Dead Scared

student.’

‘How many cases are we talking about?’

‘Nineteen in five years, including Bryony Carter,’ said Joesbury.

‘Well, I can see why the authorities are worried,’ I said. ‘But I don’t get why SO10 are involved.’

Joesbury leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He looked thinner than I remembered. He’d lost muscle definition from his chest and shoulders. ‘Old girls’ network,’ he said. ‘Dr Oliver contacts her old Cambridge buddy Dana, who in turn gets in touch with her old mentor on the force, another Cambridge alumna.’

‘Who is?’

‘Sonia Hammond.’

Joesbury waited for the name to register. It didn’t.

‘Commander Sonia Hammond,’ he prompted. ‘Currently head of the covert operations directorate at Scotland Yard.’

I’d got it. ‘Your boss,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you reported to a woman.’

Joesbury raised one eyebrow. I’d forgotten he could do that. ‘Story of my life,’ he said. ‘Commander Hammond has a daughter at Cambridge, so she has an added interest.’

‘Even so,’ I said. ‘What on earth do they think an undercover operation in the city of dreaming spires will achieve?’

‘I think the city of dreaming spires is Oxford,’ said Joesbury. ‘Dr Oliver has this theory that the suicides aren’t coincidence. She thinks there is something decidedly sinister going on.’

AFTER EVI HAD thanked the young WPC, she locked and bolted the front door, still more shaken than she wanted to admit. The policewoman had been polite, searching the house thoroughly and stressing that Evi should call immediately if anything else happened. Otherwise, though, she clearly wasn’t planning any action other than a report. There had been no evidence of a break-in, she’d explained, and fir cones were hardly threatening.

The woman had a point, of course. Evi wasn’t even the only one with keys to her house. Her cleaning company let themselves in every Tuesday. The building was owned by the university and it wasn’t impossible that there’d been some unscheduled, emergency visit by maintenance. Why fir cones should have been brought into the house by a maintenance team was another matter, but not one the young officer was going to spend any time worrying about.

Evi crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle. She’d just switched it on when something scraped along the kitchen window. She jumped so high in the air she almost fell over.

‘Just the tree,’ she told herself, realizing she still hadn’t taken her painkillers. ‘Just that blessed tree again.’

Evi’s kitchen overlooked the rear walled garden, which led down to the river bank. A massive cedar tree grew just beyond the house and its lower branches had a habit of scratching against the ground-floor windows when the wind was strong.

Evi took her painkillers, waited a few minutes for the effect to kick in and then ate as much as she could manage. She cleared the plates and pushed herself through to the bedroom, only stopping to pick up the fir cone from the mat. She pushed it back through the letter box without so much as a shudder. The ones from her kitchen table were outside in the rubbish bin.

She turned on the bathroom taps and started to undress. On her bedside table was an opened letter. It had arrived a few days ago in a thick padded envelope. She’d shaken it over the bed and watched shells, pebbles, dried seaweed and, finally, a snapshot of a family fall out. The photograph lay face up on the table. Mum, dad, young children. They’d been patients of hers the previous year and had turned into friends. They’d just bought a semi- derelict bungalow on the coast road of Lytham St Annes in Lancashire and come the spring, the mother had written, planned to demolish the house and build their new dream home. It would be their second attempt; their first hadn’t worked out too well. Evi was welcome, the letter insisted, to visit any time. There had been no mention of Harry.

Knowing she shouldn’t, Evi opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a newspaper article that she’d found on an internet archive. She didn’t bother reading the words, she knew them off by heart. She just needed to look at his face.

The bath would be filling up. Just one more second to look at hair that was somewhere between strawberry blond and honey, at light brown eyes, square jaw and lips that always seemed to be curved in a smile, even when he was trying, as in the picture, to look serious. Just one more second to wonder when the good days, the ones when she could push him to the back of her mind like old memories, would outnumber the bad ones, when he was hammering at the front, so vivid she could almost smell the lime and ginger fragrance of his skin. Just one more second to wonder when the pain was going to go away.

By the time the water began to go cold, Evi was almost asleep. She pressed the button that would activate the lift and bring her out of the bath. She managed to stand unaided for long enough to dry herself and rub body lotion into her skin. You have such soft skin, he’d whispered to her once. As she left the bathroom, there were tears in her eyes and she didn’t even bother telling herself that it was just the pain, so much worse at night lately, that was making her cry.

She hadn’t seen the message on the bathroom mirror, which only the steam from the hot water had made visible.

I can see you, it said.

‘SINISTER HOW?’ I asked Joesbury.

‘Dr Oliver believes there is – and I’m reading directly from notes now – a subversive subculture of glamorizing the suicidal act,’ said Joesbury. ‘She thinks these kids, backed up by an online network, are egging each other on.’

‘People said that about Bridgend,’ I said.

‘Always very difficult to prove,’ said Joesbury. ‘But there are documented cases of suicide pacts, of people meeting, usually online, and deciding to end it all together. They give each other the courage to go through with it.’

I nodded. I’d read about such cases from time to time.

‘More disturbing,’ Joesbury went on, ‘is a trend of what I can only call bottom-feeders accessing websites and chat rooms specifically to find depressed and vulnerable people. They strike up friendships, pretend to be concerned, but all the while they’re pushing them towards topping themselves. And there are websites where suicidal people go to talk to like-minded others, discuss which methods are most effective, get a bit of courage together for when they finally take the plunge.’ Joesbury looked down at his notes again. ‘Dr Oliver calls it negative reinforcement,’ he said, ‘sometimes deliberate and malicious, of self-destructive urges.’

‘She sounds a laugh a minute,’ I said.

‘Dana tells me she’s a bit of a babe,’ said Joesbury, with a smile I could cheerfully have slapped off him.

‘So assuming I agree,’ I said, ‘what exactly will I be investigating?’

‘You won’t be investigating as such,’ said Joesbury. ‘At this stage it doesn’t merit a full investigation. Your job will be to spend some time with this Dr Oliver, let her know we’re taking her seriously.’