Bitter Fruits: DI Erica Martin Book 1 (Erica Martin Thriller) (5 page)

Simon Rush’s room was dark and musty, filled with the ubiquitous adolescent smell of hormones and body odour. Martin strode across it and abruptly pulled open the curtains, letting light stream into the large oval-shaped space. Officers from the MCU began to fan out around the room, removing books from shelves, dusting for fingerprints.

The room had been guarded and had remained as it was when Rush had left it that morning to come to Principal Mason’s office. His bed was to one side of the room, a blue duvet thrown haphazardly across it. Clothes had been abandoned on the carpet, pants at the bottom of the bed; overflowing ashtrays on the coffee table; wine bottles with candles stuck in the necks, the wax stopped in time. Stick it in a modern art museum, Martin thought, and you’d have the male Tracey Emin exhibition.

Underneath the bay window was a line of those awful chairs that seemed to be found in every publicly funded institution in the country: wide seats,
MDF arms, and all covered in that grey-green rough, furry fabric that reminded Martin of an old army coat her grandfather used to wear. From the number of chairs, Rush either held college meetings in here or was having regular parties.

Martin bent down to examine an ashtray. She sniffed at it, the tang of weed still floating amidst the aroma of tobacco. Roaches fashioned of rolled-up cardboard remains of Rizla packets were scattered on the table. She carried on, making her way around the room. On a desk, no books to be seen, but Martin peered at a photo in an old silver frame: a woman with a young boy, perhaps eight years old. They stood at a garden gate, and the woman was laughing, the boy gazing up at her adoringly as the shutter clicked.

In the bathroom, there was the usual male grooming detritus. Martin looked closely at the sink and wiped her gloved finger around its flat edge. It was impossible to tell whether the white powder was cocaine, no matter what the cops in American TV shows rubbed into their gums. But, as she pulled back the shower curtain, she saw a lighter and a teaspoon lying on the edge of the bath, its shiny surface stained brown.

Calling to one of the officers to come inside and remove it, she was about to leave them to it when she noticed a small cupboard next to the bed.

‘Has anyone checked this?’ she asked, already moving across to it. She squatted down and rooted around the contents: some condoms, a half-drunk bottle of Bells, a girly magazine and some homosexual porn, which she passed to the exhibits officer to bag.

At the bottom of the cupboard was a seemingly insignificant brass plate. Martin frowned, leaned in and got a fingernail underneath. She managed to flip the plate and hook it so that the bottom of the cupboard lifted upwards, revealing a tiny space concealed within. Inside was about an eighth of Black wrapped in foil, some more weed and, sure enough, a small, sealed packet of cocaine.

Martin sat at her desk, thinking. She sighed and closed her eyes for a second before reaching forwards and checking her phone. Despite the sudden pull of this investigation, she couldn’t help herself. After the row last night, still she had heard nothing from Jim.

Martin loved the way Jim looked first thing in the morning, how he’d looked that morning. His eyes were heavy-lidded, easier to look at than later, when he became wide-eyed about things. When she’d left, he would have dragged himself out of bed, creased from sleep, tugging his old university rugby shirt over his head from the back of his neck. He would have rubbed his face, as he did every morning, before he
moved under the shower, as if preparing himself for the change in sensory stimulation.

Lately though, he had not been accepting of change. Jim hadn’t been prepared for the move away from Newcastle. His suit and tie, the clothes of a giant striding across the world, these were not the clothes befitting an hour’s commute in a car that didn’t match Jim’s expectations of himself. The house they had settled for, in a town outside the hub of the city, not where he had anticipated to be in his life just then.

In the last few months, since she had been told of her promotion, Martin had felt shrink-wrapped by Jim. Five years older than her, sometimes he looked at her as if the weight of his experience was a hard cross to bear, that he was waiting for her to catch up. She sighed, rubbing her temples, trying to focus. It wouldn’t leave her, though, the truth of it – that the love for Jim she had first thing in the morning had generally waned by the end of the day. As if the day had grown him, or maybe her, beyond the reach of love.

Martin opened a bottle of water and took a long drink, pushing these thoughts away. She took a couple of Ibuprofen and rubbed her temples, shaking it off, as Jones walked into Martin’s office precariously carrying two grande lattes and a paper bag containing,
Martin hoped, an almond croissant. Jones sat at the desk opposite Martin and passed the bag to her.

