Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller) (10 page)

Jones met Annabel Smith in the small, overheated room at Joyce College which the MCU had been given for the task of interviewing the students. Annabel was a rounded girl; demure, Jones thought. Bottle-green cords and a cream cashmere jumper, she had thick caramel-coloured hair pulled into a low ponytail, tiny pearls in her earlobes and brown heeled boots pushed as far back as she could manage against the base of the leather club chair on which she sat. She looked as if she were posing for a school photograph, albeit one where she had red-rimmed eyes and a constant sniffle. From outside, signs of continuing college life from the nearby refectory trickled into the room: the clank of plates being stacked; the smell of peppers frying; the low rumble of voices.

‘Annabel,’ Jones said gently, ‘I know this is hard for you, but we need to find out as much as we can about Emily’s life, who she was mates with, what she did. You were friends with her, right?’

Annabel sniffed. ‘Well, I, um, I don’t know if you’d
describe us as
best
friends. We were friends, yes. But I’ve got lots of those.’ She tossed her head imperceptibly. ‘Emily was one of them. We hang around in a group, you know?’

Jones looked down at the notes she held in her lap. ‘I do. But it seems from what other people say, what we’ve seen online, that you and Emily spent a lot of time together.’

Annabel brought her hand to her mouth and began chewing on a nail. A deep frown appeared between her eyes, and she pulled her knees closer to each other. There was something childish in the movement, Jones observed. ‘What do you mean, what you’ve seen online?’ Annabel asked.

‘What we’ve seen on Facebook, Twitter. All of it.’

‘So, you’ve seen … ?’

‘The photos? Yes we have.’ Jones leaned towards the girl. ‘Why don’t you tell me about that, Annabel?’

Tears began to drop from Annabel’s eyes. She shook her head, squeezing them tight, clasping her hands on her lap. ‘Of course you would,’ she muttered. ‘Fuck …’

‘What’s upsetting you about that, Annabel? You didn’t have anything to do with the photos, did you?’

‘No!’ She opened her eyes at once before fixing her mouth into a flat line, a mulish stripe of obstinacy. Something in her had retreated behind high walls. Jones tried a different tack.

‘Okay, tell me about Joyce, then. What’s it like being here?’

Annabel gave a miserable laugh. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Only all right?’

Annabel moved her eyes away from Jones and fixed them on her lap, twisting a silver and turquoise ring on her middle finger. An internal debate flickered across her face.

‘What it is …’ she began.

‘Yes?’

She lifted her chin. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. It’s hard, you know? Being a Fresher. Everyone expects so much of you. You need to fit it all in.’

Jones made a sympathetic face:
I get it
, and the girl seemed to loosen up. She unclasped her hands and rolled her eyes. ‘I know – First World problems, right? But sometimes …’ her hands now fluttered in the air, searching for the words, ‘it’s hard to be yourself, you know?’

Jones opened her mouth to speak, but Annabel was on a roll. ‘Like, online, right? I mean, like what you say on Twitter, for example, or what you might email someone, well, perhaps what I say isn’t
necessarily
what I mean. But people take it as gospel, you know? And then it gets churned out and said back to you as if you’re the only person who’s got a view. And then someone might think that those things were coming
from
you. When all along, you’re only saying what
everyone else is … because, you know, it’s like, that’s what you do here.’

Jones took a breath. They would need to check out Annabel’s online output. But she seemed to be implying something else. It hung in the room like a bat with open eyes but firmly closed wings. Jones thought fast.

‘So, right. Are you saying that you’ve said something online has been taken out of context?’

‘Well, not exactly. Nothing I can completely point to,’ Annabel said, dipping her eyes. ‘But, you know, there’s been some press. And I wouldn’t want you to think that I’d been
talking
to anyone. Certainly not in the press,’ she said quickly.

Meaning
, Jones thought,
that she had indeed been talking to a journalist
.

‘Okay, Annabel. Well, moving on. Just a few more questions. Did you see Emily down at the boathouse on Sunday? Were you with her?’

‘Yes. We were drinking Pimm’s on the grass for a few hours. Then Emily headed off after seven.’

‘Do you remember the exact time?’

‘Twenty past? Something like that?’

