Class Murder Read online

  Leah’s blush deepened. ‘He was in my class too, but he was one of the cool guys, you know? He wasn’t interested in me.’

  That wasn’t what Geraldine had asked. Robin was fairly short, but he was good looking. She wondered if Leah had fancied him.

  ‘What about Ashley? Was she friendly with Ned or Robin?’

  Leah’s face twisted into a sour grimace. ‘She was friendly with all the boys. At least, all the boys were after her. I’m not saying she was flirty. It was the opposite, really. She was very quiet. She just let them all run after her and compete for her attention.’

  ‘That must have been hard for the rest of you.’

  ‘Not really,’ Leah brushed off the suggestion a little too readily. ‘None of us wanted to go out with any of them. They weren’t exactly God’s gift, any of them.’

  ‘Did Ashley go out with any of them?’

  ‘She was interested in someone else.’

  Still tearful, Leah gave a mischievous smile. Geraldine waited, confident that she was keen to share her gossip. Having lost her flatmate, she was bound to be feeling lonely, and ready to talk to anyone, even a police officer. Sure enough, Leah blew her nose and cleared her throat, preparing to pass on what she knew.

  ‘She was seeing someone but no one was supposed to know, apart from us, of course. But no one else knew. We were all sworn to secrecy. Oh, it’s all right, we were in the sixth form, but he was older than her and she didn’t want her parents to find out.’

  ‘How much older?’

  Leah shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He was just older than her. She didn’t tell me everything. It wasn’t like I was her best friend,’ she added bitterly.

  ‘Who was close to her?’

  ‘There were four of them who used to go around together. Nicole and her family went to live in America soon after we left school.’

  ‘And the others? You said there were four of them who used to hang out together.’

  Somehow Geraldine wasn’t surprised to hear that Ashley’s other two best friends at school had been Stephanie and Beth.

  ‘Was she friendly with Peter?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I mean, not that I knew about.’

  ‘Leah, I’m not here to gossip, but this is important. Who was Ashley’s boyfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.’

  ‘When did they stop seeing one another?’

  Leah shrugged. ‘I told you, I wasn’t her best friend and when we were in the sixth form we didn’t really mix that much. She had her clique and – and I had my own friends. Once we left school we didn’t socialise at all. She moved away and I don’t know who she was friends with, or who she was going out with.’

  Geraldine returned to her earlier question. ‘Do you remember Ned being bullied at school?’

  ‘No, not especially.’

  ‘What do you mean, not especially?’

  Leah looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, he was deaf, although he could hear, but he had a funny voice. Oh, you know how it is, kids will pick on anything. But he seemed quite happy. I don’t know if he really knew what was going on. He didn’t seem bothered by it.’

  Geraldine tried to find out details of the bullying but all Leah admitted to recalling was that other pupils used to mutter insults at him behind his back. She was fairly certain he hadn’t even been able to hear them. When Geraldine asked about messages written on the whiteboard in class, Leah said she had no recollection of that at all. There didn’t seem to be anything else Leah could tell her, and it was too late to call on Ashley again, so Geraldine drove home and wrote up her decision log there.

  Mulling over what she had learned about the victims’ time at school, Geraldine had a frustrating sense that in all the snippets of information she had heard that night there had been a clue that might unravel the whole case, if she could only spot it. Sitting back on her sofa with a glass of red wine in one hand, and the remote control in the other, she flicked through television channels without really registering what was on. For no apparent reason, her gut feeling was screaming out to her that Ashley held the key to the mystery. Details about her school days flickered in and out of Geraldine’s consciousness like myriad pieces of a vast jigsaw. The problem was, Geraldine didn’t have a picture to guide her how to put the pieces together, and singly they made no sense at all. She would have liked to set up a team dedicated to discovering everyone who had known Ashley when she was in the sixth form at school, but as a sergeant she didn’t have the same powers as she had enjoyed during her time as an inspector. She was only just beginning to appreciate the limitations of her new post. Resolving to talk to Ian first thing in the morning, she went to bed and dreamt she was dragging a dead woman out of the canal. The wet skin was slippery and every time Geraldine pulled the woman from the water and lay her down on the bank, the body slipped back down the slope into the canal. Only after several failed attempts did Geraldine glance at the dead woman’s face and recognise her sister, Helena.

