Good Girls Don't Die (20 page)

Nick Warleigh, a slight, taut man with a shaved head and smooth dark skin, was the head of the Serious Crime Division unit assigned to the surveillance of Pawel Zawodny. Grace had invited him to grab a coffee with her and Lance in the busy cafe round the corner from the police station, and now he greeted them with an understandable defensiveness: his team had, after all, lost sight of a suspect for a full twenty-six minutes during which Roxanne had been murdered. Warleigh must also have heard on the grapevine that Grace had been a friend of the victim, for his next words were to offer his condolences.

‘Thank you,’ she replied, touched by his consideration. ‘We wanted a chance to get some direct feedback on your observation of Zawodny.’ She didn’t add that she’d worked occasionally with a covert operations specialist in Kent whose gut instinct about a suspect’s pattern and style of behaviour had proved even more invaluable than his hi-tech vans, cameras and listening devices. ‘What do you make of him?’

‘We’ve hardly been on him forty-eight hours,’ Warleigh pointed out. ‘And most of that he’s either been working on the house he’s renovating or at home in his flat. One trip to the supermarket for newspapers and food, one stop at the florist en route to the campus vigil last night. Calls have been work-related or we think to his mother. Recordings have gone to a Polish translator.’

‘First impressions?’ she prompted.

‘Well, he obviously knows now that we’re there. But my guess is that he’s been aware of us right from the off.’

‘Whatever gives you that idea?’ Lance asked sarcastically.

‘Not because he gave us the slip, if that’s what you mean.’

‘We were the ones who released him from custody,’ Grace reminded them both, wishing that for once Lance wouldn’t come out of his corner fighting. ‘Not that we had much choice about it.’

‘Yeah, I’d never have known that if yesterday’s
Courier
hadn’t reminded me.’ Warleigh gave her a wry smile and she returned it: now that both sides had scored a point, maybe they could get on with business.

Warleigh spooned aside the froth on his cappuccino, thinking for a moment before continuing. ‘Zawodny’s been meticulous,’ he said. ‘Drives bang on the speed limit. Stops for orange lights. Even parks precisely within the bay markings outside his flat.’

‘So he’s organised and law-abiding?’ said Grace. ‘He likes routine?’

Warleigh shook his head. ‘Feels like it’s too much. Over the top.’

Lance leaned forward over the little round table. ‘A performance?’

‘As I say, we’ve only been on him forty-eight hours. Give me a little longer, and I might have an opinion on whether his patterns are natural or contrived.’ Warleigh sipped his coffee. ‘He could just be a bit OCD.’

‘But you don’t think he is?’ urged Lance.

‘He seems hyper-vigilant. And he has an unusually light data footprint, too. Pays cash for everything, even petrol. Has a smartphone, but no computer or wi-fi.’

‘See? He has something to hide,’ declared Lance, looking to Grace for endorsement.

‘He could just be keeping his costs down. Or he’s worried about being caught not paying his tax.’ She was as pleased as Lance that Zawodny’s behaviour had provoked suspicion in such an experienced surveillance officer, but she wanted to prevent Lance railroading Warleigh into seeing only what they wanted him to see. That kind of tunnel vision tended to lead to bad consequences.

‘It’s probably best we don’t share our theories yet,’ she told Warleigh, hoping that Lance might also take the hint. ‘Not until they’re more than theories.’

‘Fair enough,’ Warleigh said, finishing his coffee. He pushed his chair back and looked at the door. ‘If you don’t mind, I need to get back to work.’

‘Please, go,’ she told him. ‘We appreciate you making the time.’ She saw him reach into his pocket. ‘No worries, we’ll get this.’

‘Thanks.’

Lance shuffled his chair out of the cramped corner into which he’d been forced so the three of them could fit around the table. ‘You getting cold feet about Zawodny being our man?’ he asked crossly.

‘Not at all. He
is
organised and meticulous and probably keeps an eye on costs, but then his ambition when he came here was to do well, make some money, go back to Poland and watch his Catholic mother shed tears of pride. So you can imagine his reaction when he saw what the
Courier
had written about him. My guess is he could well have felt pretty murderous.’

‘So we let him go on Monday,’ said Lance. ‘He went to the railway station to make an untraceable call to Roxanne and arranged to meet up with her at the campus vigil.’

