Dust to Dust (22 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

The door closed and snuffed out the pool of yellow light, making Steven realise that daylight was rapidly becoming a reddish memory in the western sky. He walked back to the main street. The small size of the village meant that it didn’t merit street lighting, something that made it difficult to tell if the east-facing cottage he picked out as Louise’s had blue shutters or not, especially as there were no lights on in the windows. There was no space for a car; three were parked on waste ground on the other side of the road but he didn’t know what Louise drove. He walked up the gravel path and knocked loudly on the front door.

The lack of lights predicted no response and that was what he got. He didn’t bother with a second attempt but walked round to the back where there was more light. The rear of the cottage was high above the beach and faced west so that the red glow in the sky bathed the building in what Steven thought resembled the safe-light of a photographic darkroom.

He rapped on the stable-style split back door and called out Louise’s name but again without response. His mind insisted he start imagining scenes of what might be lying inside but he tried to counter it by hoping that Louise might have changed her mind about coming here this weekend. An open window to the left of the back door, however, caught his attention and the hope died.

After a moment’s hesitation, he tried the latch on the door and found it unlocked. He stepped inside onto the cracked linoleum floor of a small, whitewashed utility room containing a fridge and a washing machine. The washing machine was old, its front showing signs of rust where the enamel had been chipped. He called out Louise’s name again but knew he was using it as a mantra to inject normality into a situation that was threatening to unfold into a nightmare. He ran the flat of his hand up the wall as he moved into the house proper and clicked on the light to reveal that everything seemed to be in order in the sitting room. There were no signs of a struggle, and a cardboard box full of groceries which presumably Louise had brought in from the car was lying in the middle of the floor, waiting to be taken through to the kitchen and unpacked. He moved on through the house but every door he opened was preceded by a vision of what he might find inside.

After drawing three blanks, he came to the last room, the bathroom, where he paused, preparing to find a corpse staring up at him through a tub full of water. The fear disappeared instantly when he found the room empty and smelling pleasantly of bathroom cleaner. Louise was not at home … but she had been.

He stepped out into the back garden and looked out over the Solway, trying to put himself inside Monk’s head. He didn’t like what he came up with. Monk was a professional; he wouldn’t have murdered the girl and left her body lying on the floor or in the bath at the cottage where it would precipitate an immediate police murder hunt and press outrage. He would have faked her death, made it look like an accident, just as he’d disguised the attack on John Motram and probably engineered Jim Leslie’s road traffic accident. Steven felt the chances were awfully high that Louise had had an ‘accident’ too and, standing in the back garden of a cliff-top cottage, he didn’t have to be a member of MENSA to figure out what the likely kind would be.

He walked down the sloping garden to the picket fence which marked the boundary between the Averys’ garden and a steep slope of rough grass leading down to the cliff-top path which zigzagged below. His heart sank when he noticed that a swathe of the grass had recently been flattened: something heavy had been dragged across it.

Taking care in the dying light, he scissored his legs over the fence and slid on all fours down the flattened grass trail to where it met the cinder path. Less than five metres to his right, where the path changed the course of its zigzag, he could see that the wooden guard rail between the path and a one-hundred-foot drop had been broken. It had given way … or someone had made it look that way. He felt sure he was looking at the site of Louise’s ‘accident’.

With a heavy heart, he made his way down the winding path and out on to the beach to discover the inevitable: Louise Avery, her neck broken and lower limbs at an impossible angle, lay spread-eagled on the sand, her eyes open but her life very definitely over. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he murmured, feeling almost overwhelmed by guilt. If only he hadn’t asked her to analyse those damned samples. ‘You bastard, Monk,’ he raged, slamming his fist into the sand once, twice, three times. When his breathing finally subsided, he brought out his mobile phone and called the police.

An hour later, when Steven had finished with the police, he called John Macmillan and told him what had happened, starting with his request to Louise Avery that she carry out a duplicate analysis on the Michael Kelly samples and ending with the circumstances of her death.