  51

  A bleary-eyed Gloria opened the door in her dressing gown. ‘Bloody hell,’ she blurted out, ‘do you know what time it is?’

  ‘I’d like a word with Ashley. I came early so I could catch her before she goes to work.’

  ‘You did that all right. She’s probably not even up yet.’

  Gloria glowered at Geraldine, but she stepped aside to let her in.

  ‘Have you arrested anyone?’ Ashley wanted to know as soon as she came into the front room.

  ‘No. And don’t worry, this won’t take long,’ Geraldine assured her. ‘I want you to tell me about the man you were going out with when you were in the sixth form.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘You were seeing an older man, someone you didn’t want your parents to know about.’

  Ashley gave an awkward laugh. ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Are you saying you never dated an older man while you were at school?’

  ‘It’s hardly the kind of thing I’d forget. Whoever told you that must have confused me with someone else. No, I’m sorry but I didn’t have a boyfriend when I was in the sixth form. At that time the only boys I really knew were local ones from school, and I can’t say I fancied any of them. I mean, no offence and all that, but we probably knew each other too well.’

  Puzzled, Geraldine asked a few more questions before leaving without finding out what she wanted to know. That was in keeping with the investigation, which seemed to be floundering. She wasn’t alone in feeling frustrated. The detective chief inspector’s foul mood wasn’t helping. Geraldine struggled not to compare Eileen’s conduct with how she herself would have striven to behave had she been promoted; a senior investigating officer’s role was to encourage her colleagues, not chastise them. But it was easy to criticise other senior officers, especially now she would never face the challenge of leading a team herself.

  ‘The killer’s got to slip up sooner or later,’ Eileen said.

  She spoke in a controlled tone, but the tension in her voice was clear to everyone. Even her wording seemed all wrong to Geraldine, implying as it did that their success depended on the killer making an unforced error, rather than on their own intelligence and hard work.

  ‘How many more people are going to be killed before he makes a mistake?’ Ian muttered.

  Eileen glared at him. ‘We’re not exactly sitting around waiting for him to screw up. We’re going to track him down through the DNA he left at the crime scene. It’s only a matter of time now.’

  But although DNA had been collected from local residents on a massive scale, processing the samples had not yielded a possible match with the partial DNA profile recovered from Stephanie’s body. Insisting that ‘someone somewhere must know something,’ Eileen had organised appeals for information through the media. There was no longer any point in t
rying to conceal the fact that the three murders were connected and the media was buzzing with reports of a violent serial killer. The news had spread as far south as Kent, and Celia had rung Geraldine, agog to hear about the investigation. Her concerns for Geraldine’s safety unwittingly reminded her about the threatening letter she had received. Archie had reported that nothing had been found on either the letter or the envelope. He had cunningly protected Geraldine’s role in submitting the letter for examination so she was able to stay silent, assuring herself she could do more to help track down the killer if she continued working on the case than if she was sent away for her own protection. But she wasn’t confident she was right to keep quiet about it.

  ‘I owe you,’ she had told Archie and was surprised when he blushed.

  ‘It’s all part of the job,’ he had blustered. ‘To be honest, it’s not every day I get approached by a detective to play a part in a major murder investigation. It was quite exciting, really.’

  Slipping back into the police station, Geraldine had felt a spasm of anxiety in case her absence had been noted and was going to be queried, but no one had paid any attention to her.

  Naomi was grumbling. ‘The nonsense they broadcast, you’d think there’s a killer running amok on the streets brandishing a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, assaulting everyone he sees. It’s hardly our fault we haven’t caught him yet. We’re certainly doing everything we can.’

