I took a moment to wonder how many acts would be considered more sinister than setting fire to yourself. ‘I’m not familiar with that,’ I said. ‘What you just said about tick-boxes.’
‘Means, Motive, Intent,’ said Joesbury. ‘First thing to check with a possible suicide is whether the means of death was readily to hand. Pistol close by the shooting hand, noose round the neck and something to stand on, that sort of thing. In Bryony’s case, the petrol can was found outside the dining hall. And the investigating officer found a receipt for it in her room. He also found traces of the drug she’d been using for Dutch courage.’
Someone leaned over to put an empty glass on the table and caught sight of the photograph. Without looking up, I slid the pictures under the file.
‘Next box is motive,’ Joesbury went on. ‘Bryony had been depressed for some time. She was a bright girl but she was struggling to keep up with the coursework. Complained about never being able to sleep.’
‘What about intent?’ I asked.
Joesbury nodded. ‘She left a note to her mother. Short and very sad, I’m told. The report prepared by the first officer on the scene and the SOCs report on the state of her room are in the file,’ he went on. ‘No evidence of staging that they could see.’
Staging refers to tricks sometimes used by killers to make a murder look like suicide. Placing a gun near to a victim’s hand would be a classic example. The absence of the victim’s fingerprints on the gun would indicate staging.
‘And a couple of hundred people saw her do it,’ I said.
‘They certainly saw her in flames,’ said Joesbury. ‘And it’s the third suicide at the university this academic year. Does the name Jackie King ring any bells?’
I thought for a moment and shook my head.
‘Killed herself in November. Made a few of the national papers.’
‘I must have missed it.’ Since the case we’d both worked on last autumn, I’d made a point of avoiding the papers and the national news. I would never be comfortable seeing my own name in the spotlight, and constant reminders of what the team had been through were not, as the therapists would say, going to help the healing process.
‘I still don’t get it,’ I went on. ‘Why are SO10 interested in a college suicide?’
Joesbury pulled another file out of his bag. Asking him not to open it didn’t really seem like an option so I sat and waited while he pulled out another set of photographs. Not that multiples were strictly necessary. I got the idea clearly enough from the one on the top. A girl, obviously dead, with wet hair and clothes. And a rope tied tight around her ankles.
‘This was a suicide?’ I asked.
‘Apparently so,’ he replied. ‘Certainly no obvious evidence otherwise. This was Jackie in her better days.’
Joesbury had pulled the last of the photographs to the top of the pile. Jackie King looked the outdoor type. She was wearing a sailing-style sweatshirt, her hair was long, fair, shiny and straight. Young, healthy, bright and attractive, surely she’d had everything to live for?
‘Poor girl,’ I said, and waited for him to go on.
‘Three suicides this year, three last, four the year before,’ he said. ‘Cambridge is developing a very unhealthy record when it comes to young people taking their own lives.’
EVI STOPPED, WILLING the wind to soften so that she could hear the snigger, the scuffle of feet that would tell her someone was watching. Because someone had to be watching. There was no way these cones had blown on to the path. There were twelve in all, one in the exact centre of each flagstone, forming a straight line right up to the front door.
Three nights in a row this had happened. Last night and the night before it had been possible to explain away. The cones had been scattered the first time she’d seen them, as though blown by the wind. Last night, there’d been a pile of them just inside the gate. This was much more deliberate.
Who could possibly know how much she hated fir cones?
She turned on the spot, using the stick for balance. Too much noise from the wind to hear anything. Too many shadows to be sure she was alone. She should get indoors. Walking as quickly up the path as she was able, she reached the front door and stepped inside.
Another cone, larger than the rest, lay on the mat.
Evi kept her indoor wheelchair to one side of the front door. Without taking her eyes off the cone, she pushed the door shut and sat down in it. She was in the grip of an old, irrational fear, one she acknowledged but was powerless to do anything about, dating back to when, as a chubby, inquisitive four-year-old, she’d picked up a large fir cone from beneath a tree.
She’d been on holiday in the north of Italy with her family. The pine trees in the forest had been massive, stretching up to the heavens, or so it had seemed to the tiny girl. The cone was huge too, easily dwarfing her little plump hands. She’d picked it up, turned to her mother in delight and felt a tickle on her left wrist.
When she looked down, her hands and the lower parts of her arms were covered in crawling insects. She remembered howling and one of her parents brushing the insects away. But some had got inside her clothes and they’d had to undress her in the forest. Years later, the memory of delight turning to revulsion still had the power to disturb her.
No one could know that. Even her parents hadn’t mentioned the incident in decades. A weird joke, nothing more, probably nothing to do with her. Maybe a child had been playing here earlier, had left a trail of cones and popped one through her letter box. Evi wheeled herself towards the kitchen. She got as far as the doorway.
Heaped on the kitchen table, which several hours ago she’d left completely clear, was a pile of large fir cones.
‘YOUNG PEOPLE COMMITTING suicide is hardly uncommon, though,’ I said, thinking as I spoke. ‘The suicide rate is higher among the student body than the rest of the population, isn’t it? Wasn’t there a case in Wales a few years ago?’
‘You’re thinking about Bridgend,’ said Joesbury. ‘Although technically, that didn’t involve a university. Cluster suicides do happen. But they’re rare. And Dana’s mate isn’t the only one who’s worried. The media attention is getting the governing body very edgy too. Outlandish public suicides don’t look good for one of the world’s leading academic institutions.’
‘But no suggestion of foul play?’ I asked.
‘On the contrary. Both Bryony and Jackie had a psychiatric history,’ said Joesbury. ‘Jackie in the past, Bryony more recently.’
‘Bryony was receiving counselling?’
‘She was,’ said Joesbury. ‘Not by Dana’s friend herself, what’s her name …’ He pulled a stack of paper from the file and flicked through it. ‘Oliver,’ he said, after a moment, ‘Dr Evi Oliver … not with her but with one of her colleagues. There’s a team of counsellors dedicated to the university and Dr Oliver heads it up.’
‘What about the other girl?’ I said.
Joesbury nodded. ‘Jackie had her problems too, according to her friends,’ he said. ‘So did the young lad who hanged himself in his third week.’ Joesbury glanced down at his notes. ‘Jake Hammond. Nineteen-year-old English
