doing or with whom. And she was exhausted. She just wanted to go to bed. The next day they tried to talk her into going to the police but she refused. They all assumed she’d been with another bloke and didn’t want to tell them about him. Her boyfriend jumped to the same conclusion and dumped her.
Don’t you just love men?
After that, not surprisingly, she got a bit depressed or, to use their words, ‘well weird’. What they seem to mean by that is she became jumpy and nervous, keeping to her room most of the time, not really talking to anyone, stopped going to lectures, complained about not being able to sleep and bad dreams.
And she developed a pretty bad rat fixation. Yes, you read it right, rats. Seemed convinced the building was overrun with rodents. Nobody else noticed but she heard them all the time, day and night. She even found a dead one under her bed one time. She went absolutely mental and, yes, I am quoting my new best friends again, because once they got started on rats there was no stopping them. Seems Nicole was the butt of a few practical jokes on the subject of rats. Someone set off a mechanical one in Hall one day and she nearly lost it, someone else broke into her room and covered the walls with photographs of them.
So, to summarize (and I heard you mutter ‘about time too’, by the way), Nicole sounds like a classic suicide case to me: depressed, not sleeping, bad dreams when she did sleep, not keeping up with coursework, dropping out of social life. On the other hand, she was picked on by some fellow students with a rather warped sense of humour and, most alarmingly, disappeared for several days shortly before she died.
Should we be worried about that, do you think?
Right, this is me signing off now, my coffee’s going cold and there’s just one more thing I want to check out before I stumble Lethe-wards. You see, all this academic bollocks is starting to rub off. Hope London’s a bit warmer than this place. Snow is forecast any day now but luckily I brought some boots.
Sleep well.
Joesbury got up and walked to the window. She’d sent him the email just five minutes ago. She’d be leaving Starbucks, probably the one on Market Street, pulling her coat up round her shoulders, wrapping that stupid college scarf round her neck, stepping outside. He turned and looked at the street map of Cambridge on his desk. If she was going back to St John’s she’d walk along St Mary’s Street. If. He had to be in King’s Parade in ten and could well walk straight into her. The case was turning into a farce. ‘Enter Brian Rix, stage left, with his trousers round his ankles,’ he muttered, as he found his coat, grabbed his wallet and left the room.
‘FOUR OUT OF the nine were patients of ours,’ said Nick.
‘Did you know them personally?’ asked Evi.
He shook his head and a faint tinge of pink spread across his upper cheeks. ‘As far as possible we put the young women under the care of the other partners,’ he said. ‘Probably being over-cautious but there you go, better safe than sorry. I get the men and the women over forty.’
‘I’m registered with you,’ Evi reminded him. ‘And I’m a few years off forty.’
‘We assumed familiarity would have bred contempt in your case.’
Evi smiled. Women had been falling head over heels for Nick for as long as she’d known him. She looked down at the spreadsheet on her desk.
‘I have a list here of nineteen students who took their own lives in the last five years,’ she said. ‘Bryony Carter would have made twenty. Now we have another nine attempted suicides.’
‘I’m not getting a good feeling about this,’ said Nick.
‘Join the club.’
The night outside had got even colder. I pulled my collar up, wrapped my new college scarf around my face and set off. I was heading for the site of the first suicide this academic year. In late October, Jackie King had drowned herself beneath a bridge belonging to Clare College. She’d been a third-year English student.
The bridge was of pale stone, with three arches to let the boat traffic pass below. By the time I reached it I was having serious misgivings about my email to Joesbury. I probably shouldn’t have been so familiar. It was just easier, somehow, to talk to him when he wasn’t close.
The whole bridge was shiny with frost. I stayed close to the stone balustrade on the left-hand side and stopped in the exact centre, just as Jackie had done. Only she’d brought a length of washing line with her. She’d tied one end to a baluster. The other she’d fastened securely round both her ankles. The exact length of the rope had been important. She must have worked it out beforehand, cutting it carefully. I have no idea what happened to her during the next few seconds. I can only guess.
So here’s my guess. I think she must have sat on the stone rail and swung her legs over the side. She’d have looked down, just as I was doing now, seen the water black and slow-moving beneath her. She would have been cold. It was late in the year. It was also around four a.m.: she was caught on a CCTV camera making her way over here. She must have looked down at the water and asked herself what on earth she thought she was doing. She must have seriously considered giving it up and going home. She hadn’t. She’d jumped.
Jackie, Bryony and Nicole. Three young women who’d chosen to end their lives in what Evi Oliver called very untypical ways. She was right. Each death, or near death in Bryony’s case, had been complicated, considered and violent. So what was happening to women in this city?
‘Twenty-nine students, twenty-three of them women, either killed themselves or tried to in the last five years,’ said Evi, leaning back against the chair and trying not to let the pain show.
‘Friggin’ hell, it doesn’t look good, does it?’ said Nick.
‘No,’ said Evi.
Silence for a second.
‘I saw Meg yesterday,’ said Evi. ‘She mentioned a spate of suicides when we were here. Ring any bells with you?’
‘Can’t say it does. There was that chap who jumped off Great St Mary’s around exam time, but other than that …’
‘No, he’s the only one I can remember.’
‘And you’ve already spoken to the police?’
Evi nodded, then gave a small half-shrug.
‘What?’
‘I’m think I’m beginning to have credibility issues with the local CID,’ she said.
Nick frowned at her. Evi finished her wine and told him about her intruder, about the tricks that had been played on her, and the phone calls and messages from earlier.
‘And these emails have just vanished from your computer?’ he asked her. ‘I know nothing about IT. Is that even possible?’
Evi pulled a face.
‘Are you worried?’
‘A bit.’
‘Want to come and stay at my house tonight?’ he asked her. ‘Any number of spare bedrooms.’
Evi shook her head. ‘Kind thought, but I think I might die of exposure in the night.’
He laughed. ‘I could lend you a dog to cuddle, but you’re probably right. Look, why don’t I talk to my partners, show them this list? If I can get them on side, CID will have to listen to five of us.’
She thought about it for a second. ‘It can’t hurt,’ she said.
‘I need to get going. I’ll see you on Friday, right?’
Evi agreed that he would. ‘Actually, I thought I might bring someone with me after all,’ she said. ‘No, not a date. A new mature student who’s helping me out with some research. She needs to meet a few people. Would that be OK?’
‘Course. Now, want me to check the house for you?’
Evi opened her mouth to say she’d done it herself earlier.
