Strange Blood (24 page)

‘I think that's a pretty fair guess.' He looked at her and she wondered why he was so open about his dislike of Foy's methods. For most of the police officers she had encountered, loyalty to colleagues was imperative.

‘Tell me something,' she frowned, ‘You were the one who arrested Justin at my sister's house. Did you really believe he might be the killer?'

‘I was keeping an open mind,' he replied. ‘When I realised he was Sean Raven's stepson I knew the Guv'd want him hauled in. If I'm honest I was just covering my back – after all, he's nothing like that profile you gave us, is he?' He held her gaze just a fraction too long and she glanced down at the table.

‘No.' She stood up, unnerved by the way his eyes had made her feel. ‘I must be getting back,' she lied, ‘but could you do something for me? I'd like to see that list of recently-released sex offenders – the ones you said the team had checked out.'

‘Well, yes, I should be able to get hold of that for you,' he said. ‘Do you mind me asking why?'

‘Just curious, that's all.' This time she wasn't lying. She had to see that list for herself.

‘I'll e-mail it to you if you like – should be okay if I do it from home.'

She scribbled down the e-mail address and he put it in his pocket.

*   *   *

As dusk fell on the ruins of Whiteladies Abbey the men and women crept through the shadows. Candles in glass jars were set on stones, incense cones lit and ceremonial ornaments laid on the wide window ledge that served as an altar.

Mariel Raven held up her arms to the night sky, the silver crescent moon on her forehead glinting in the flickering light. ‘Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, we thank you for delivering our brothers Sean and Justin from those who wish them ill,' she intoned. ‘Great Goddess, we thank you!'

There was a swish of cloth against bare flesh as the others held up their arms ‘We thank you,' they murmured.

Mariel Raven took something from the pocket of her robe. It was a piece of newspaper, the edges ragged where it had been torn from the page. At it's centre was a photograph of Megan.

Stretching her arm towards one of the candles, Mariel Raven held the scrap of paper to the flame. ‘Evil be to she who evil sees!' Her words rang out in the darkness. Megan's face was lit up for a split second. Then it blackened and crumpled to a cinder, floating up into the night sky.

Chapter 17

Megan woke with a start. She sat up in bed, her heart racing. The back of her neck was wet with perspiration. In the nightmare she had been gasping for breath as a man in a mask stuffed a white dishcloth into her mouth.

She peered at the red quartz display on her alarm clock. Six forty-five. She knew it was pointless trying to go back to sleep. Her head thumped as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and groped around with her feet for her slippers. Today was a day she had been dreading. She was due to meet the Vice-Chancellor at nine o'clock. All that had happened over the past few days had pushed it to the back of her mind. But there was no getting away from it now. She was going to have to face the music. And it would be all the harder to bear now that she and Patrick had parted.

She made herself a coffee and took it up to her study. Last night she'd been too exhausted to check her e-mails. She wondered if Dave Todd had sent the list of sex offenders yet. As she waited for the computer to come on she reached into a drawer, bringing out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She put them on the desk and frowned. She hadn't touched a cigarette since before Christmas. Patrick had helped her quit. The packet had been lying in the drawer all that time. Just in case. She flipped it open and slid out a cigarette. It felt strange when she put it in her mouth. Big and clumsy. She flicked the lighter but nothing happened. She flicked it again, then she shook it. Empty.

‘Oh bugger!' She spat out the cigarette and broke it in half, turning to hurl it and the packet into the bin. She swivelled her chair back round, staring hard at the computer screen. Yes, she had e-mail. Something told her before she had even clicked the mouse that there was going to be a message from Patrick.

‘In
Amsterdam!
' she said aloud as she read the text. ‘My God, you don't hang around, do you?'

He said that he had gone to Amsterdam to talk things over with Kristine. He had agreed to start maintenance payments as soon as the baby was born, provided she agreed to a DNA test to prove the child was his. The fact that she had agreed to this made it pretty clear to him that he wasn't being set up.