Grace winced: there was no way she could keep her part in this buried for much longer.

‘He was angry and resentful. That’s why nothing soft was placed under her head.’

‘We’re pretty certain the bottle of wine was bought at the campus shop, by the way,’ said Lance. ‘Did Duncan tell you?’

‘No. Any prints?’

‘Wiped clean. We know he never went there, so it may have been rubbish that he picked up.’

‘Rubbish,’ Grace echoed, a sob of horror for her friend rising in her throat.

‘Sorry.’ Lance touched her arm. ‘But every bit of meaning shows he’s talking to us. He wants a conversation, even if it’s to punish us, to demonstrate his contempt.’

She nodded miserably, aware of his friendly scrutiny. ‘Did you look at the Facebook page the
Mercury
set up for Roxanne?’ she asked.

‘No. Why?’

She shook her head, wishing now that she hadn’t brought it up, but words like ‘rubbish’ and ‘contempt’ were painful to hear.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I know every website gets them,’ she said, ‘but there are a few horrible comments. Stuff like: “She got what she deserved.” “Strangling too good for her.” And one or two pretty explicit suggestions about what else should have been done to her body.’

‘Have you told the SIO?’

She shook her head again. ‘No. What’s wrong with people?’

‘Tell Keith,’ he said, his urgency betraying his excitement. ‘Could be that some of them at least were left by our guy.’

‘You think Zawodny would write that kind of stuff?’

‘Abuse is about power. He’s taunting us, daring us to stop him, proving how far he can go, how much he can get away with.’

It struck Grace that if Lance was right then the killer would probably be pleased with the effects of his nasty game: he’d certainly upset her and got Lance all riled up. But she kept that thought to herself.

‘So where does Polly Sinclair fit in?’ she asked instead. ‘If the conversation’s so important to the killer, why wasn’t
she displayed? Why doesn’t he produce her body? Why the silence?’

Lance shrugged. ‘Something went wrong, or he got spooked or realised he’d left evidence on the body he couldn’t get rid of, so he dumped her at sea. Then, when maybe it began to piss him off that no one would know what he’d done, he went after Rachel so we’d get the message.’

‘But he was sorry about Rachel,’ Grace pointed out. ‘He put her jacket under her head.’

‘Wants us to think he’s a nice guy really. It’s these ungrateful women who take advantage, don’t show proper respect, and need to be taught a lesson. They’re to blame. They make him do it.’

‘We still need something to tie him directly to Roxanne.’

‘We’ll get him on the CCTV from the railway station,’ Lance said confidently.

‘And if we don’t?’ she asked, feeling sick and shivery.

‘Then we do it the old-fashioned way,’ he said. ‘We’ve got hundreds of statements to plough through. The switchboard has been overloaded with calls since the
Courier
posted its reward. Someone will have noticed something, even if it takes us weeks to find it.’

‘I feel like we’re drowning, Lance.’

‘You need a good night’s sleep.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled at him. ‘Thanks for last night, by the way. Don’t know what I would have done without you.’

‘No problem.’ He put a ten-pound note on the table, waving aside her objection. ‘I’m off home. See you tomorrow.’

‘Sure. Bye.’

Grace was in no hurry to return to her poky, sterile flat, so signalled to the waitress and asked for a glass of water and a toasted panini. Better stay off the coffee or she’d be too wired to sleep, but if she ate here, she wouldn’t have to bother about what wasn’t in her fridge, plus she could put off the evil hour when she’d have to go back to the flat. Unthinkingly, she reached for the newspaper discarded by a departing customer at a nearby table, only to drop it again as if the touch of newsprint on her fingers were a deadly poison.

Leaving the cafe half an hour later, Grace decided to loop through Castle Park before it closed for the night. It was a melting June evening and the wide lawns, cafe and play area were still busy. Nevertheless, as she skirted the impregnable Norman ramparts, she had a fleeting sensation that someone was dogging her footsteps, weaving from path to path between the flower beds and the steep earthworks. She knew where the feeling originated: though she told herself she was glad that Pawel Zawodny was under close observation by Warleigh’s team, the truth was that Trev’s text this morning, followed by two missed call alerts from him during the day, had spooked her. She checked her phone again now as she walked, just to make sure there’d been no further calls, and hoped she wouldn’t find him waiting for her outside her flat again.

