Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller) (16 page)

Martin sat in the incident room at a computer, looking at the whiteboard on which were stuck the photos of Emily, Simon and Nick. She added one of Annabel Smith, drawing a line between her and Emily. Above them all, she had written ‘Daniel Shepherd??’.

Butterworth put his head round the door. ‘Still nothing on the psych report from the hospital, Martin. They’re still assessing Rush.’ He looked around. ‘Where is everyone?’

Martin leaned back in her chair, still looking at the board. ‘There’s a massive culture of trolling going on here, Sam. All the students are doing it. They’re thick with it,’ she murmured.

Butterworth sat on the edge of Martin’s desk. He passed over a manila envelope. ‘It’s the photograph of the Brabents’ house which you requested.’ He gave a puzzled shake of his head. ‘Any reason why?’

‘Hard rage disguising fair natures,’ Martin said quietly, her eyes glazing over as she stared off into space. ‘Or the other way around?’ she whispered.

‘Eh?’

Martin sighed and focused on Butterworth. ‘I need to talk to Mason again. I bumped into that journalist this morning.’ She turned the computer monitor around so that Sam could see the screen. ‘Another little gem of an article from him this morning, by the way.’

Sam read it quickly. ‘Who’s the person high up he mentions? Mason?’

Martin rubbed her nose. ‘Seems likely. This Egan guy knows about the trolling, knows about the photos of Emily. Jones reckoned Annabel Smith had been talking to someone in the press. He seems to think he’s the next Carl Bernstein about to uncover Trollgate or something …’ Martin’s voice was rich with disdain. ‘Whatever. But the trolling was tolerated, it would seem.’

‘I want you to tread carefully with Mason. I don’t need to tell you that he wields a lot of power in the university.’

Martin shrugged.

‘Yes, Martin. Tread carefully,’ Butterworth repeated. ‘It’s in your own best interests.’ He glanced up at the board, folding his arms. ‘Who is Daniel Shepherd?’

‘I don’t know,’ Martin answered, opening up the envelope and taking out the photograph. The Brabents’ house was impressive. Tudor, she guessed. Ecru and black with a thatched roof, casement
windows, a magnolia curling up its walls. To the front was a typical country garden but to the side lay an expanse of lawn. Martin’s eyes moved to that section of the photo. The grass sloped downwards; the edge of the photo indicated that its boundary met rolling fields. A football net sat in its middle; there was a shed, it seemed, at the very bottom.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Butterworth, pushing the photo over to him. He had good hands, she thought absent-mindedly as he took it. His nails were square and clean.

‘Nice house,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m still not sure why you’re bothered by it though.’

‘I’m bothered by it because we need to know where Emily came from, what kind of person she was. This is a middle-class house; her parents are well-to-do.’ Martin sat back in her chair. ‘So I still don’t have a reason for what prompted her to come to Durham, a bastion of tradition, and get her kit off for the lads.’

‘I don’t know,’ Butterworth acknowledged. ‘I can’t understand it myself. If my daughter behaved like that,’ he sighed. ‘I’d lock her up for the rest of her life.’

They both sat silent for a moment before the telephone bombed into their thoughts with a yell. Martin snatched up the handset. ‘What is it?’ She paused, listening, looking at Butterworth as she did. ‘Fuck a
duck,’ she said softly as she put the phone down gently. ‘Fuck a fucking duck.’

‘What is it?’

Martin stared at him.

‘Come on, Martin, what? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

She shook her head, swallowing. ‘That was Jones. The response car called her on route.’

‘On route to where?’

‘Joyce College. Emily’s mum – Rebecca Brabents?’ Martin hesitated. ‘She’s been found dead.’ She looked at Butterworth. ‘Hanging from the rafters in one of the college guest bedrooms.’

Jones was waiting for Martin outside Joyce. The women exchanged glances as they crossed the threshold of the college but said nothing. Julia Earl stood in the lobby, waiting for them. ‘Principal Mason is with Mr Brabents.’ Her voice shook. ‘It’s a terrible thing. We’re all very upset as you can imagine.’

Martin nodded. ‘She’s upstairs?’

‘Yes. Some of your lot are there with the doctor. They were staying in one of our visitor rooms. We have them free for guest speakers, VIPs and the like.’ She twisted her wedding ring in a reverie, snapping out of it as Martin cleared her throat. ‘Oh, sorry. I’ll take you up.’

