Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller) (22 page)

Flinging open the entrance doors to the police station, Martin stepped out into the afternoon. Sean Egan stood on the pavement, breathing out cigarette smoke into the road, where a traffic jam was beginning to build.

‘Egan?’ Martin exclaimed.

‘Martin,’ he replied with a grin. ‘So you got my message?’

‘You sent that text just now?’ She frowned. ‘And the one yesterday?’

‘I did indeed. Thought we should have another one of our chats.’

Martin exhaled, cold disappointment sliding out from her pores. She glared at Egan. ‘I’m busy. I don’t have time to feed your sick brain.’

‘Come on, Martin. You know I’m just doing my job.’

‘You’re not, though, are you? You’re making things up and stirring trouble. You could actually be helping this investigation, trying to get accurate information out to the public.’

‘But you don’t have any information. Or do you, Martin? Come on. We’re old friends now, aren’t we?’ Egan said with a glimmer of malice.

‘No comment,’ she replied wearily. ‘Have you got anything of use to tell me or are you just here to waste my time?’

Egan ground his cigarette out on the pavement and folded his arms. ‘Ask yourself where I’ve been getting my information, Martin. It’s not from Mason, that’s for sure.’

She stared him down like a cat until he gave another grin. ‘One boy, one girl. Think about it,’ he said before walking away from her up the street towards The Sun.

Martin shook her head, a thought emerging in the back of her brain.

The little shit.

Martin sat in her car on the boundary of the sports ground at Maiden Castle. The weather had turned once more, and a May squall was sitting low in the sky, waiting to shed its load. She got out of the car and pulled her jacket round her. Sean Egan’s taunts of a secret source had prompted her to come and seek it out: it was time to speak to Annabel Smith.

Martin had initially gone to the girl’s house but she had been informed by a seemingly stoned and inarticulate housemate that Annabel had gone for a run.

Martin drove there in less than ten minutes. The track was deserted apart from a tracksuited figure hauling itself around the running track. Annabel had a hood over her head and something about her was familiar to Martin, although she couldn’t place it. Eventually the girl noticed she was being observed and came to a stop at the finishing line, where Martin stood with her hands under her armpits to try and keep them warm.

‘You should have joined me,’ Annabel puffed. ‘Would help with the cold.’

Martin raised her eyebrows but ignored the sass, looking at Annabel in silence. The girl began chewing at her fingernail, disconcerted. ‘What? What do you want?’

‘Detective Inspector Martin.’ She gave an easy smile.

‘I know who you are,’ Annabel answered in a flat voice.

‘I wanted to talk to you about Emily,’ Martin continued. ‘I think you’ve already spoken to my sergeant about your movements on the day of the Regatta?’

Annabel nodded, still chewing.

‘I need some more information. About what was going on with Emily online.’

Annabel dragged her foot along the asphalt of the track. She pushed the hood back off her face, and the wind lifted her hair, revealing a broad forehead,
shining with perspiration. She had plucked her eyebrows badly, Martin observed.

‘What stuff online?’ she said lamely.

‘Well, let’s see. Shall we take a short walk?’ Without waiting for an answer, Martin began to stroll slowly around the track. After a pause, Annabel fell in with her.

‘Do you know who killed Emily?’ Martin asked, light as air.

Annabel looked at her sharply then gave a loud sigh, something approaching a sob attached to the end of it. She swallowed to control it and shook her hands to warm them up. She was quiet for a while before shaking her head. ‘No. No I don’t.’

Martin looked over at the girl as they continued walking. ‘What was she like? Emily? You were friends, right?’

Annabel said nothing, her eyes turned to the clouds. Jones had said she was childish.

‘We know she had something going on with Nick Oliver,’ Martin persisted. ‘How about you? Did you fancy Nick too?’

A puff of air escaped from Annabel’s mouth. ‘Nick’s a friend, that’s all.’

‘So you were happy for Emily, that she’d started a relationship with him?’

A laugh escaped from Annabel before she recov
ered, putting her hand over her mouth to prevent further fugitive emotions.

‘Why the laugh?’ asked Martin. ‘What’s funny about that question?’

‘Relationship?’ Annabel said. ‘If that’s what you want to call it, I was fine about it.’ She didn’t sound fine. Her face was a study in petulance. ‘No one’s close to anyone here, and you’re an idiot if you think they are.’ Annabel gave another affected laugh. ‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world here, Inspector. And don’t I know it.’

Martin winced. She sounded like a kid from one of those American television shows they show on Sunday mornings – earnest yet entirely disingenuous. ‘Tell me about it then, Annabel. What’s so awful about this world? Looks pretty good from where I’m standing, I have to say.’

‘Really?’ Annabel tossed her head and then stopped abruptly and faced Martin, her arms folded. ‘You think it’s good to have your life documented and spread out and dissected on the internet and iPhones for all the world to see? Never knowing what’s going to show up next. Not being able to trust anyone.’ Her eyes filled with genuine tears. ‘Ever?’

Martin was silent, taken aback by this outburst. She put her hand on Annabel’s arm. ‘That sounds like the stuff I’ve been reading in the press. Have you been talking to journalists, Annabel?’ she asked the
girl gently. Annabel pulled her hood back up defensively, and Martin had a flash of where she’d seen her before. ‘You were watching me, weren’t you?’ she asked. ‘When I went into Emily’s room? You were on the other side of the road.’

Annabel nodded, and tears began to fall down her cheeks. ‘I saw her. Emily, I mean. I was running that morning. I saw her when the police arrived.’ She stared at Martin in utter distress. Gone was the articulacy of a dispossessed teenager, Martin thought. Here instead was a grieving and confused young girl. Jones was right: she
was
just a child.