Trev, no doubt, would insist he was merely concerned about her and trying to be supportive, but that’s not how his intrusions made her feel. She felt threatened,
vulnerable, scared. She hadn’t heard from him at all over the past couple of months, so what had stirred him into action now? Was it that she was forcing through the sale of the house? Or that she had a job and was back on her feet, was right at the heart of a major murder inquiry while he had to work in a shop? She guessed he felt aggrieved and, if he couldn’t control and dominate her in any other way, intended at least to make it impossible for her to remain oblivious to his presence in her life. He couldn’t possibly kid himself that she felt comforted by a text promising her that she was
not alone
, must know his unwanted attention could only revive visceral memories of helplessness and pain. But if she called him on it, he’d merely say he was trying to be supportive and that she was being neurotic, suspicious and ungrateful.

She shook herself and, spotting a young couple ahead of her rise from a bench, nipped over to sit down before anyone else could claim it. She had a choice: she could either let a few unanswered calls fuel imaginary fears or she could treat them seriously and consider going down official routes to protect herself. She didn’t want to be afraid, but past experience had proved what Trev was capable of. She must send an email tonight to her solicitor asking again that all contact go through him and that the house be sold as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Grace told herself, it was more important to think about what had happened to Roxanne. Although it hurt, like deliberately touching an inflamed tooth with the tip of her tongue, she forced herself to think clearly and
professionally. At least Roxanne hadn’t been beaten or raped. Dr Tripathi thought it likely she’d been taken by surprise as a ligature was thrown around her neck from behind and then tightened too rapidly to give her any chance of escape. She was petite, shorter and lighter than the strong, muscular builder. But what on earth had she been doing alone with him amongst the trees?

Grace needed to put herself inside Roxanne’s head. Had her friend’s ambition led to her death? Rachel Moston’s murder and the mystery surrounding Polly Sinclair’s disappearance were the biggest stories to hit Colchester in years, and in Roxanne’s hunt for a fresh angle, she had been facing massive competition. The media had latched on to the girls’ landlord before his arrest, so it wasn’t impossible that she had approached and even spoken to Zawodny before the vigil. But Roxanne also knew about Zawodny’s boat; she had been the source of the
Courier
’s story about the police searching it. She knew that a bottle had been retrieved as evidence from the murder scene. If that hadn’t come via a leak from within the investigation, then she must have realised that only the killer could possess this particular piece of information. But had she heard it from Pawel? And if so, even in pursuit of a career-changing scoop, would she honestly have believed she could tough it out alone with Rachel’s killer? However badly Roxanne wanted to schmooze the national dailies and get a foot in the door in London, surely she’d never have been stupid enough to place herself in such danger?

Grace looked out across the grass. Some young men in
shorts and bare feet were throwing a Frisbee to one another; a group of tired mothers were fastening fractious children into buggies ready for the walk home; and an elderly couple holding hands on the bench opposite caught her eye and smiled. It was hard to believe that death might be waiting under the shadowy trees that cloaked the picturesque castle walls, yet it was true. Grace shivered. Maybe Roxanne had convinced herself it couldn’t happen, that she was invincible. It’s probably how Roxanne
would
think. It’s how Grace had once thought. Before Trev broke three of her ribs and fractured her cheekbone.

She was suddenly weary. Besides, it was no good: some piece of the puzzle was always missing. She’d never solve it by thought alone.

Yet the moment Grace rose and set off across the grass, avoiding the Frisbee players, she began to spy a fresh possibility. According to Ivo Sweatman, Roxanne’s source had claimed it was the
police
who’d been asking about the boat and the bottle. What if it hadn’t been Zawodny that Roxanne had expected to meet? What if Roxanne had gone to talk not to a suspect at all but merely to someone she believed had access to inside information? Expecting to talk to someone who posed no threat, she had instead encountered her killer.

Grace looked up curiously as the door to Keith’s office finally opened on Thursday morning. When the Murder Review Group team had arrived late yesterday afternoon, they had been whisked off upstairs, and they were already closeted with Keith when she’d got here first thing this morning. She was eager to meet them. It would be good to set out the facts and ideas she’d connected up last night about who Roxanne might have been talking to, and to see if the new team would reach similar conclusions. But as the first figure exited behind the SIO, her heart jolted into her throat: Colin Pitman, her old DCI from Maidstone.