He knew that in order to meet the maintenance payments he was going to have to give up his PhD and return to his old job with the Dutch police. So he was going back to Liverpool to pack up his things and would be calling at Megan's house on Thursday at about 2pm to collect his Doc Martens and some CDs that he'd left in the cupboard under the stairs. If she didn't want to see him would she mind leaving them in the porch?

And that was it. No impassioned plea for her to take him back. Just ‘With love, as always, Patrick.' What was she supposed to make of it? Grabbing the mouse she erased his message from the screen. Her hand shook from the mixture of misery and anger welling up inside. Trust Patrick to make this shitty day even worse, she thought. Desperate for distraction, she scanned her inbox. There was a message from Dave Todd. Good.

She printed out the list he had sent and took it back to bed along with a fresh mug of coffee and some toast. It made grim reading. The crimes committed by the men on the list ranged from multiple rape to unlawful intercourse with a minor. Beneath each name were details of the prison or prisons where the sentence had been served and a list of previous convictions. It also gave the current address of the offender and the length of time since his release. She was only halfway through reading it when she glanced at the clock and realised she had just forty minutes to get dressed and get to the university.

*   *   *

The Vice-Chancellor's office was in an old, ivy-clad mansion that had once housed the whole university. It was the only really attractive building on the campus, the rest having been added in bits and pieces from the 1950s onwards. As she walked along the red-carpeted entrance hall she had a sick feeling in her stomach. Never in her career had she been reprimanded; colleagues had commented enviously on her meteoric rise to Head of Department. At thirty-six years old she was the youngest person ever to have held the post. And the first woman. Even though she knew that technically, she'd done nothing wrong, she felt she had let down all the people who had believed in her enough to give her that chance.

She was shown into a room that smelt of beeswax and cigars. There was an ancient-looking leather-topped desk by the window and two huge reproduction leather armchairs facing each other in front of the fireplace. The Vice-Chancellor's head was completely obscured by the winged headrest of one of them, and when he spoke she jumped.

‘Doctor Rhys.' His voice was a throaty growl; the legacy of a lifetime of smoking. ‘Sit down, please.'

He quizzed her about her affair with Patrick, making her feel like a naughty schoolgirl called into the headmaster's office. She tried to explain that there had been no intimacy between them until Patrick had changed PhD supervisors; that she would never have contemplated embarking on a relationship with someone whose work she was responsible for assessing. She stopped short of telling him they had split up. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

‘Doesn't look good though, does it?' He scowled at her from behind his black-framed spectacles. ‘Not something to make a habit of.'

My God,
she thought,
what does he take me for? Does he think I've slept with other students?
She opened her mouth to protest but he beat her to it.

‘And this doesn't help.' He pulled a newspaper from the side of the chair. It was Saturday's local evening paper, open at the page bearing her photograph. He waved it under her nose. ‘This kind of thing doesn't put the university in a very good light.'

‘But I didn't…' she began.

‘A warning, Dr Rhys,' he cut in. ‘No more
fraternising
with the students. And perhaps you should think about cutting down on the police work. Stick to academia. That's what you're paid for.'

When she got back to her car she was trembling with rage and shame. The tears in her eyes and the pounding in her brain made it difficult to concentrate on driving. At the Bull Ring roundabout she nearly crashed a red light. All she wanted was to get home and hide herself away. It was a miracle she made it back in one piece.

She threw off her clothes and jumped into the shower, as if the sharp jets of water could blast away the memory of what had happened. Bundling her hair into a towel she wrapped her bathrobe tightly around her wet body and ran into her bedroom, burrowing under the duvet like a hunted animal.

In the warm darkness she tried to rationalise the Vice-Chancellor's words. She had only been given a warning. Not the sack. That was something, at least. But what really grated were his comments about her police work. The university had been only too happy to bask in the media spotlight when she'd made headlines for solving a string of rapes in Scotland and the murders of three Birmingham prostitutes.

