CHAPTER EIGHT
Hannah didn’t mention Bethany Friend’s name that night. Marc did the cooking, a very good boeuf bourguignon, washed down with a bottle of Merlot. Over the meal they watched a DVD, a sentimental romantic comedy she forgot as soon as the final credits rolled. When he suggested they go to bed early, she said yes at once. As she undressed, she tried to remember the last time they’d made love on a weekday night, when they both had to get up for work the next morning. How stupid it would be to ruin the moment by cross-examining him about the woman who had died in the Serpent Pool.
Marc was patient and tender. This was how it used to be between them. When they first met, she’d liked the fact that books meant so much more to him than football or rugby. As a junior police officer, she’d dated men who were keener on sport than on sex. Marc’s sensitivity turned her on, made him seem different. When he asked her to move in with him, she said yes before he had a chance to change his mind. Even now, she didn’t regret it. Sometimes you had to trust your instinct. Take a chance.
As she allowed him to take control, she found her body responding. Forget everything else, exist for the moment. His touch was gentle, his breath warm. Time to banish the image of drowned Bethany’s swollen face. Afterwards, she settled into deep and dreamless sleep.
Marc was out of bed by the time the alarm roused Hannah. She yawned, reluctant to drag herself from under the duvet and get on with her own job. But when it came to duty or duvet day, the work ethic won every time. Sad, really.
Over cornflakes and coffee, she didn’t mention Bethany. Marc took a call from a customer in Denmark with a couple of titles to add to his wants list and then padded off to his study. He was wearing his boxer shorts and his body looked as trim as she could remember. Desire stirred again inside her. How did he manage to keep himself in shape when he seldom went to the gym and spent most of his time reading?
Hannah switched on the radio. The early show presenters, Nerys and Erik, were talking to Arlo Denstone about the De Quincey Festival.
‘…and Daniel Kind, the historian, will be talking about Thomas De Quincey-’
‘
‘Yes, De Quincey was one of the most fascinating Englishmen of the nineteenth century. He had a brilliant mind, yet he admitted to “a chronic passion of anxiety”, and “a perpetual sense of desperation”. These were the qualities that…’
Marc reappeared. ‘Seen my black jersey?’
She turned down the volume. ‘I washed it over the weekend. Look in your wardrobe.’
‘It wasn’t in its usual place.’
‘Look again.’
‘You might have told me.’
He gave a theatrical sigh and banged the door shut as he left the room. Was this the inevitable fate of all longlasting relationships? Those early days of excitement and passion slowly transformed into squabbles about laundry and loading the dishwasher? It wasn’t only Thomas De Quincey who had a perpetual sense of desperation. Perhaps she ought to be thankful that the magic was still there at bedtime. Some nights, at any rate.
When she turned up the sound on the radio, the conversation had moved away from Daniel Kind and Thomas De Quincey. She swallowed the last of her coffee and slid off the kitchen stool. Time to face the day.
As soon as the briefing session was over, Hannah returned to her room and shut the door. Greg Wharf’s patience with knotting specialists was wearing as thin as frayed string. Like experts the world over, they were happiest when perched upon the fence. Nobody was prepared to go on the record and rule out the possibility that Bethany had tied herself up before lying down in the Serpent Pool and submitting to her fate. Hannah guessed that Greg’s scepticism had deterred the experts from inching outside their professional comfort zones. They’d worry about the blame game if fresh evidence came to light to prove that Bethany had killed herself.
Hannah shuffled circulars from the ACC as her thoughts roamed. Ben Kind hadn’t been afraid to take risks when circumstances demanded it. He’d once told her there were only two types of senior cop: those with tidy desks and those whose desks looked like a bomb had struck. Ben never tolerated clutter. When his paperwork began to accumulate, it finished up in the wastepaper basket. He was a bulky man, but astonishingly neat, in his physical movements as well as in the way he marshalled his office. He’d never sympathised with Hannah’s hoarding of ancient memoranda and she wasn’t sure she could explain it herself. Maybe she liked the comfort of the familiar. For her, a clear desk was like a zero crime rate. A worthy aspiration, no more. In this, she resembled Marc, even though she lacked his obsessive collector’s zeal. She understood why he hated to let things go.
Was that why they stuck together, because it wasn’t in their nature to make the break? Even after last night in bed, she could not swear to the answer.
Her personal address book lurked at one corner of the desk, hidden by a sheaf of last month’s crime statistics. On impulse, she fished it out. She’d noted the numbers of Daniel Kind’s mobile and the cottage in Brackdale. Never got round to crossing them out.
Why not give him a ring, where was the harm?
As she picked up the phone, the door swung open.
‘Ma’am. Something’s just cropped up. I thought you’d like to know.’
Maggie Eyre, breathless and sweaty after running down the corridor. She’d put on a bit of weight, Hannah noticed. She succumbed to unworthy selfishness.
She put down the receiver and waved Maggie into the chair on the other side of the messy desk. ‘Be my guest.’
‘Sorry to interrupt, I should have waited.’
‘It wasn’t important.’
Maggie tossed a sheet of paper onto the desk. It covered up the address book. ‘Of course, this probably means nothing at all. But it’s an intriguing coincidence, I wanted you to know straight away.’
Hannah glanced at the sheet. It was a short witness statement. The witness’s name was Wanda Smith, and she had worked at a PR consultancy where Bethany temped prior to moving to a post at the university.
A yellow Post-it note was stuck onto the paper. Maggie had written on it a telephone number and four words.
Daniel Kind stared at his laptop, thinking about murder.
Thomas De Quincey had a lot to answer for. Daniel had just finished rereading ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’, and the old essay retained its bite. De Quincey was intrigued by ‘the philosophy of cleansing the heart by means of pity and terror… Something more goes into the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed, a knife, a purse, and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature.’ The true murderer was a romantic, who played to the gallery. The crimes that appealed to De Quincey possessed a touch of the bizarre.
Daniel thought it best not to dwell upon what his dad would have said about making murder the subject of satire. No scope for relishing the aesthetics of murder when your job was to detect it. One of Daniel’s infant memories was of staying up late one Friday night when his father was working on a case. The old man had promised to read him a story at bedtime — a rare treat, and Daniel chose a chapter about the Five Find-Outers, who were forever investigating mysteries. When at last Ben arrived home, he was haggard and weary, and he hugged his son with a strange ferocity before saying that he needed a shower before story time. Louise was already fast asleep, but as Daniel waited in his bedroom, he overheard his parents whispering.
‘What did he do to her?’
‘Strangled her with his bare hands.’
‘Oh God.’
‘And that wasn’t the worst of it.’ Ben’s voice was choking and, for a terrible moment, Daniel thought his father was about to burst into tears. ‘A kid, that’s all she was. A kid.’
At that point, Ben noticed his son’s door was ajar and shut it so as to prevent any more eavesdropping. But
