Good Girls Don't Die (17 page)

Lance received the urgent summons to make their way down to the trees between the two lakes. The explanation was brief and to the point: a body had been found.

Keith was already there, talking to a shorter, paunchy man whom Grace was now able to recognise as Ivo Sweatman. Keith glanced at her over Ivo’s shoulder and told her curtly to stay back. She looked at Lance, wondering if he meant both of them or just her, but Lance remained with her anyway, making room for uniformed officers who came scurrying out of the darkness with crime scene tape that they proceeded to wind around the ring of trees.

‘Any idea who it is?’ she asked one of them.

‘Local journalist, according to the guy who found her.’ The young female PC nodded towards Ivo. ‘He knows her. He’s one of the London press corps, apparently.’

‘Roxanne?’ Grace started forward, but Lance caught her arm and held her firmly.

‘Wait! You’ll have to wait.’

‘It can’t be her! Why would anyone hurt Roxanne?’

‘We don’t know it is her yet.’

‘We can’t have been more than a couple of hundred yards away!’

‘I know.’

Grace looked into his eyes, willing him to say it wasn’t true. ‘Oh Jesus. We saw Pawel Zawodny! He was right over there. Why didn’t we keep him in custody when we had the chance? We should never have let him go!’

‘Look, we don’t know anything. Could even be some kind of accident.’

Keith summoned a uniformed officer to escort Ivo away, then came over to where they stood. He gave Grace a hard look. ‘Where have you been all evening?’ he asked.

‘Skirting around the lake, like you told us. Why? I don’t understand.’

‘Grace has been with me the whole time,’ said Lance firmly, and then Grace understood: she was a potential suspect!

‘So it is Roxanne?’ she said.

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘Are you sure she’s dead?’ Grace started to move forward again, propelled by her sheer disbelief, but Keith blocked her way.

‘We’re waiting for official confirmation. Samit’s on his way. But I spoke to the officers who were first on the scene. They’re experienced guys.’

‘But what’s happened?’ Grace’s brain, still able only to reject this alien reality, looked for some other way out, some escape clause, some other answer to this riddle.

‘Looks like the same MO as Rachel Moston,’ said Keith.

Lance lowered his voice. ‘Is there a bottle?’

Keith nodded. ‘So Ivo says. I don’t want to contaminate the scene more than necessary, but Wendy’s on her way, should be here soon.’

Grace had stood around many times waiting for the crime scene investigators to arrive, but on those occasions the interval had been simply a tedious matter of minutes to be filled with gossip and banter, the anonymous victim largely ignored, merely the opening of a new case file. Now the idea of turning their backs on a lifeless human being filled her with intolerable distress. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ she asked.

‘Duncan’s organising teams to get names and addresses as people leave, so I want you two here,’ Keith spoke softly, his businesslike tone deliberately calming. ‘Someone’s bringing lights over, so if you want to nip back to your car to get jackets or whatever, now’s your chance.’

The night breeze coming off the dark water was indeed growing chilly and the ground beneath the trees was damp, but Grace shook her head: she couldn’t leave Roxanne friendless.

‘I’ll go,’ said Lance. ‘I’ve got a torch in the boot, too.’ He squeezed Grace’s arm before slipping away between the tree trunks.

She and Keith stood awkwardly together. ‘You don’t happen to know the next of kin?’ he asked.

Grace felt a rush of sorrow for Roxanne’s parents. They were nice people, lived in Haywards Heath, not far from
Brighton, and she’d visited them several times when she and Roxanne were students. Roxanne’s father had a little garage and, back then, her mother worked in the Italian cafe-restaurant her grandparents owned. But that was ten years ago, and Roxanne had mentioned that first evening at the Blue Bar that the cafe had closed when her grandfather died. She told Keith all this, and he asked her to relay the essentials to the Sussex police.

Grace was grateful for the distraction, and pleased to end up speaking to someone in the local district force who was calm and sympathetic. Ending the call, she tried not to think too much about Roxanne’s parents hearing the doorbell at this time of night and opening up to find uniformed officers on the doorstep.

A generator van lumbered down the slope and across the grass towards them. Technicians jumped out and swiftly began to set up powerful arc lights. Grace stayed well back, reluctant to face the inevitable sight of the corpse. Keith came up behind her. ‘You don’t have to be here for this. It might be better if you weren’t.’

‘Thanks, boss. But I’d like to stay, if that’s possible.’

She saw him hesitate before he spoke. ‘Ivo said the tip about the bottle of Fire’n’Ice came from her. We have to know who told her about it.’

‘Not me, boss!’ she promised, praying again as she had when facing the chief con that it was the truth. ‘I swear I never told her anything about the investigation.’

‘Well, we’ll never know now, will we?’

Grace’s heart sank: it was a selfish thought, but the only
other person who could confirm what she had or hadn’t said that night in the Blue Bar was now dead. She stepped closer to the SIO, raising her chin. ‘You
can
trust me, sir.’ She glanced into the darkness under the trees. ‘We were friends. I owe her the truth.’

