Class Murder Read online

  The detective chief inspector cleared her throat noisily. ‘So you were alone each time one of your former classmates was killed?’

  Blinking angrily, Leah took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t alone when Stephanie and Peter died. Beth was at home too.’

  ‘You must miss her,’ the other detective said.

  The kindness in his voice dissolved the vestiges of Leah’s self-control, and she broke down in tears. Stirring in his chair at her side, the lawyer spoke for the first time, requesting a break. With a shrug of her broad shoulders, the detective chief inspector paused the interview. A few moments later Leah was sitting on a hard bunk in a small whitewashed cell, staring miserably at the metal lavatory. Her lawyer stood gazing down at her, a complacent expression on his round face, his pudgy white hands folded across his rotund belly. It was all right for him. He was free to leave whenever he wanted.

  ‘When can I go home?’

  He gave a smug smile. ‘They can’t hold you for long. Don’t worry, you’ll soon be released.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve got no right to keep me locked up here like this. I want to go home,’ she wailed. ‘It’s horrible in here. I want to go home. Please, tell them to let me go home. I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  The lawyer nodded. ‘Yes, of course. I understand. Now, you rest for a few minutes and then we’ll finish off the interview and you’ll be free to go. But first, is there anything else you’d like to discuss with me? Remember you can speak to me in complete confidence. I’m here to help you.’

  Leah shook her head. ‘No, no. There’s nothing else. There’s nothing to tell. And you’re not helping me. Please, I just want this to be over.’

  She tried not to cry again, but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘My client is very upset,’ the lawyer said when they were seated in the interview room again. ‘She’s very distressed about the recent murders and this unnecessarily heavy-handed approach is causing her a great deal of further stress. So if there’s nothing else, I suggest you send her home for the time being. It serves no purpose keeping her in custody.’

  There was some more discussion in which Leah didn’t participate. She sat quietly, biting her lip and struggling to control her emotions. At last the detective chief inspector rose to her feet. For such a bulky woman she moved with surprising grace.

  ‘Can I go home now?’ Leah asked.

  But instead of being released, she was accompanied back along the corridor to her cell.

  ‘Sit tight,’ her lawyer said. ‘We’ll soon have you out of here.’

  Leah didn’t trust him. Intending to reassure her, he was irritating, since he was clearly powerless to help her. He hovered in the cell for a few minutes, uttering fatuous platitudes about keeping her spirits up and being patient. She didn’t answer. When he finally left her alone she lay down on the hard bunk bed and closed her eyes, trying to pretend she was at home. But it was impossible to relax, knowing where she was. No longer needing to control herself, she let tears slide down her cheeks unchecked.

  When Bethany died, Leah had thought that was surely the most terrible experience she would ever have to go through. To be questioned as a suspect in the murder case was even more terrifying. She didn’t know how much longer she could bear to remain locked up in there before she lost her mind. In a frenzy of despair she began banging on the door, demanding to be let out, until her voice grew hoarse and her throat was sore. She might as well have saved her breath, because no one came in answer to her hysterical summons. For all she knew, the apocalypse could have arrived, leaving her as the only survivor on the planet. If war had broken out, or there was some other drastic reason to prevent anyone from unlocking her cell door, she would starve to death in there, all alone. Her self-pity was overwhelmed by fear and she lay rigid on her bunk, praying that someone would come and put an end to this horrible waking nightmare.

  44

  That evening before Geraldine left work, her phone rang. It was Ned’s mother.

  ‘There’s something Ned would like to show you,’ she said.

  It could have been the phone line, but her voice sounded curiously cold and tinny.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Please, can you come round? He won’t tell me what it is, but he’s very upset.’

  ‘Can I speak to him?’

  Mrs Thomson didn’t reply straight away. Geraldine thought she might have gone to fetch her son, but instead she heard his mother’s voice again. ‘He doesn’t like talking on the phone. It makes him nervous. You know he was profoundly deaf as a child?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know.’

  ‘No, of course, why would you know that? You can’t tell now, not really, not unless you listen really closely to him speaking. He had cochlear implants fitted in both ears when he was a teenager but he’s never really caught up. He’s not as dim as he seems.’

  ‘He didn’t strike me as dim,’ Geraldine lied.

  ‘And now something’s happened, and he won’t tell me what, but he said he needed to talk to you and then he locked himself in his room and he’s refusing to come out.’

  ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  In little more than an hour, Geraldine was driving up the lane past the caravan site and farm shop to the large farmhouse. Ned opened the door and ushered her inside quickly.

  ‘What was it you wanted to show me?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘You’d better come with me.’

  He led Geraldine up a wide wooden staircase and along to a door at the end of the landing where he opened the door to a small bedroom with a desk in one corner. Taking an envelope from the top drawer, he handed it to Geraldine.

  ‘This arrived in the post yesterday.’

  The typed letter addressed to Ned Thomson had been posted in York with a first class stamp. It was a cheap envelope, and the contents were printed on a sheet of A5 lined paper with two holes punched in the margin. The four-word message typed in large capital letters said simply: YOU COULD BE NEXT.