Martin and Jones followed Mrs Earl up the stairs
to the corridor where Principal Mason’s office was situated. Beyond that door, around a corner, led another flight of stairs, and they continued up until Martin could hear the voice of Brian Walsh. He was just leaving the room as they reached it; a uniformed bobby stood outside as sentry.

‘Martin,’ he acknowledged her arrival.

‘How are you, Dr Walsh? What have we got here?’

‘Looks like suicide by hanging, I’m afraid. Can’t say for sure obviously until after the post mortem. Have a look yourselves, she’s certainly hanging. No other marks on her except on the neck.’ He looked at Martin. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle. I’ll try and get the report to you in the next twenty-four hours anyway.’ He inclined his head as if to tip a hat and made his way past the policewomen to leave, his black bag dangling uselessly in his grip.

Mrs Earl gestured towards the room’s interior in a limp fashion. She moved backwards down the corridor as if unable to turn away as Martin and Jones spent some seconds putting on their protective suits.

The room was filled with the silence of the dead. Rebecca Brabents’ body swung from a thick wooden beam which crossed the high ceiling over a bed covered with a thick crimson bedspread. Her head lolled forwards at an angle. Martin walked under the body, trying to see her face; her eyes bulged, purple spiny veins standing out from her eyeballs, pupils
dilated into black discs. Martin peered closer; she had used what looked like a golden rope to wrap around the beam and then her neck. Martin scanned the room and saw that a thick, brocaded curtain tie was missing from one of the windows. It cut into her flesh, red raw marks visible beneath it. Her hands swung at her side, her toes pointing down to where a three-legged teak stool had been kicked over. A cool breeze permeated the room, and the body swayed a little in its thrall.

Rebecca’s arms were bare, and Martin studied them. ‘No other marks apart from the neck,’ she said quietly. ‘Walsh is right. Doesn’t look like a struggle.’ She looked around the room. It was overstuffed and overly decorated. The furniture was dark and cumbersome, the soft furnishings all in various shades of red. Martin shook her hair back from her head. It was a room of nightmares, a red room of death. They would need a new SIO to handle this, alongside the investigation into Emily’s death. Martin could already hear the scream of the newspaper headlines, ramping up the heat which already emanated from the university.

‘Any note?’ she asked as Jones, too, scouted the room.

‘Not yet. Except …’ She reached under the bed, where the handle of a bag could be seen poking out. ‘Here’s her handbag.’ She put it on top of the bed and
looked carefully inside. She pulled out a cream envelope. ‘A letter addressed to Michael.’ She handed it over to Martin, who opened the envelope quickly. She scanned its contents then looked back at Jones.

‘This case just gets more fucked up with each hour,’ she said softly.

I texted Emily immediately after I’d watched the video. I didn’t mention I’d seen it, I just pretended it would be good to catch up when she was down in London. She texted back almost at once and invited me to her brother’s gig. I should say I was excited about this. I would have been looking forward to seeing Emily anyway, but the idea of going to see a proper band, where I almost knew the drummer, was pretty thrilling.

The gig was on the Wednesday in between Christmas and New Year. I told Mum I was meeting a friend from university and ignored the raised eyebrows that this information produced. I wore jeans and a black T-shirt, completely innocuous, I thought. I wrapped my Nightingale scarf round my neck and over my jacket before stepping out into the cold London air. The tube was busy from Walthamstow to Hammersmith. The Christmas party season was in full swing and I had to barge my way out on to the platform at my destination. I picked up one of those trashy free newspapers as a defence mechanism as I was still quite early. It annoys me that I am so incapable of
being late. I am always fascinated by those people who can never get anywhere on time. What are they thinking? How can they forget that they are supposed to be somewhere – is life so all-consuming, exciting or stressful for them that the time disappears from their consciousness? Arrangements I make with others never leave the front of my brain. They stay there as markers to hold on to, that I am actually part of society, not merely its ironic observer.

I had a pint in the pub next to the Apollo before going in. I had arranged to meet Emily in the lobby. Of course, she was late. I stood there with my paper, looking at posters of upcoming gigs. It all seemed so apart from me, so disparate from what fired my soul. But still I was intrigued by it. I observed its glitter with the stealth of a magpie, trying to find a way to steal a prize. A prize I didn’t really know if I wanted. Emily was part of that. She was my connection to that world, the bridge I could take to it, my only way in. But then I remembered, Emily was lost at the moment. She, who had been accepted so easily by the realm which spun separately from me – that realm was a dark and desperate place for her nowadays.