Keith hesitated before he nodded, though Grace could see some doubt linger in his eyes. ‘OK.’ He sighed. ‘Ivo said people at his paper gave Roxanne’s information a further spin. Someone in a lab may have been bribed, they may have hacked a phone or a computer, who knows.’

‘Surely he has to tell you now?’

Keith laughed. ‘Don’t kid yourself! No, I doubt he’ll give me any more than he already has.’

There was a loud click and suddenly they were bathed in bright white light. It made Grace blink and threw every leaf and blade of grass into sharp, colourless relief. Without meaning to, she turned her head and immediately saw, beyond the taut blue-and-white tape, Roxanne lying on the grass. Her face was turned away, her legs straight, her pose so restful she could very well have been asleep. It was Roxanne, but not Roxanne. Not any more.

Grace was determined not to break down in front of the SIO: if she showed too much emotion, he might take her off the case. But she yearned to breathe life back into her friend, not to allow her memory of someone once so sweetly and zestfully alive to be overlaid by the image of this scene. She recognised that part of her grief was self-interested, that her remembrance of Roxanne also preserved the hopeful energy of her own youth; this crime stole something
precious from every person with whom the victim had ever shared her life.

‘Pawel Zawodny was here tonight,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Do we pick him up?’

‘Be patient, DS Fisher. Wait and see what we can recover from the scene first. Let’s hope matey’s slipped up this time and left something we can nail him with.’

Grace made a silent vow to thank Roxanne for her friendship in the only way now left to her: she would hunt down her killer.

Murky clouds muted the moonlight as Grace and Lance made their way back to the car park by the dwindling beam of his torch. The area was deserted now and the familiar glow of the interior light as Grace opened the car door promised a welcome security. Lance drove, allowing Grace time to stare silently out into the blackness.

Once Samit had arrived and they’d suited up, she’d tried her best to examine the body through the pathologist’s professional eyes, and for a while she had succeeded. It had helped, too, that she’d been prepared for the intimate sight of the violating wine bottle, though the little cloud of midges that swarmed over Roxanne’s bare skin, magnified by the bright white light, was a mental picture she’d probably never manage to obliterate. Apart from what looked like some kind of fabric placed in her mouth, which Samit would wait to extract under sterile mortuary conditions, Roxanne’s body had been positioned in a manner strikingly similar to the way Rachel Moston’s had been arranged.

Once Keith had decided to remove the body, and Wendy
had secured the scene, there’d been the usual chat around the forensic van as people wound down and agreed deadlines to deliver test results and reports. Just at the moment when it hit Grace hard that she was the only one here who had truly lost someone, Lance had moved unobtrusively to her side and remained there until the undertakers’ van had lumbered off across the grass.

Now they were reaching the deserted lamp-lit roundabouts on the outskirts of Colchester, and Lance casually mentioned that, if she’d rather not be alone for the few hours that remained of the night, she was welcome to come back to his place and get some kip on his couch until it was time to report for work. Grace accepted gratefully.

Lance’s flat took her by surprise. It was on the ground floor of a large Victorian house near Lexden Park, and had shuttered windows, high ceilings and bare floorboards. The living room contained only a big leather sofa, a frayed Oriental rug, a low wooden table and an upright piano with tarnished candle sconces that looked like it had once belonged in a pub or a music hall. The lid was up and a book of classical music lay open on the stand. She could read pencil notations in the margins written in what she imagined was the firm hand of a music teacher.

‘So you’re a pianist?’ she said.

‘Yeah. Another thing my family reckoned was me being jumped-up,’ he replied. ‘A bit too girly for them. Little did they know.’

Exhaustion made her indiscreet. ‘You’re gay?’

He gave her a jaded look.

‘I simply never clocked it,’ she said. ‘Sorry. Too preoccupied this past week, I guess.’

‘Well, I don’t exactly advertise it at work. What can I get you?’

‘You know what I’d really like? Some toast.’

‘Coming up.’

He disappeared through to the kitchen. Grace considered following him, but she was too tired. She flopped down onto the leather couch and closed her eyes. Immediately she saw a swarm of grainy black insects and raised her lids again, blinking to relieve the dryness that went with being awake for nearly twenty hours. She lay back and focused instead on the scrolling plasterwork around the ceiling, so different to the mean, plain surfaces of her own flat. How blind she’d been not to perceive Lance’s sexuality, not to realise how tough it might sometimes be for him in a workplace that was a long way from banishing homophobia. What else had she been blind to? If she’d listened to Roxanne in the pub, really listened and asked questions instead of banging on about her own problems, might she have learned something that could have prevented her friend’s death tonight?

Why Roxanne? Why had she been killed? Keith said it was Roxanne who’d told Ivo about the vodka bottle, and now Grace was terrified in case that knowledge had somehow led to her death. Had she, Grace, put Roxanne in danger by telling her? If only she had some way to know for sure whether or not she’d said
anything
on that tequila-fuelled night!