Over the four years she’d worked with Colin, she had considered him a great boss, funny and astute, who wielded his authority with a light hand. Once upon a time he’d gone out of his way to make her feel a vital member of his team and supported her promotion to DI. But watching him now beside Keith Stalgood, she knew she’d take Keith’s stern expression over Colin’s easy smile any day. She’d learned the hard way that Colin’s constant search for consensus
had been at best pragmatic and at worst a gutless need to be popular – she’d seen it in his face when she’d handed him her resignation. She watched him now, trying so hard not to meet her eye, just as he had that freezing February day outside Maidstone Magistrates’ Court when Trev was convicted. She felt a weight settle round her heart. Last night she’d emailed her solicitor and had been relieved to receive no more calls or texts from Trev. She’d made an effort, as she settled to sleep, to rinse the past out of her mind. And here it was, walking in the door and expecting her to smile politely at it.

Keith introduced the three senior officers as John Kenny, Lena Millington and Colin Pitman. Grace had heard that Colin had been made up to superintendent, and now wondered how much his relief at her departure had been due to getting rid of a problem that might jeopardise his promotion. If so, he owed her one! Meanwhile she found comfort in the idea that he might be dreading their imminent encounter more than she was, and when he could no longer avoid acknowledging her, watched him flush with what she hoped was shame.

Keith explained that the review team had been given an office upstairs, where they’d be evaluating the evidence, strategy and direction of the investigation and making recommendations for how to progress it. The team were authorised to ask questions and check facts as and when necessary. There was no denying the sour resentment that washed around the office: it was not just highly unusual for the chief constable to have called for an external review
so early in an inquiry, it was humiliating. Nevertheless Keith now set a positive tone, insisting it was vital to ensure nothing had been overlooked, especially in the search for Polly Sinclair, and urged them all to welcome the team and make good use of fresh oversight.

Keith moved quickly on to an efficient round-up of reports on the various lines of inquiry – DNA, toxicology and other results from the post-mortem wouldn’t be in for a while yet – and was keen to tell them that, thanks to Superintendent Kenny’s intervention, all the data gathered about who was where and when at the campus vigil was now being fed into a simulation programme that would allow them to track any given individual in real time. They had already constructed skeleton outlines for the routes followed by the victim and other persons of interest, including Pawel Zawodny, which they hoped would prove fruitful.

Lance reported that so far today Zawodny was sticking to the same routine as the previous two mornings, and shared Warleigh’s sense that Zawodny was on his best behaviour because he knew he was being watched, stressing that at this stage that was only a hunch. Duncan hoped today to get the CCTV footage – which had been held up by the usual bureaucratic nonsense – from Colchester Town railway station. And Grace confirmed that she had sent a preliminary list of questions over to Gareth Sullivan at the
Mercury
, but he’d come back to her saying that he, too, was having difficulty deciphering Roxanne’s personalised shorthand squiggles; she promised to chase him up by lunchtime if she hadn’t heard from him again by then.

After a word with the review team, Keith returned to his office, closing the door. Lance turned his back on the intruders so that he could grimace at Grace without being observed. She leaned closer, angling her head towards where Colin stood with his colleagues talking to Joan on the far side of the room.

‘He was my guv’nor in Kent.’

‘No way!’ Lance swivelled to take a better look. Her former DCI was an attractive man: fit, dark-haired and bright-eyed, always dressed in a spotless white shirt; she’d probably even quite fancied him when she first joined his team. She’d certainly been aware early on that he cheated on his long-suffering wife. Now, although Colin didn’t acknowledge their inspection, Grace saw his neck stiffen. It almost made her want to laugh; for a second she felt free, like a kid no longer afraid of a bully because she was safe with the cool gang at the back of the classroom.

‘He’s actually not stupid,’ she said. ‘Maybe Keith’s right and fresh eyes on the case can’t hurt.’

‘We’re not stupid, either,’ Lance retorted.

‘True,’ she said, pulling her chair closer. ‘I need to speak to Keith, but d’you mind if I run something by you first? Something that occurred to me last night?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Remember Danny Tooley, the kid in the bookshop on campus?’

‘The one we saw Roxanne talking to?’

‘Exactly,’ she answered, matching his matter-of-fact tone, despite her flare of grief at the recent memory of Roxanne
flitting from bookshop to cafe. ‘We know Roxanne was keeping tabs on him. Schmoozing him.’

