The interview was broadly a bush-shaking exercise from what he could gather. Casting his mind back to his study materials with precious little personal experience of a case such as this these were all he had to work with, the likelihood of Holly being murdered by a stranger was slim. Nine times out of ten it would be someone within her circle of family, friends or acquaintances who killed her. Sometimes it was the slightest snippet of information, often perceived innocuous at the time, that would lead them to the culprit.
Holly struck him as an unusual girl. There were girls like her at his school, every school probably. Popular but not overly so. There were hierarchies. The in crowd were the ones everyone either wanted to hang around with, be a part of or, as in his own case, be acknowledged by. Within that group there were further ranks, those everyone adored, pupils and teachers alike. Then there were the remainder who were routinely despised by the rest of the school, including Eric. They took pleasure in lording their status over everyone else, using their weight of numbers and overwhelming gravitas to inflict abuse on anyone they chose to single out. Beyond this close-knit group were disparate smaller conclaves of people who banded together in an almost tribal pact to ensure survival, perhaps six or seven strong. Safety in numbers but without sufficient strength to enable absolute security if the eyes of the pack fell on them.
Where did Holly fit into this environment? Social structures such as these weren’t peculiar to his own educational experience. They were repeated throughout the country whether state or independent, in an urban or rural setting. This was how people interacted. Powerplays carried on well into adulthood, in office spaces or on factory floors. This was the nature of humanity. Sometimes where you stood in these social interactions could indicate how much of a victim you might be. Of course, this was all sociological and a construct of academia but building a profile of the victim could offer up useful insights.
Holly Bettany was popular but remained on the periphery of the central crowd. With her intelligence, personality and her looks, from the outside looking in she appeared to have it all and yet she refrained from the spotlight. Choosing to keep her distance from those around her was surprising to him. Even more so was the selection of Mark McCall as her friend and her self-imposed guardianship of his time at the school. If the support worker’s views were accurate and Holly was indeed toying with Mark, what was her reasoning? To protect him from the pack of hyenas as she did only to play with his emotions herself made little sense. Unless she was driven by bouts of her own insecurity or low self-esteem which saw her punch down as many were prone to do. The further they exposed Holly’s character, the greater the level of complexity was revealed.
The phone on his desk rang. It was a call from the technical support team based in Norwich. The conversation was informative as much as it was brief. The encryption on the laptop he found in Holly’s bedroom was not as complex as first thought, but the data on the hard drive was far from enlightening. However, the last point raised excited him and he couldn’t wait to share it with his superiors.
The two of them appeared shortly after. Tamara Greave led the way, striding purposefully as she always did. He could only hope to one day have the same confidence in his abilities as she did in hers. Tom lingered behind. There was something on his mind, Eric could tell. Janssen often fell to bouts of introspection when he was working towards something. They could last for days and it was unnerving to say the least. It was weeks before he learned not to take the silences personally for they were nothing to do with him and all about Tom and his thought process. The thought occurred how the new boss might be finding working with him. Watching the interaction between the two of them, he was intrigued. Both confident, experienced and knowledgeable but with starkly different approaches. Up until now, Tom was the benchmark, intense and focussed. Greave was different. Open, approachable and assertive but he had a sense she wouldn’t suffer fools. This worried him slightly, if he was honest.
Listening to Janssen reveal his instincts about Colin Bettany was interesting. Eric found the doctor intimidating. He held a position of influence within the community, moving amongst the local politicians and land owners, living a life far above the standard he could ever hope to achieve. His mother always hammered him for his willingness to acquiesce to those of a perceived higher status. She misunderstood his attitude. He didn’t see them as better than him, he knew they weren’t but others didn’t agree. The forelock tugging was ingrained in those around him and these people certainly had the reach to make his life difficult. Since joining the force, he found that class played a weak role in helping to differentiate between those who followed the law and those who felt it was something only for others to adhere to.
Greave didn’t respond to Janssen and a short silence followed. He waited, wondering if now was a good time to speak, fearing his switch of conversation would be interpreted as a lack of understanding of the nuance to the comment. The frown left Janssen’s face and he blew out his cheeks. Now was a good time. “I heard from tech regarding Holly’s laptop. Good news and bad.”
“Start with the bad and work up,” Tamara told him, grasping a chair on castors and wheeling it closer.
“There was very little on the hard drive. No diary or email threads to read
