Dark Mirror (20 page)

‘The last time we met,’ Kathy said, ‘you suddenly chose to reveal that you did know where Marion Summers lived, a fact you had denied up until that point. Now that you’ve had a few days to think about things, I wonder if you have any other information you’d like to share with us?’

‘Um, well, no, I don’t believe so.’

Kathy stared at him for a long moment, so hard that he was obliged to look away. ‘You should bear in mind that we’ve now
downloaded all the contents of your computer, including material that you probably thought you’d trashed.’

Ogilvie bit his lip and remained silent.

‘You’re very interested in poisons, aren’t you?’ she went on, scanning the sheets of paper on her clipboard. ‘Aconitine, strychnine, digitalin, hyoscine hydrobromide, hemlock, arsenic . . . Obsessively interested, one might say.’

‘It’s my work,’ Ogilvie blurted. ‘I had to research poisons. That’s what the project is all about. I told you.’

‘Your boss disagrees. The title of the book was
Deadly Gardens
, yes? He wanted you to find gardens where people had died in sinister circumstances—hanged, drowned, guillotined, burned at the stake. He tried to discourage you from focusing so much on poison, but you seemed to take no notice.’

Nigel’s face burned.
That little shit Stephen. How he must be enjoying this!

‘So much so that he’s had to give the project to somebody else.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t you know? He did say that he’d had a lot of trouble getting hold of you recently. Apparently you never answer your phone. Too busy taking pictures with it, probably.’

‘Look, I—’

‘And poisoners! Hamlet’s stepfather, Dr de la Pommerais, George Lamson, Dr Crippen. Did they have interesting gardens? Well, did they?’

‘Not them, especially . . .’

‘Then why, Nigel?’ Kathy leaned forward across the table. ‘Why this obsession with poison? You can imagine what the prosecution barrister will make of that, can’t you?’

Ogilvie paled. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Brock reach suddenly forward. He stiffened, but the chief inspector was only turning his newspaper over to the crossword.

‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he gasped. ‘I had a plan.’

‘Oh, I’m sure of that.’

‘No, no. For the book,’ he gabbled. ‘I was going to work through different means of death, and it seemed logical to start with poisons, because poisonous plants can grow in gardens. And also . . .’ He hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘Well, to be frank, Marion did have something to do with it. When I started my research in the library, I went to “P”, and there she was.’

‘What?’

‘The layout of the London Library is different. They don’t use Dewey decimal, the subjects are arranged alphabetically. It’s one of the charms of the place.’ He chuckled nervously. ‘You can get quite unlikely subjects sitting next to one another. People say it’s very serendipitous.’ He saw the stony expression on Kathy’s face and added quickly, ‘That means—’

‘I know what it means. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Marion was studying Pre-Raphaelites, and so when I was looking for Poisons I met her, further along the shelves. We were both in the ‘P’s.’

‘So it gave you an excuse to get close to her.’

‘Well, not like
that
. I mean, she was also interested in poisons, because of her work—laudanum and arsenic, especially. So we exchanged information.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Oh, let me see . . .’

Nigel Ogilvie launched into a rambling account of various sources of information on nineteenth-century poisonings that he’d shared with Marion.

Kathy pressed on, probing Ogilvie with bits of information they’d gleaned from his computer. ‘Who’s Colin Ringland?’

‘What?’

‘His name’s on your hard drive.’

‘Is it? Ringland . . . Ringland . . . Oh yes, Marion gave me his contact details. Someone at her university who was interested in arsenic. I spoke to him on the phone once. Something about Bangladesh; I didn’t think I could use it.’

When she’d exhausted this line Kathy moved on to the photographs downloaded from his phone, pressing him about Marion’s house, and about a large shoulder bag she was carrying in several of the pictures.

After an hour she paused and looked at Brock. He glanced up, as if dragging himself away from some other train of thought entirely.

‘Mm, yes,’ he said. ‘Her computer. What is it about that, I wonder?’

Ogilvie looked at him in surprise. ‘Pardon?’

‘You were very uncomfortable each time DI Kolla brought it up. You crossed and uncrossed your legs, fiddled with your watch, scratched your nose. What was all that about, I wonder?’ Brock asked this with an almost kindly interest, as if this was something two reasonable people could surely resolve.