  ‘Ned, I want you to think very carefully. Do you have any idea who might have sent this to you?’

  Ned shook his head. ‘I don’t know what it means. What do you think it means? It says I could be next. Is it from the killer?’

  For answer Geraldine slipped the letter into a plastic bag and explained that she was going to have to take it away for forensic examination.

  ‘This letter could be significant to our investigation. It will be returned to you as soon as possible, should you want it back, but you understand it could give us vital evidence that might lead us to finding the killer.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Mrs Thomson burst out. She was standing in the doorway of the narrow room, listening. ‘You think it’s from the killer, don’t you?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘Does this mean Ned’s life is in danger?’ Pressing her fist against her mouth, she glared anxiously at Geraldine.

  ‘Until we find out who’s behind all this, Ned is going to have to be vigilant.’

  ‘What do you mean, vigilant?’ he asked. He looked very pale.

  Geraldine advised him not to leave the house alone, and not to go anywhere unaccompanied.

  ‘My son should be given police protection,’ Ned’s mother said.

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary as long as he’s careful not to go out by himself. With this new evidence you’ve just given me, we should be able to catch whoever is behind all this even sooner than we thought. But in the meantime, Ned, it would be wise for you not to go out unaccompanied. You work with your father, don’t you? Can you stay close to him?’

  ‘That message is a threat,’ Ned’s mother said. ‘He isn’t safe, and you know it.’

  ‘He’ll be safe as long as he’s careful not to go out alone.’

  Geraldine hoped she was right, but she knew pol
ice resources wouldn’t stretch to twenty-four hour surveillance of Ned and all his former classmates, any one of whom might be a potential target for the killer.

  ‘What do you mean, he should be careful? It’s your job to protect people. You should be out there arresting whoever wrote that letter, not telling innocent people to protect themselves because you can’t or won’t.’

  Ned’s mother was almost in tears.

  ‘We’re doing our best,’ Geraldine assured her gently.

  ‘What exactly have you been doing? It seems to me you’re not doing anything at all,’ Mrs Thomson protested.

  ‘We’re following several leads and we hope to be making an arrest very soon. This letter will help.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Ned wanted to know, his eyes bright with curiosity. ‘Who killed them? Who?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that.’

  If the killer had sent the message, as seemed likely, there was a chance he or she had left at least a partial print, or a trace of DNA, on the paper or the envelope. With the plastic bag safely tucked in her jacket pocket Geraldine left, Mrs Thomson’s words still ringing in her ears. As she drove away, her phone rang. With a sinking feeling, she answered.

  The reception on her phone was poor. If Geraldine hadn’t seen the message Ned had received, she wouldn’t have been able to make sense of what Robin was saying about a letter, and something about him being next.

  45

  Leah had been in custody when the letters had been posted, and Ashley hadn’t received one.

  ‘Not yet, anyway,’ Ian said.

  ‘Maybe the killer doesn’t know where she lives,’ one officer suggested.

  ‘The killer might have written to her, and his letter could have got lost in the post,’ Ariadne said, eliciting a general murmur of agreement.

  There was a stultifying atmosphere at the police station, with nothing much to do but wait for results of forensic tests. The two letters had been sent away for examination but so far scrutiny of the letters and envelopes had revealed nothing about the killer’s identity. Determined to make sure nothing had been overlooked, Geraldine went to speak to the forensic officer, Archie, who had examined the letters. Although his report was detailed and thorough, a face-to-face encounter might yield some ideas. Tall and skinny, with a prematurely receding hairline, he gave her the eager smile of an enthusiast before launching into his report.

  ‘There are minute traces of regenerated cellulose on one of the envelopes, visible under magnification, which suggests the envelopes were sold in a cheap cellophane wrapper.’

  ‘Can that give us any indication where they came from?’

  Archie told her they were the sort of envelopes that were available at just about every retail stationery outlet, as well as from online suppliers.

  ‘We can’t say where they come from, but there’s a lot we can tell,’ he added quickly, sensing her impatience. ‘By analysing dating markers like fibres, synthetic brighteners, pulping chemistry, paper additives, adhesive components and surface treatments, it’s possible to determine the likely age of the paper with reasonable accuracy. The precise formula for paper varies enough for it to be possible to identify the company that manufactured a particular sheet, by comparing different samples.’

  His eyes glowed with enthusiasm, but Geraldine wasn’t sure she was going to learn anything that might help move the investigation forward. She had a suspicion she was wasting her time, listening to an expert lecturing her about his own area of interest. And all the time they were talking, a vicious killer remained at large and she was helpless to do anything about it.

  ‘So what can you tell me that might help us find whoever wrote these letters?’

  Archie shrugged. ‘It was all in my report. The writer used relatively cheap white Basildon Bond envelopes, peel and seal which they mostly are these days, so the flaps have no traces of saliva. And there are no finger marks on the envelopes. They were handled with rubber gloves, leaving traces of white latex but no identifiable finger marks. It can’t have been easy, separating them with gloves on,’ he added with something like admiration in his voice. ‘Whoever sent these letters took a lot of trouble not to leave any identifying clues.’