‘Cheers.’ Martin said, tearing off a large piece of the croissant and popping it in her mouth. She fired up the computer on her desk and tapped on the keyboard for a while. ‘Found a stash of drugs in Rush’s room by the way. Not just weed. Looks like he was taking coke too.’

Jones lifted her eyebrows, wearily unsurprised.

Martin took a sip of coffee. ‘Presumably the university has a social networking site?’

Jones flicked through her notebook. ‘Yes. It’s linked to all the colleges’ email systems. We’ve got the passwords already for Emily’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. And some of the team will be looking at Rush’s.’ She slid the notebook across the desk to Martin.

‘Let’s take a look at Emily’s now, then. Rush’s dad won’t be here until this afternoon I shouldn’t think. When do the parents arrive?’ Glancing down at the notebook, Martin continued to tap on the keyboard and move the mouse across the pad on the table.

‘About lunchtime, I’d say. Phillip Mason’s putting them up in the college. He’ll meet them off the train with uniform. I’ll get DC Tennant to take them to the morgue to identify Emily if you’ll be in with Rush …’

‘Fuck …’ Martin interrupted, peering closely at the screen. ‘Look at this, Jones.’

Jones leaned forwards over the desk. ‘God,’ she whispered as she watched Martin scroll further down. ‘That’s Emily’s Facebook page?’

Martin nodded, minimizing the screen and enlarging another. ‘And this is her Twitter feed. Jesus Christ …’ She was silent for a moment, her eyes travelling rapidly over what was displayed.

Emily’s social media page carried the same photo that had been tacked on to the whiteboard in the incident room. Underneath it was her tag line:
Happiness is a Choice.
Her favourite films were:
Anything with Leonardo DiCaprio; Bridesmaids; Twilight (shame
LOL
!).
Music:
Bob Dylan (hippy parents:)); Taylor Swift;
LOVE
Bastille …
Books:
I Capture the Castle
and
The Other Boleyn Girl.

Under this and links to various tweets and comments were a series of photographs of Emily in different poses: the first one was of her on her knees in front of a semi-naked male figure. Others showed her in underwear; gazing at the camera suggestively. A few of the photos had been crudely drawn over with an electronic pen, adding or enhancing Emily’s body parts. In some, speech bubbles had been grafted on to Emily’s mouth importing sexual phrases from her mouth to the camera.

‘It looks like she’s actually posing for the photos,’ Martin said softly.

Jones shook her head. ‘The comments. They’re Benny Hill, but it’s nasty Benny Hill,’ she said.

‘It’s just nasty, is what it is,’ Martin replied continuing to scan the images. ‘
Slut, whore. Get yourself a rampant rabbit, you sick slag.
’ She glanced over at Jones. ‘Poor girl.’ She sat back in her chair, her fingers resting lightly on the desk. ‘Emily wouldn’t post these photos herself, would she?’

‘Wouldn’t imagine so.’

Sitting forwards again, Martin clicked on the mouse. ‘It looks like Emily hasn’t made any status updates or whatnot since,’ she paused, still scanning what she was looking at, ‘well, since the beginning of the year. But other people have been adding comments on these photos, it seems.’

‘Anyone can comment on photos if they’re friends with the person on Facebook. But if you wanted to post a photo yourself on someone else’s page, how easy is it to hack into their account?’ Jones asked.

Martin shrugged. ‘I’m no expert, but pretty easy I’d say. You’d only need to know Emily’s username and password. It can’t be that difficult. They’re social media accounts, not Bletchley.’ She tapped again on the keyboard. ‘Let’s see what happens if you do a search on Facebook for Emily’s name. Yep, see there,’
she pointed at the screen. ‘Christ,’ she whispered, taking in the title of the page. ‘
Emily Likes It Like This
’ was another spread of photos – replicas of the ones on Emily’s own page – with more comments in the same vein. ‘This page must have been created by someone else. I can’t see Emily doing it. And if that’s the case, she wouldn’t be able to take it down or change anything on it unless she had the password.’

Martin pushed her chair back and stood up, energy pulsing through her. ‘Who’s the boy in this photo?’ She said, pointing at the screen at the photo of Emily on her knees. ‘Is it Nick Oliver? You can’t see his face. Did he post the photos?’

‘We need to speak to him,’ Jones said.

‘Undoubtedly,’ Martin said quietly, almost to herself. ‘Emily was self-harming. I saw the scars. Was it because of this?’

‘It’s definitely possible.’ Jones said. ‘A lot of people have seen this, obviously. She was being trolled. Look at the comments.’

