with no recollection of where she’d been or what she’d been doing.’
Evi looked at me. When Bryony had tried to kill herself, she’d been taking a combination of drugs that could have wiped out huge chunks of her memory. A few weeks later, another girl with a history of memory loss had taken her own life.
‘If there was DMT in Nicole’s bloodstream too, that can’t be coincidence,’ I said. ‘Her post-mortem was done this week, wasn’t it?’
Evi nodded at me. ‘Tuesday, I think,’ she said. ‘Nicole disappeared, you say?’
‘I need to get hold of that report,’ I said. ‘Can you access it?’
Evi shook her head. ‘She wasn’t my patient,’ she said. ‘If Nicole had been taking drugs, or if there were any excess levels of alcohol in her system, it’ll all come out at the inquest. Until then …’
I breathed out heavily. The normal course of events was for an inquest to be opened and then immediately adjourned. The full inquest could be six months away. ‘Do you know the local coroner?’ I asked.
Evi waved her head around in a completely non-committal way. ‘I’ve met him,’ she said. ‘At one of the college dinners. We talked for a while.’
‘What sort of age?’
She shrugged. ‘Late fifties.’
‘Married?’
‘Bachelor, I thought. What has this …’
‘Gay or straight?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Oh, like you’d need to. Gay or straight?’
‘Straight,’ said Evi. ‘Quite flirtatious, if you must know.’
‘Couldn’t be better,’ I said. ‘We need to see him. Do you have his home phone number?’
Evi held up one hand. ‘Hang on a sec. You said a girl had disappeared. Did you say her name was Jessica?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, why?’
Instead of answering, she picked up her desk phone and dialled a number.
‘Hello,’ she said after a moment. ‘Could you try Jessica Calloway’s room for me?’
We waited. I was trying to remember what I’d seen on various websites the night before about the girl who was missing.
‘Hello, may I speak to Jessica, please?’ said Evi a second later. ‘This is Dr Oliver.’ The frown line on her forehead deepened. ‘I see,’ she went on after a moment. ‘And have you spoken to her family at all?’
She looked up at me. For the first time, I thought she looked scared. ‘OK, thank you,’ she said, before putting the phone down.
‘Jessica Calloway,’ she said to me. ‘I’ve been seeing her for a few months now. She has a history of depression and eating disorders. I saw her on Tuesday and was seriously concerned. I was starting to think about hospitalization. Now she hasn’t been seen since that evening. I need to go and talk to the people in her block, her tutor.’
‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘You’re taking the local coroner out to lunch.’
IT WASN’T FAR from Evi’s house to St Catharine’s. When I reached the candy-striped canopies of the open- air market, I got off the bike and pushed it through the stalls. The early sunshine had all but disappeared by this time and the sky had clouded over. It had a yellow, heavy look that suggested snow wasn’t so far away. I wove my way in and out of the shoppers, past bread stalls, flower stalls, fruit and veg stalls, and everywhere I turned there was an almost visible sense of urgency. People wanted to get their shopping done and get home before the snow came down. I picked up speed again and was soon at the college.
I made my way up to the third floor slowly, praying I wasn’t coming down with something serious. The last thing I needed was to be laid up in bed for days. At the top, I stopped to get my breath, then found Jessica’s room.
She would have a view of Main Court from her window. I knocked and waited. At the sound of a lavatory being flushed I turned to see another young woman coming out of a communal bathroom.
‘Hi,’ I said, before she had time to speak. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m here about Jessica.’
‘Nineteen dead women,’ said Evi. ‘It could be twenty by the end of the weekend. One of my patients hasn’t been seen since Tuesday evening.’
Dr Francis Warrener, the coroner for the city of Cambridge, lifted the corner of his napkin and dabbed his mouth. He’d been amenable enough to Evi’s suggestion that they meet for lunch and had sounded intrigued when she’d admitted she needed a favour. Now he was clearly regretting agreeing to see her. Well, tough.
‘It’s only a matter of time before the national press run with the story, asking very pertinent questions about what we’ve allowed to go on here. And before some parents start to get litigious,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about you, Francis, but when that happens I want to know all my boxes are ticked.’
Francis Warrener was small and slim and slick. All his movements were neat and precise. He had dark brown eyes, features that might have been pretty on a woman and very white teeth. He spoke little, but every word he uttered was precise and to the point. He’d stopped speaking a couple of minutes earlier.
‘You know the first question always asked in cases like these?’ said Evi. ‘Could anything have been done sooner? When I’m asked that, I don’t want to have to say, well, yes, actually, I was a bit worried, but I didn’t want to rock any professional boats.’
Warrener picked up his fork, speared a pea and put it carefully into his mouth. Most of his food was still on the plate, cooling rapidly. ‘If you’ve reported your concerns to the police,’ he said, ‘then surely you’ve done all you can.’
‘Yes, that might just save my career,’ said Evi. ‘And if it’s not enough by itself, then the fact that I met you, spelled out my concerns and asked you to look into it further will also help. Having both you and the police tell me to mind my own business will, at a pinch, exonerate me.’
‘And pass the buck firmly into my court,’ said Warrener.
‘I think you just mixed a couple of metaphors but, basically, yes,’ said Evi, forcing her cheek muscles into a smile. She waited, while Warrener pushed the remains of his chicken breast to the side of his plate and then put both knife and fork neatly down in the exact centre of it.
‘Why don’t you just look,’ suggested Evi, feeling sorry for him, but not enough to back down. ‘If you go through the reports and there’s nothing to substantiate what I’m saying, just tell me. I’ll accept your word for it. Then no confidences will be broken and no professional rules breached.’
‘And if I do find something?’ he asked.
‘Then you’ll be very glad you looked,’ said Evi, knowing he was going to do it. ‘And if you think that’s even a possibility, we shouldn’t be wasting any time.’
Nearly an hour later I’d learned nothing new. Except that it’s possible to feel seriously concerned about someone you’ve never met. I’d explained I worked for Jessica’s counsellor, and her friends had been happy to talk. After thirty minutes I felt like I’d known her myself. She was a girl with problems, that had been obvious from the day she’d arrived at the college. She was unnaturally obsessive about her appearance, in particular her weight, and hadn’t put anything in her mouth without carefully weighing up its calorific value. Sensing her vulnerability, people had begun picking on her.
‘Which people?’ I’d asked.
The girls had looked at each other for inspiration.
‘We never found out,’ said the one with cropped blonde hair. ‘Most people round here just don’t seem the type. Everyone’s pretty nice. A lot of it was on websites, you know, that sort of thing. Those things are completely anonymous.’