‘Ye gods, this is getting out of hand,’ said Macmillan, quickly assimilating all the facts and asking the right questions. ‘How much do the local police know?’

‘I only gave them the bare facts when they turned up,’ said Steven. ‘With nothing else to go on, I think they might see it as a tragic accident – a fall from a cliff-top path after the guard rail gave way …’

‘Whereas we know it was anything but,’ said Macmillan.

Steven grunted, his anger still smouldering inside.

‘So why did he kill her?’

‘According to Louise’s boss who was present when Monk came to pick up the report, Louise saw something unusual in her analysis and pointed it out to Monk. I think that may have been her undoing.’

‘But we’ve seen a report on the samples,’ protested Macmillan. ‘There was nothing unusual about them at all.’

‘I know,’ sighed Steven. ‘I don’t understand it either.’

‘I’m assuming Miss Avery’s findings were the same as our lab’s?’

Steven screwed up his face at the question. ‘I didn’t see Louise’s report,’ he said. ‘She gave it to Monk.’

‘And there’s no other copy?’ asked Macmillan, sounding astonished.

‘I doubt it – most universities’ policy on contract work is to hand over everything to the client when the job’s finished. Contract work is always regarded as confidential so they don’t keep copies – that’s normal practice. Christ, I should have realised Monk would check there were no more samples lying around at the university. What a fool …’

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Macmillan. ‘None of us can think of absolutely everything. Apart from that, they were quick enough to give us our samples back after their “mistake” at the airport, so why should it matter if there were still some up north?’

‘Another question I can’t answer.’

‘Are you still intending to stay over with your daughter this weekend?’

Steven sighed. ‘No, I think I’m going to have to call off. I’ll come back to London as soon as I’ve told Louise Avery’s head of department what’s happened. I don’t want her finding out from the papers. The police will be telling Louise’s parents.‘

‘Let me know when you get back. There’s something else we need to discuss: the lab report on the MRSA cultures has come in. It’s the same strain.’

Steven let out his breath in another long, slow sigh. There were times when he could turn off the day job and switch into family mode to spend time with Jenny but this definitely wasn’t one of them. The cocktail of anger, frustration and guilt that simmered inside him was best not shared with anyone. He didn’t want the dark world of his job to come anywhere near Glenvane. He called Sue and apologised for crying off.

As always, she was understanding. ‘Don’t beat yourself up over it, Steven,’ she said. ‘If you can’t come, you can’t; we all know there must be a good reason – probably one it’s best we don’t know anything about,’ she added.

‘Thanks, Sue. I’ll call Jenny when … things get better …’

‘Take care, Steven. I’ll give her your love.’

Steven gave silent thanks for having a sister-in-law like Sue and reflected on how often he’d had to call on her in the past when the job became just too incompatible with normal life. This, in turn, forced him to acknowledge that Tally had been right. His attempts to minimise the dangers of the job had been ridiculous. Danger and death were always lurking on the horizon. That being the case, he couldn’t expect any woman to share anything more than a fleeting romance with him. That conclusion was just about all he needed to make an awful day even worse.

It was now a little after nine in the evening and Steven sat in the car, pondering how he was going to tell Mary Lyons. He had a number for her at the university but she wouldn’t be there at this time and she probably wouldn’t be there in the morning because it was Saturday. He knew that many people these days chose to be ex-directory but he decided to check out directory enquiries anyway, asking for Professor Mary Lyons in the Newcastle area.

‘37 Belvedere Road?’ asked the operator.

‘Yes,’ said Steven, hearing no other option.

‘Would you like me to put you through?’

Mary Lyons answered, giving her phone number in a clear voice, which struck Steven as being charmingly old-fashioned but infinitely preferable to ‘Yeah?’

‘Professor Lyons, it’s Steven Dunbar. I’m afraid I’ve got some very bad news for you.’

‘Oh, dear,’ sighed Mary Lyons. ‘I’ve been dreading this. It has to be about Louise, hasn’t it?’

‘She’s had an accident … a fatal one. She fell from a cliff-top in Leeford earlier today.’