‘It’s so good to see you. Thanks for coming.’ She rushed at me, dabbing at both my cheeks with her lips, a child pretending to be a grown-up. I felt as if I were at a cocktail party and not standing in a dingy
pseudo-Victorian lobby surrounded by gothic-clothed teenagers carrying supersized cups of Coke. Emily’s family were making their way into the auditorium. They didn’t bother to greet me, naturally accepting my presence as a hanger-on. Emily seemed buoyed by my company, though. She linked arms with me as we walked into the dark of the concert hall. We walked past the needless red velvet seats, all pointing upwards as their occupants stood, bunched in, fated to move restrictedly, in rows of stilted dancing. The Brabents family and I moved on past them to a doorway in a corridor off the main space. We would be watching the gig from a box at the side of the stage.

We stood there, a crowd of shadowy shapes in the dim light off-stage. Emily’s dad (I presumed) opened some bottles of champagne, and we remained there in the half-light, holding plastic glasses of warm fizz. Emily and I were towards the back of this small group, near the door to the corridor. She was in front of me as I leaned my back into the wall, but we could hardly hear each other over the noise of the kids jamming in to the theatre, the heat rising in proportion to the squashed masses.

‘How have you been?’ I semi-shouted over the din.

More friends of the Brabents crammed into the box. I removed my scarf awkwardly, looping it over the arm which held my plastic cup. Emily shrugged.

‘Okay.’

‘How was Christmas?’

‘Fine.’ She jutted her chin towards her parents standing at the balustrade, looking down at the stage. ‘They’ve been a bit of a nightmare.’ Mrs Brabents was wearing a spaghetti-strapped top with skinny jeans, and her face was thick with make-up. She looked less a mother, more a secretary on a night out.

‘How so?’

‘Oh, you know, just …’ She looked over at them. Mr Brabents had his back to his wife, talking to another man in jeans. We were all wearing the same clothes, I noticed, and I sighed.

‘What’s wrong?’ Emily looked up at me, her eyes shining in the golden light of the stage. I smiled ruefully.

‘Nothing.’ I took her hand. ‘Thanks for asking me tonight.’

She patted my hand. ‘That’s okay. I know you don’t have many friends at Durham.’

I grimaced internally. The waiting instruments on the stage took on a frustrated quality. Why wouldn’t somebody just get on and play them? I sipped from my cup.

‘And you?’ Emily said brightly, oblivious to my discomfort. ‘Christmas good?’

The elephant in the room was practically sashaying down the aisles at this point. Could I tell Emily about
the video? ‘Yes,’ I decided to persist with this inane conversation. ‘Fine.’

Emily nodded. She turned to look at the stage and then at her watch, an expensive circle of silver on her slim wrist. I finished my drink and pretended to look at the stage too. Seriously, it was interminable. When would they start? The crowd were also restless. People had begun to spill into the aisles, out of their seats, edging closer to the stage.

‘I’m going to get a beer,’ I said suddenly.

‘Oh, but there’s more wine …’ Emily gestured ineffectually towards her father. I smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’d rather have a beer. Do you want anything?’ She shook her head as I left the box and headed back down the velvet-swathed corridor. The Victorians really did know how to make a meal of their décor, I thought as I headed back to the lobby. I couldn’t help but think of brothels: the richness of opulence so in your face, it made a mockery of its supposed class. Carpetbaggers, I thought. A bit like the company I was keeping. I felt anger rise to the back of my throat as I walked off. It was a rank taste in my mouth.

I stood in line at the small bar near the entrance. This was not how I’d planned this evening to go. I was on the verge of leaving, when Emily appeared at my elbow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘This isn’t much fun, is it?’

I looked up at her from where I’d been staring at
the floor, lifted my eyebrows a bit, part puppy dog, part James Dean, I hoped. ‘Not really,’ I admitted.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, touching my arm gently. ‘I do like you, you know. Even if I’m a bit rubbish at saying it.’ She licked her pretty pink lips with the tip of her tongue, her eyes meeting mine for a second too long.

The queue moved, and I went with it, reaching the bar and leaning on it, turning my head towards her. For once in my life, I think I looked cool.

‘Beer?’ I said with a slight smile.