‘And did you see anyone go with her? Had she arranged to meet anyone on the way home?’

Tears sprang again into Annabel’s eyes, and her face crumpled as she shook her head. ‘I tried to call her later, but she didn’t answer.’

‘So she definitely had her phone with her when she was at the boathouse?’ Jones asked, making a note.

Annabel nodded miserably. ‘Yes. We were taking selfies with it. She emailed me some, and I posted them that night. I can’t bring myself to look at Facebook now, though.’

‘Was Emily dating Nick Oliver? What was going on there? Having seen the photos with him …’

Annabel wiped her face. ‘He’s just a wanker. Emily … well, I don’t know what she was doing. But he took advantage of her. Oh, I don’t know.’ She looked exasperated. ‘It’s so confused. One minute I think it was him that was playing her and the next I think she was the one playing everyone.’ She began to cry openly. ‘I just can’t understand why she’s dead.’

‘I know. I’m really sorry, Annabel. Just one more thing, though, and then you can go.’

Annabel was sniffing repeatedly, her face brackish with tears.

‘Do you know Simon Rush, the college president? I know he’s a third year, but have you had many dealings with him?’

Annabel chewed her lip and looked down at her lap. ‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, I know him by sight. Everyone does.’ She gave a self-conscious giggle. ‘He’s gorgeous, right? And everyone likes him. Emily was always flirting with him. We had a drink with him
once, ages ago. But, no. I don’t know him as a friend.’ She glanced up at Jones. ‘Why do you ask?’

Jones straightened in her chair and gave a brief smile. ‘Thank you, Annabel. That’s all. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.’

Martin looked at her wristwatch as she scrolled down Emily’s Facebook page again on her computer. She had got back to the station after giving a short, prepared statement to the press. No questions or information about the murder or Rush’s confession: just an appeal for witnesses.

Jones had returned from interviewing Annabel and was tucked in, next door in the incident room, coordinating the cross-referencing task she was so keen on getting stuck into. Looking at the scope of the comments, it would be a hard task. And now Jones seemed to think that Annabel had been talking to the press about life at the university.

Mervyn Rush, Simon’s father, had asked to see her before the interview took place. And after it, she would need to brief Butterworth. With every step of this investigation, she felt she was getting further and further away from Rush. It was as if she were in one of those dreams where you were running through treacle, obstacles popping up preventing you from getting to where you must go. She had to drown out
everything else.
Who was Rush? Had he been the one to murder Emily?

Martin let her mind wander around the kids she had met so far, the university staff. The place was a study in hierarchy. Mason hovering at the top – the college principals of Durham were emperors of this particular universe. And then the pecking order of the students themselves. Rush as college president lording it over the new blood. Was that why the first years were called Freshers, Martin wondered? Fresh meat for the rest of the student body? She shuddered. Something dark lurked here. She couldn’t put a name to it, but she felt it. The absence of something, or the … what was it? She’d noticed whatever it was in the interchange between Rush and Principal Mason. Something had jerked in her brain, made her skin prickle. What was it? Something that would show that Rush was a murderer?

Martin looked again at her watch and then at the old postcard of an Emily Brontë poem propped up on her desk, given to her many years ago, the only piece of personal paraphernalia she had brought into this new office. She bit her lip, Jim’s face coming unasked into her thoughts. She batted it away; she would call him later, after the interview. She reached down to get her handbag to pull a brush through her hair as Jones hustled in to the room.

‘Anything?’ Martin asked.

‘Might be something. That note on Emily’s door? Where you saw the impression of some writing?’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, all the witness statements are correlating with Emily leaving the boathouse at 7.30 p.m. or thereabouts. And the impression left on the pad seems to say something along the lines of
Meet you at the bridge later – D
.’

Martin’s head whipped up. ‘D?’

Jones nodded. ‘Seems to be. Not S or N, that’s for sure, anyway.’

‘So, who’s D?’

‘Dunno, boss. And nothing’s come up on Rush’s computer or social media. Just the usual. He was friends with Emily on Facebook, but that’s it. A fan of Beethoven though, apparently.’ Jones looked baffled by this. ‘And liked Seamus Heaney, whoever he is.’

