Dead Scared

Silence on the other end of the line. Then the sound of fabric moving together. Something creaking, and, possibly, a yawn. Meg was still in bed.

‘Nope, wide awake,’ she replied, in her usual gravelly early-morning smoker’s voice. ‘Just not completely alert. It’s my day off and I’ve not had my caffeine fix yet. What’s up, Evi?’

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize. I can call you next week.’

More sounds of sliding fabric, a tiny grunt. ‘No, go on.’

Evi named the year both women had been students at St John’s, Evi in her first year, Megan in her third. ‘Five suicides,’ she said. ‘Only time other than the last five years when anything out of the ordinary in that respect has happened here. You mentioned it the other day. How much do you remember?’

Silence for a second, while Megan was thinking, and pushing herself up in the bed.

‘Not a lot, to be honest,’ she said after a moment. ‘But Evi, fifteen years ago, it was very early days for the internet. The sort of online bullying and goading you’ve been talking about wouldn’t have had a chance to get going. I don’t see how it can be relevant.’

She had a point. ‘That’s true.’

A small sigh. ‘Look, Evi, I’m really not sure this is what should be occupying your head right now. You’re far from well yourself. Let me pass this on to John. His team can follow it up if they think it’s important.’

Something in Megan’s voice suggested she found that last idea amusing. ‘Is he there?’ asked Evi.

Pause. ‘Might be,’ said Meg, with a definite smile in her voice.

‘OK, OK, I’m out of your hair. Enjoy the rest of your day, Meg.’

‘I’ll let you ladies chat,’ said Joesbury, walking to a dining table at the far side of the room and pulling out one of the chairs. Earlier he’d bought a copy of the Daily Mirror. He turned to the sports pages and dropped his head into his fingers. Now he had a good view of the two women, and would look like he was reading.

Danielle Brown was a mess. No other way of putting it, really. At twenty-five, she could have been a decade older. She was about four stone overweight, riddled with acne and scratched herself constantly. An hour and a half earlier, he and Flint had arrived at the small solicitors’ office where she worked as a legal clerk. They’d introduced themselves and asked to talk to her during her lunch break. She’d agreed willingly enough, almost seemed to welcome the unexpected attention. At one p.m., they’d driven her to the house on the outskirts of town where she lived with her parents.

The house was a big 1930s semi, with large rooms, high ceilings and art deco-style windows. The massive open-plan living room (two rooms knocked through) was full of photographs of Danielle as a schoolgirl and a young student. She’d been slim and athletic, with long, glossy brown hair. The hair was short now, cut for ease of care rather than to flatter. She could have been a different woman.

‘I read about that girl,’ she was saying to Lacey as she picked at some dry skin on the inside of her wrist. ‘The one who self-immolated at the end of Michaelmas. Is she dead?’

‘She was very badly hurt,’ said Lacey. ‘Her recovery isn’t certain.’

‘And the one this week. The papers didn’t give any details. What happened to her?’

‘We suspect she may have deliberately crashed her car,’ said Lacey. ‘Danielle, I’m going to ask you some questions that you might find difficult to answer. I’m truly sorry to cause you distress but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Is that OK?’

Out of the corner of his eye, Joesbury saw Danielle nodding her head, looking wary but also, he thought, intrigued. He looked down again, waiting for the inevitable question about the alleged sexual abuse.

‘Danielle,’ said Lacey, ‘when you were at Cambridge, were you ever scared?’

Joesbury realized he hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes. Danielle was getting a whole load of free therapy from Lacey, who’d clearly missed her vocation in life as a student counsellor, but otherwise they’d made little progress.

He’d known before they arrived, because he’d been through Danielle’s file in some detail, that she’d struggled to cope with life at Cambridge. She’d missed assignments, forgotten to attend lectures and tutorials, frequently overslept. Her work had suffered to the point where the authorities were considering taking action. He’d already seen the files from the Student Counselling Services and knew about Danielle’s unsubstantiated claims of sexual abuse in her room at night. What he hadn’t known, in fairness, was what Lacey had unearthed. The fact that, before hanging herself from an oak tree, Danielle had been scared.

‘One of the lines we’re pursuing,’ Lacey was saying, ‘is that vulnerable students are being encouraged to harm themselves by some sort of online bullying. Did you ever visit any sort of suicide website or chat room while you were at Cambridge?’

Danielle nodded her head. Joesbury sat further back in his chair and watched her. From where the two women were sitting, Lacey could see him, Danielle couldn’t.

‘I just needed to know there were other people out there who felt as bad as I did,’ Danielle said.

‘Did anyone tell you about these sites?’

Blank look.

‘Did these sites find you, in any way? Did you get any emails, or did they pop up in your search engines, or anything like that? How did you know about them?’

‘I Googled suicide,’ said Danielle, with a faintly contemptuous tone to her voice. ‘It wasn’t hard.’

‘Were any of the sites Cambridge-specific?’

Again, Danielle shook her head. ‘Most of them seemed to be based in the United States from what I can remember,’ she said.

Quietly, Joesbury stood up and walked to the window. The garden outside was mature and well cared for. Even in winter it was attractive, with grasses and evergreen shrubs gleaming with frost. He’d give them ten more minutes then bring it to a close. There was still time for lunch, maybe a chance to talk about something that wasn’t police work. Had they ever actually done that before?

Over on the sofas Lacey and Danielle were talking about the event itself, the morning Danielle had ridden her bike to some nearby woods, thrown a rope over a branch and hanged herself.

‘How did you reach the branch?’ Lacey was asking. ‘If it was high enough for you to hang yourself, it must have been too high to reach from the ground.’

‘It’s all a bit fuzzy,’ said Danielle. ‘Even the next day I couldn’t remember it too clearly. The police said I’d had the rope ready looped and just thrown it over.’

‘You must be good with knots,’ said Lacey. ‘I’m hopeless. Can never sort out my reefs from my bowlines.’

No response.

‘So how do you make a loop in a rope?’ asked Lacey. ‘And then, how do you get the knot round your neck right? So that it tightens as it should? I wouldn’t have a clue.’

Joesbury gave up all pretence of admiring the garden. He turned round to face the two women.

‘I don’t remember,’ said Danielle. ‘I’d taken something, according to the doctors. It’s all just a blur.’

‘What had you taken?’

A shrug. The girl’s face had stiffened. Defences were coming down.

‘What did you usually take?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t take drugs.’

‘Just on the morning you tried to kill yourself?’

‘DC Flint,’ said Joesbury, stepping forward.

She looked up, half defiant, half guilty. Then, with a tiny purse of the lips, she turned back to Danielle. ‘What did you stand on?’

‘DC Flint …’ Joesbury raised his voice.

‘To die by hanging, you need to raise yourself off the ground, tighten the rope and then jump. What did you stand on?’

‘According to the CID report, Miss Brown balanced on the pedals of her bicycle for long enough to tie the rope,’ said Joesbury. ‘And if we don’t take her back now, she’ll be late for work.’

‘Bull – shit!’

Joesbury glanced along the road and pulled out of the small car park. ‘Don’t mince words, Flint, say what you