‘No, no. As I said, I don’t know if it was hers, and I really can’t remember the make. Truly, I’ve racked my brains.’

‘So why the anxiety each time it was mentioned?’

‘I haven’t got it!’ Ogilvie yelped, holding himself rigid as if trying to stop his body from betraying him. ‘I don’t know where it is, I swear to God!’

Brock studied him for a moment. ‘I’m almost inclined to believe you, Nigel. But there’s something there, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling us.’

•

‘But there’s not a trace of his DNA at Rosslyn Court,’ Brock objected. ‘And no sign of arsenic at his home.’

Kathy nodded. It was true; they’d tested his clothing, the keyboard of his computer, his fingernails, and every inch of his bedroom and garden shed and found no indication that Ogilvie had ever been in contact with arsenic, let alone acquired enough to poison someone. ‘But we did establish a connection to Dr Ringland, who has buckets of the stuff.’

‘Mm.’ Brock didn’t sound convinced. ‘We’d better organise an audit of that laboratory.’ He checked his watch. ‘Another meeting. I’ll leave you to it.’

Auditing a university laboratory wasn’t something Kathy had been faced with before and she wondered how to set about it. She decided to phone Sundeep Mehta for advice, and he immediately offered to help. They discussed how it should be done, and afterwards, while Sundeep organised an inspection team with Forensic Services, Kathy worked her way through the university administration until she got to speak to the senior academic responsible for the laboratory. The man was guarded and clearly worried when Kathy explained the reason for her call.

‘You’re not suggesting that we were the source of the poison, are you?’

‘We know that Marion Summers visited the laboratory, and so far that is her only connection to a source of arsenic that we’ve been able to discover. So I’m sure the university will be as anxious as we are to eliminate this possibility as soon as we can.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. But she could hardly have just walked in and helped herself.’ The academic left the conclusion unspoken.

‘We have no reason to suspect Dr Ringland or his team of any lapse, but it would clearly be best if they didn’t carry out the audit themselves.’

They discussed the issues at some length, and Kathy began to realise the time and effort that would be involved. There wasn’t only the physical security of the laboratory and its materials to consider, but also the paperwork trail of purchase orders, stock records and disposal arrangements. They agreed to meet the following day to draw up detailed plans for inspection and forensic analysis, supervised by a joint committee. In the meantime, the academic agreed to close down the laboratory and seal its premises and records.

•

Brock was playing devil’s advocate, Kathy thought to herself that evening, as she sat with a glass of wine and the remains of an Indian takeaway on the sofa in her flat. He hadn’t been entirely convinced by Sundeep’s claim that the scene in Marion’s kitchen was staged, and was becoming impatient with the lack of progress. He wasn’t the only one: the case had dropped below the press radar now, and Forensic Services were clearly reluctant to spend more time on it. It had reached that messy stage, she thought, of inconclusive leads and dubious theories. A young woman, secretive and possibly hysterical, disturbed by a recent miscarriage, stages an attention-seeking cry for help, miscalculates and kills herself. End of story, move on.

Except that somehow Marion had got her hands not only on a few grams of arsenic, but also on three-quarters of a million pounds, and they had no idea from where. And then there were the predators—Keith Rafferty, Nigel Ogilvie, perhaps Anthony da Silva, and the unknown father—standing in the background.

She turned again to the photographs on her laptop of Marion’s study, those taken by the SOCOs on Friday and on her
phone that afternoon. She’d been mistaken about the pinboard, it seemed—there was only one small change, the removal of that unidentified photograph of a woman brooding over Rossetti in the middle. Everything else was the same. And da Silva’s biography of Rossetti was gone too, as she’d thought. The obvious culprit had to be da Silva himself. Perhaps there had been a compromising inscription in the book, and he’d had a key and come back to check on things once she’d told him that they knew about the house. But why wait till then? And what was the significance of the missing photograph? It was equally possible that Tina or Emily had helped themselves to these trophies from Marion’s room. Were they aware of the significance to Marion of the unnamed woman?