The sheer physical finality of the undertakers carrying the black body bag to the private ambulance hit her, and she tried to control her breathing to overcome her panic. She’d been too young to remember her mother’s death, and her dad had died in hospital, rigged up to tubes and monitors. A guy she’d been at school with had written himself off on his motorbike, but this was the first time someone she knew and had been close to had died such a sudden and cruel death.

And all the time she’d been only yards away! That’s what she couldn’t get over, couldn’t get past. She knew her thoughts were illogical, but she felt like she’d just stood by and let it happen. And what if
was
her fault? What if Roxanne had been killed and violated because of dangerous knowledge Grace had given her?

Lance came back in balancing mugs of tea and plates of toast spread with raspberry jam. He looked at her as she sat up. ‘I think you’re in shock,’ he said. He put everything down on the low table, sat down next to her and handed her a mug. ‘Drink this. Supposed to be what got everyone through the Blitz.’

‘It’s my fault.’

‘That a confession?’

‘No, but –’ Grace longed to unburden herself about what she had and hadn’t said to Roxanne, but not even the late hour made her forget the chief con’s warning: if she had any other unauthorised contact with the media, it would be treated as a very serious disciplinary offence. And she had: she’d deliberately gone against that order and met
Roxanne in the out-of-the-way pub the very same day. Withholding information from an investigation went against every principle Grace had, but she must not get herself sacked! Nor could she risk telling Lance; it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to keep her secret.

‘Why Roxanne?’ she asked instead.

‘Could have been random,’ he said. ‘Sheer bad luck.’

‘You don’t really think that?’

‘No. That would have to mean Rachel Moston was a random victim, too.’

‘And cancel out any connection with Pawel Zawodny.’

Lance nodded. ‘I still think it’s him. I figure he was putting himself back at the centre of attention tonight by hijacking the vigil for Polly. Those flowers were yet another performance.’ He patted the phone in his shirt pocket. ‘Word has spread. Looks like everyone who was there or heard what happened has told everyone else they know. All the social media sites have gone viral. So far as our guy’s concerned, this is like the shooting of John Lennon. His big moment.’

‘And another scoop for the
Courier
,’ she said bitterly.

‘Afraid so. Serial murder scores higher as a headline than any celebrity event. Higher than a rock concert, a film premiere, a royal wedding. This second killing puts him right up there.’

‘She was my friend.’

Lance nodded. ‘I know. Eat your toast.’

Grace did as instructed, and he waited until she’d finished the first slice before speaking again. ‘Seriously,’ he began,
‘this makes him really dangerous. He’s got a lot to live up to now. He’s unlikely just to drift back into obscurity.’

‘So you reckon we’ll have more victims?’

‘Don’t you?’ asked Lance.

‘Do you think he chose Roxanne because she was a journalist?’

‘Maybe. She’s the local reporter. The
Mercury
is fairly widely distributed.’

Grace wasn’t convinced. ‘Did we drive him to this, Lance? I deliberately humiliated Zawodny in interview. You saw how furious he was. Was this his way of retaliating? Of getting at me because she was my friend?’

‘How would he know that?’

‘She might have told him. She might have been in contact with him for days for all we know.’

‘Surveillance didn’t pick it up.’ Lance handed her a cushion from his end of the couch. ‘Here. We’re not going to solve it tonight. We should try and catch some sleep.’

Grace took a deep breath and blew it out again very slowly. ‘This sounds crazy,’ she said, ‘but do you know what upsets me most? That he didn’t put anything under her head. That he didn’t care. He wasn’t sorry.’ She twisted the empty tea mug around in her hands. ‘Like Roxanne wasn’t good enough for him to bother. Was that deliberate? A signal to someone? To me?’

‘I think we’re over-thinking it,’ Lance said gently. ‘If I fetch a rug and another pillow, will you be OK here?’

‘Yes,’ she said, trying hard to follow his example and subdue her anxiety. ‘Thanks.’

He returned moments later, checked she had everything she needed, turned off the lights and then headed off to his bedroom. Grace lay still, letting her eyes adjust to the pale light that came through above the shutters that covered the tall windows. She was grateful to Lance not only for providing sanctuary but also for offering friendship despite the many reasons he had not to. Yet, try as she might to empty her head of the night’s events, she couldn’t stop herself shivering at the thought of Roxanne in mortuary storage. She knew enough of the autopsy process, of what Samit would do to the body, for it not to bear thinking about. Then she began to imagine Roxanne’s parents preparing themselves for their journey from Sussex to identify her. She must distract herself! To avoid being alone with such meditations, she reached for her phone and searched for Roxanne’s name on Twitter. Just as Lance had said, the timeline was packed with dozens – hundreds – of different people wanting to talk about her, to reach out to one another. Grace was evidently not alone in her mourning. Comforted, she fell asleep clasping her phone to her heart.