  Geraldine frowned, but her irritation did nothing to dampen her companion’s enthusiasm.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ she asked, struggling to hide her impatience.

  But tracking down where one packet of envelopes had been bought at an unspecified time in the past, from a supplier anywhere in the world, was an impossible task, even with all the resources at her disposal.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So the envelopes are a dead end. What about the message itself? Does that offer any indication about who might have written it?’

  Archie shook his head, his long face suddenly lugubrious. ‘Not really. If you want my opinion, it would be pointless to speculate.’

  Hearing the response she had been expecting, Geraldine’s disappointment was stupid.

  ‘The messages are identical,’ Archie continued. ‘They could all have been printed on the same simple printer, an Epson XP 432, or something similar. Like the paper and the envelopes, those sorts of printers are available everywhere. None of this gets you anywhere, does it? I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. But don’t look so glum,’ he added, forcing a smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll get your man in the end.’

  His breezy enthusiasm made Geraldine feel uncomfortably jaded. It seemed a very long time since she had felt a similar youthful optimism.

  ‘So there’s nothing more you can tell us?’ she asked. ‘Anything at all that might narrow down our search?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s it. If we find anything else, you’ll be the first to know.’ When Geraldine returned to the police station, she went to find Ian in his small office. He looked up when she opened his door, his expression despondent.

  ‘It’s early days,’ Geraldine said. ‘There’s no need to look so fed up.’

  ‘We have three victims and we’re getting nowhere.’

  He was right. They needed to start making progress, before there was another murder.

  ‘What about your paper man?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  Ian called up an image of the letters on his screen and nodded at her to stand behind him so they could stare at it together. Beside her cheek, close enough to touch, his fair hair glinted in the light streaming through his window. Momentarily distracted by a faint scent of aftershave, she forced herself to focus on the words on his screen: YOU COULD BE NEXT.

  ‘He’s not giving much away,’ Ian grumbled. ‘I’ve been staring at those four words for hours and I’m still no wiser.’

  ‘It’s a warning.’

  ‘But why alert his potential victims? Surely he wouldn’t want anyone to be expecting an attack. That’s only going to make it more difficult for him to carry it off.’

  ‘So he’s arrogant. He thinks he can succeed whatever the odds against him. But in any case, they’re already on their guard. He’s just killed three of their class. How much stronger a warning could he have given them?’

  ‘He’s toying with them to taunt us.’ Ian sounded angry. ‘He knows we’re not on to him yet.’

  ‘And he’s supremely confident he’ll get away with it,’ Geraldine added. ‘Of course it might have nothing to do with us. He could be threatening them because he wants to frighten them. But why?’

  ‘It must be some kind of payback.’

  ‘But for what? The answer must lie in their school days.’ She paused. ‘Unless his intention is to terrorise one of them – Leah or Ashley, perhaps? All of this could be aimed at one of them.’

  Sunlight glistened on Ian’s hair as he shifted in his seat. ‘You’re suggesting he’s killed three random people just to frighten someone else?’

 
‘Yes, why not? And they’re not random. They all know one another. He’s threatening her with what he’ll do to her if she doesn’t give him what he wants. It’s possible.’

  ‘No. That’s crazy. Do you really think anyone would kill three people, just to make a point?’

  ‘Well, he has killed three people, and whatever his motive, it’s certainly crazy.’

  Ian shook his head. ‘You need to go home and get some sleep. You’re not thinking clearly.’

  Geraldine went home that evening feeling thoroughly dejected. Seeing as she was feeling so low anyway, she decided she might as well phone her sister. Helena could hardly make her feel much worse. Besides, she might be making good progress, which would cheer Geraldine up.

  ‘Hi, it’s Geraldine. How are you doing?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What have you been doing today?’

  ‘Not much. I went shopping.’

  ‘What did you get?’

  ‘Not much.’

  It was a stilted exchange. After a few minutes, Geraldine gave up the attempt to engage her sister in conversation. She said goodbye and rang off, hoping there wasn’t a reason for Helena’s reluctance to talk to her. Having slept badly, she woke early next morning with a pounding headache. After a strong coffee she felt slightly better and set off for work, pausing briefly to check her post box in the entrance hall on her way out.

  She didn’t register anything unusual about the typed address, but as soon as she slipped the letter out of the envelope she recognised the message. Feeling sick, she hurried to the car park, keeping an eye out for anyone loitering outside her block of flats. Apart from an occasional car passing by, the street was deserted. Driving into work she considered her options. She was strongly tempted to keep quiet about the letter she had received, knowing that reporting it would result in her being taken off the case. She couldn’t bear to be removed from the investigation and almost certainly have to leave the area. Withholding such significant information would land her in trouble if it ever came to light, but if necessary she could deny having received it. No one could prove it had actually reached her letter box. As Ariadne had mentioned only the previous day, it wasn’t uncommon for letters to be lost in the post.