Gone to Ground (6 page)

"One way or another, yes. Probably."

"I was thinking," Helen said, a few moments later, "that case not so long back, one guy beaten to death on the Common—I know it's not the same, but..."

"You're right," Will said. "It's not the same."

Helen drank a little more of her coffee. Two women came in with five children and two buggies between them and maneuvered the buggies so that no one else could easily enter or exit. The place, she thought, was turning into a crèche.

"What McKusick was saying," she said, "about people thinking someone who gets raped has been asking for it, you think that's true?"

"It depends on the circumstances, but, yes, I think a lot of people do."

"People on the Force?"

"We're no different from anybody else."

"Maybe we should be."

"It's difficult, isn't it?" Will lowered his voice. "You know what it's like. A young woman comes into the station, early hours of the morning, alcohol levels way over the limit, skimpy top showing everything she's got, skirt up round her waist almost, claiming she's been raped. It's hard not to think to some degree, at least, she's contributed to that."

"You mean it's her fault?"

"I'm not saying that."

"Aren't you?"

"What I'm saying, unless she's spent the last ten years living in a convent, she knows what it's like out there, pubs and clubs, Friday, Saturday nights. You get yourself tarted up..."

"Tarted up, Will?"

"All right, make yourself as attractive as you can. But then it's cheap lager, cheap drinks, alcopops, Bacardi Breezers, whatever. Next thing you know you're half-pissed and you're putting yourself at risk."

"And you deserve what you get?"

"Jesus! How many more times? That's not what I'm saying."

"Well, it's still the way it sounds."

Will sighed. "Look, you put your hand in a trap, unless you're really stupid you expect you might lose some fingers. If you're a gay bloke and you go out looking for sex and follow someone into the bushes the same thing applies, you should know the risk. All the risks. And if you're a young woman, out on the town, the same again. I think it's too easy to say men are beasts, no better than animals, shuffle off all the blame. You have to be aware, take some responsibility for your own actions, that's what I mean."

"And you'll tell your daughter that, when she's of an age? Your son, too?"

"Yes."

"And when one of them comes home in the early hours, bleeding, raped, what will you say then? You should have known better? You should have known the risks?"

Will's face darkened.

"Well?" Helen said.

"It's time we left," Will said. "We've got a job to do."

He swallowed down the rest of his coffee and Helen followed suit. The car was parked close by. Neither of them spoke again until they were almost at the station.

"Stephen Bryan," Helen said then, "there's no evidence he'd had sex before he was killed?"

"None so far. I doubt everything that went off to the lab'll be back for a couple more days."

"We've got someone out checking the gay clubs anyway? Showing Bryan's picture? Regardless of what McKusick's just said."

Will nodded. "Nick Moyles is doing the rounds."

DS Moyles was active in the Lesbian and Gay Police Association, and, despite his occasional complaints, was often called to work on investigations in which the gay community was involved.

"I'm sure he'll thank you for that," Helen said.

Will shrugged. "Free drinks on our time."

"But nothing back so far?"

"Nothing."

For once there was a space in the car park and Will reversed neatly in. The air outside was brisk; the temperature had dropped and would drop again overnight.

"I'll be in in a minute," Helen said, once they were out of the car. "I'm just going to have a cigarette."

Will gave her one of his "your funeral" stares.

"McKusick," Helen said. "You still like him for this, don't you?"

The photograph of McKusick and Bryan came to Will's mind, the frame smashed, the picture itself torn and torn again.
I never want to see your face again.
"Don't you?" he said.

Helen tapped a cigarette from the pack. "Maybe. I'm not too sure."

Will nodded and began to move off.

"I'm sorry," Helen said. "About earlier. Riding you like that. I didn't mean to get under your skin."

Will smiled quickly. "Yes, you did." He stepped away. "See you in a few minutes, okay?"

"Okay." Helen clicked her lighter and used her thumb to lower the flame.