‘
You deserve to be raped?
’ Martin shook her head in disbelief. ‘
Why don’t you just fuck off and kill yourself?
’ She shuddered, her eyes glazing a little as she digested what she’d seen. ‘We’ll need to go through all the comments. First priority, though, is to find out who posted the photos.’ She paused in silence for a moment. ‘Is Rush’s name here?’ she asked abruptly, scouting the screen again.

‘Kids don’t have to post with their own names, though,’ Jones said as Martin looked in vain. ‘Wouldn’t want to if they were trolling, would they? I’ll look into it. See if any names cross-reference, if any names correlate.’

‘Good for you, Jones.’ Martin smiled at her quickly. ‘I wonder if Principal Mason knows about this. We need to find out.’ She walked to the window with her coffee and took a swig, watching the seagulls wheel and squawk outside. ‘So Emily was being trolled. But the question is,’ she turned to face Jones, ‘who took the photos? Was she posing for them? And, if so, why?’

Jones shifted in her chair, not knowing the answer.

‘And,’ Martin continued, ‘what does Rush have to do with it?’ Martin tossed her empty cup expertly into the bin and picked up her jacket. ‘Come on, Jones. Time waits for no woman.’

The night of the hockey social came around fairly soon. By this time, I had become a stalwart, really, of Emily’s. I didn’t ever socialize with her amongst her big group of friends at Joyce, but we would meet up, just the two of us or sometimes with Annabel tagging along. I was her sounding board, her support system, if you will.

I was bumbling along at Nightingale. We were moving on to the Romantics, and this tied in with the change in the seasons. The autumnal colours were intensifying, deepening their hues; leaves fell sadly to the ground as the natural cycle moved to a time of bareness, of stone-grey branches, slate skies and frosty roofs. The weather made for treacherous runs sometimes, but it wasn’t until the night of the hockey social that the first snow fell.

I had decided to spend the evening in the library reading T. S. Eliot’s essay on Byron and had made a flask of hot tea and some ham sandwiches to keep me company. As I walked through the city past Joyce to where the library sat at the very top of the hill, I let my thoughts turn to Emily. She would have been
getting ready about now. I tried to ignore thoughts of her with Nick, I didn’t want to think of her like that – with someone else. I focused on her as my friend. Really, my only friend since coming to Durham.

The library was unsurprisingly quiet, it being a Friday night, and so I secured my favourite seat by the window on the first floor, overlooking an expanse of lawn fringed by thick oak trees. As I read, I would occasionally glance up and look at the wind ruffling the trees. When it grew darker, my own reflection began to stare back at me.

I wondered. About me. Was I destined to always be on the outside? I was self-aware enough to know I hated large groups, much preferring the company of one or two people. But even then, why hadn’t I made more friends since coming to Durham? Even my roommate Zack had seemed to attract (forgive the physics pun) a posse of like-minded dudes, hell-bent on tearing up the Nightingale common room with Brian Cox DVD nights and physics pizza parties. The others on my English course were fine but, apart from one girl who hid behind her waist-length hair in every tutorial and barely said a word, they all seemed to be from that set to which Emily belonged. They were racehorses: glossy and slick, all prancing hooves and tightly wound emotions. They looked identical, I thought. Big white teeth, rounded chins; the girls had long blonde hair, the boys had a short back and sides
and wore shirts indicating some interest in sport, with their collars pulled up to the backs of their ears. They carried their course books in front of them, hugging them as if they cared.

It was their eyes, though, that I really noticed. These were discs of dissembling. Their thoughts lingered in the air before them, as visible to me as fireflies, while they considered me whenever I came into contact with them – was I a person of note, they would think to themselves. Was I worth a chat? Then the dissembling would conclude and, on the whole, they would step aside and skirt round me as if I were no more than a shadow on the footpath. I wasn’t even accorded the status of an obstacle, merely a puddle to be avoided. If, perhaps, they did recognize me through my association with Emily, they would slur a greeting, their lips barely deigning to form the words. ‘Hiiiiii, how are
you
?’ they’d ask, their eyes skittering behind my head as I answered, already searching out someone better, more connected, more
like them
, to talk to. Why couldn’t they see that I was interesting? That I had something to give of value?

I suspected that this was why I liked Emily so much. Because she actually acknowledged my existence in the world. I sighed and looked at my watch. Ten p.m. on a Friday night. Seriously? I was pathetic.

