflecting it back again as an eerie twilight.
The eighteenth-century farmhouse seems to lean against the ridge, protected from the wind. Soot blackens the paintwork above the upstairs windows, like mascara on a teenage Goth.
Released from the claustrophobic heat of the car, I feel the wind tug at my trouser cuffs and collar. Drury leads me across the lawn. He signs a clipboard and hands me a pair of surgical gloves.
“The victims are Patricia Heyman, aged forty-two, and William Heyman, forty-five. Married. One child. Flora. She’s studying at one of the colleges in Oxford. Mrs. Heyman writes children’s books and the husband is a freelance editor. They bought the house three years ago. Both work from home.”
“Any sign of forced entry?”
“The front door was kicked in. Nothing was taken. We found four hundred pounds in a drawer beside the bed and William Heyman had his wallet in his pocket. That’s the problem with amateurs.”
“Pardon?”
“They panic and do stupid things. A professional thief wouldn’t leave a mess like this.”
The DCI unlocks a padlock and pulls aside a sheet of plywood. Snow tumbles from the eaves. The inner hallway looks largely undisturbed. Glancing through double doors, I notice a sitting room with an inglenook fireplace and exposed oak beams. The dining room has a vaulted ceiling and another fireplace. Cast-iron. Fat-bellied. There is a faint smell in the air, a mixture of smoke, butane and bleach.
Almost without thinking I’m collecting the details: signs of normal, everyday life; cups draining next to the sink; scourers, rubber gloves, scraps of vegetables in a compost bin; a tin of drinking chocolate on the kitchen counter. Open. The Aga stove is cold.
Drury is still talking. “This is where we found the husband. Face down. Two blows to the back of the head. Something heavy, blunt—a hammer maybe or an axe. He dragged himself across the floor, trying to get away.”
The blood trail has dried into a dark smear.
“What about his wife?”
“She was upstairs tied to the bed. She was still alive when the assailant doused her with an accelerant, possibly lighter fluid.”
“The fire didn’t spread?”
“Damaged the room, but didn’t get into the ceiling.”
The smell of bleach is stronger here. A side door near the dishwasher leads to the laundry. Wellington boots are lined up—three pairs for mother, father and daughter. A soiled dress is soaking in the tub.
In the living room there are two mugs on a side table. Hot chocolate. Half-finished. A third mug lies in pieces in the fireplace. A bottle of Scotch rests on the mantelpiece. Opened. Single malt. Twenty years. A drop for special occasions.
Propped against a drying rack, a thin pair of leather shoes. Ballet flats. Charlie wears them.
The DCI continues. “It happened on Thursday night, during the blizzard. Half the county was blacked out. Roads closed. Phone lines down. Someone made a 999 call from William Heyman’s mobile at the height of the storm, but the emergency switchboard was swamped and they were put on hold.”
“How long?”
“Four, maybe five minutes. By the time the operator answered, the caller had gone.”
Drury gives me a baleful stare. “It was a hell of a night: dozens of accidents, people stranded in their cars; the M40 was like a car park.”
He leads me upstairs. Crossing duckboards on the floor, I reach the main bedroom and recognize the sickly sweet odor of burning flesh, human fat turned to liquid.
Snow swirls through the shattered window before gathering in a corner of the bedroom. Almost every other surface is covered in a fine layer of black soot. The blaze began on the mattress. Layers of bedding are peeled back to reveal the cross-like outline of undamaged fabric. The outline of a body—two arms, two legs, a torso; Patricia Heyman’s body had protected the mattress from the flames.