‘I didn’t want to talk to him, that Egan guy.’ Annabel cried. ‘But he read what I’d been saying online. Before Emily was … you know. And I thought it would be fun. To be interviewed by a paper. In a scandal type thing …’

Martin sighed internally.

‘But as soon as I knew that Emily had … had died. I tried to stop him. I texted him that morning and told him not to print it. But he didn’t listen.’

Martin cleared her throat, waiting a moment for Annabel to compose herself before continuing. ‘This stuff on the internet … Tell me more about it. How often does it go on?’

‘All the time,’ Annabel replied in a tired voice, turning to walk again. ‘Every single fucking day somebody will do something.’

‘And is there anyone you can talk to about it? Any adult?’

‘Stephanie Suleiman, I suppose. She’s the counsellor. Yeah, right.’ Her laugh was filled with disdain. ‘Call her as many times as you like, but she never even picks up the phone.’

They turned a corner of the track, walking into the rising wind. Martin’s words bumped into themselves as she caught her breath against it. ‘Right. But the photos … Emily seems to have consented to them. Why would she do that?’

Annabel rubbed her hand over her nose and sniffed loudly. ‘She wanted to be like them, I think.’

‘Like
them
?’

‘The boys.’

Martin bent her head, thinking this through.

‘But she couldn’t be like them. It doesn’t work that way,’ Annabel continued, giving a sarcastic smile. ‘Obviously. It just meant that all the girls hated her and all the guys wanted to fuck her.’ She stared at Martin in provocation.

Martin made a face:
not impressed.
‘So there’s a culture of trolling and spying and people using information against each other. I can see how that would be stressful. No escape from it, really.’ She gave a thin smile. ‘How far up did it go? Was it just the Freshers? Or are the older years involved?’

‘All of them.’

‘Simon Rush?’

Annabel narrowed her eyes. ‘Maybe.’

‘Do you like Simon?’

Annabel gave a small sigh. ‘The whole thing’s toppling down, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘The whole fucking thing. It’s hit the fan.’ She shook her head, giving a short laugh.

Martin waited a while. ‘What’s that got to do with Simon Rush?’

Annabel looked sidelong at Martin. ‘Everyone knew he had something going with Mason. He was on a trip.’

‘A trip?’

‘A power trip. He’d got the presidency. He …’ She stopped again, uncertain.

‘Tell me, Annabel. Please. You know this is really important.’ Martin put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, her breath fogging the air in front of them. ‘You can trust me,’ she said.

‘I don’t know, really,’ Annabel said eventually. ‘I never went in there. I’m only a Fresher. But Simon would have parties in his room. Members only.’

‘Members of what?’

The girl shrugged. ‘Of their stupid gang. I don’t know the details, really I don’t. We just knew.’

‘Who knew?’

‘Everyone. Everyone in my year. Nick and Emily, Shorty. We used to laugh about it. It seemed crazy.’

‘What would happen at these parties? Did you know about that?’

Annabel rubbed her lips together, shaking her head.

‘So what was wrong with it, then? Why did anyone care? It’s not unusual for students to have parties in their room.’

Annabel stopped walking and looked down at her feet. ‘I’m not sure, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

‘That doesn’t matter now, Annabel. We need to work out the truth of it. Whatever happened in Simon’s room – maybe it’s relevant, maybe not. But we need to know about it.’

Annabel was silent for a long moment, then she exhaled, as if making a decision. ‘It was the principal. We saw him once, at one of the parties.’

‘Who saw him?’ Martin’s heart thumped loudly in her chest at this.

Annabel nodded. ‘Me and Emily. He left Simon’s room at about four in the morning. We were going to her room, just coming home from Sixes.’ She blinked rapidly at Martin. ‘Please don’t tell him I told you, though.’

‘You’re sure it was Principal Mason?’

Annabel nodded firmly.

‘Did Emily tell Simon she knew about this?’

‘I think so. I’m not sure. Simon …’

‘What?’

‘He had a bit of a thing for Emily, I think. Who didn’t, right? Emily knew so many people. Especially after the photos. It was hard to keep up sometimes.’

‘Did she reciprocate with Rush?’

‘I think she was flattered. He turned up to see her in London once, she thought it was funny. But, you know, she was so obsessed with Nick.’

‘Does anyone else know about Mason going to that party?’ Martin asked after a short while.

‘I don’t think so. I haven’t said anything.’ Annabel paused. ‘I don’t think he liked it. Simon, I mean. I saw the way he looked. He looked trapped sometimes, I could tell. I felt sorry for him. But …’

‘But, what?’

‘But he got something out of it,’ she shrugged.

Martin looked up at the sky for a moment, her mind whirring as raindrops began to spatter down, hitting her face. They began walking again, reaching the other side of the track, continuing to trace it round to where they had started.
Rush and Mason
. How stupid of the principal to have been caught out, though.

‘And what about Daniel Shepherd?’ Martin asked as they rounded the last bend, the rain coming down heavier now.

‘Who?’

‘Daniel Shepherd? He’s another one of Emily’s Facebook friends.’

Annabel pulled the sleeves of her tracksuit top down as the rain began to pelt. ‘I don’t know him,’ she shrugged.

Martin frowned. ‘Are you sure, Annabel? This is really important. Are you saying you don’t know of a friend of Emily’s called Daniel Shepherd?’

Annabel jumped up and down on the spot. ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Can I go now? I’m getting fucking freezing here.’

Martin nodded, distractedly. She watched Annabel as she jogged away. Annabel was Emily’s closest friend, whatever she said. So if she didn’t know who Daniel Shepherd was, who did?