  Accustomed to dealing with criticism from the media, Geraldine shrugged off the reports. ‘They’re just trying to sell their papers.’

  ‘At our expense. They’re turning public opinion against us, making out we’re a bunch of incompetent idiots wasting tax payers money. Next thing you know, there’ll be more cuts. You wait and see. This is playing right into the hands of the hatchet men in government. As if we haven’t got enough to contend with.’

  Geraldine sighed. Reporters in general were only too eager to generate panic in order to attract interest to their particular news story. It might be irresponsible journalism, but drama and tragedy sold papers and boosted audiences for radio and television channels. The trouble was, Naomi was right. Harsh criticism of the authorities turned members of the public against the police, making people less likely to come forward with information. At the same time, all the publicity might discourage people from going out alone after dark, which was probably a good thing while this killer remained at large. She had a strong suspicion he wasn’t finished with his killing spree yet.

  ‘We just have to wait for the results of the tests,’ she said.

  ‘So you’re saying there’s nothing else we can do?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘We can think,’ Geraldine replied. ‘If we can work out who might have a motive…’

  ‘A motive for senseless killing?’ Naomi replied. ‘I don’t think so. You can’t get inside the mind of a maniac. Not unless you’re insane too.’

  Geraldine was about to quip that perhaps she was, when Eileen came over.

  ‘Let’s not get carried away with speculation,’ the detective chief inspector said. ‘The only way to nail a killer is through hard forensic evidence. Even confessions can be false.’

  ‘We’ve been told that Ashley was seeing an older man when she was in the sixth form. We could try to find out who he was.’

  ‘According to Leah she was seeing someone,’ Eileen agreed, ‘but Ashley’s denied it.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but she could be lying.’

  ‘More likely Leah was spinning a yarn, trying to deflect suspicion from herself.’

  Geraldine accepted the sense in that remark. None of them were convinced Leah was trustworthy.

  ‘All I’m saying is that it will be easier to find the right evidence if we know where to look.’

  Eileen bristled. ‘We’re looking everywhere,’ she said, as though addressing an audience at a press conference. ‘The killer won’t escape. We get results by working thoroughly and efficiently, not by chasing hunches.’

  Geraldine didn’t answer. She knew her approach to detective work was sometimes considered controversial but, in the absence of hard evidence, she believed it could be useful to follow a hunch. And she had a feeling Ashley was hiding something about the man she had been seeing.

  52

  Nearly two weeks had elapsed since Geraldine had last visited her adopted sister, Celia, and a phone call from Geraldine was long overdue. Guilt and a sense of duty, rather than love, had prompted Geraldine to respond when Celia had first turned to her for support after the death of their mother. Similar to their mother in appearance and inclination, Celia had always been closer to their mother than Geraldine. Only after their mother’s death did Geraldine discover the shocking truth that she had been adopted. After giving birth to her only natural daughter, Celia, their mother had been unable to have more children. She had adopted Geraldine so that Celia wouldn’t be an only child.

  Since their mother’s death, Geraldine and Celia had grown closer than before, but now she hesitated to pick up her phone and make the call. She anticipated her sister complaining that she hardly ever saw Geraldine, which was true now more than ever. It wasn’t that Geraldine was reluctant to see her sister, but she was preoccupied with the case, and Celia lived a long way away from her. Not only was the journey tiring, but she didn’t want to travel so far from the centre of the investigation.

  The conversation this evening started out cheerfully enough.

  ‘Geraldine! It’s great to hear from you. I guess you must still be working on that dreadful case. It’s been all over the news, even here. How many people have been killed now? Honestly, I know I’ve said it before, but I don’t know how you can bear to hear all about it, and see those bodies! It makes me shudder just reading about it. I suppose they’re keeping you hard at it?’

  ‘Yes, everyone here’s busy working on it. All leave’s been cancelled,’ Geraldine added, in an attempt to preempt any demands for a visit.