AND WHEN ONE OF THEM COMES HOME IN THE EARLY hours, bleeding, raped, what will you say?
Will's reflection stared back at him from the glass. After she'd been fed, the baby had failed to settle and, leaving Lorraine to sleep, Will had lifted Susie from the cot, wrapped the blanket carefully around her and settled her where she liked to be, resting against his arm and chest, her head just above the crook of the arm, against the soft inside. The skin over her closed eyes was the faintest of mauve and wafer-thin.
What will you say then?
He touched the tips of his fingers to her forehead, brushing the slightly damp hair aside, and, without waking, she stirred.

Sleep for Will, as was often the case, had been a parlous thing. Lying there, attempting to juggle bits and pieces into place, gave him no rest at all. The most recent batch of results from the lab had come through late that afternoon. The shape and size of several depressed fractures to Stephen Bryan's skull—indentations on the bone and grazing on the skin—suggested the use of a quite narrow, hard-edged instrument—hard rather than sharp—and wood, they were now saying, rather than metal.

Several hairs not matching Bryan's own had been recovered from the living room settee, some from the bedroom, one from where it had snagged on the uneven edge of the bathroom door. According to the DNA, the majority of the hairs belonged, not surprisingly, to McKusick.

Traces of semen had been found on one of the towels that had been in the laundry basket, waiting to be washed: some was Bryan's, but not all. Not McKusick's either. The sample was being further tested, to see if there was a DNA match with any of the stray hairs that were otherwise unaccounted for. Either way, what the discovery of the semen did suggest, contrary to McKusick's assertions, was that at some point in the previous week, Bryan had had sex with someone as yet unknown.

Someone who might have killed him.

If Mark McKusick did not.

Of course, there was as yet no way of knowing if the person with whom Bryan had sex and the person who killed him were one and the same. They could, as easily, be two different men, men whose identity they did not yet know. And if it were two men, Will wondered, could they somehow be connected? Possibly through Bryan's sexuality? Or were they strangers? Never met?

Susie stirred again against his arm and then settled. There was condensation, Will noticed, toward the corners of the window; the window itself deliberately wide to take advantage of the view. A broad swath of sky, surprisingly few stars, the moon veiled in cloud. Fields that angled down toward the fen.

At certain times of the year those fields were busy with men and women, mostly men, bent over as they harvested the crop. Potatoes, kohlrabi, cabbages, beets. Poles, Lithuanians, Slovakians, Latvians, Czechs. Sometimes walking behind clanking machines, sometimes picking by hand. Before deductions, £4.50 an hour at best. At night, in certain months, he would see them, outlined in floodlight, stooped against the clock.

Susie shifted again and made a sound, small and fragile, in her sleep, and Will rested his lips against the top of her head, the fontanel, the soft tissue where the cranial bones had yet to meet.

Stephen Bryan's skull had been fractured in five places.

Five.

He shifted position carefully, so that Susie's face tipped inward toward his chest, her breath faint against his heart. The first hint of light at the horizon's edge.

What will you say then?

He didn't know.

The gutter press was living up to its traditions. Official police statements had been sparse, enquiries were ongoing, anyone with information should contact this number, the usual tight-lipped caution. Questions about Stephen Bryan's sexual orientation had been played down and, for the most part, ignored. But this only served to fuel the rumour mill, rather than the opposite; officers within the force, a few, paid back their not inconsiderable retainers with a mixture of fact and fanciful rumour. The more restrained of the media responded by mixing straight reporting with conjecture and innuendo; those to whom restraint was a dirty word printed lurid tales about rough trade and the twilight world of men who trawl for sex.
Cruising for a Bruising,
ran one headline, a man's brutal murder reduced to a sub-editor's childish joke.

The truth, as far as Will and Helen could ascertain it, was more mundane, if less immediately useful. Strange faces in gay pubs and clubs tended to be noticed, but Bryan's photograph had so far elicited little positive response. A handful of possibles, a couple of weak maybes, nothing more. As Nick Moyles put it, if Bryan had gone social since moving to Cambridge there was, as yet, little sign. As to the single assignation of which there was recent proof—well, as Moyles said, "You don't have to go to a gay club to meet gay men." Adding, with a wink, "The ready-cooked meal aisle at Sainsbury's is meant to be quite good, Will, if you've a mind."

