Chapter 35
‘Good thinking, girlfriend. Bunch of goddamned horny schoolboys in here, is all. I need to pee first, though, honey.’
Hannah looped her arm through that of Laura who was being chatted up by a lanky youth and headed to the loos.
Chloe put a hand on the bar, seeming to steady herself.
‘She look all right to you, Lucy?’ asked Suzy as she paused the footage again.
‘No. Not for the amount she’s had. She’s not been drinking as much as the other girls.’
‘No. She’s keeping herself sober. Or trying to.’
‘Always on the case.’
Suzy nodded. ‘She’s a pro. You figure her drink was spiked?’
‘Looks that way.’
Suzy nodded and ran the tape again, watching as the barman chatted to Chloe who then nearly collapsed as she walked away. She stood up unsteadily and brushed away the hand of one of the rugby players who had come across to help her.
Chloe was five foot ten in her bare feet and the man seemed surprised at her strength. He backed off, holding his hand up, and Chloe stumbled through a crowd of his friends who were singing loudly. She lurched through them, through the door and up the ancient stone steps out into the night.
‘Someone spiked her drink,’ said Suzy. ‘I guarantee it.’
‘Maybe it was caught on camera?’
‘Let’s find out,’ said Suzy as she rewound the footage and fast-forwarded it again. Slowing it down as drinks were poured and handed over.
Some half an hour or so after the girls had entered the bar she paused it again. Then ran it backwards and forwards a few more times. The crowd of rugby players and another bunch of male students were at the bar and the barman was obscured from view for a while. When the crowd cleared, Chloe had a new drink in front of her.
‘One of those men at the bar?’ asked Lucy.
‘Could be.’ Suzy tried to adjust the angle of view but there wasn’t a camera behind the bar pointing down, only one pointing outwards, so there was no way they could see what had happened to Chloe’s drink. She pulled out her phone and hit a speed-dial button. She listened to Dan’s recorded voice as the call went direct to voicemail.
‘Dan, it’s Suzy,’ she said after the beep. ‘Get someone onto Chloe’s blood works at the hospital. It looks like she was slipped a Mickey of some sort.’
She closed her phone and turned back to the screen.
‘Why would someone have just targeted Hannah?’ asked Lucy.
‘I don’t know. Unless they knew who she was.’
Suzy pressed the remote again and they sat and watched as the external security cameras picked up the action. Switching data files as Chloe came up the steps leading into the quad, walking across it and out into the side street.
She flipped the control again and called up the earlier footage as Chloe left the bar. She watched her leave, weaving through the group of drunken rugby players. One of them was watching her very closely.
Suzy let the tape run for a few moments more and then whistled quietly.
‘Well, well, well,’ she said.
She clicked another button and the printer standing in the corner of the room beeped and hummed into life.
Chapter 36
The Union Jack Cafe near Shaftesbury Avenue was one of the last of a dying breed in the capital. A proper greasy spoon.
I had ordered the full monty – eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, mushrooms, black pudding – but when it arrived I pushed it aside. The memory of Chloe lying in bed with a tube in her mouth kind of spoiled my appetite.
Sam Riddel was carving his yolk-free scrambled eggs on wheat toast with surgical precision. He laid his fork carefully aside and took a sip of his chilled organic tomato juice. His breakfast went against all the principles of the cafe, but we had been coming here long enough for the owner to compromise for Sam. Besides, most people didn’t argue with my colleague. Apart from his boyfriend and me, that was.
Suzy came in, carrying an A4 manila envelope.
‘What have you got?’ I asked.
‘Not sure yet, but you’ll want to see this.’ She opened the envelope and put a photo in front of me. ‘This is the guy serving Chloe and the others last night in the union bar. I’ve heard back from the hospital…’
‘And?’
‘And Chloe’s blood work was showing traces of an intermediate-acting three-hydroxy benzodiazepine.’
‘Which means?’
‘Temazepam,’ said Sam and took another delicate sip of his tomato juice.
‘Someone slipped her a Mickey. Lucy and I went through all the footage, there were a couple of possibilities,’ Suzy said, tapping the photo. ‘This guy had ample opportunity and he’s out of sight of the CCTV easily for long enough to spike her vodka. He leaves the bar shortly after Chloe. He doesn’t show up in the quad but there are other exits not covered by any camera.’
‘And the other possibility?’
‘A group of men at the bar. Rugby team – one of them shows a very keen interest in her.’
Suzy flipped a couple of photos down. The young men from the security footage. Early twenties, big, boisterous by the look of it, wearing the university rugby colours. And a further one. A close-up shot of one of the men. A degree more serious than the others, his eyes unsmiling as he looked at Chloe leaving. An intense, predatory look.
‘Good job. We got names on these people yet?’
‘The barman’s called Ryan Williams. He’s being interviewed down at Paddington Green even as we speak.’
‘He’s been arrested?’
‘No. Helping with enquiries.’
‘Why take him down there, then?’
‘Don’t know, boss. But you probably know someone who does.’ Suzy smiled pointedly. She was right. I did.
I tapped the pictures of the rugby players. ‘And the merry gentlemen here?’
‘We’re on it, Dan.’
‘Good.’
‘But there’s more,’ she added.
‘Go on,’ prompted Sam.
Suzy picked up the envelope again. ‘I went back to the footage from the quad, wound back a couple of hours. The university had a visitor you both might recognise, and I’m guessing he wasn’t there because he had a tutorial on Spenser’s Faerie Queen.’
She slipped the final photo out and flipped it down on the table.
She was probably right about the tutorial. The man in the dark suit and matching sunglasses was about Sam Riddel’s height but a good few stone heavier, and certainly no vegetarian. His name was Brendan ‘Snake’ Ferres and he was one of the most unpleasant men to walk the planet.
‘Not good,’ I said simply.