  ‘I guessed as much. So, how are you?’

  ‘That’s what I called to ask you. It can’t be much longer to go now.’

  Celia laughed. ‘I look like a hippopotamus and I feel even worse. Honestly, Geraldine, if I get any bigger they’ll need a hoist to get me out of bed in the morning.’

  Celia described the progress of her pregnancy, and Geraldine listened to the details of her latest scan, and the functions her unborn baby was already able to perform, and how strong its heartbeat was. She could imagine Celia had chattered like this to their mother every day during her sister’s first pregnancy. Feeling a pang of guilt that she was unable to offer her sister more support, she reminded herself that Celia had a husband and a daughter, and a circle of local friends she had grown up with. Geraldine had problems too, and she was on her own, living in an unfamiliar city. After a while the conversation shifted from Celia’s pregnancy to news of her older daughter, Chloe. It was a relief to engage in such normal conversation, with no mention of bodies or evidence.

  ‘So when do you think you’re going to be able to come and visit us?’ Celia enquired at last. ‘If you don’t come soon, the baby will be here before you!’

  Geraldine hesitated. She was hoping to fit in a visit to her twin sister in London, but had decided to keep that area of her life private at least until after Celia had given birth.

  ‘I’m planning to come over as soon as I can get time off,’ she hedged.

  ‘And when’s that going to be?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m sorry to sound so vague, but it just depends on work.’

  ‘You know Chloe’s desperate to see you,’ Celia went on, with a hint of condemnation in her voice.

  They both knew that wasn’t true. The last time Geraldine had gone to Kent, Chloe had been far more interested in texting her friends than talking to her aunt. It was Celia who wanted Geraldine to visit them.

  ‘I want to see her too,�
� Geraldine replied. ‘But I just can’t get the time off right now.’

  The telephone conversation lasted over an hour and by the time she rang off, Geraldine felt worn out. Even though her sister seemed perfectly happy with her life and really didn’t need Geraldine around, she always made her feel guilty for having moved away. It would probably have been easier on them both if Geraldine had admitted the truth right from the start and told Celia that she had been given no choice about moving to York, if she wanted to continue working. But she hadn’t even told Celia that she had discovered she had a birth sister, an identical twin, a heroin user who had been the cause of her expulsion from the Met.

  Apart from her determination to protect her adopted family from any contact with Helena, it was all too difficult an emotional mess to dump on Celia while she was pregnant. Eventually, Geraldine supposed, she would have to tell her, but the longer she allowed Celia to continue in ignorance, the harder it would be when she finally told her the truth. She could imagine Celia’s dismay on learning that she wasn’t Geraldine’s only sister. And that wasn’t all. While Celia and Geraldine were sisters by virtue of adoption, Helena and Geraldine were not only birth sisters, but identical twins. Celia was bound to feel ousted from her comfortable perch as Geraldine’s only close relative.

  With more immediate concerns to occupy her, Geraldine turned her attention away from her personal issues to the man the papers were calling The Slasher. He was probably plotting his next attack, and they still had no idea where to look for him. The DNA which had given them such high hopes was worthless without a matching sample on the database.

  ‘We must redouble our efforts to find him,’ Eileen had urged the team at their last briefing.

  At her side Geraldine had heard Ian muttering about needles and haystacks. All they knew from the partial and unidentified DNA profile was that the missing man was Caucasian, with dark hair and brown eyes. Extensive and time-consuming examination of automatic number plate recognition on the main roads into the area had failed to come up with any vehicle arriving and departing at times which matched the times of the murders, and a concentrated study of CCTV on public transport had proved equally unproductive. It was possible the killer might be living in the vicinity, although even that inference was inconclusive. So far all they had to go on was supposition based on tantalising fragments of evidence. And the letter Geraldine was concealing hung over her. Not only might she land herself in trouble again, but there was a chance the threat to her life might be genuine.