The investigation was in danger of stalling. The short list of names McKusick had provided had still be to be checked, but Will hadn't looked at it with any great hope.

He was on his way across the car park when a woman got out of a somewhat elderly Peugeot and moved to intercept him.

"Detective Inspector Grayson? Can I have a word?"

She was early thirties, Will thought, bright faced, medium height, stocky rather than slight, reddish-brown hair that flicked out at the sides. A blue coat; smart red and gray bag, laptop size, over one shoulder.

"If you have a few moments?" The voice was professional, polite but firm. "Lesley Scarman." She was holding out her hand.

He didn't recognize the name, just the manner.

"You're a reporter."

"BBC Radio Nottingham."

"A little off your beat."

"Scarman's my married name. Before that it was Bryan. I'm Stephen's sister."

He could see it then in her face, enough of a family resemblance, something about the eyes, the set of the mouth.

"I thought you were in New Zealand," Will said.

"I was. I got back a couple of months ago."

She had an East Midlands accent, Will thought, tricked out with something else.

"I wanted to ask about the investigation," Lesley said.

"What exactly?"

"How it's going, what progress you're making. Anything, really. Whatever you can tell me. I was going to come and see you yesterday, after seeing Stephen's body. With my parents. But they were in such a state afterwards, I didn't like to leave them."

Why didn't Irving tell me? Will was wondering. Perhaps he had, an e-mail or a message Will had not yet seen.

"I'm not sure," he said, "I can tell you a lot more than Paul Irving will have told you already."

"Really?"

"Really."

She fixed him with a look. "You are in charge of the investigation?"

"That's correct," Will said, on the back foot and less than comfortable.

"The liaison officer," Lesley said, "Irving? He spelled out the basic facts, gave us the party line, but that's all. He didn't tell us anything about any potential suspects, or which direction the investigation is heading. And it's not as if the police so far have been exactly forthcoming. Which means most of what's in the media, unless it's being fed from inside, is just speculation. Robbery, that's what it said in the papers. Some of the papers. The others are slathering over Stephen's sex life and precious little else."

A patrol car carrying two uniformed officers pulled out from one of the spaces near where they were standing and they moved to one side to let it pass.

"Look," Lesley said, "you can imagine the condition my parents are in. I still don't think either of them can really believe what happened, even now. If there's anything I can tell them, anything positive, it will make a difference."

Will hesitated, feeling he was being backed into a corner.

"I'm not asking for state secrets," Lesley said, "just a conversation. And in case it's what's worrying you, anything you say, it won't get any further. This is nothing to do with my job, okay? It's personal. You've got my word."

"You'd better come inside," Will said.

While most of the CID accommodation was open plan, Will's seniority gave him office space of his own, a cubicle as he liked to call it, though there was room for a modest desk, a two-drawer filing cabinet and a couple of chairs. He asked Lesley if she wanted something to drink, tea or coffee, and, businesslike, she shook her head. Shrugging off the topcoat she was wearing, she hung it, at Will's suggestion, behind the door, over the North Face anorak he kept there against bad weather. The bag she set down at her feet.

"It might be easier," Will said, "if you tell me what you do know and then I can try to fill in a few gaps."

"All right. But it's not a lot. That's the problem. Stephen was killed in his own house, I know that much. Beaten to death. Most likely, some of the papers have suggested, by someone he knew."

Her voice started to go and, abruptly, she turned her head aside. Will thought she might be about to lose it altogether, break down in tears, but she recovered and carried on.

"Other than the suggestion the motive might have been robbery, that's about it. That's all I know."

"As I tried to say before, there's isn't a great deal I can to add," Will said. "I only wish there were."

"But you must have some ideas? There must be suspects? Leads?"

"There are lines of enquiry we're following, of course." He realized how lame it sounded; how like the standard anodyne press release.