There was a slight choking sound and a long silence before Mary Lyons replied, ‘I don’t think for one moment you’re telling me the whole story, Dr Dunbar. This is all tied up with the man who came to the department yesterday, isn’t it?’

Steven found himself on the spot. ‘He is part of the story,’ he confessed, ‘but it’s complicated …’

‘If only I hadn’t been so stupid …’

‘No, professor, none of this is your doing.’ Steven did his best to sound reassuring, but as he knew exactly how she felt he wasn’t sure he was helping. ‘It was just an unfortunate series of events that no one could have foreseen.’

‘I take it the police will be investigating this “accident”?’

‘The authorities will leave no stone unturned in uncovering the truth,’ said Steven, fearing he sounded like a government minister under interview. ‘I promise you, justice will be done.’

‘I just can’t believe this has happened … Louise’s poor parents …’

‘The police are informing them. Professor … I know you’ve had a terrible shock but there’s something I must ask you … You said that Louise found something strange or unusual in the results of the tests she was carrying out and pointed this out to the man who came to your department?’

‘Yes, but they both agreed it had no significance for the proposed transplant.’

‘I know you said you didn’t see what the oddity was but I just wondered if there might have been something said about it that you can remember? Anything at all? I’m clutching at straws here.’

‘No, I’m afraid not. It was just something mentioned in passing.’

‘No matter,’ said Steven, acutely aware of the woman’s grief and now her discomfort at not being able to help.

‘But you could look for yourself,’ said Mary Lyons suddenly.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’ve just remembered something. When you asked Louise to analyse these samples and she asked me for permission, I told her that a record would have to be kept of the whole thing for the benefit of the university authorities – they’re very strict about contracting for outside work, or rather the university’s insurers are. A file was opened for her on the departmental server so she could list everything she did and cost everything she used in the analysis. The last thing she would enter would be her final report, which would remain on the file until the client was billed and the account settled.’

‘And you think she might have done that before handing over the written copy?’

‘There’s a good chance she did.’

‘How many people know about this?’

‘Just myself and the lab manager.’

‘Wonderful. I take it this wasn’t mentioned at the meeting you and Louise had with the impostor?’

‘It wasn’t relevant,’ said Mary Lyons. ‘Although when he thanked us before leaving, I did remind him he would be getting a bill.’

Steven considered for a moment but didn’t see how that could have raised any suspicion. ‘It’s absolutely vital that I see that report,’ said Steven. ‘And it goes without saying that no one else hears about it, professor.’

‘Understood. When would you like to come?’

‘First thing tomorrow?’

‘Fine. It’s Saturday. Not many people will be around, certainly not in the accounts department.’

Steven drove into Dumfries and booked himself into the County Hotel where he had a late bar supper and several gin and tonics before going upstairs to spend a restless night, waves of guilt over Louise Avery’s death lapping on shores of surreal dreams in which broken bodies lay on red beaches under black cliffs and dark skies. They doused any immediate enthusiasm he might have felt for an investigation that was promising to take a turn for the better. He was up and gone by six a.m.

THIRTY-FIVE

Steven felt his pulse quicken in anticipation as he sat in Mary Lyons’ office watching her use the computer keyboard on her desk to log on to the departmental server and summon up Louise Avery’s file. The movement of her fingers was slow and deliberate; her eyes seemed to flick more than necessary between the keyboard and the screen. It made Steven reflect that this was an age thing. Regardless of intellectual capacity, people over a certain age often behaved as if they didn’t quite belong in the company of computers.

‘Here we are,’ she said, followed by another silence. ‘And … yes … she did file it.’

Steven closed his eyes and gave silent thanks as a tremendous weight seemed to be lifted from them both: they exchanged a rare smile. The head of department punched a few more buttons on her keyboard, the last with a final flourish, before getting up to walk across the room to her printer where she waited for it to grind into action. She returned with a copy of the report and gave it to Steven, saying, ‘I hope this brings justice for Louise.’