‘And we spoke to him at the vigil, right?’

‘Yes. What if he knew who Roxanne was planning to meet?’

‘Is his statement not amongst the rest?’

Grace shook her head. ‘I checked. He never made one.’

‘Then we should chase it up,’ agreed Lance.

Grace nodded uncomfortably and looked at her watch. ‘I’m going to have to shoot off in a second. Hilary wants me at the media conference. The chief con’s coming over for this one, and they’re expecting a big turnout. But there’s one other thing.’ She lowered her head, speaking more quietly. ‘I only remembered last night. When I went to speak to Danny about Polly wanting a lift home, I asked if he knew Pawel Zawodny, if he’d ever seen him with Polly in Colchester.’ She made herself meet Lance’s curious gaze. ‘Danny lives in Wivenhoe, so I also mentioned that Zawodny has a boat on the river. I hoped it might jog his memory.’

‘Shit!’

‘I know. At the time I spoke to Danny, it seemed more important to try and place Zawodny with Polly than to worry about something Danny might have known anyway. But it means he could have told Roxanne we were asking about the boat. And it weakens the argument for it being Zawodny himself who told her.’

‘Still doesn’t explain the bottle.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘And it’s possible Roxanne got that
from someone else. But if Danny did tell her about the boat, then we need to find out what other information he gave her.’

Lance nodded. ‘And where he was getting it from.’

Just as Grace twisted in her seat to see whether the SIO was still in his office, he came back out, accompanied this time by Duncan.

‘Listen up.’ Keith had everyone’s attention. ‘Some violently offensive comments have been left on the
Find Polly Sinclair
Facebook page and on the memorials set up for Rachel Moston and Roxanne Carson. We’ve now established that the most unpleasant messages originated from Matt Beeston’s IP address.’

As Keith waited for the ripple of hushed comment to subside, Lance looked at Grace in astonishment: Matt’s was the last name they’d expected to hear.

‘Two particularly vicious new Twitter accounts have also been traced back to him,’ added Duncan. ‘He’s used them to slag off the women who made allegations of rape or sexual assault against him.’

‘What a sweetheart!’ muttered someone at the back of the room.

‘The chief constable rightly feels that none of the young women or their families should have to tolerate such distressing and distasteful abuse,’ Keith continued, ‘and that we should make it a priority to be seen to take decisive action as part of our ongoing inquiry.’

Strictly speaking, such offences did not fall under MIT’s remit, and there was an undercurrent of grumbling that,
with resources already at breaking point, they were being dictated to from above for the sake of PR.

‘Matt Beeston had no particular connection with Roxanne Carson, did he?’ asked Lance. ‘No reason to troll her that we know of?’

‘She wrote a piece condemning the university authorities for failing to discipline him sooner,’ Keith reminded them. ‘That kind of publicity is likely to put paid to him ever finding another academic job.’

‘The worst of the Twitter abuse is about Roxanne,’ said Duncan.

‘But she was hardly the only reporter to lay into him,’ said Grace. ‘Some of the other newspapers were far worse. Why target her?’

Lance turned to her, a note of apology in his voice. ‘Because she was a woman?’

Grace felt sick. ‘Then surely this should put him back in the frame, boss?’ she asked, knowing full well how her question implied they’d made a mistake letting Matt go the first time. ‘Venting such an un-self-censored hatred of women when he’s already in a deep enough hole strikes me as pathological.’

‘He remains under investigation,’ said Keith. ‘The case papers for the rape allegations are with the CPS lawyers.’

‘What about the link between online abuse and domestic violence?’ she pressed. ‘This kind of harassment with constant texts and threatening messages is known to precede violent attacks.’

Grace noticed Colin nod sagely and fold his arms.
Although his expression remained neutral, it was a familiar gesture that she knew signified opposition. It only served to make her persevere. ‘There’s a pattern of behaviour here that we should look at again.’

Keith thought it over before he nodded. ‘Find out first if Matt was seen at the campus vigil,’ he ordered. ‘Let’s not assume anything. But if he
was
there, bring him in immediately.’

Grace turned to Lance, who raised his eyebrows. He leaned over. ‘What about Danny Tooley?’ he mouthed.

She didn’t need reminding: the investigation was starting to go around in ever-decreasing circles, and they knew it.