She’d had large prints made of some of the crime scene photographs, and with these she formed a collage on her wall reproducing the display on Marion’s pinboard. Was this something she should follow up? Until the woman’s picture disappeared she would have said it was, literally, academic. It occurred to her that she could construct her own version of this, with the images of the people involved in Marion’s death. She sorted through her papers and began to stick their photographs—Keith Rafferty’s stark police file photo, a brooding image of Anthony da Silva from the back of his Rossetti book, a snap of Nigel Ogilvie from his own phone camera, looking owlishly startled, and, at the centre, the black and white photograph of Marion herself. Was there some sort of parallel here?

She gathered up her file and noticed her bag in the far corner of the room, still only half unpacked from the weekend. It seemed a long time ago now. She thought again of Guy Hamilton, in Dubai or Qatar or wherever it was, and at precisely that moment, as if by induction, her phone rang and with a jolt she heard his voice.

‘Kathy, hi. It’s Guy. Guy Hamilton, from Prague? Is this a bad time?’

‘No . . . no, not at all, Guy. How are you? Are you in the Gulf?’

‘No, they delayed the trip for a few days. I’m just waiting, twiddling my thumbs. I wondered if you felt like going out for a drink or something.’

‘Sure. When?’

‘Well, now, if you’re free.’

‘Okay . . . yes! That would be good.’

‘Great. You live in Finchley, right? I’ll come and pick you up. What’s the address?’

She told him and hung up, feeling her cheeks burning. Then she jumped to her feet and started to get ready.

When he pressed the buzzer she took the lift down to the ground-floor lobby, and saw him waiting on the other side of the glass doors, stroking the ginger cat that was curling round his ankles. He was wearing the soft suede jacket she remembered from Prague. He looked up as she opened the door, and they grinned at each other and exchanged a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘I think she likes me,’ he said, and it took Kathy a second to realise he meant the cat.

‘She belongs to Jock, the manager. Basically she vets everyone who calls.’

He led her to a little Porsche parked near the gate, and when he said he didn’t know the area she directed him to a wine bar she thought would be all right, not too far away. As he drove they tentatively re-established contact, feeling different now on home ground. He was quiet, grateful that she had been free at such short notice when he’d been at a loose end, waiting to go away.

He corrected himself when they settled themselves in the bar. He hadn’t meant that he’d called her because he was at a loose end.
The fact was that he’d intended to do that anyway, but assumed he wouldn’t be able to until after this trip.

‘Same here,’ Kathy said, feeling unexpected pleasure at the confession. ‘I was going to call you.’

‘Oh, great! Well . . . cheers.’

They talked about the weekend, casting it in a retrospective glow that reflected on their evening now, warming them with shared intimacy as Kathy remembered the characters they’d met at Rusty’s show and Guy recalled the one with the dark glasses, falling over the dustbins outside.

‘I’ve been so flat out since I got back,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

‘Busy time, eh?’

‘Always.’

‘The same case? The girl who was poisoned?’

‘That’s right. I should have moved on, but I can’t seem to shake it off.’

‘But it was suicide, didn’t Nicole say?’

Kathy hadn’t realised that Nicole had been talking about it. ‘That’s what it looked like, but . . .’

‘You’re not so sure?’

Kathy shrugged.

‘I know the feeling,’ he said. ‘Reason tells you that you’ve got the answer, but it doesn’t feel right, eh? I get that all the time.’

‘But surely, as a structural engineer, you have the maths to tell you if you’re right or not.’

‘I wish. No, you have the maths to tell you if it’ll work, but is it the best answer? Is there another way of looking at it you haven’t thought of?’

‘That’s exactly right. And I think Marion was struggling with the same problem.’ She told him about Marion’s pinboard, its network of relationships, and how she felt she needed to do a similar thing.

‘But you’ll have computer programs for that sort of thing, in the police, don’t you? I’ve seen it on TV, the murder wall, glowing in gothic darkness.’

She laughed. ‘Yes, we have one of those, but I need something at home, that I can think about over a glass of red.’

‘We have programs we can put on our laptops, for analysing complex relationships of things—people, cash, construction events. I use that sort of thing all the time.’

‘Maybe I need someone like you to give me a few lessons,’ she said.