She lifted up the covers and glanced at the clock. Beside it was the list Dave Todd had e-mailed earlier. She grabbed it, scanning the pages with renewed determination. She was damned if she was going to give up this case. Vice-Chancellor or
no
Vice-Chancellor.

She was so deep in thought the phone made her jump.

‘Megan, it's Delva.' The voice sounded faint and Megan could hear traffic in the background. ‘I'm in Pendleton. They've found another body – did you know?'

‘What?' Megan's hand tightened on the receiver.

‘It's a woman – that's all I know. Des had a call from his mate at Tipton Street nick. I'm just on my way to the flat where they found her.'

‘Where is it?' Megan made a grab for her clothes, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder.

‘It's above the electrical shop in the precinct,' Delva said. ‘Number 7A'.

*   *   *

Dave Todd stared at the woman lying on the bed. Her chalk-white thighs were marbled with dark brown streaks where the blood vessels had begun to putrefy. Her swollen stomach was tinged green below the blackened mess that had once been her breasts. A corner of blood-stained fabric protruded from her swollen lips and on the tight, stretched skin of her forehead were the unmistakeable lines of a pentagram.

‘Her name's Susan Thompson.' Steve Foy was standing by the Venetian blinds that screened the bedroom window from the curious glances of the shoppers below. ‘Forty-six years old. Worked as a receptionist at the doctor's.' He nodded in the direction of the surgery. ‘They came round when she didn't turn up this morning.'

‘How long's she been dead?' Todd pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his mouth.

‘More than thirty-six hours, the FME said. Post mortem should give us a better idea.'

Todd looked at him. ‘What time were Raven and Preece released?'

‘Just what I was thinking.' Foy nodded slowly. ‘Five o'clock Saturday afternoon. So anything up to forty-two hours, they're still in the frame.'

‘When was she last seen?'

‘Half past five last Thursday afternoon. That's when she left the surgery. She didn't work Fridays, so no one missed her until this morning.'

Todd frowned ‘She lived alone, then, like Joanna Hamilton?'

‘A widow,' Foy replied. ‘One daughter living in America.'

‘No boyfriend?'

‘None that her pals from the surgery knew of.'

*   *   *

Megan was pulling into the precinct carpark when Dave Todd rang.

‘I'm outside,' she said.

There was a pause at the other end. ‘How did you know?'

‘Tip-off from a friend in the media who got it from one of your lot.'

‘Hmm.' Todd knew better than to ask who her friend was. ‘I'll come and find you.'

Megan waited by the entrance to the supermarket. She could see a short, uniformed figure with spiky ginger hair standing with his back to her in the main square. Steve Foy. He was being interviewed by Delva, who had positioned him in front of the shop above which the body had been found.

Dave Todd appeared from the opposite direction, having come out of the flat's back entrance. In a few brief sentences he told her what he'd seen.'

‘I'm going across to the surgery to talk to the colleague who found her,' he said. ‘Want to come?'

Megan glanced towards the square. ‘What about your boss?'

‘He's off to the mortuary as soon as he's done with the TV people,' Todd said.

‘Nice one, Steve,' Megan muttered as they headed for the surgery. ‘Nothing like getting your priorities right.'

The colleague who had found Susan Thompson's body was a frail-looking woman with short grey hair. Her face was ashen and the her hands shook as she related the horrific experience of letting herself into the flat above the electrical shop.

‘She'd given me a key in case of emergencies,' the woman said, her voice almost inaudible. ‘When she didn't come in this morning I knew straight away something must be wrong. Sue was hardly ever ill, but on the odd occasion when she was, she'd always phone to let someone know.'

‘I'm sorry to have to ask you these questions, Mrs Green,' Todd said, ‘But can you tell me exactly what time you last saw her?'

‘It was twenty to six last Thursday evening,' the woman replied. ‘I remember because we were supposed to close the surgery at five-thirty. I said, “Come on, Sue, it's time we were going home.”' She clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap. There were no tears in her eyes. They would come later, Megan thought.