I walked out of the library with my shoulders hunched, crunched like a piece of wastepaper. The
snow began to fall, lilting on my eyelashes, blurring my vision. It sopped the path before me, a perfect sheen of white now being marred by my footprints. I looked only at the ground but found myself away from Nightingale, back down the hill, on to the Bailey and into the oldest section of the city. Here ye olde tea shoppes sat next to gift shops and ladies’-wear boutiques, which I could never imagine selling anything to anyone. I breathed in the scent of winter, the freshness of the new snow underlain with a smell of bonfires, charcoal pyres. I raised my head to inhale it more deeply and realized I had come upon The Sun, its bright lights within searing the cold pavement outside. I stood on the opposite side of the road, taking it in: the din of drunken voices, the odd shout, the muffled thump of the music. I wrapped my arms around myself, at last noticing the freezing air. The snow was by then coming down thickly, and I retrieved a beanie out of my jacket and shoved it on.

I think that’s why Annabel didn’t recognize me at first. She bundled out of the main entrance and rushed across the road without looking. I had turned to leave but she crashed into me blindly as I stepped off the kerb.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I exclaimed, before noticing who it was. ‘Annabel? Is that you?’

Her mascara was smeared down her face, and tears
spilled down her cheeks as she breathed some sort of coconut-infused alcohol on me.

She looked at me, confused. As usual, she struggled to remember my name. ‘Um, hello?’ was all she said.

I immediately felt embarrassed to be seen as if I was stalking them at their party. ‘I, um, I was just out walking and, well, here I am,’ I finished lamely.

She was too drunk to consider this properly and nodded, accepting this lack of explanation as good enough.

‘What’s wrong anyway?’ I asked, changing the subject.

Annabel rubbed her hand over her face, trying to stem the flow of tears. ‘Stupid. I’m just an idiot. Nothing.’ She attempted a smile. ‘Nothing, seriously. Just had too much to drink.’ She was struggling to speak and she hung on to my arm to prevent herself tottering.

‘Are you heading home?’ I asked. ‘Would you like me to walk you back?’

She nodded again, miserably, then looked up with a start and back at the pub. ‘Oh, my coat … But I can’t go back in there.’

I didn’t want to go in either. If Emily saw me, she’d think I was following her in to a party where I hadn’t been invited. ‘Here, take my jacket.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, it’s fine. A bit of snow won’t kill me,’ I said looking up into the sky as the snow rapidly multiplied itself into a blizzard. I was rather wishing I had stayed in the library at this point. I handed Annabel the jacket then shoved my hands as far into my jeans pockets as I could. She hunkered down into it and we began to walk down the hill towards the bridge at Prebends.

After a few moments silence, punctuated only by the sound of our breath in the stillness, I asked again, ‘What’s wrong, Annabel? Why have you been crying?’

She didn’t answer to begin with but walked on mutely. Annabel often did this; her mouth would harden and she’d set her face much as a toddler does during a sulk.

‘Come on,’ I nudged her shoulder with mine. ‘What is it? Didn’t you have a good time?’

She laughed bitterly, enunciating her words carefully – so as to get them out in the right order, I thought. ‘Yes, I had a great time! It’s always good to be ditched by your best friend at a party.’ Then she clamped her lips together as if she’d spoken in error.

‘What do you mean?’ I questioned. ‘Where did Emily go?’

‘Ask her,’ Annabel shrugged, bitterness sparking off her so that I could almost smell the phosphorus. She looked at me side-on, seeming to debate something. ‘She was at the party but then she … left.’

‘Left? Why? To go home?’

Annabel sighed. ‘Just ask her, why don’t you? I can’t be bothered to think about it any more. It makes me feel sick.’

I could see that she had turned a pale shade of green. ‘Are you going to be sick?’ I asked, worried. I didn’t want the dry-cleaning bill, if I’m honest.

Annabel shook her head. ‘No, don’t worry. I just feel it. I don’t like it. What she’s done.’ She was almost muttering to herself now. ‘It’s wrong, that’s what it is. Just plain wrong. Call yourself a friend.’ She grabbed my arm abruptly, pulled me round to face her. I could see then how drunk she was. She looked vaguely wild, her eyelashes clumped with the black of her streaked
Clockwork Orange
-esque mascara, grey stains on her cheeks revealing the path of her tears. ‘Don’t you think?’ she asked almost desperately. ‘Don’t you think it’s just
wrong?
’

I didn’t know how to respond, and Annabel’s eyes glazed over. She retreated for the rest of the walk and let herself into her front door with barely a word. I hefted off, back up the hill again at last to Nightingale, puzzling over what had happened. I was to find out in a few hours.