‘Irish poet,’ Martin muttered, tossing her brush back in the bag.

Jones gave one of her cheery grins. ‘Anyway, just wanted to wish you good luck. I’ll walk you out.’

Martin nodded, more touched by that than she could say. The women stopped at a vending machine in the lobby, where the lifts would take Martin down to the cells. ‘Want anything?’ Martin asked as she put in the coins required for a Crunchie.

‘On a diet,’ Jones said, pressing the button for a lift.

‘Yeah, me too,’ Martin answered, unwrapping the chocolate bar which had popped out with a clunk. ‘We shall see what we shall see, Jones,’ she said as she went into the lift. As the doors closed behind her, the word she had been scrabbling for came to her – the way to sum up the atmosphere of the university, which had eluded her since early that morning. It wasn’t insouciance, she thought, it was
carelessness
. None of the people she had met so far had shown any care for their surroundings, their peers or even themselves.

Mervyn Rush stood outside the interview room where his son had been brought from his cell. He was an imposing man, and had a few inches with which to try to intimidate Martin. He wore a black suit with thick white pinstripes over a pink shirt. His hair was akin to a clown’s – two bushels of black curls sticking out either side of his head. His face was not that of a clown, although his nose was red. Martin attributed that to the revelries of the Bar.
Networking
, she suspected Mervyn Rush would’ve called it. She disliked him on sight.

‘You’ve got nothing.’ Rush spoke with a low voice, a conspiratorial cloth draped over a Samurai’s sword.

‘Why did you want to see me, Mr Rush?’ Martin
parried. She leaned against the corridor wall, on the face of it relaxed but with the feeling in the stomach she used to have as a kid when someone made a dare. She would always take it. She could play this game as well as him.

Rush looked at her as if appraising an artefact. He seemed to decide something before speaking. ‘Are you aware of Simon’s history?’ He released a smile from his cheeks as if making a stab with a knife, before sucking his mouth back into its usual purse. He was a cold fish, Martin thought. Red cheeks, cold heart. She didn’t answer but waited for Rush to continue.

‘He saw his mother drown when he was ten years old,’ Rush whispered, his lips moist. ‘She walked into the sea at Brighton in front of him. He’s been seeing the university counsellor about it. Tell me, Inspector, what effect will the knowledge of
that
have on this so-called confession do you think?’

Martin frowned a little. So he would be angling for diminished responsibility. She sighed. ‘Mr Rush, can we stop playing Perry Mason out in the hallway please? At the moment, we only have a statement from your son. I have been waiting,
very patiently
I might add
,
for you to arrive. I would now like the opportunity to interview Simon and see if we can work out what’s happened here. Would that be all right with you?’

Rush nodded briefly before turning his back
and entering the room. After a beat, Martin followed him in.

As soon as Martin entered, she saw it had been a mistake to allow Mervyn Rush to represent his son. All the cockiness of Simon, so visible in Principal Mason’s office, had shrunk into a horrible emptiness. He seemed undone, unravelled, splayed in the plastic chair in the interview room like an unwanted toy. His body language reeked of fear, his shoulders twisted away from his father. Only his chin let him down, which tilted up in a sad sort of way, his mouth downturned: the chin of a small boy trying to make the best of it.

A high narrow window on the back wall let in the only natural light in a room which was otherwise blank with the glare of a fluorescent tube and claustrophobic in its dimensions. Martin studied Rush. He had a quality about him, although now his face was pale, blanched by the strip-lighting above. He had one of those faces that pulled you into its wake. Despite his current lacklustre stare at the greasy Formica table, he had something appealing; Martin could imagine people voting for him, wanting to be around him.

Martin sat opposite Simon at the tiny table, her legs tucked under her chair so as not to bump his. Mervyn Rush was next to his son, a pad of paper in front of him. He didn’t look at Simon once, merely
unscrewed a gold fountain pen and sat still as stone, pen poised to strike. Martin bit her lip. She would need to be careful here; the dynamic teetered on a knife edge. Which way would Simon veer? To his father? Or to the truth? Martin flicked her eyes quickly to the CCTV camera in the corner, where she knew Butterworth and the team would be watching. She swallowed. It was time.